Edit: Hope I didn't come across as too harsh to folks replying with their favourite coffee styles. I think I find myself in a near-constant state of, "but what about the things that matter" when spending time in VC/Startup/SV/AI/crypto/etc. culture. I know more unhappy-but-wildly-successful people here than I can shake a stick at, and I think we (as a community) are hugely complicit in pushing a consumerist culture where stuff>people. I was deeply moved to see a piece surface to HN which poetically argued for the opposite value set, and I had a moment of frustration when it wasn't clear that it was coming across to people in the comments. :)
Once I started making a french press of single origin locally roasted coffee every day, I realized that every single day I could simply be happy. I could make decisions (at a reasonable cost, for Happiness) and enjoy the little things each day. Regardless of how the rest of my day could go, I had my coffee, and I had it my way.
At the time, since it was college, I was reading widely across religions and counter-culture - trying to Figure it All Out - and this daily ritual of making my coffee struck me as a shortcut to gratitude, mindfulness, and existential affirmation. Money may not be able to buy you happiness, but it can buy good coffee - and with the right mindset these are one and the same.
- community centres where the coffee is made by volunteers and typically costs 50 pence
- anywhere that I'm invited into a social group that includes drinking coffee of whatever quality
- visiting friends who aren't coffee snobs
- visiting a workplace to promote my own stuff
- waiting to get my tyres fixed and its Maxpax but it's free
And I don't see the post about being one, or the other.
I see the post about the common point where these two meet, and reinforce each other.
No matter what advances or crapifications they do to gaming, we will always say they were better in the 90s, and we will likely never get bored with the rare times everyone actually has time off to play pen and paper games.
DnD and WoD have not had any major technical advances, and everyone is still excited when a new book comes out, stories and friends don't get old.
Sci-fi is not about tech development. It's about how the whole rest of the world responds to the tech development. That's what makes an exciting story.
The tech industry right now has almost no context, most developers really do seem more interested in making the best code they can, as an isolated standalone object, rather than making the code that fits the context as best they can, even if that means giving up on any kind of "Every part is necessary" logical structure.
I've had lots of interesting discussions around the subject of coffee.
Btw, I drink coffee black now, and my circuitous coffee journey led me to cold brew coffee, which is mellow and not acid/bitter.
Have you tried cold brew?
My happy medium is just doing basic pour overs, but with really good locally roasted coffee. To me, this is the cheapest and best approach.
In fact, even if pour overs require too much work (weighing, timing), then just do drip. But do it with quality coffee.
Quality is really about roasting time and date. You don’t want old coffee (anything older than a few weeks isn’t good), and low temp. Dark roast is burnt. It’s not a flavor. It’s used to remove the taste from shitty beans. If you use quality beans you want light to medium. This usually isn’t an option with quality beans anyway. They typically only sell the coffee roasted one way. So in most cases, you won’t even have to worry about.
Anyway, I guess my point is the opposite of the article. You don’t have to drink shit coffee to save money.
It was a piece about slowing down, fussing less, and just appreciating moments with people over things like roasting dates and quality of beans.
That said, have any good coffee recommendations?
Anything older that a week or two tastes a little weaker and is missing some (usually nice) flavours, but it's still damp and caffeinated and tasty. It's not bad in the sense that a stubbed toe is bad, only in the sense that a car snob might call your Toyota Camry bad ("common, suboptimal, plebian, old model, everyone has one"). Darker roasts are missing some flavours too, but they're often the exact ones I don't want. I trust coffee roasters to work out what suits a particular bean and know which flavours they want to keep.
I think coffee is one of those things like wine or whiskey or steak where the best way to enjoy it is to keep your mind open. That lets you work out what you, personally, enjoy. Try over- or under-extracting an espresso shot, and see how it tastes sour or bitter. Try packing the basket differently. Experiment with letting ground coffee sit for a few hours, or with freezing, or with similar beans at different ages. It's fun! You don't have to just believe someone on the internet when they tell you a dark roast is missing flavours, you can go roast your own coffee and see, or ask a roaster to do it.
If you work out what you enjoy, it lets you do enjoyment arbitrage, where you can buy a less popular bean/wine/whiskey/cut for less money and get more enjoyment out of it. If you listen to other people, you're just getting told what the fair market value of the thing is, which means you'll miss any opportunity to get a good (personal) deal.
