Much Colombian coffee is low-grade, mass-produced stuff these days. If you want a decent Colombian coffee, insist on the highest grade, Supremo, from the state of Narino. The "canned" Colombian coffee is invariably a lower grade product not grown at higher elevations.

I agree.It seems whatever brand and how much,I cant seem to get the flavor or scent back.I guess its time to upgrade.

I've noticed that I used to hear the vacuum leak/hiss and smell the wonderful aroma of the coffee grounds when I opened a metal can of coffee ... now with the plastic containers of Folger's there doesn't seem to be a vacuum any more when I peel off the aluminum 'foil' under the plastic outer cover and I don't smell the coffee aroma any more either. Why have they switched the packaging? I still like the Farmer's Brothers served in many restaurants; can it (the grounds) be bought in retail stores? This Swede misses the aroma of coffee too, 'lovetogarden'!

- vieja

yes! I too have noticed the coffee doesn't taste like coffee any more. No taste, no aroma. I have tirelessly tried every single brand, and roast, in every single supermarket, over the last few years trying to find that old fashioned good cup of coffee that actually tastes and smells like coffee. I've even looked up local roasters and tried their coffee's freshly ground for me as I waited. Still no coffee flavor, and no aroma. Help! What does a person have to do to get a good old fashion flavorful, aroma filled, cup of coffee? My X who used to drink a lot of coffee, now quit drinking coffee all together for the same reason. It all tastes like diesel fuel. What is the point to a cup of coffee if it doesn't taste like coffee?

I have found that the coffee that used to smell so good when you opened it, now smells like chemicals and I feel like I am drinking a hot beverage, but not coffee, doesn't even taste like coffee. What happened? jm

A year ago I purchased light roast Oaxaca at the Whole Foods bulk section. After grinding it and taking it one mile home, my car had a delightful odor of coffee for a week or so. Everyone who tried it loved the taste. Sadly, I haven't seen that coffee at Whole Foods since then. A I understand, availability is seasonal so maybe they will be having some soon.

shuffles_gw, I'll have to keep my eyes opened for that. I am no longer drinking as much coffee as I used to. Just a cup in the morning that I down to wake up, which I don't enjoy. That's a big change from the 3-4 cups a day I used to drink. Surely coffee producers must know that people aren't drinking as much coffee as they used to if my change in drinking habits are anything to go by. I work with people who have also stopped drinking coffee. Instead they down a can of Red Bull or one of those caffeine shots to wake up.

Being Swedish & English (still prefer my Swedish coffee-black- over my English tea!), I drink a LOT of coffee (read it is now good for me !). I just buy the ground coffee in the big cans (cheaper!) but I also notice it doesn't smell like it used to in those cans that were vacuum packed ... a big 'wheez' & great aroma when the container was opened with a can opener!!! NOW, just a 'metal-like film' inside over the contents & no 'sound'! when peeled off ! :(

My Swedish Dad I think used 1/2 cup coffee & ??? 1/2 cup sugar or a few sugar cubes in his mouth!!! Even convinced my English Mom to switch from tea to coffee in later years!

-vieja

What is needed is *fresh* coffee. Coffee that has already been ground looses much of its taste and aroma PDQ. Formerly, "vacuum" canning/packaging was used to keep oxygen away from the ground coffee, but that's not possible with today's cheap plastic 'cans'. That, and the fact that much of the coffee on the market these days is from inferior robusta plants (better yielding, but typically machine harvested) rather than the arabica variety.

So...grind yer own.... Coffee grinders have become very inexpensive as of late - since a lot of folks are abandoning the bland supermarket brands. I'd recommend the "Capresso" brand, which is quieter and more adjustable in grind than many. The flavor of roasted but un-ground beans will last far longer ground coffee. You'll be amazed at the difference.

How you make the coffee is another place for improvement. A programmable Mr Coffee is OK if you want the convenience of waking up to coffee prepped the night before - but there are better ways. I prefer a 'vacuum pot' - a throwback to the roadside diners of the '50s, plus it's off the charts in its "science geek coolness" factor. "Yama" is a good choice.

The next step is roasting your own beans. Un-roasted or 'green' coffee has a prolonged shelf life. And if you have one of those old-fashioned "Whirly Pop" popcorn poppers, you already have a perfect coffee roaster.

The final step is *growing* your own coffee like I do. But there's no way I can grow enough. And there's *a lot* of work involved in growing, harvesting and processing...so I never complain about the cost of quality beans.

