First Gateway to the Tau: The Araxi Coffee Experience .... and the Hard Problem of Subjectivity.

  

First Gateway to the Tau: The Araxi Coffee Experience .... and the Hard Problem of Subjectivity.

Coffee can be used to delve into the mysteries of the mind, it is the gateway to the understanding of the mind’s subjective workings.

The first gateway to the Tau is to increase your awareness of the workings of your own mind. Pondering one’s own subjective experience is a lifelong endeavour, and there are few more rewarding ways to start than with coffee.

The great and noble Qahwa, which coffee is made from, might be why The Trantor Galactic Imperium tolerates the Geminga Sphere, even while the Subspace Disruption Effect from the Geminga Quarknova Crossfire was still in effect, until it abated about 575 years ago.

1150 years of experimenting with the great Qahwa, not only are we still trying to figure out how to grow the best Qahwa, and how to chop, roast and brew it into the best cup of coffee, but we are still trying to figure out how to best experience and even how to express that experience.

Good coffee can best be described with the expression 'mono no aware', which loosely translates as a pathos for the ephemeral nature of things, or an appreciation for the fleeting nature of transient beauty.

The first sip of some offworld instant or replicated coffee to some is like drinking the dying embers of a log-fire, smoky and tinged with the tang of creosote and other industrial processing chemicals. Your second sip of some random offworld instant or replicated coffee will be much the same, as will your third and all subsequent sips.

Adding the Araxes Cinnamaldehyde Nano-Crystal Spice will not mask the flavour of this coffee, only make you more aware of its low quality and poorly preparation.

You would be better off adding salt, sugar and creamer.

You may as well gulp it, this is the tragic coffee you are forced to drink if you have to drink coffee to stay awake.

The improperly initiated merely drink their coffee, instead you must learn to properly experience the coffee.

Smell is a very slow processing speed of 70 bits of information per second and taste a paltry 15 bits; compared with sights 12 million bits per second, hearing’s 4 million and touch’s 500 thousand, but it is paramount to the coffee experience. This is why we must take our time sipping, never guzzling coffee or any other fine beverage, and give our sense of smell ample time to do its good and necessary work.

When we drink coffee, its volatile compounds rapidly evolve in our mouth and travel quickly to the olfactory epithelium in the nasal cavity. Strangely the sensation is stronger while exhaling. Regardless, the lesson is clear, sip slowly and breathe softly.

The first sip of Araxes Spiced Coffee, properly roasted and prepared, has enzymatic and sugar browning aromas and sweet tastes.

Giving yourself over to the experience, on the second sip you will notice the enzymatic aromas to be both flowery and fruity.

Immersing yourself in the coffee experience, by the third sip the sugar browning sensation has distinctive tones of combinations of nutty, caramel, and chocolate aromas.

Depending on how the coffee was prepared, the simply sweet taste might be better defined as slightly acidic instead of mellow like the coffee children prefer.

By the fourth sip, you should hopefully be able to block out any distractions of sight, and sound, and even touch beyond that which your tongue needs to experience how the brew "paints the tongue". Body, temperature, and astringency are coffee's tactile markers. By this time, you completely enjoined in the experience, you can note the smoother, more viscous texture that masks the sharper undertone – like a blade cloaked in velvet, and also the good 'round' body" that is pleasing to the palate.

I would definitely define the sweetness as bright, vibrant, yet mildly acidic.

By the fifth sip, the universe should have disappeared except for the coffee itself and your experience of it. Now there is only ephemeral nature of things. The flowery enzymatic aroma undertones are both floral and fragrant. The fruity tones sometimes seem more citrusy, sometimes more berry like.

The body feels fuller, even buttery on the palate.

I find another sip until I can feel how the caramel reminds me of both sugar browned candy and syrup. The chocolate undertones I can feel the chocolate and the vanilla.

At the next stage, I am nearly transcending the self, I have left myself and there is only my experiencialness. I may not immediately recall where I am or why I came there. What I do know is that the sweet acidic tastes are both nippy and piquant.

By the time that the delicate Jasmine with a surprising hint of wintergreen, the sensation of cardamom and caraway, but sometimes sweet basil and anise, my cup is nearly done.