I buy green coffee beans for $8-$6/lb at https://www.sweetmarias.com and roast them with a Behmor drum roaster. Then I dump the roasted coffee into a burr grinder that has preset weights, so I can grind 50g for a pour over or whatever and the grinder stops when it hits that weight.
Its def the easiest way to have consistently great coffee. The initial spend is up there, ~$500 for a roaster and ~$400 for a grinder, but if you amortize it over 10 years, as I have, it easily pays for itself. The taste of the coffee is as good as all the fancy single origin stuff and when you get the hang of it, there’s really not much fuss to it.
I find pourovers extremely sensitive to timing. For an espresso, 1-2 weeks old is totally fine (even preferred?), but for pourovers the flavor is totally different even just 8-9 days after roasting. Is there any way around this?
I tried a recirculating one a while ago and I actually liked it a lot, I just broke it and haven't replaced it. It didn't seem to make a "burned" taste either.
Maybe the finer points of coffee are beyond the granularity of my relevant tastebuds or something, because from what coffee people say I'm allegedly drinking toxic sludge.
You should be enjoying coffee - pure and simple joy of the moment - instead of focusing on the technicalities of making your brew ... The marginal gain of weighting, expensive grinders etc. is not worth it.
But ho boy have I tried cheap American coffee. That filter coffee you get in NYC. In 3 separate places including in a 5 star hotel. I've never tasted any coffee that was so horrible.
And I'm brewing with an Aeropress for over 10 years. It's by far the simplest and most lenient way of brewing coffee, and produces excellent results. I just can't be assed to faff around with brewing methods.
I can't help not notice bad beans, and most places serve almost undrinkable coffee by what I think are minimal standards.
If I were to drop bellow this level of quality, I'd rather give up on coffee entirely.
Disagree on roast, I've had great dark roasts. Even for espresso, I'd say full-city / medium-dark is preferable. However, I've had more bad dark roasts than bad mediums.
i use a hottop 2k roaster, got it for $600 on craigslist, and get green coffee from sweet marias.
so far it's the best cost/return i've gotten yet!
Really, it’s all about timing, but if you prepare it at the end of the workday you’ll have concentrate ready in the morning, and it generates so much concentrate. The “work” is just grinding the coffee, letting it soak, and then filtering.
(Then my personal preference, given a tie in roasting date, is also for the more lightly roasted stuff.)
My pet peeve is the expensive, fancy-looking stuff that boasts to be "roasted in Italy" or whatever. That's basically bragging that "this coffee went stale before it even entered your country".
Consumer Bunn machines are pretty solid, my grandma’s lasted for over 20 years. Looking inside mine, I suspect mine will do the same. This is the one on my counter: https://retail.bunn.com/38300.0066
I prefer a French Press over pour overs, but they are very close.
You are the marketer's ideal mark. $2K for a $20 grinder? $10K for a $100 coffee machine? And that's before rip-off beans...
But then your choice of coffee would cost me an extra 100€ every month. For me, preparation is more important than the coffee and even roasting date. I prefer cheap-ish (supermarket or slightly above) coffee (usually 6 months+ since roasting) with a French Press over fancy freshly roasted drip/filter coffee.
I chose to get off at the French press for weekends etc, and just have bog standard instant during the day.
I still get to enjoy better coffee, without spending ungodly amounts of money to get it.
in LA, stumptown, intelligentsia, and lightwave are good general options. i get mine from trystero, because reading pynchon felt like a rite of passage in college, and it’s excellent. a 14-oz cup costs me $0.90-1.00 per cup, all in.
With a $10 bag of beans, I'm good for a fortnight.
As for coffee, like many other parts of life (movies, food, and music especially), I find that I like it very good or very bad—as long as it’s not down the middle, I can find a time/place to enjoy it.
I have a fairly expensive Rocket Espresso machine, I’ve learned some latte art. I have every coffee making contraption out there. And I enjoy all of it, at times.
When I’m in a hurry I’ll make instant or go to a gas station. Totally fine and the gas station coffee is kind of a favorite of mine for long trips in the car.
