Coffee Talk: My coffee selection hierarchy

Recently, James Hoffmann conducted a coffee fermentation project, along similar lines to his previous decaf project. Since this project was based entirely around caffeinated coffee, and I am quite caffeine-sensitive, I opted to just do this as a risky “drink one cup every few days” thing rather than a formal cupping.What I found is that while there were some slight differences between the coffee varieties, and I’d probably be able to tell the difference between them in a side-by-side cupping, the differences weren’t so profound as to make me think I need to particularly focus on fermentation as a selection criterion for my beans, especially since it’s uncommon to even encounter fermentations when going with decaf.So, here are my observations regarding the things that make the actual differences to my coffee enjoyment. Caffeine levelThis isn’t about flavor preference so much as the fact that if I have much more than 100mg of caffeine in a day I also end up having a panic attack and my…