I wouldn’t say it that way. Taste and smell are closely related in all foods. The effervescence of a beverage in your mouth rising into your olfactory cavities is a huge part of what we call the “taste” of anything.
I don’t think that “bitter” (like sweet – you can’t smell sugar) is much of a component of the effervescence in coffee, so when people say “it doesn’t taste like it smells” I think it’s because the bitterness overwhelms them.
However, “sweet” really has almost no smell. “Bitter” has more of a smell. I think that coffee tastes more like it smells than coca-cola taste like it smells. Coffee is more like beer or wine in that regard.
Coffee is such a lie. It doesn’t taste like what it smells like, and I don’t like being deceived. Count me as another loather of stealth coffee flavor in desserts, too. I can just barely stand it with a crapload of milk and sugar and stuff, but really, give me hot cocoa or chai or tea or something.
A few years ago, I picked up some chocolate fudge Edy’s ice cream. When I got it home, my wife pointed out the word “mocha.”
I’m a firm believer that you should try things as time goes by to see if you’ve changed your mind, and I figured this was the perfect way: I love chocolate, so that might have helped.
Nope. One taste and all I could note was the flavor of coffee. The chocolate goodness was ruined.
I don’t like beer, either. I don’t mind beer batter, since it doesn’t taste like beer, but the drink is vile.
When I got my first internship during college, I had to run for coffee. I decided it was time to take the plunge. I bought myself a cup during a run. Now I had tried coffee ice cream in my day, and usually found I could barely get through a dish of it, but I figured I’d be able to down the cup with enough cream and sugar.
Five creams and seven sugars later, I realized it was a lost cause. Maybe it ahd something to do with the fact that the only time I ever drank enough to puke my guts out during college was a night I drank mostly Kahlua drinks…
I can not stand coffee-flavored anything at this point. Of course I had to go and marry a half-Colombian woman, who is always trying to foist some concoction on me that initiates the gag reflex.
Strangely enough, when I worked at a theater company as front-of-house staff, patrons often came back to the concession stand to complement me on the coffee I had brewed. I am apparently able to make a hell of a cup without understanding what the hell anyone sees in it.
I am among those who enjoy the smell of freshly ground coffee, but feel that perhaps the wrong portion gets thrown away after brewing. ACK!
I am glad to see that so many of the posters of whom my main impression is that their posts are well-thought-out and balanced feel the same. I am in good company.
I don’t mind coffee, I guess. I used to be a serious coffee drinker (hey, I went through medical school and residency, after all :)). Now, if I have the choice between coffee and tea (even plain tea), I’ll generally choose tea.
There was a coffee shop in Houston - Cafe des Artistes - that had a WONDERFUL Kenya AA. It hardly tasted liked coffee - it was light and sweet, even without sugar. Alas, it’s a bit far to drive for a cuppa.
I’ve never understood the fascination for Starbuck’s coffee. Must be all the brainwashing, er, marketing.
I grew to love the smell of coffee while I was in the Navy. But I could never get past the taste. I have only found one alleged coffee beverage that I’d be willing to drink: that was General Foods Double Dutch Chocolate Coffee. And, frankly, if I were going to drink that, I’d do better to skip the coffee, and simply have hot cocoa.
But I love tea. Iced tea, without any sweeteners.
And I’ve had some toll house-style cookies with chocolate covered coffee beans instead of chocolate chips. Those were yummy.
Hate the smell of coffee, hate the taste of coffee.
Hate stealth coffee in desserts and sweets.
I’ve purchased what I thought was a chocolate frappe once, which turned out to have a shot of espresso in it. “Blech” I say “Take this foul concoction away from me!”
Hubby (a coffee drinker) tastes it, looks at me askew and goes “But there’s barely any flavour of coffee at all!”
It’s terrible what a tiny bit of coffee will do to an otherwise wonderful drink.
