No. there's only two coffee tastes: hard and soft.
Relax, I was intentionally simplifying. I am fine with people deeply exploring every nuance of every coffee, the only real challenge and pushback I have is that much of it is learned.
People think coffee at work (or any other "regular" coffee) is bad because somebody else said it. Not because they discovered this on their own. Likewise, discovering "better" coffee is not having superior taste buds, this too is largely acquired knowledge and taste.
I'd take this even further to say that the entire categories of coffee, wine, and beer are learned. If you'd take anybody from an uncontacted tribe and let them drink any of it, they'll think you're trying to poison them. It's not natural to our taste buds, and instinctively rejected. You actively need to be told and learned that all this stuff is actually very good, you just don't understand it yet.
I don't agree with this; I don't consider myself of a coffee snob, but I do generally buy what I think are 'high end' coffees, because I buy fair trade coffee and that's basically what you get.
There is so much variety between types of coffees, and even preparation methods (we mainly use french press and aeropress, but the grind size, brew time, water temperature, and of course the amount of grind, all make enough of a difference that the same beans can give different flavours)
And yes of course I like the flavour of coffee, but mainly drink it for the ritual and the increased alertness in the mornings. There's something so satisfying about a good cup though; again, I don't get science-y about it and measure things accurately, just throw the water in the kettle, and mix it with a few scoops of coffee in the french press sometime after it boils.
But sometimes a cup is just perfection, tones of chocolate, smoke, warmth, boldness. And sometimes the cup is just meh. Then when I'm at a hotel, it's almost painful trying to choke down whatever passes for coffee in their lobbies.
I'd say it's not as much better or worse just because it was learned to be better or worse; it's more like comparing things you know with each other.
Say you taste something with a very generic taste that you can't really describe other than 'brown with a bit of a toasty taste', then if taste something else that makes you have a much more descriptive or complicated taste and you also like that new taste, you now have something to compare against.
This has nothing to do with coffee per se or 'better vs worse', just with what you taste and if you want to explore it.
The same goes for details within a taste. A raw potato tastes different from a cooked potato, and the texture of that same cooked potato but mashed makes you experience it differently as well. If you fry that same potato, now it's different again. It doesn't really change the potato itself into something else (like changing it into a carrot or something silly like that), but it does change what you experience when eating it.
Relax, I was intentionally simplifying. I am fine with people deeply exploring every nuance of every coffee, the only real challenge and pushback I have is that much of it is learned.
People think coffee at work (or any other "regular" coffee) is bad because somebody else said it. Not because they discovered this on their own. Likewise, discovering "better" coffee is not having superior taste buds, this too is largely acquired knowledge and taste.
I'd take this even further to say that the entire categories of coffee, wine, and beer are learned. If you'd take anybody from an uncontacted tribe and let them drink any of it, they'll think you're trying to poison them. It's not natural to our taste buds, and instinctively rejected. You actively need to be told and learned that all this stuff is actually very good, you just don't understand it yet.
If it's learned, it's malleable.