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Comment by sershe | Hacker News Reader

Or you could argue it eliminates the flavor that needs to be eliminated; using your steak analogy from a sibling comment, drinking medium/light roast may be like eating the steak raw or frozen. Totally different flavor from medium-rare, just not the one many people want.

I recently had an unwitting encounter with medium roast (at the same "semi-fancy" price point as I typically buy) when my wife put some fresh beans in our coffee container. First cup I made, I was wondering why the coffee tastes so bad, bad enough for me to dump it. There were all those weird sour/almost soda like notes that should not be in coffee. Then I got suspicious about the look of the beans, then I asked my wife... "I decided it would be good to try something new" ;)

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I have this problem. I’ve tried for years to ‘acquire’ whatever the acquired taste is in these fancy coffees, but it just tastes of compost or dung and makes me feel like I’m drinking the water from the bottom of my kitchen bin. I would never deny it’s a more complex taste and differentiated across different beans, I just can’t force myself not to gag and actually finish a cup of this fetid water.

I find the light roasts interesting as opposed to enjoyable. I had one that tasted like orange juice (not as in “notes”, like actual juice!).

Medium is my comfort zone though!

The most bizarre coffee I've ever had was from the Papua New Guinea Baroida Estate. STRONG tasting notes of tomato. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I love weird flavours like that. Very interesting coffee.

I'm drinking some Papua New Guinea right now that I roasted myself, it's dry processed like many Ethiopian coffees are, and it tastes like berries and spice. The different origin flavors that can be found through different processing methods and soil conditions are amazing. There's so much variety. As a hobby roaster I value my relationship with coffee too much to deliberately drink bad stuff.

she might be trying to tell you something about your regular roast.

fyi, different roasts require different grinds, and changing bean roasts without changing grind can definitely lead to bad coffee (even if the beans are high quality). In general, you have to tune in your grind for each roast.

Simple overview here: https://coffeechronicler.com/grind-size-chart/

all of these look too coarse to me. I make coffee in a moka pot and at these sizes it just tastes like water

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