How does salt affect coffee?

Kenneth Chang, guest posting for John Tierney, has proposed an interesting fix for reducing bitterness in your food: salt.  He notes that salt suppresses bitterness better than sugar.  He notes that it’s not quite known how salt suppresses bitterness, whether it disrupts the bitter receptors on the tongue or whether there’s some sort of post-processing by the brain.  Ultimately, though, the conclusion is that salt can remove bitterness without removing bitter compounds.

Where am I going with this, you ask?  Jacob Grier, at Liquidity Preference, took this one step further and applied it to coffee.  He aligns the Tierney salt discussion with another article he read about a new coffee trend catching on in Taiwan called “salt coffee”.  Taiwan’s largest coffee chain, 85 Degree Bakery Cafe, is selling this unique tasting coffee that isn’t quite salty in flavor, and sales have increased to the point that they are overcoming the sales of black or sugared coffee.  The coffee chain came up with the idea due to the use of sea salt in cosmetics and health foods.

Grier has a theory as to its popularity.  He thinks that if salt can be used to reduce bitterness, it also reduces bitterness in the coffee, and maybe the Taiwan coffee drinkers are drawn to the reduced bitterness.  He tried adding some salt to his coffee and found that it significantly reduced the bitterness in his coffee.  Then he added some more, and it was too much — the salt taste overwhelmed the coffee.

After reading his post, I actually tried this as well over the weekend.  I had a little extra Columbian Supremo that I wasn’t planning on drinking, and after sprinkling a little salt in, it still tasted like coffee but had a very unique flavor.  After another sprinkle, it was too salty to drink.

Grier doesn’t necessarily recommend this, and neither do I.  In fact, one coffee drinker I’ve mentioned this to responded, “Why would i want to remove the bitterness from my coffee?  Sometimes I like the bitterness.”  I agree — bitterness can add to the flavor of coffee, enhancing other flavors.  So wiping out the bitterness in coffee will also likely wipe out the true flavors of the coffee.  In my experience, the coffee’s flavor changed completely.  It was still drinkable, but it lost the crispness of its natural flavors. The flavors became muted.  Grier describes it as insipid, which means that it lacks flavor or interesting qualities, and that’s a really good way to describe the result.

But then, again, as Grier says, “But you can’t always get good coffee. If you’re stuck drinking acrid brew at the airport at 5 am, then maybe this salt trick could come in handy.”  Try it sometime when you’re desperate, and see if “salt coffee” is for you.