Is Salted Coffee Delicious? Flavor Profile and Taste of Pour-Over Coffee with Salt, Clever Uses of Salt in Coffee

The Magic of Adding Salt to Coffee

In daily life, salt is an indispensable seasoning that enhances and adds flavor to food. But what wonderful effects would adding salt to coffee bring?

The practice of adding salt to coffee is not a "bizarre" behavior; in fact, many regions have traditions of salting coffee. Ancient and mysterious Turkish coffee, in addition to its interesting divination culture, also uses salted coffee in marriage customs. When the man visits the woman's family to propose marriage, the woman will add salt (or black pepper, ginger powder) to the coffee to test the man's character. If the man drinks it without showing difficulty, it will be considered a sign of a good marriage.

The nineteenth century was when coffee began to become popular in European coastal regions. At that time, coffee could only be described as strong, bitter, and astringent. The quality of coffee beans themselves was not high. People would roast them to a charred state, then grind them into fine powder, pour them into a pot with water, boil, and drink directly. To alleviate this palate-stimulating bitterness, they thought of adding seasonings to coffee, and salt was one of the common seasonings available in every household. (At that time, sucrose was an expensive luxury that only aristocrats could afford.) People discovered that after adding salt, the bitterness of coffee "disappeared," replaced by the sweet aroma of coffee.

Today, some regions still maintain the habit of adding salt to coffee. For example, people in northern Scandinavia add appropriate amounts of salt during the coffee brewing process. So how does salt "reduce" the bitterness in coffee?

During the roasting process, coffee undergoes complex decomposition and polymerization reactions, producing a large number of chemical compounds under high temperatures, among which chlorogenic acid lactones and phenylindanes are the main sources of bitterness. The bitterness of light-roasted coffee comes from chlorogenic acid lactones, while dark-roasted coffee has more persistent bitterness brought by phenylindanes. Of course, the bitterness of coffee also changes with our extraction, often stemming from water temperature that's too high, grinding that's too fine, steeping time that's too long, or coffee-to-water ratio that's too low...

When we eat bitter foods, our taste buds release calcium ions, which then transmit "bitter" signals to the brain, activating receptors that perceive bitterness. When salt is added, the sodium ions activate the salt receptors on our taste buds and bind with them, inhibiting our perception of bitterness. The addition of sodium ions mainly enhances our perception of other tastes, thereby achieving a balanced flavor. In other words, the bitterness doesn't actually disappear; it's just that salt changes our taste perception, enhancing our sensitivity to sweet flavors and causing us to "ignore" the bitterness in coffee.

The role of salt is to enhance flavor, not to "overwhelm the host." As mentioned in many recipes: add salt in moderation. This "moderation" has no clear standard because everyone's sensitivity to bitterness is different, and the amount of salt should be added according to individual perception of coffee bitterness. The fine salt used in daily life has very high salinity, making it difficult to control the ratio when added directly. FrontStreet Coffee tried mixing salt with water in a 20% ratio to create a salt solution with fixed concentration. Each 0.1 gram of salt solution added contains 0.02 grams of salt, added in small, multiple increments to the extracted coffee liquid.

FrontStreet Coffee selected medium-dark roasted Golden Mandheling coffee with relatively strong bitterness, improving extraction rate by changing brewing parameters: 15g coffee grounds, coffee-to-water ratio 1:13, water temperature 91°C, grind size (80% pass rate through China standard #20 sieve), three-stage water pouring.

The original coffee liquid showed very high concentration, with strong bitterness upon entry and obvious off-flavors in the aftertaste. FrontStreet Coffee divided 50g of coffee liquid equally into three coffee cups, adding in increments of 0.1g to each cup for taste comparison.

Adding 0.1g of 20% concentration salt solution slightly reduced the bitterness, but it still stimulated the taste buds. FrontStreet Coffee added 0.2g of salt solution to the second cup of coffee liquid. At this point, the taste was balanced, with significantly less bitterness and easier to drink. The third cup had 0.3g of salt solution added. The coffee bitterness was weakened, but the salty taste became prominent, destroying the balance in the cup.

Therefore, adding 0.02g of salt can indeed save this pot of bitter "failed coffee," but the control of salt quantity here deserves more attention. Too little salt content has no obvious effect; too much content easily masks the coffee's flavor. Additionally, the original intention of adding salt is to reduce the negative bitterness in coffee, thereby enhancing the flavor. When the coffee itself has rich aroma, with proper brewing resulting in balanced sweet, sour, and bitter flavors, without unpleasant feelings of heaviness or bitterness, forcefully adding salt might create discordant flavors in the cup.

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