Daily Coffee Tip::Try It Naked

Wait!
Stop right there!
Go ahead and pull your mind out of the gutter and button that shirt-button back up; I am in no way advocating the production or consumption of your morning coffee in the nude (unless you are a seasoned nudist that is, then you're on your own). More appropriately, I am challenging everyone who doctors up their coffee to taste their brew "naked" before adding the Splenda and hazelnut-fat-free-cream-substitute-product. I know you like your coffee that way and I'm not really suggesting you make any major changes, yet. On the contrary, I'd like you to alter the way you think about tasting coffee, just for a moment.

Lets go crazy and pretend that instead of a hot cup of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, you're face to face with a couple ounces of nice Bordeaux. Now, even if you weren't a wine drinker and you were just tasting it to find out what its all about you certainly wouldn't pour Sprite in the glass to make it taste closer to the Boone's Farm you're used to (ok, maybe that was harsh, I apologize). You would give this classy glass of fine wine a good sniff, swish and swallow and at least humor the idea that you might find interesting fruit flavors, acidic undertones and fascinating palate textures. You still might not care for the wine enough to drudge through a whole glass without the Sprite, but you'd give it the fair shake it is due.

Coffee deserves the exact same tasting love as a fine wine. Many of the characteristics that can be pulled by an expertly roasted quality coffee bean are identical to those of a fine wine. Coffee and wine both share acids, sugars, oils, tannins and other dissolved solids; the only true differences are coffee is hot and wine is alcohol. Even the method of tasting is the same (sniff, swirl, sip, slurp, swish, swallow & savor). So I encourage you to take a chance tasting your coffee "naked" before you spruce it up. You may be surprised to find that different coffees have totally different characteristics without cream and sugar. You'll also find that some coffees blend with the cream and sugar in totally different ways. Who knows, you may discover that there are a few coffees out there that you like better without all the fixin's!