Can regular coffee drinkers notice the difference taste-wise? I’m the opposite of a coffee connoisseur and I drink any kind of brewed and instant coffee (including decaf) and can’t tell the difference.
Side by side, trying one after the other. I can tell they taste different.
But walking into a place blind, and only getting one. I think it might be hard to tell.
I was at a concert drinking my fourth beer, getting nicely buzzed when someone told me those were alcohol-free and I just sobered up instantly. It was awful.
I’m a pretty avid coffee enjoyer, and I can’t tell the difference. The stuff that you can buy chemically decaffeinated are made by brands that generally sell lower quality coffee beans in the first place
Good roasters also usually have a decaf roast on the go. You can taste the difference, but if you’re just getting some random restaurant’s drip coffee, you’d probably just assume a bunch of things are off about it anyway, so “it’s secretly decaf” wouldn’t necessarily rank very high.
Decaf needs to be fresh and in bean form. I freeze them because they get bad much quicker due to porosity after the treatment to pull out the caffeine.
I also don’t think you would be able to tell the difference with good decaf.
As someone who works in taste, people tend to overestimate their tasting abilities. Alcohol free beer, meatless snacks, etc. When presented without focusing attention to taste, people generally don’t notice.
If you give both options and are forward about it they will be 50% correct in discerning the ‘alternative’. Realization comes more clearly in the absence of physiological change (no inebriation, no caffeine effect).
However if people do find out you’re cheating them you can sell legit product all day, but people will still doubt you. So don’t expect long term business.
Um, the smell alone is a dead giveaway, since alcohol has a very distinct smell. I don’t drink alcohol, but I assume the taste of alcohol is similarly distinctive.
Beer doesn’t usually smell of ethanol, it smells like hops and yeast. Since most AF beers are built to model light ales anyway, I can hardly tell. I’ve also gotten really into mocktails lately and with the right mixes of bitters and syrups most of them are significantly better than real cocktails. With those, that gasoline taste of ethanol is noticeably absent in a good way!
I know exactly how caffeine affects me though, and would pretty quickly realize I’d been given decaf.
Really? I don’t drink, so maybe I’m more sensitive to the smell, but beer of all variety has the same alcohol smell that wine and liquors have. Yeah, there’s hops and yeast in there as well, but there’s also that alcohol smell.
I actually like that smell oddly enough, but it’s very distinctive. I’m also very used to the smell of yeast (we bake bread fairly often) and malt (I love AF malt beer), but I’m not as familiar with the smell of hops, so I just assume that’s the “beer” smell I’m smelling.
I like beer and drink a fair bit of it, and make it. I have had some alcohol free beers and have recognised that they were either bad or alcohol free on the first taste, even when I was blind to the lack of alcohol
Low alcohol can be made good. I have made a 2% stout which tasted good and a 3% hazy pale ale and both taste fine, but you can’t get to low enough alcohol to call it alcohol free through fermentation
Apparently you can get to alcohol free through reverse osmosis which doesn’t wreck hop flavours (which boiling or vacuum boiling will wreck). Perhaps I haven’t had any alcohol free beer made with reverse osmosis
They’re probably more similar, but there’s no way they can mimic that distinctive alcohol smell (same smell in wine and liquor). I’d take a bet any day that I can distinguish any AF from regular beer, provided the regular beer is at least the typical 4-5% ABV.
Oh I don’t dispute people can distinguish it by taste. Like I said, if not informed of the possibility that the beer is NA (or the coffee decaf) most people won’t notice. When informed of the possibility less than half of people can distinguish it relyably.
But most people are shure they would distinguish the taste any day of the week, and the chance is biggest that they can’t.
I still find that surprising, do you have stats that you can link?
The smell of alcohol alone is very distinctive, so I don’t think most would need to even taste it to know it’s AF. It might fool them if it’s served in an area with a lot of alcoholic drinks nearby, but even then a quick sniff should make it plainly obvious to me and, I assume, most people. I don’t have a particularly keen sense of smell (my wife smells a lot of stuff I don’t notice), so I don’t think I’m special here.
For instance, people do genrally even exihibit ‘drunken’ behaviour, even though they have had no alcohol.