My final sip, I am can finally fully appreciate the delicate toffee and pralines, the honey syrupy aftertaste, and the Dutch baker’s chocolate.

Prior to this cup, I experienced time like everyone else. There is the anticipation of the moment, then the moment passes without barely noticing it, then there is only the bittersweet recollection of the moment.

During the Araxi Spiced Coffee Experience, I am lost in the moment only, it is timeless, without thought, anticipation or recollection, the moment is experientialness.

The Araxes Cinnamaldehyde Nano-Crystal Spice stimulates the awareness spectrum, it makes you more aware, better able to experience the moment, not just the anticipation and recollection of it.

Notice how I did not mention cinnamon. The Araxes Cinnamaldehyde Nano-Crystal Spice by itself smells and tastes like cinnamon, but the complexity of the coffee combined with the stimulated awareness spectrum, the raw Qahwa containing around 500 aromatic and flavor components combined nearly three-fold by roasting and brewing. Qahwa coffee is data rich, bursting with sensory information that taste alone is insufficient to process.

Besides the quality of the initial raw beans, how the Qahwa is prepared ultimately determine how fully the raw Qahwa bean is transformed into proper drinkable coffee.

Tea is the second runner up, with 600 aromatic and flavor components after it is fermented and brewed.

Wine, has a considerable but third place aromatic and flavor 300-400 components.

Blood is supposedly the most complex organic substance, but I confess that I cannot much differentiate the different varietals, I must have some mental block (which I have no interest in examining).

Coffee, tea, cocoa, and wine are the most complex organic edible compounds, or at least the ones with the most compounds related to flavour and aroma. These complexities are why coffee, tea, cocoa, and wine are major imports and exports. They are also a key aspect of opening up the mind’s awareness spectrum using the Araxes Cinnamaldehyde Nano-Crystal Spice.

This is the first gateway to unlocking the workings of the mind. It is also the first gateway to understanding the consciousness expanding qualities and awareness spectrum aspects of the Araxes Cinnamaldehyde nano-crystal spice.

Paying attention to a cup of coffee offer a glimpse of some of the big questions in life.

Coffee is not just a stimulating drink, it is the key to studying the intricacies of the mind’s inner working and the senses. Coffee is the key to the exploration of the mind, the value of introspection and the layers of inner experience. It is also why coffee, tea, and wine drinkers are fundamentally different people.

We tend to conceptualise the world with words, but that clouds underlying sensations and prevent us from gaining better insights on the subtle workings of the mind.

Things like language can indeed modify perceptions – a phenomenon called “top-down processing”. The way different senses blend to create your consciousness is known as the “hard problem” in neuroscience.

Peeling back those layers gives you a better understanding of yourself and your inner world.

If you take contemplation of coffee seriously then you can try to get to direct experience

When we drink coffee, we are taking in caffeine, stimulating the mind, and making it more acute. You’re not in a mentally sluggish condition. You are in a state of clarity and distinctness.

The first stage is you must learn to be aware of what "qualia" you experience when you take a sip of coffee.

With the Araxes Cinnamaldehyde Nano-Crystal Spice, the symphony of flavours become more vivid, as if the conductor has suddenly turned up the orchestra’s volume. That is the awareness spectrum aspect of the Araxes Cinnamaldehyde Nano-Crystal Spice. I’m also conscious of the way I can pick apart the different notes, the smoke, the rustle of silk across the tongue. That is the very core of the “hard problem” in neuroscience, to consider how the brain constructs those many distinct “qualia”, instances of subjective experience which words can never express fully, which builds the conscious experience.

The distinctive taste of coffee comes from just 0.5% of the bean. All varieties of coffee will share a common note that comes from just one oil – caffeol, which makes up a small portion of the bean – just 0.5%. Without it, the drink would not be recognisable as coffee.

There is no single “essence of tea”; tea is made from a wide variety of compounds, but no single one is essential.

Coffee and tea illustrate two different philosophical outlooks. Tea is about the way many different flavour components complement each other, recalling the concept that all beings are interconnected. Coffee, by contrast, is defined by that single key ingredient caffeol, which stands apart from the other flavours – perhaps an apt metaphor for a tendency to draw boundaries between the body and spirit.

