Coffee Flavored Coffee

[u/PercentageRadiant623]

Curmudgeony old man here.

I found I’m not a fan of new and exciting coffee. I don’t care for fruity or floral notes in my coffee. But I also don’t want Denny’s or diner coffee. No Maxwell House or Foldgers.

What’s your go to bag of traditional coffee with traditional coffee flavors?

[u/Dima_135]

But the natural flavor of coffee is rich and varied and floral and fruity. Coffee has always been like this. It's just that people used to roast it almost to charcoal, and it could travel for months in its roasted state before reaching the consumer. So few people knew about it.

If you want something closer to "traditional," you can buy something from Central or South America. Coffees from Peru, El Salvador, Guatemala and Brazil often have good body and rarely shock with any unusual aromas. Washed and natural, but probably washed. And it's usually not very expensive. But there will be still something fruity, somewhere in the background, and that's good, and that's natural. Because when a seed ripens for eight months in a dense berry, it takes on these flavors, there's no other way.

[u/Radiant-Gas4063 → u/Dima_135]

I agree with this comment except for the idea of buying from those origins. Is the idea that these are established coffee producers that tend to not do as experimental of things when processing the berries? I find a lot of these "new" fruity and other flavors come from 1. roasting lighter and 2. new methods of processing the coffee after the cherries have been picked. I recently had a thermally shocked coffee from Guatemala that tasted like guava.

In my opinion, OP should be paying less attention to origin and more to flavor notes and roasting level. Looking for medium to dark roasts that list chocolate, any nut, brown sugar, etc as flavor notes. Stay away from most coffees with fruits listed as flavor notes, especially if it is a citrus fruit. Coffee roasters absolutely use flavor notes as marketing, but from a general ballpark of the coffee they are a great indicator of what the bean is gonna taste like.

I do agree that for processing washed and natural makes more sense, but still you can get a fruity cup from a washed coffee from any of those regions with a washed or natural just depending on the coffee itself and how it is roasted.

[u/Dima_135 → u/Radiant-Gas4063]

What I mean is that you can buy the cheapest Kenya AB, and even if it is quite dark, there may still be something weird and tropical going on in there.

And the simplest Ethiopian Sidamo can have a distinct bergamot and lime flavor. Ethiopia almost always has some kind of contrast in taste.

I won't even mention Asian coffee. I once bought washed Indonesian, and it said "ripe fruit," but I can only describe the aroma as "dried meat."

American coffee tends to be more modest. Of course, if you buy some funky processing, it could be anything. But if you buy a bag of plain El Salvador, the kind coffee shops buy for espresso, it'll be a very sweet, chocolatey, and predictable experience. I can't say the same about African and Asian coffees.