- 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.
