Best Black Coffee To Drink: Black coffee may make you squeamish, especially if you’re from the UK or the US, as coffee is usually topped with dairy products in these countries.
However, choosing the right coffee beans could be the difference between enjoying a cup of black coffee or retching in disgust. In this article, I’ll show you a few coffee beans you can start with as the best black coffee to drink.
What is black coffee?
In the Western world, coffee is topped with milk, cream and sugar. While this creates a pleasant-tasting beverage, it dilutes the actual coffee taste itself.
Black coffee, something people in the UK and the US aren’t so keen on, is coffee that hasn’t been topped up with anything. Just coffee and water. The pure coffee taste.
It is a strong taste, probably why people in the UK and the US aren’t so fond of drinking it. But as a home barista, I would suggest you get your taste buds accustomed to the taste of black coffee.
Benefits of black coffee
A powerful caffeine solution that is ideal for getting your day started. Drinking coffee black has been a popular beverage among health-conscious individuals. Black Coffee does not have sugar or calories and has just the right amount of caffeine to give you energy without shaking.
Drinking coffee black twice daily improves your health and wellbeing in many ways. It can help you shed a few pounds, lower your risk for heart disease, increase your brain function, clear up your skin, and reduce the risk for depression.
There are plenty of various health benefits that drinking coffee black can provide. It’s good for the heart because it contains antioxidants. It also boosts your metabolism, allowing you to burn fat faster.
While producing energy, some valuable nutrients are used up. Therefore, by having a cup, you’ll prevent the deficiency of other vitamins and minerals in your body.
How to start drinking black coffee
Buy fresh coffee
Most coffee at grocery stores and shops is stale—like three to six months stale. Stale coffee usually has a bitter edge and muted flavour, which is why 80 per cent of coffee drinkers choose to add milk and sugar to their drink.
So if you only change one thing about your coffee routine, buy fresh coffee! Coffee is a perishable good: it may not “go bad” in the traditional sense, but it will lose its fflavour, and if it sits long enough, the oils on the beans will begin to taste like spoiled food. Buy fresh, and keep in a cool, dry, airtight container out of the sun.
Buy whole beans, and don’t grind until you brew
Once the beans are ground, they lose their fflavourmuch faster. Do yourself a solid by grinding just before every brew.
Try light roasts
Many light roasts don’t have those solid and bitter flavours for which “traditional” coffee is known. Washed Yirgacheffes taste like black tea. Natural Ethiopians and Kenyas have a tart, syrupy fruit fflavours Central American varieties like Costa Rican and Guatemalan coffee often have soft, mellow fruit and floral notes.
A Panama Geisha is the ultimate splurge of speciality coffee, and no one would ever mistake it for a dark, diner brew. Check out our handpicked light roast coffees here.
Try Japanese cold brew
Lighter roasts brewed in the Japanese cold brew style taste golden and crisp, like iced tea, and are often a good choice for those wanting to drink black coffee.
Wean your way off sugar slowly
Coffee is comfort food, and you don’t want to feel like you’re suffering through something for health or sophistication. Add just a little less sugar or cream each day so you can ease into the strong fflavourof black coffee.
Keep your tummy happy
There are a lot of dubious myths around coffee acids and stomach aches or reflux, but in the end, you have to listen to your body. And suppose you’re concerned about a cup of black coffee upsetting your stomach.
In that case, there are ameliorating factors: pick a roast with less acid (often lower-grown coffees, like Brazils and Sumatras, as well as medium-dark roasts), and use a brew method that filters the grounds from your cup (French press is a no-no), and pair your coffee with food.
The eight best black coffees to drink in 2022
Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Coffee
For those who drink black coffee, medium roasts yield a satisfying level of complexity without overpowering. Yirgacheffe is no average Joe either. The thickness accentuates some fflavours and its heaviness is more wine-like.
In terms of fflavour you can’t go wrong with finding strawberries in your brew when extracted on the light side. Dark chocolate is far from the worst flavour when your extraction is drawn out a little longer than usual.
This is the beauty of drinking black coffee using good quality beans using best practices. Everyone wins. Only sleep loses. When you support a good brand, coffee improves as an industry too.
The Cookie Dough Coffee
When it comes to coffee to drink black, this always makes it near the top of my “MUST TRY” lists.