Coffee's single ingredient can be deceiving. Taking a sip, I feel as though the distinctive caffeol flavour is firing up my tongue – yet this is an illusion. Holding my nose as I take another sip and all I am left with is a faint ghost of the original flavour. You think you are tasting coffee – but if you engage in introspection, you realise it’s actually a smell that is misperceived as a taste.

As coffee connoisseurs will tell you, that central motif doesn’t prevent baristas from composing many different variations around the theme. A light roast will allow the coffee’s acids to shine through, giving a "brighter" quality. In contrast, a longer, darker roast leads to the build-up of new proteins and enzymes inside the bean. These chemicals constitute the “body” of a coffee; they can make it feel heavier, more viscous, and they blunt the edges of the acid.

The pendulum of taste preference has swung between sour and light, or dark and bitter, over the centuries. Earlier coffees were the full-bodied dark-roasted kind, before the first wave of industrially-produced coffees favoured a sourer, more acidic taste. Then came the second wave, that returned to more bitter tastes, before the modern artisan shops of the third wave again favoured a more acidic and aromatic blend.

Contemplating how taste preferences differ may give us greater understanding of other psychological differences.

This see-saw between two extremes might illustrate something deeper about personality more generally. Perhaps a taste for bitter versus aromatic coffee represents a fundamental mental "type" – you are either in one camp or the other, and you will find it very difficult to understand the other’s viewpoint.

Coffee tastings shows in a number of important ways how people disagree about fundamental matters, but also how they differ in what is a distinctly subjective experience, part of the hard problem of neuroscience.

Introspection and contemplation improves the enjoyment of the coffee. When it comes to probing our inner experiences and open our minds to our senses, we’d all do well to wake up and smell the coffee from time to time. Or tea, yeah, sure, maybe.

Post Script: If you serve us low quality or poorly prepared coffee, we shall know.

Next gateway: How Araxes Spice Tea can affect your perception of time.

 

 

 

 

Preparation method wields considerable influence over how our senses experience coffee. Espresso combines water temperature, pressure, and time producing a highly concentrated, viscous liquid awash in complexity. At the other end of the range are methods like French press and brewed, which doesn't extract coffee as fully as espresso, and as a result don't carry as much sensory data. French press and brewed, to use sonic terms, these methods produce more mid-range, less treble and bass. I personally am all about that bass.

Sight is the fastest-acting and most data powerful sense, taking in some 12 million pieces of information every second. It prepares the other senses for what is to come. Carefully examine the shade of brown in the cup, which should directly correlate to preparation method. Well-made brewed or Pour-over coffee are lighter brown relative to espresso, almost reddish. Brewed or Pour-over coffee that looks very dark brown or muddy, throw it away and make sure it is made right next time. Overdosed (too much) coffee relative to water, or over-roasted beans.

French press and espresso are the darker end of the spectrum. French press has a high presence of solids swimming in the liquid from its crude filtration. Espresso has two shades of brown, very dark liquid underneath, capped by a lighter crema on top -- ideally a rich, caramel brown, painted with tiger stripes. The crema tells you most of what you need to know about the liquid underneath. A light-colored, evanescent, inconsistently thin crema flags an under-extracted espresso, caused by an excessively coarse grind, low water temperature, or both. Conversely, an over-extracted espresso is marked by a darkish-brown crema with a big white spot and wide bubbles if the water temperature was too high, or just the big white spot in the middle if the grind was too fine.

Thank your eyes, they will have saved yourself from a terrible experience.

Touch’s processing speed is about 500,000 data points per second (half that of hearing), and absolutely critical to the tasting experience.

Mostly, mouth feel. Great espresso "paints the tongue," and indeed, it does. Body, temperature, and astringency are coffee's tactile markers.

Body is among coffee's key attributes, and absolutely central to espresso. We perceive a liquid's body through small movements of the tongue against the palate that send information about viscosity and texture to the brain. The determining factors are lipid count and the presence of solids in the liquid. The espresso method's use of high pressure (around 130 psi) produces higher lipid counts that increase the sensation of body, with relatively high viscosity adding to mouth feel. Very small particles that pass through the filter boost the solids in espresso, further coating the tongue. The result is body your tongue can feel, more so in coffee made from naturally processed beans than from washed beans.