Cheers

We've been importing beans from Mexico. Some of the most delightful and aromatic coffee I've ever had. We grind them fresh in the morning and the whole house smells delightful.

yes !!!!! coffee is not the same as it used to be. it doesn't have the same flavor. weak like cardboard. i tried sooooo many. i truly believe it's due to climate change and the coffee crops are poor. many people out of work where it used to grow.

There are several reasons for bad coffee these days. The first is a global pandemic: coffee leaf rust. This plague is a world-wide problem - except for Hawaii, which is so far from anywhere else, the fungus hasn't shown up...yet. I lost my two trees as it took too long to identify the problem and find a cure, a copper-based spray called Bordeaux mix. It's commonly used in vineyards, but coffee growing in almost subsistence agriculture and the poor farmers can't afford it.

As a result, coffee plants are being torn out everywhere. I even lost two 'volunteers' that self-planted from the first two. Since coastal Virginia is a long way from any coffee plantations, I figure the spores came in on a dying hurricane that passed over Cuba. As a side note, coffee wood makes for a most excellent smoker for the grill.

The other reason is that the Robusto variant is being planted more than the better-tasting Arabica species, Robusto can be pruned/shaped to facilitate machine harvesting, but then all of the cherries (what beans are properly called on the tree) are harvested at one time. Arabica are picked by hand when fully red and ripe. Green machine-harvested cherries make for a thin and poor-tasting coffee.

Buy your coffee in bean form from a specialty shop and insist on "fair trade" coffee which provides a honest price to the farmers, rather than funding the greed factor of some large corporation.

Cheers

We also agree that coffee no longer has the warm "java fug" of aroma and now always has a hard harsh taste. We too used to fill the house with the intoxicating smell of freshly extracted coffee, it's missing now.

This is the same no matter how "boutique" the importer/roaster or how fresh the roasted beans are. It tastes terrible everywhere and from everyone. We have purchased scores of different freshly roasted beans from specialists who rave about their beans source from small individual growers. They ALL lack flavour and aroma, there is no coffee smell from any of them when they are ground, just a hard harshness.

Fancy espresso bars that batch roast their own imported beans are the same: there's no coffee aroma inside the cafe where the coffee is brewed or in the cup!

We think that due to disease and disasters coffee plantations have been re planted in hybrid varieties grown on Robusta rootstocks to get disease resistance. Could it be that robusta imparts undesirable flavours (or the lack of flavour) to the new coffee tree?

That and as described above, green cherries being harvested along with the ripe cherries may also contribute.

Our coffee drinking friends from some decades ago all agree, coffee today is nothing like it was 30 years ago for true "coffee" flavour and aroma.

More comments please!

I AGREE 100%.....SO FRUSTRATING.

I agree too!! It is not coffee and people buy all different creamers to try and make it taste good. I drink decaf because I have to, and it is crap too. I think I will just drink hot water from now on. Tim Hortons ice cap has a coffee flavor but isn't coffee. It is a coffee paste, but no coffee in it. I am tempted to buy some coffee paste but it probably cost a fortune.

even the Narino is not what coffee used to be. I love coffee and I keep searching , spent way too much money so far, for that taste of that taste and smell that we had as recent as the early 90's but after that it was no more to be found. SO DISAPPOINTING

Or has Covid widely affected our tastebuds...? But it's weird: other food/drink tastes as it always has, yet coffee is now just... pfft nothing. I sure do miss it. :(

It couldn't be covid. This thread started 17 years ago. Covid is only three years old.

Coffee has been subject to a trifecta, "a perfect storm" if you will, of issues. Coffee leaf rust is a global pandemic. Sure, it can be treated with a copper-based 'Bordeaux' mix, but that may be too costly for smaller growers. Older coffee trees, which make for the more flavorful brews are dying everywhere - except for Hawaii, which is too far away from any contaminated coffee plantations that can spread spores of the disease.. Then there is the shift away from caffea arabica to caffea robusto, a plant that can be 'groomed' for machine harvesting. But red and green cherries all get harvested together, making for a 'thin' brew. Some coffee-producing nations like Brazil are almost exclusively robusto. And then there is global warming. Sure, coffee grows close to the equator, but at high altitudes where the nights are cool. Good coffee needs that. With global warming, it's not just the days that are getting hotter - but the nights as well. Coffee doesn't like that.....

thought i was alone. the coffee these past several years has been just AWFUL! no aroma and sickening to drink - recently, i have been tossing it out because it is so bad in every way. tried all types and brands over the years and it's all the same horrible thing! i cannot even remember the last time i drank or smelled actual coffee and that was at coffee houses too! the wondrous aroma is absent and the taste is undrinkable! life is not as it used to be...