But genrally people are very addamant they can distinguish by taste their ‘own’ brand from others. If you do a blind taste test of lagers you’ll find out that most people are not able to pick their preferred brand. This is also not only amateurs, even sommeliers get fooled easily: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamous_study_on_wine_tasting.html
Taste is just very difficult and personal. Thats why people are overly confident on their own taste, but generally people tend to mimic each others tastes, as the Sideways movie tanked interest in Merlot and increased interest in Pinot Noir https://winebusinessanalytics.com/features/article/61265/The-Sideways-Effect .
Like I said some people are very good at tasting, but generally people overestimate their abilities, a true blind taste test is very fun and informative. You should do it with friends!
That first one is really interesting. The second just talks about reduced alcohol beer, and it’s a lot harder to tell the quantity of alcohol by smell/taste than the presence of alcohol. But swapping something out with a beverage with no alcohol is a completely different story, so I have to assume it’s because it’s in a social atmosphere where other alcoholic beverages are present, so smell isn’t reliable and taste is secondary (they’re focused on the conversation, not the drink).
even sommeliers get fooled easily
Yeah, I’ve read/seen studies about just that, and I think it’s hilarious that the main difference between an expensive and cheap wine is branding. But distinguishing drinks by taste is different from determining whether a drink has alcohol.
As an anecdote, my brother went to a wedding reception while underage and there were two bowls of juice, one spiked and one not. He accidentally got the spiked punch, tasted it, and wondered why it tasted funny, at which point my parents noticed he got juice from the wrong bowl. He didn’t know what to look for (he was like 10 at the time), but he knew something was off.
So I think if you take away the “distractions,” it’ll be very easy to tell whether a drink is alcoholic. But maybe I’ll give it a try and do a blind test. I don’t think I’ll even need to get to the tasting part, the smell alone should be enough to distinguish alcoholic from non-alcoholic beverages.
My sister would feel the difference because her heart goes nuts if she has regular coffee. I wouldn’t since I’m an addict with high tolerance. Maybe the headache around noon would make me suspicious but probably not.
Anon says it was a restaurant that happens to serve coffee; not a dedicated coffee shop. So, honestly, probably not. Chances are the coffee would be stale, burned, or just plain poorly brewed regardless of what beans were actually used.
A lot of whining is done about decaf, but it takes a pretty refined palate and a lot of experience consciously tasting the differences to be able to reliably tell the difference by taste alone.
The biggest giveaway is the near total lack of a caffeine buzz, even after several cups. But the placebo effect will go a long way to mitigate that.
I developed a sensitivity to caffeine, it basically throws me into a weird heart racing thing at any but the smallest doses.
But I freaking love coffee. So I buy decaf. If you shop around, find a few brands that do water process decaf, you’ll end up with something that’s good. Not just good enough, but good.
But the chemical process decaf, yeah, I can tell a difference blindfolded. Literally, I won a bet doing it.
The typical name brands, they usually have a fairly over processed taste to begin with. So it’s harder to detect, and I can’t tell the difference as clearly. It’s there, but you have to already have compared them before you can tell blind.
Thing is, part of that is how you drink coffee. If you’re drinking it out of habit, or on the go, your brain is going to filter the taste out in favor of other sensory input. You have to be drinking it for the coffee itself, paying attention to the experience.
Chemical process decaf has this layer of unpleasant metallic tang to me. Water process tastes like the same basic roast and bean, just slightly less intense. Things like floral notes get a little muted.
At least the ones i have tasted decaf espresso does taste more weak but might have been because my decaf beans were noticeably older and the freshness seems to be one of the biggest factors. If i took decaf coffee somewhere based on my knowledge i would likely just assume that it is old/low quality/not brewed strong enough before i would assume its decaf
Can regular coffee drinkers notice the difference taste-wise? I’m the opposite of a coffee connoisseur and I drink any kind of brewed and instant coffee (including decaf) and can’t tell the difference.
Side by side, trying one after the other. I can tell they taste different. But walking into a place blind, and only getting one. I think it might be hard to tell.
Side by side you’ll notice the little kick depending on strength. But you’d likely be full placebo none the wiser.
I was at a concert drinking my fourth beer, getting nicely buzzed when someone told me those were alcohol-free and I just sobered up instantly. It was awful.
