Too Much Coffee

well with sweetness and fruitiness being some of the most important points in espresso and filter coffee, it seems to me putting sugar in will really confuse your tastebuds! Unless you can extrapolate the actual sweetness of the espresso from the amount of sugar you put in... but my tastebuds can't do maths!!

We get people who buy the jamaican blue peaberry, having never tried it before, and then drop a sugar cube in without even a taste!

I regard Espresso in the same way as a desert and like it sweet. Not quite up to sucking it through a sugar cube held in my teeth but working on it.

@KateM,

Sugar? A white crystalline sweet carbohydrate, a disaccharide, found in many plants and extracted from sugar cane...blar blar blar.

Why? Because they are heathens!

No points for guessing my vote. Although if I ever have to drink instant coffee I take sugar to turn it into a different drink I can manage to drink it then.

double_shot wrote:@KateM,

Sugar? A white crystalline sweet carbohydrate, a disaccharide, found in many plants and extracted from sugar cane...blar blar blar.

Why? Because they are heathens!

No points for guessing my vote. Although if I ever have to drink instant coffee I take sugar to turn it into a different drink I can manage to drink it then.

Heathens?? Moi??

And this from one who drinks Instant coffee.

GeorgeW wrote:Heathens?? Moi??

A most unfitting term, I agree...

"Pagans", nowadays, would seem much more fashionable ... or sophisticated. "Welsh" - in its original sens - might apply too but then again this could easily be mistaken as denominating those Celtic descendants still dwelling in the western parts of the Island these days.

Picts, maybe?

With sugar and milk: cream is hard to come by in Taiwan. However, the amount of sugar that I add is getting less and less as time goes by.

What is it with the lack of cream availability out your way then SlowRain? Is it just not a popular item in the way it is in the west?

Exactly. Milk is widely available in the supermarket, but yogurt, cheese, cream, and most other dairy products just don't have the appeal. Some basics are available, but the selection is limited. You have to go to specialty stores for most of most other stuff--and pay double the price.

That must be a real bugbear for ex-pats from the west.

We make do. It's not as bad as it sounds. Most things are available, you just have to look around--and pay more. Indirectly, it's an incentive to adopt the local culture. It also helps Taiwanese people keep some of that money in their own country.