No, I haven't gone back to drinking coffee. I'm not ruling out never drinking the stuff again, but I do want to be off it for at least a year to give it time to completely work its way out of my system, and see if it takes these headaches with it.

But anyway, that disclaimer aside, I have been reading here and there. And the other day I came across a mention of gold coffee. Gold?? All the eyes of #silvergoldstackers members light up. No, it's not actual gold. Not like that sake I posted a few months back that had gold flakes in it. Well, there is a gold component to one of the few things I'm going to introduce here. But first things first.

Gold Coffee

This is brewed from an ultralight roast, more than a light roast, more than a blonde roast. When the coffee is brewed from these ultralight roasted beans, the resulting drink is golden in color, resembling tea more than coffee.

^{photo from article}

Supposedly this takes all the bitterness out of coffee. Yeah yeah, there are so many methods for making coffee less bitter. Classically people add milk, sugar, or cream to fight the bitterness. A few years ago the idea was add butter to make it less bitter. And now.. maybe gold coffee is the latest attempt.

Along with the less bitterness is lower acid levels, which seem to make gold coffee easier on the stomach for some people.

The potentially bad point (or good point, depending on your point of view) is that gold coffee has much more caffeine than regular coffee. As coffee drinkers know, lighter roasts generally have more caffeine than darker roasts, and an ultralight roast has even more. So there is that.

Overall it seems like an interesting idea. If and when I do return to coffee, I might try it out. I read a few pages on it, but this one might be the best, so if you'd like to try some gold coffee, go give it a read.

Gold filter coffee

Next I came across a method of brewing that uses actual gold. This time the gold is the filter, which is made from gold. This process seems to be named Swiss Gold Filter Coffee.

^{photo from article}

Ok, the filter isn't solid gold. That'd probably be a bit expensive. It seems like a the filter is made from titanium and coated with a layer of gold. This layer of gold is said to prevent the coffee from sticking to the filter and also adds a unique flavor to the coffee.

As with all metal filters, it allows the oils to stay in the coffee, which adds flavor (but also lets through two chemicals in the coffee that raise your cholesterol. See a recent post I did on that). But in addition, it gives a gold flavor! I suppose that means on the micro level, parts of that gold layer are coming off and mixing into the coffee, so you really are consuming gold with this one—tiny tiny amounts of gold, but gold nonetheless. Gold!

Read about this method here.

Anyway, there we go. Two times of gold coffee, one using actual gold. If you are a coffee person, might be worth looking these up.

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.