Why You Shouldn’t Add Sugar To Your Coffee
Why You Shouldn’t Add Sugar To Your Coffee
I remember when Colonna and Smalls first opened in Bath, nearly a decade ago. The first thing I heard about it was that they didn’t offer sugar. This was controversial. Coffee, especially espresso based coffee, generally needed sugar, didn’t it? My interest was piqued, though; after all, the reason, I’d heard, that the reason that they didn’t offer sugar was that the coffee was of a quality where sugar would just taint it.
I approached my first espresso there with some trepidation; I’d been drinking espresso for years, but never without a small amount of sugar to balance out the inherent bitter taste of dark roasted espresso beans. What I tasted was nothing like I expected. There was no bitterness, no roastiness, just a taste not unlike salted caramel. It was certainly nothing like the espressos I was used to drinking – it was a million times better.
That moment ultimately led to my establishing my own speciality coffee shop a few years later, and, just like Colonna and Smalls, I didn’t offer sugar. Or, to be precise, I didn’t make sugar available unless it was requested, and even then I would ask the customer to taste the coffee first before adding it.
Now, some people may find this a little pretentious, and perhaps even something to be upset about (a few early TripAdvisor reviews of Colonna and Smalls certainly suggest that a small number of people found the lack of sugar some sort of an affront to their human rights), but the idea does have some logic to it. Let me explain.
Traditionally, coffee, especially espresso, has been roasted extremely dark. This enabled it to be extracted relatively easily on the poor equipment that was available in the early days of espresso machines. It also disguised a multitude of sins in the beans themselves, which were rarely of a particularly high quality. The downside of a dark roast is that it makes the dominant taste note in the coffee extreme bitterness. Espressos are exceptionally strong in comparison to filter coffee, so this bitterness can become unbearable unless balanced by sugar. And so the practice of adding sugar to espresso and espresso based drinks came about.
Fast forward to the third wave coffee movement and you find that the nature of the raw ingredient has changed significantly. Dark roasts are gone – no longer needed or wanted in the days of dual boiler espresso machines and sophisticated grinders – and so has the bitterness brought about by excessive roast time or temperature. The skilled barista is able to utilise this equipment and their own finely tuned tastes, to produce an espresso that is naturally perfectly balanced. Adding sugar just corrupts this balance and results in a coffee that, in many cases, will taste horribly over-sweet (like drinking concentrated Ribena neat) or, in some cases, sour.
The simplest analogy to make is to fine dining. You don’t see salt cellars at Michelin starred restaurants. You also don’t see people asking for salt at these establishments (at least, not on any sort of regualr basis). This is because there is an expectation and an understanding that the food will have been seasoned at the perfect level, and that any additional salt would only serve to spoil the experience. Coffee is exactly the same – the barista has spent time and energy dialing the coffee in; don’t ruin it by adding sugar.