- Today we're gonna talk about a topic
a lot of you have requested,
which is should I be putting salt in my coffee?
And the answer is hopefully not, but maybe.
To explain all this properly,
we're gonna have to dive a little bit,
just a little bit into some taste science to start off with
and I'll also say that for the most part
we are gonna talk about sodium chloride as salt.
Salt is considered one of the five basic tastes,
that are sort of alive, but aren't,
so you've got salt, sour, sweet, bitter and umami.
There are other tastes that take place in the mouth,
I would argue that piquancy like heat is one of them,
astringency is another, it's a contentious topic,
I don't wanna get into it too far,
but salt is one of those things
and it's a very simple interaction,
your tongue has a bunch of taste receptors,
taste buds on it and what it's generally doing
is detecting sodium ions crossing a membrane
and you experience saltiness and with it though,
you also experience some synergistic effects,
generally saltiness can amplify sweetness, for example
and it can also mitigate or reduce bitterness.
Now I learned a lot of this
from a book called "Tasting and Smelling"
by Gary Beauchamp and Linda Bartoshuk,
it's still available, but it is ridiculously expensive now,
I did not pay that much money,
but I'll put a link to it in the description,
if you find a second-hand copy cheap,
I would recommend it very highly.
Now when it comes to researching salt and bitterness,
one of the compounds that they often test is caffeine.
Now caffeine is quite a bitter substance,
it's rare that you taste it on its own,
but it does contribute to coffee's overall bitterness,
but if you drunk decaf coffee,
you know that even without caffeine, coffee is still bitter.
Now thankfully it seems that salt
does impact lots of different kinds of bitterness,
so salt is basically our friend,
we should be putting salt on our coffee
all the time then, right?
Firstly one of the pleasures of coffee
is when it's good, it has the right kind of bitterness
much like beer or chocolate,
some bitterness is very pleasant,
when it's balanced out properly
by sweetness and some acidity
and overall it's a complex and enjoyable thing.
I don't wanna get rid of it
anymore than I wanna get rid of the acidity of coffee,
I want it to taste good
and we should also consider salt to be an addition
like milk or cream or sugar,
it might make the drink more palatable,
but it will change it,
it will obscure the truth of it in a way
without sounding overly philosophical,
it'll be harder to taste where that coffee is from
and the journey that it's taken from seed to cup.
Secondly and this is very important,
salt perception is not universal,
what is my threshold of detection,
my threshold of recognition might be different to yours.
Let's talk about actually putting some salt into coffee.
Now to start with, I have a simple example,
I have a V60 that I brewed,
that was way too fine, it's over extracted,
I brewed it quite slowly at too fine of a grind,
it would be harsh and a little bit bitter.
There will be some tastes that are unpleasant in it,
that are not bitter tastes, things like astringency,
salt will do nothing for those.
Often you'll see a recommendation
that you put the salt in with the ground coffee
and that tastes better
than putting it straight into the cup of coffee,
now that didn't make much sense to me,
except that if you're working at pretty low concentrations,
it's probably easier to be accurate when you're scaling up.
If you overdose or under-dose the amount in the actual cup,
that'll be a much more noticeable fluctuation,
than doing it across an entire liter,
liter and a half of coffee,
however in this situation I'm gonna be dosing the cups
and to do so I have my good friend, some saline solution,
this is just 20% salt, 80% water,
so that I know in a gram of this, there's .2 grams of salt.
So here's the test, I'm gonna take this particular cup,
I'm gonna put in to start with half a gram of saline,
I'm adding .1 of a gram total salt
into about 200 mils of liquid.
Give you a little stir.
Now this isn't a blind test as you can tell,
'cause I can see the coffee.
Let's start with our un-dosed section.
Not great, a little harsh.
That is better, but it's actually noticeable salty to me,
that's .1 grams of salt in 200 mils,
that's really interesting, it's quite noticeable
and it is better.
I think it's a little bit tastier, it's a little bit softer,
it does have a touch of that saltwater mouth feel,
but thinking about this,
how do you accurately dose with a teaspoon .1 gram of salt?