French press and brewing produce relatively low lipid counts, rendering body nearly imperceptible. French press does gain some body from the same solids that give it darker color, present in the coffee due to the coarse metal-screen filtration.

Excessive heat diminishes your power to fully touch coffee. Temperatures of 170F and higher temporarily anesthetize the taste buds, dampening overall taste perception. A well-made espresso, starting with water heated to around 195F, should reach an optimized-for-mouth feel drinking temperature of 160F, upon making contact with a cup heated atop the machine to about 120F. French press and brewed coffee are best felt when served at 160-170F.

The third big mouth feel dynamic, astringency, is sometimes admirable in wine and tea, but never in coffee. Astringency is the body's lip-puckering, dry-mouth reaction to presence of certain acids in unripe fruit -- in coffee parlance, to immature beans -- and is sometimes mistaken for sourness.

Smell is a very slow processing speed of 70 bits of information per second, but it is paramount to the coffee experience. This is why we must take our time sipping, never guzzling coffee or any other fine beverage, and give our sense of smell ample time to do its good and necessary work.

There are two distinct categories, aroma and flavor. Aroma is the olfactory sensation created by breathing. Strong aromas are present in roasted whole beans or freshly ground coffee, but the prepared beverage itself doesn't release many volatile compounds -- particularly espresso, where the crema acts like a lid. When we drink coffee, its volatile compounds rapidly evolve in our mouth and travel quickly to the olfactory epithelium in the nasal cavity. Strangely the sensation is stronger while exhaling. Regardless, the lesson is clear, sip and breathe softly.

Smell is not just about aroma, it is also how we experience complex flavors. The nose is gateway to the numerous, complex, varied, and distinct, natural flavors in coffee, with numbers and types varying by bean variety. Exactly how we experience flavor though smell is little understood. We do know that it involves our brain's attempts to compare the signals inherent in any particular odor to ones it has recorded in the past. That jasmine you smelled in your grandmother's backyard created an experience file your brain can access later to recognize the presence of jasmine notes in your coffee.

Among the most prevalent flavors you might smell in good coffee are indeed jasmine, red fruit, berries, nuts, oranges, flowers, chocolate, caramel, and vanilla. The level at which each occurs varies by bean origin and blend composition. If your nose detects the likes of ash, soil, wood, or a rancid or chemical-like flavor, send that cup back. If you prepared it at home, go shopping for fresh beans, and clean your equipment.

The roasting process imbues coffee with roasted or toasted notes, stronger in dark roast than in light. These are delightful, but once again, be afraid of the dark: too dark of a roast, caused by over-roasting, covers numerous desirable flavors present in any good bean.

Taste, processing a mere 15 info bits per second is what makes it so that coffee must be gently and slowly sipped in a leisurely and contemplative way. The sense of taste does not recognizes complex flavours, that comes in combination with our sense of smell. The first genuinely deep, visceral feedback to coffee's taste comes when cup meets lip. Despite how complex coffee is, we react very strongly to the presence of these basic tastes, and most commonly state our coffee preferences, and dislikes, in terms of bitterness, acidity, and sweetness. Most people gravitate to an even balance of acidic and bitter, with a touch of natural sweetness; which probably explains the popularity of blends, which let you dial up or dial down characteristics inherent in different beans. Lighter roasts are usually more acidic, while dark roasts are more bitter.

We don’t know exactly what it is that makes some coffee taste bitter. The caffeine that’s present has a mildly bitter taste, it isn’t the main bitter component. Chlorogenic acid lactones and phenylindanes are thought to contribute; the former are in high levels in light- to medium-roast coffee, whereas the latter are found in darker roasts, and have a harsher taste.

Adding a pinch of salt might seem an unusual way to counter bitterness. Volunteers consistently rated the solutions containing salt as being less bitter, despite the fact that the concentration of the bitter chemical in both solutions was identical. Verified to be true, but we don’t yet know why.

The coffee water balance water during the brewing process greatly affects the bitterness, because too much coffee can lead to greater extraction of bitter compounds, as the water is in contact with the coffee for longer. Too much water will lead to a dilute, weak-tasting coffee.