Ouch, your wallet
Alcohol-free buzz worked on TV too
Taste-wise? Probably not. But I’d know by 11am because the caffeine withdrawal would start and I’d get headaches.
I’m a pretty avid coffee enjoyer, and I can’t tell the difference. The stuff that you can buy chemically decaffeinated are made by brands that generally sell lower quality coffee beans in the first place
Good roasters also usually have a decaf roast on the go. You can taste the difference, but if you’re just getting some random restaurant’s drip coffee, you’d probably just assume a bunch of things are off about it anyway, so “it’s secretly decaf” wouldn’t necessarily rank very high.
Decaf needs to be fresh and in bean form. I freeze them because they get bad much quicker due to porosity after the treatment to pull out the caffeine.
I also don’t think you would be able to tell the difference with good decaf.
As someone who works in taste, people tend to overestimate their tasting abilities. Alcohol free beer, meatless snacks, etc. When presented without focusing attention to taste, people generally don’t notice.
If you give both options and are forward about it they will be 50% correct in discerning the ‘alternative’. Realization comes more clearly in the absence of physiological change (no inebriation, no caffeine effect).
However if people do find out you’re cheating them you can sell legit product all day, but people will still doubt you. So don’t expect long term business.
Um, the smell alone is a dead giveaway, since alcohol has a very distinct smell. I don’t drink alcohol, but I assume the taste of alcohol is similarly distinctive.
Beer doesn’t usually smell of ethanol, it smells like hops and yeast. Since most AF beers are built to model light ales anyway, I can hardly tell. I’ve also gotten really into mocktails lately and with the right mixes of bitters and syrups most of them are significantly better than real cocktails. With those, that gasoline taste of ethanol is noticeably absent in a good way!
I know exactly how caffeine affects me though, and would pretty quickly realize I’d been given decaf.
Really? I don’t drink, so maybe I’m more sensitive to the smell, but beer of all variety has the same alcohol smell that wine and liquors have. Yeah, there’s hops and yeast in there as well, but there’s also that alcohol smell.
I actually like that smell oddly enough, but it’s very distinctive. I’m also very used to the smell of yeast (we bake bread fairly often) and malt (I love AF malt beer), but I’m not as familiar with the smell of hops, so I just assume that’s the “beer” smell I’m smelling.
I like beer and drink a fair bit of it, and make it. I have had some alcohol free beers and have recognised that they were either bad or alcohol free on the first taste, even when I was blind to the lack of alcohol
Low alcohol can be made good. I have made a 2% stout which tasted good and a 3% hazy pale ale and both taste fine, but you can’t get to low enough alcohol to call it alcohol free through fermentation
Apparently you can get to alcohol free through reverse osmosis which doesn’t wreck hop flavours (which boiling or vacuum boiling will wreck). Perhaps I haven’t had any alcohol free beer made with reverse osmosis
Old style AF beers had a distinct malty musty smell. But with new techniques AF beers can be indistinguisable. Certainly if hop foreward
They’re probably more similar, but there’s no way they can mimic that distinctive alcohol smell (same smell in wine and liquor). I’d take a bet any day that I can distinguish any AF from regular beer, provided the regular beer is at least the typical 4-5% ABV.
Oh I don’t dispute people can distinguish it by taste. Like I said, if not informed of the possibility that the beer is NA (or the coffee decaf) most people won’t notice. When informed of the possibility less than half of people can distinguish it relyably.
But most people are shure they would distinguish the taste any day of the week, and the chance is biggest that they can’t.
I still find that surprising, do you have stats that you can link?
The smell of alcohol alone is very distinctive, so I don’t think most would need to even taste it to know it’s AF. It might fool them if it’s served in an area with a lot of alcoholic drinks nearby, but even then a quick sniff should make it plainly obvious to me and, I assume, most people. I don’t have a particularly keen sense of smell (my wife smells a lot of stuff I don’t notice), so I don’t think I’m special here.
Most of it is from personla experience, however there have been some areas of research in the matter
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6286248/#R51
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1360-0443.1988.tb03979.x
For instance, people do genrally even exihibit ‘drunken’ behaviour, even though they have had no alcohol.
