Coffee, Cheese on the Side / Porter Cheddar

Amazing! Thanks for telling me this, Knotthaid.

I am always to find out about what others are experimenting with in connection with coffee.

Thank you for your comment CL1

As you might already know, I dwell intensively upon ways to use coffee. The reason I write about it and have blogs in different languages for is NOT that I am a fan of coffee, rather because it is this single fruit/seed/drink that allows me to handle many topics important to me. Some of these are alchemy, nature and culture (our abilities as humans). Coffee is among others the very unification of these three. Like vanilla and a few other products we commonly use, coffee is not a product of nature, but a combination of complex steps, the right composition and much tuning, giving us a cup of Ethiopian coffee and/or an espresso. Without our handling and manipulation of the vanilla pod and the coffee seed, these heavenly flavours would not exist.

Hence I find it tricky to think of the "natural" combination.

Could however well follow that this is your favourite way to enjoy coffee.

And - believe me - 25 years ago I would have never even imagined using coffee in some of the combinations I have discovered in the last 5 years. And I must admit, I find this cheese-coffee combination is quite unimaginable before comes to physically trying it.

"tuning":

Yes, think of how much a roaster could do with the profile of any batch of coffee. Think also of the hundreds of possibilities of any coffee, depending on the soil it grew (South America, Africa or Asia), the altitude and how any roaster deals with those differences when roasting to various levels of darkness and lightness.

However, "experimenting", "chemistry" and "tuning" sound too much like a laboratory. Above ALL, for me is one singular condition: food must taste good. Every "experiment" must bring me a step or several steps in the direction of better flavour, better "understanding" of what is available out there, be it simplicity or the orchestration of 101 ingredients in one single spoon. I am a composer and do drawing since my childhood, so creativity and composing is in my blood, but an espresso MUST taste good with sugar and good without.

Think about the usual process of starting with sweet red wines before learning to appreciate and taste the important complexities of dry red wines. But besides the usual process of learing to love different flavours, there are also concrete directions in which every individual tends to go. Some might learn to appreciate blue cheese, but simply do not like the taste. Some love to put chili in each plate, others refuse to. Some die for licorice, others hate it. Also, sugar is a very unique thing. It makes many changes in perhaps every food we mix it with, not only in terms of flavour.

All in all, I just like to experience as much as possible with my palate. This little dark chamber is fabulous!

By the way, that is interesting that when not using sugar in chocolate, you crave for sugar. For me it seems to be the opposite. I find that when I use sugar in a cappuccino, I drink it much quicker than without.

indeed... different sugars, different amounts, different preparations. Everything has various reactions. I find it highly important to simply investigate further and further, with the great hope that our palates stay awake to enjoy this universe of flavours.