Sweet doesn’t have a smell? :dubious:
I can smell sweet–think of a carnival with cotton candy–100% spun sugar. It sure has a smell…it smells sweet.
I agree that bitter is a taste, not a smell, though. Coffee smells so robust and rich and filling in an odd way, but then the taste is not rich at all, just harsh and bitter and almost sour. It’s watery, too–the smell leads me (at least) to think that a thick drink is coming to my tongue. Instead it’s foul tasting water. It’s not bitter like aspirin, but it is not neutral, for sure.
I’m not sure I know what you mean at all. I’ve never heard anyone say “I am going to drink MY coffee”, though “I need my coffee in the morning before I can function” seems to get said by caffeine junkies a lot. Is that the kind of thing you mean?
I’m a reformed coffee drinker (I renounced the stuff along with all things caffeinated), and I can definately identify with the complaints about taste. The primary reasons I drank coffee-- and I drank a LOT of it when I did-- were that it’s functional and that it seems cool to be a coffee drinker.
I remember my first real cup of coffee (circa age 16) was on an international flight when an attractive flight attendant asked me if I wanted tea or coffee and I impulsively answered “coffee please, black”, which impressed myself and my friend sitting with me but woefully not the flight attendant. After that I always drank coffee black, but my relationship with the flavor was always one of tolerance rather than enjoyment. Once it occurred to me that coffee (especially cheap coffee) was one of the most effective ways to get my caffeine fix I took to drinking it by the pitcher at our late-night teenage hangouts (IHOP and the like).
Eventually though I grew out of the coffee-as-a-lifestyle mentality and when I was sick of filling my daily caffeine quota in order to function as a normal person, I quit coffee along with sodas. Every once in a while though, usually around finals week, I’ll go crawling back to caffeine to get me through the late nights and coffee is usually my delivery method of choice.
These days though, I load the rancid junk up with milk and sugar.
Hate the smell. Hate the taste. Hate the ubiquitousness. Have the over-zealous fans it has. Hate the marketing. Hate the atmosphere of the shops. Hate the flavour when given to to other products. Hate the concept that it’s enjoyment makes you a better and more culturally educated person. Hate people who have 8 cups a day including two after dark and become distressed at ther lack of sleep. Hate caffeine freaks who think it’s hilarious to eat 6 packets of chocolate covered coffee beans and go insane. Hate the stupid people who must, MUST, have it a a temperature that no real human tongue can handle. Hate people who have perversely detailed coffee orders. Hate the live-the-meme morons who order ‘A small cappucino but not too hot, in fact just warm really. With chocolate syrup. And extra milk, I like it quite milky. An extra sugar too. Can you put some more chocolate sprinkle on the top as well? Great.’. Hate them because they don’t seem to realise that what they actually want is a chocolate milkshake. Hate them because they just think they want coffe because the world tells them to want it. Hate the world telling people to want, nay NEED, coffee.
Like the smell, dislike the coffee. Particularly dislike how I’m expected to like it, to want it, to NEED it. Dislike even more what others here are referring to as “stealth coffee”, the fact that the flavor has somehow become an ubiquitous part of our society right up there with chocolate and vanilla. Coffee can’t hold the jockstrap of chocolate or vanilla.
Of course, I think that tea generally tastes like hot water, and why would I want to drink hot water if I could just drink delicious ice cold water?
Hot chocolate is the nectar of the gods, of course. As long as it doesn’t taste like coffee
Listen around now that you have read this. People will get a drink of “A” beverage or “SOME” beer/soda/water but “MY” coffee crops up all of the time. Your example is one common example but it irritates the crap out of me so much that I focus on every example and it comes up a lot. It seems follow most closely with uses that describe a prescription drug. I don’t hate coffee itself nearly as much as serious coffee drinkers and its culture. I don’t like casual chit-chat focusing around a beverage with unusually specific and nitpicky variations: No thanks. I don’t associate with the types that want to do that.
