Why does it become bitter after making coffee with your hands and letting it cool? What is the difference between the taste of hot coffee and cold coffee? Which is better?

"Drink it while it is hot" should be a saying that many friends often hear in their daily lives. Not only are elders at home who advise you to drink the soup while it is hot, but even friends of baristas or coffee lovers will advise you to drink it while it is hot while you are tasting hot coffee.

Why? Because coffee easily becomes less delicious after it cools down. This is not an alarmist. Qianjie has shared it in many articles that after hot coffee is completely cooled, its taste, aroma, and taste are likely to undergo earth-shaking changes (exaggerated).

What will be different when hot coffee cools down? Here, Qianjie takes the situation shared by a friend who went to the store to buy beans yesterday as an example. The friend said that he used Esther Hamathiu from the Qianjie bean list to brew a pot of hot coffee. When you taste it when you are just brewed, you can feel the rich aroma of flowers and fruits, and the rich flavor like a fruit bomb. There are strawberries, mangoes, citrus, guava, and elegant floral flowers. The taste is sweet and sour, and the taste is light and smooth. Very delicious!

When the coffee completely cooled down, not only did it not smell much aroma, but the taste was not so outstanding. The sour taste was a little sharp, and the taste became less smooth. This made him sigh at the scene: "Coffee really has to be drunk while it's hot. "

The reason why this change occurs is that many things in coffee change with time and temperature. For example, aroma, oil, or something other than coffee-our perception of flavors.

Why does hot coffee not taste so good after it cools down? First of all, Qianjie needs to remind everyone that not all coffee will become bad after it cools down, but the coffee that cools down is relatively not as good as when it is hot; another point is that it does not mean that the coffee that cools down is bad because the quality of the coffee beans is not good, or it may be that the coffee has a negative taste due to brewing problems. When the negative experience is amplified after cooling down, the coffee will become bad. Therefore, these two points that are prone to misunderstandings are something that everyone needs to pay attention to.

So back to the topic, the reason why cold coffee is not as good as hot is first that changes in temperature lead to changes in our perception of different flavors. This is a content often shared on Qianjie. At different temperatures, our taste buds are sensitive to different flavors. For example, when the liquid is at a high temperature, the heat generated when the liquid touches the mouth will overshadow the perception of the taste buds, which will reduce our taste buds 'perception of all flavors, especially bitterness.

When the temperature drops, our taste buds regain their perception of all flavors, especially bitterness and sourness, due to the lack of heat caused by masking the taste. After the liquid is completely cooled, the bitterness/sourness will be very easily perceived by us. If there is not enough sweetness, this will make liquids with a lot of bitterness/sourness difficult to eat, such as coffee and Cantonese herbal tea.

The sweetness in coffee is another situation, because the sweetness in coffee mainly comes from the feeling brought by the aroma (not entirely ha, followed by the sweetness), which is the so-called sweetness. If we want to become easy to perceive the sweetness in coffee, it is best to taste it when the temperature of the coffee is close to that of the human body. As the temperature drops, it will become increasingly difficult for us to capture the sweetness in coffee. Because there is a check and balance between tastes, when coffee lacks sweetness and only acidity and bitterness, then the sourness and bitterness will be amplified, and in short, they will become more prominent. So this is why when the coffee cools down, a lot of coffees become more sour and bitter. Another influencing factor comes from aroma! The flavor we smell and taste from coffee is mainly the association caused by the combination of aroma and taste. Most of the aromas in coffee are volatile, and these aromas will continue to be lost after the coffee is made. Therefore, the longer the coffee is left, the more the aroma is lost. Without these aromas that can make us associate, the level of coffee will naturally become much weaker.

If you keep your coffee long enough, some substances in the coffee will also condense, such as oil. This will reduce the smoothness of the coffee and make the taste thinner. So to sum up, we can know why hot coffee becomes less delicious after it cools down. But not all coffee is bad when it is cold. For example, most of the coffee beans in the Front Street Bean List, including the above-mentioned Esther Hathieu, as long as you brew it properly, even after the coffee is cooled, it can have an excellent taste, because there are not many unlikable things in the coffee, so even if it is cold, it is only a little worse than when it is hot.

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