You can't, it's not really doable.
Now if I was trying to dose this into the basket,
I would have to presume that everything got dissolved,
but I wouldn't know for sure
and at that point I might be dosing, you know,
less than half a gram of salt into a half liter of V60.
So for me, this is one where you need a delicate hand,
I absolutely wouldn't recommend just getting a pinch of salt
and putting it in your coffee, because you could very easily
end up with something too salty.
To be honest, I would say an over-extracted V60 coffee
is not really an adequate endgame boss
for salt to face on this one,
I think we need a bigger challenge for it to overcome
to really endorse it as a good idea,
as a useful thing to have around.
There's only one option for that, Nescafe Original,
not even Gold Blend, we're going for the basics,
the basic, basic, basic,
this would be quite a bitter product.
I'm gonna get a couple of mugs of this brewed
and then we'll dose it with salt
and see how much it takes for it to be good
and does it get to good before we get too salty?
Let's find out.
These smell really bad, really bad.
Let's make them better, they're made to spec,
you get a spec, 1.8 grams of coffee to 200 mils of water,
these are exactly that each.
Let's start gentle,
.3 grams I think is probably about right.
Now the idea of adding salt to coffee is not new,
it's common in lots of cultures,
you see it often in particular in Scandinavian countries,
they have a big history of that.
You might think that's weird,
the Scandinavians do the light roast thing,
but that's a new thing,
historically dark roasted coffee was everywhere.
So let's get our sort of pain threshold set
with a benchmark of just plain Nescafe.
It's not for me, it's not for me.
Oh, then it's better, even at .3 of a gram, that's better,
I'm gonna dose it up a little bit more though,
I'm gonna take it up to .6.
Wow, that is,
it's pretty magical actually, that's pretty magical.
I'm gonna take it up a little bit more.
Let's be clear about what this is not doing,
this is mitigating bitterness,
this is reducing my perception of bitterness,
slightly improving the texture of mouth full of coffee,
the flavor is the same, it's absolutely the same,
it just doesn't hurt quite as much to drink.
But that is really surprising and it's interesting.
So bear in mind in this 200 gram cup,
at most I had .2 grams of salt in it,
that's very little salt,
that is a pinch and I hate things like a pinch,
I hate any volumetric measurements of anything,
'cause they're very confusing and how much even is a pinch?
'Cause it's gonna be different if I'm using table salt
to using say kosher salt or even Maldon big, flaky sea salt,
but a mass of salt is a mass of salt,
it is consistent and glorious and highly recommended.
Speaking of which, I would recommend
making a salt solution like this with table salt,
with cheap, cheap, cheap salt.
It's okay if it's got a little bit
of anti-caking agent in it,
but you don't want any other extras in there,
you don't need raw salt, unrefined salt,
you just need sodium chloride as cheaply as you can get it.
So don't bother with kosher salt,
don't bother with expensive, fancy salts,
they don't have anything extra,
that's gonna do a better job here,
you just want cheap table salt.
A final word of warning, this doesn't work for everybody,
for some people their suppression of bitterness from salt
doesn't particularly happen, you'll get a little effect,
but not as strong as other people, so if that's you,
I'm sorry, but don't be weirded out,
if it doesn't seem to work too much.
For most people though,
it's a surprising and interesting little change.
Now I've seen people like Scott Ray
are recommending this on Instagram,
on his kind of tip of the day, other places,
it's a very old idea in lots of different countries,
so why not learn about how you taste a little bit more,
learn a bit more about what you like
and how your sense of taste works.
If you do this, let me know in the comments down below,
let me know your experiences.
If you use salt all the time already, well, let me know,
but if it doesn't work for you also, let me know,
I'd be interested to know what percentage of people
this doesn't work for.
But for now I'll say thank you so much for watching
and I hope you have a great day.
A lot of you had a question about this poster,
it's a print we commissioned from Matt Joyce,
an artist in the UK, it's available as a print
and as a T-shirt, it's a limited edition thing
for tens, hundreds, thousands, it's available now,
there's a link in the description down below.
Thank you, I hope you enjoy it.