So happy to hear that it isn't just me.

I tried the Narino mentioned by Spewey but it is no better.

I too miss good coffee. You could smell the coffee brewing throughout the house. And the woosh when a new can was opened and the wonderful smell that came from that can.

If you want "good coffee" you have to work for it. Forget mass-marketed supermarket stuff from Columbia and Brazil. Sure, there may be a few small growers in these regions, but for the most part it's just robusto crap. And don't be hung up on the ;organic' label. Coffee leaf rust cannot be controlled except by chemical means. Vast swaths of formerly flavorful arabica coffee trees are being ripped out worldwide.

And grind yer own....using fresh roasted beans. (Keep the beans in the freezer to preserve flavor and aroma.) I grind my fresh-roasted beans just seconds before use. And if you really want a good cup, check out the AeroPress: it makes a superb brew, albeit one cup at a time. I'd suggest roasting your own, but it is a 'challenging' procedure. Just seconds separate a good cup from that burned crap Starbucks sells.

Cheers

The point being made in our comments above is that there is no "good coffee" anywhere, no matter how hard you "work for it" It used to be that you could get decent coffee with aroma and flavour at the supermarket. You can't now, nor can you get it from exotic specialty importers/roasters. They boast about their sourcing small batch coffee from family growers in exotic locations throughout the coffee growing world and display photos on their websites and cafe walls to show this.

The facts are their coffee tastes and smells just as bad as cheapo stale beans from the supermarket. There is NO coffee aroma or flavour. It's just a harsh brown drink! They rave about "black current/citrus/mushroom flavours, they have to, there is no coffee flavour at all.

As noted above, coffee leaf rust has decimated coffee trees worldwide and growers have rushed to plant Arabica/Robusta hybrid trees to compensate. Also the move to dwarf trees to enable machine harvesting has lead to production cost reductions but means ripe and unripe cherries are harvested together whereas hand harvesting allowed for only ripe cherries to be harvested each pick.

We used to buy and roast green beans sourced from small growers in Cuba through an independent specialty coffee importer in NZ (roasted beans were also available) They were astounding, filling the house with freshly ground coffee aroma and the taste was divine. After several years the flavour and taste disappeared. Asking the importer why, they couldn't give a straight answer but just that those beans were no longer available, try something else... Now, all their "small batch "specialty" coffees taste equally dreadful.

Our take: hybrid Robusta/Arabica re plantings world wide have eliminated the Arabica coffee trees that produced the fabulous coffee of 30-40- years ago. These hybrid trees may be coffee rust resistant but in our opinion impart a hard, harsh Robusta flavour to coffee produced worldwide today.

"The King has no clothes!"

The only 'good' thing to come out of this downward slide is that chunks of coffee wood make for the most excellent smoker fuel on the grill.

Yes i agr with EvEverything You jujust said!!!!

Exactly! Isn't there anyone, anywhere in the whole world who knows how to grow, harvest and roast coffee anymore??

I've found one way to overcome some of the 'issues' with coffee these days. Mind you, I have every manner of brewing devices known, including Chemex, vacuum pot, and French press. But there is a new player: AeroPress. It makes but one cup at a time - but a very good cup. The secret is that the hot water is only on the the grounds for seconds before it it 'pressed' into the waiting cup. It is also the fastest way to make coffee, which is very important some mornings.

Cheers

Wow, I can't believe this post is 18 years old. Well folks, I think I found out why our coffee no longer tastes good. For almost the past two decades, almost everything we consume is being irradiated against pathogens and pests. Every single thing. Have you noticed that meat, no matter what it is and how you cook it, is tasteless, dry and tough? Same with vegetables and grains too. Irradiation not only kills potential pathogens, but it also kills the flavor of foods, not to mention a lot of other things that are good for us, according to the WHO and independent researchers, like up to 95% of nutrients. For some reason, governments are allowing this dangerous practice when a simple inspection of a processing plant's cleanliness should do.

A lot of folks have noticed their usual Colombian coffee just doesn’t hit the way it used to. Growing conditions have shifted, big farms are pumping out higher-yield hybrids, and the flavor can end up a lot flatter because of it. If you’re chasing that old rich aroma again, try a small-batch roaster or a good single origin bag that’s where you’ll find something much closer to the best tasting coffee you remember.