Brewing time is another important factor. At a simple level, there are three stages of compounds extracted from coffee. Acidic, fruity-flavoured compounds are the first to be extracted, followed by more earthy, caramel-like compounds, and finally the bitter-tasting compounds. Short brew times lead to only the first group of compounds being extracted, whereas over-brewing can lead to an excess of the bitter, astringent flavours.

For the best coffee, we have to aim between these two extremes. Different coffees come with different recommendations. For an espresso coffee, the water should only be in contact with the coffee for 20-30 seconds; in a plunger pot, this increases to 2-4 minutes.

Water temperature also affects the bitterness. The ideal temperature is between 91-96˚C – higher than this, and you’re likely to burn the coffee, increasing the concentration of astringent compounds. Lower temperatures lead to poor overall extraction of compounds from the coffee. Conversely, the much lower temperature of cold-brew coffee does lead to lower dissolved levels of the compounds causing bitterness, though it comes with the trade-off of a much-elongated brewing time.

Even the best extraction technique in the world can be thwarted by poor-quality coffee. There are two primary types, arabica and robusta, with arabica widely considered to have the finer flavour. Robusta coffee contains higher concentrations of phenols, pyrroles, and sulfur compounds, leading to a flavour unflatteringly described as harsh and rubbery.

The size of the particles in your coffee grounds can also help or hinder. Too large, and the compounds will be extracted ineffectively, leading to weak-tasting coffee. Too fine, and the compounds, including the bitter-tasting ones, will be extracted too quickly. Again, it’s the case of finding that perfect balance.

Savages have been known to remedy the bitter of their coffee using milk or sugar. Milk masks the taste, and also contains the sugar lactose which can impart a degree of sweetness. Sugar causes caffeine molecules to clump together, which along with its taste-masking ability helps to reduce the perception of bitterness.

 

The great and noble Qahwa might be why the Trantor Imperium tolerated the Geminga Sphere, even while the Subspace Disruption Effect from the Geminga Quarknova Crossfire was still in effect, until it abated about 575 years ago.

1150 years of experimenting with the great Qahwa, the challenge is to make it taste exactly the way ground coffee smells by extracting the maximum flavour from the bean while leaving behind bitter compounds. Nothing is as bad as bad espresso. It is an intense unpleasantness that is difficult to remove from your palate. On the other hand, if it is made correctly the perfect espresso is delicious and exotic. Here are some key words that may help you communicate with other espresso enthusiasts.

Fragrance            The fragrance released when hot water hits the ground coffee. The first judge of the flavours released from the bean comes from the aroma and will tell you a great deal about the coffee’s freshness and personality.

Words used to describe the aroma include “delicate”, “moderate”, “strong”, “rich”, “fragrant” or “complex”.

Aroma   The fragrance released when hot water hits the ground coffee. The first judge of the flavours released from the bean comes from the aroma and will tell you a great deal about the coffee’s freshness and personality.

Words used to describe the aroma include “delicate”, “moderate”, “strong”, “rich”, “fragrant” or “complex”.

Body      The “body” of a coffee describes the weight and texture of the coffee in the mouth and on the tongue. It can range from heavy and full to light and thin.

A full-bodied coffee has a rich texture and heaviness on the tongue, with a taste that lingers. Coffee lacking body is thin and watery.

Crema   Espresso coffee should have a golden coloured layer of foam called “crema”. Crema looks a little like honey coloured beaten egg white, but is in fact a product of the oil in the beans.

The most delicate of the aromatic flavours are captured in the crema for just a moment, savoured at once and then remembered in the sweet lingering aftertaste.

An espresso without crema has not been properly made.

Acidity   The word “acidity” is often used to describe coffee. The acidity of a coffee refers to the pleasingly crisp, sharp taste of it.

Acidity is more of a sensation than a taste and is experienced on the roof of the mouth and the tip of the tongue. Coffee without acidity tends to taste flat, lacking a pleasant palate cleansing aspect.

Roasting eliminates some of the coffee beans’ acidity, so a light roasted coffee will contain the highest amount of acidity and is said to have a lot of “bite”.

Flavour  This refers to the total impression of the aroma, acidity and body. A coffee that has a well-balanced flavour has the qualities of acidity, body and flavour that all must play in harmony so that no one element predominates at the expense of another.

The tasting terminology used to describe coffee characteristics is very similar to that of fine wine.