But genrally people are very addamant they can distinguish by taste their ‘own’ brand from others. If you do a blind taste test of lagers you’ll find out that most people are not able to pick their preferred brand. This is also not only amateurs, even sommeliers get fooled easily: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamous_study_on_wine_tasting.html
Taste is just very difficult and personal. Thats why people are overly confident on their own taste, but generally people tend to mimic each others tastes, as the Sideways movie tanked interest in Merlot and increased interest in Pinot Noir https://winebusinessanalytics.com/features/article/61265/The-Sideways-Effect .
Like I said some people are very good at tasting, but generally people overestimate their abilities, a true blind taste test is very fun and informative. You should do it with friends!
That first one is really interesting. The second just talks about reduced alcohol beer, and it’s a lot harder to tell the quantity of alcohol by smell/taste than the presence of alcohol. But swapping something out with a beverage with no alcohol is a completely different story, so I have to assume it’s because it’s in a social atmosphere where other alcoholic beverages are present, so smell isn’t reliable and taste is secondary (they’re focused on the conversation, not the drink).
Yeah, I’ve read/seen studies about just that, and I think it’s hilarious that the main difference between an expensive and cheap wine is branding. But distinguishing drinks by taste is different from determining whether a drink has alcohol.
As an anecdote, my brother went to a wedding reception while underage and there were two bowls of juice, one spiked and one not. He accidentally got the spiked punch, tasted it, and wondered why it tasted funny, at which point my parents noticed he got juice from the wrong bowl. He didn’t know what to look for (he was like 10 at the time), but he knew something was off.
So I think if you take away the “distractions,” it’ll be very easy to tell whether a drink is alcoholic. But maybe I’ll give it a try and do a blind test. I don’t think I’ll even need to get to the tasting part, the smell alone should be enough to distinguish alcoholic from non-alcoholic beverages.
Is this an exotic way of saying that you’re a chef?
No I’m a sommelier
Only if you’re sensitive to caffeine.
My sister would feel the difference because her heart goes nuts if she has regular coffee. I wouldn’t since I’m an addict with high tolerance. Maybe the headache around noon would make me suspicious but probably not.
Side by side I could pick out bad decaf, but I’d struggle to notice good decaf.
On its own I’d just assume I was given a bad to average cup of coffee, which is what I would expect anywhere but home.
Anon says it was a restaurant that happens to serve coffee; not a dedicated coffee shop. So, honestly, probably not. Chances are the coffee would be stale, burned, or just plain poorly brewed regardless of what beans were actually used.
A lot of whining is done about decaf, but it takes a pretty refined palate and a lot of experience consciously tasting the differences to be able to reliably tell the difference by taste alone.
The biggest giveaway is the near total lack of a caffeine buzz, even after several cups. But the placebo effect will go a long way to mitigate that.
At a cheap diner? You’d have a hard time telling cuz even when you use regular coffee, the caffeine content is pretty low.
Depends on the coffee.
I developed a sensitivity to caffeine, it basically throws me into a weird heart racing thing at any but the smallest doses.
But I freaking love coffee. So I buy decaf. If you shop around, find a few brands that do water process decaf, you’ll end up with something that’s good. Not just good enough, but good.
But the chemical process decaf, yeah, I can tell a difference blindfolded. Literally, I won a bet doing it.
The typical name brands, they usually have a fairly over processed taste to begin with. So it’s harder to detect, and I can’t tell the difference as clearly. It’s there, but you have to already have compared them before you can tell blind.
Thing is, part of that is how you drink coffee. If you’re drinking it out of habit, or on the go, your brain is going to filter the taste out in favor of other sensory input. You have to be drinking it for the coffee itself, paying attention to the experience.
Chemical process decaf has this layer of unpleasant metallic tang to me. Water process tastes like the same basic roast and bean, just slightly less intense. Things like floral notes get a little muted.
At least the ones i have tasted decaf espresso does taste more weak but might have been because my decaf beans were noticeably older and the freshness seems to be one of the biggest factors. If i took decaf coffee somewhere based on my knowledge i would likely just assume that it is old/low quality/not brewed strong enough before i would assume its decaf
You don’t expect good coffee in restaurants, and it’s hard to tell between bad coffee and bad decaff