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scytale ,

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.

bigoljim ,
@bigoljim@lemmy.ml avatar

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.

bobs_monkey ,

Side by side you’ll notice the little kick depending on strength. But you’d likely be full placebo none the wiser.

Klear ,

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.

brbposting ,

Ouch, your wallet

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/ee14878b-80a5-4bab-a445-33c15fedbefd.jpeg

Alcohol-free buzz worked on TV too

rockSlayer ,

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

thanks_shakey_snake ,

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.

LittleBorat2 ,

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.

ipha ,

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.

Artyom ,

At a cheap diner? You’d have a hard time telling cuz even when you use regular coffee, the caffeine content is pretty low.

bamboo ,

Taste-wise? Probably not. But I’d know by 11am because the caffeine withdrawal would start and I’d get headaches.

RecluseRamble ,

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.

Akasazh ,
@Akasazh@feddit.nl avatar

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.

RobertoOberto ,

As someone who works in taste

Is this an exotic way of saying that you’re a chef?

Akasazh ,
@Akasazh@feddit.nl avatar

No I’m a sommelier

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Alcohol free beer

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.

CodexArcanum ,

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.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

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.

psud ,

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

Akasazh ,
@Akasazh@feddit.nl avatar

Old style AF beers had a distinct malty musty smell. But with new techniques AF beers can be indistinguisable. Certainly if hop foreward

sugar_in_your_tea ,

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.

Akasazh ,
@Akasazh@feddit.nl avatar

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.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

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.

Akasazh ,
@Akasazh@feddit.nl avatar

Most of it is from personla experience, however there have been some areas of research in the matter

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6286248/#R51

…wiley.com/…/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: realclearscience.com/…/the_most_infamous_study_on…

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 winebusinessanalytics.com/…/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!

sugar_in_your_tea ,

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.

general_kitten ,

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

doggle ,

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.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

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.

psud ,

You don’t expect good coffee in restaurants, and it’s hard to tell between bad coffee and bad decaff

Illuminostro ,

Uh, where I’m from decaffeinated coffee is more expensive than caffeinated.

Psythik ,

I don’t drink coffee, but shouldn’t that be the case everywhere, cause of the extra steps you have to take to remove the caffeine from the beans?

Wogi ,

Also I’ve never been charged for a coffee refill.

Coffee is usually free after you buy the first cup.

tweeks ,

I assume you live in the USA? In Europe most coffees are just singular items you order, with exceptions in buffets / sometimes hotels.

Wogi ,

What fresh hell… Yeah I’m in the US, where coffee flows from the taps, our plants are fertilized with coffee grounds. We may live in a dystopian nightmare police state, but we have coffee

Until it goes extinct. But for now we have coffee.

weker01 ,

Before I visited the us myself I didn’t know about the obsession with coffee y’all have. I mean coffee is also very important in Germany but I think you have us beat.

nomous ,

I feel like it should be clarified that if you’re ordering an actual coffee drink (espresso base) it’s not going to have free refills.

Plain old drip coffee though? Super cheap everywhere, actually the cheapest thing you can buy at a lot of convenience stores.

weker01 ,

Well the default here is that you pay even for water at a restaurant or similar…

Wogi ,

WE’RE NUMBER 1 WE’RE NUMBER 1

to be fair most Americans are drinking milkshakes branded as coffee with a single shot of the worst coffee you’ll ever have just to keep the label accurate. If you go to any random coffee place and expect the drip coffee to be good you’ll be disappointed.

But! If you go to a diner where the benches are sticky, they have a thousand little coffee cups from years of collecting, no two the same, and the waitress calls you ‘hun,’ you’re in for the best cuppa joe you’ll ever have.

pigup ,

🌈🌞 that’s _illegal_🍨🌈

AFC1886VCC ,

Only if you’re caught

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Just don’t say your coffee has caffeine in it!

Honestly, you could probably argue in court that given no one complained and caffeine has proven ill effects on health no harm was done.

refalo ,

to even get that far to have to say that, they would first have to prove negligence by showing proof that you knew it was happening and did nothing to try to stop it.

pigup ,

It’s a clear violation of FDA regulations. They say an item must be labeled as what it actually is. They even have official definitions for specific items. Decaf coffee is definitely recognized by the FDA and there are regulations that limit the amount of solvent residue that they use to remove the caffeine. See: www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/…/CFRSearch.cfm?fr…

It’s not the same product as coffee, and actually by giving people decaf, you are making people consume chemical residues that they did not sign up to consume. It’s illegal for serious reasons.

count_dongulus ,

But decaf is like…the same price or more because of additional manufacturing costs to remove the caffeine content from the beans.

RecluseRamble ,

They still sold more of it, easily making up for the slightly higher cost.

blargerer ,

Also, only having to stock one type reduces inventory, which has a bunch of cost saving, even if they got a slightly more expensive base product.

GraniteM ,

And you only need to maintain one pot of coffee at a time, saving space and equipment.

RampantParanoia2365 ,

…who did?

assassin6 ,

It says in the post that people assume they need more coffee

Kusimulkku ,

From my limited experience of drinking decaf, it usually tastes more watery. Probably wouldn’t visit that coffee shop again if their coffee was watery

doingthestuff ,

I don’t think it was a coffee shop. Actually a lot of restaurants do this. Some people can’t have caffeine and they’d rather not risk accidentally serving them the wrong thing when they order decaf.

echodot ,

I’m mostly fine with caffeine but if I drink those energy drinks I get really ill, it’s weird. I can down espressos wouldn’t have a problem, but there’s something in the energy drinks that make me ill.

Riven ,
@Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Probably one of those caffeine replacements they use. What’s the big one? Tourine or something.

alnitak ,

They generally have quite a few other things in them that could make you feel sick. Like a ton of b vitamins and various herbs. It could also be you react badly to the sweeteners in it.

pjwestin ,
@pjwestin@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve never heard of a Café doing this, but I know a lot of wedding caterers will, especially toward the end of an event. It’s safer to have people who’ve been drinking just get tired and leave rather than get some caffeine in them and get a second wind. Plus, it’s easier to just brew one type of coffee, and while caffeine could be dangerous for someone with a heart condition, no one ever dropped dead from decaf.

festnt ,

ah the best financial strategy… lying!

Agent641 ,

My dad ran a similar business, he was an arborist. When requested to trim or fell a tree on private property, he would inform the owner that the species was protected by state law, and they would need to file an application for exemption. He helped them file it, and they paid him directly to fast track it, plus his quotation and consult fee. Unfortunately, so many of these applications were rejected, and dad could do nothing further to help the home owner, his hands were tied.

There was no such protected species, dude didnt even own a chainsaw.

assassinatedbyCIA ,

So fraud. The secret ingredient is fraud.

Agent641 ,

That is what the judge said, yes.

brbposting ,

Whoh how long before he got caught? Jail time? Other stories maybe, you got me curious about him

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Bro’s lying on the Internet

brbposting ,

It sounded so real!

wesker ,
@wesker@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

https://lemmy.sdf.org/pictrs/image/4bb5b3ac-2971-4646-979f-ee6a8109906c.png

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