What I almost never do is buy Starbucks because to me, it feels like that middle-of-the-road experience. I’m not making a statement about the company or the culture or anything like that. It just feels like going to Applebees or something (yes you’re out to eat, but shouldn’t you just go somewhere nice or, on the other hand, somewhere cheaper/faster where you don’t have to tip?). It’s too acidic and too expensive for what it is. I’d rather pay for something nicer or go cheap.
Also, what's up Rocket buddy :D
1. espresso drinks
2. order one shot extra (starbucks will only put 1 shot of espresso in an 12oz tall--so you should order AT LEAST one extra shot).
3. ask for blonde roast, which is actually not half bad. pike place/standard is a disaster.
it will not parallel any craft coffee shop, but this actually makes for drinkable coffee, which is convenient since there are starbucks literally everywhere.
Gas station coffee is a Rite. I am not a maniac, I use a burr grinder for locally & lightly roasted beans, and a v60. With an electric kettle that's about a five minute process, $1.30/300ml.
On the other hand, nothing beats an early morning pop-in to the 7/11, couple 24oz "Regular Roast" cups, slide the cardboard sleeves on, fit the lids, pack of non filtered Camels, and, as you say, a long trip in the car.
And in the process they've wiped out most independent coffee shops.
I agree, but I think it's slightly more! The author doesn't like coffee, they understand the intimate knowledge of every aspect. And in doing so, they come to appreciate the interesting parts of the worst entries in the field. And the experiences those entries mean.
To give another data point, I really like pocket knives. I've been collecting them for nearly twenty years. I have some very expensive ones. My daily carries are usually around $200 or so. I seldom use them, however, and never heavily. And I often trade them away for other people's pocket knives. I love those $40 beaters that have seen a life of real and heavy use.
Those knives exist in a state of their own, just like bad coffee: they weren't created to be perfect, and nobody involved took as much care as they should. But the flaws make the end result more-valuable, in an important way."Wabi-sabi" might truly be the meaning of existence.
Ultimately I think fancy coffee is the same as fancy beer - it's not about the quality of taste of the thing, but rather it's about tribal membership and signaling. Among certain groups of people, caring deeply about 1% gains in taste value from small changes in coffee preparation or hop blends is a chance to prove your worthiness to the in-group.
The fact that so many can honestly profess that these tiny gains in subjective taste experience are Very Serious Business is a testament to humans' ability to convince ourselves of just about anything.
That said, as with craft beer I think it's very often not about the objective quality (if there is such a thing) so much as it is the novelty. I'm guessing the people you portray negatively are more interested in the fads and trends and always chasing something new than enjoying what's in front of them. The perk of that is funding a broader assortment of offerings, the downside is as you mentioned that it can bring elitism and gate keeping.
I think your "tiny gains in subjective taste experience" is glossing over very real and dramatically different flavors (like a sour beer vs. a hoppy beer).
I really really disagree, and I don't think it's an issue of being stuck inside the tribe, because I use all the same equipment, don't really give a shit (though think I should) about adjusting grind size or anything, have never timed a pour, and buying emergency supermarket/Illy coffee vs. my 'hipster' subscription is scrunch-my-face-up vs. mm-coffee.
I can drink Illy, I don't enjoy it but I can drink it.
I was recently subjected to parent-company-corporate-meeting-room push-a-button-to-pump-it-out-don't-even-know-how-they-made-it-probably-filter coffee, that I could not drink.
But who am I performing to by (not) doing so? When I do drink the coffee I like I'm remote working from home alone.
A former colleague's favourite 'coffee' is instant decaf. I believe him. I really disagree. I don't even really agree it counts as coffee. But that's his preference, people are different. Some are only happy with nice/fresh beans (my own suspicion is that it's more the freshness that counts than anything else, that supermarkets should just sell it like fruit & veg, and then they're laughing, no need to buy 'hipster'), others with anything.
Relatedly, there are days where I don't drink it at all, that I just get too distracted and I decide by that point what's the point, I'm awake, it's mid-afternoon, why drink coffee now. So it's not a case of needing a certain fix, and really I should just stop ever buying 'emergency' coffee that I don't actually like, and intentionally go without.
However, my default coffee option at home is a simple cafetière (aka French press) and a kettle. I don't do much else other than, if I'm paying attention, waiting a minute or two too let the water of the boil. Nearly always, I'm as happy with this as I am with the fanciest barista coffee.
Also, it is interesting how much the taste and experience varies even with the same machine/method and same coffee. Sometimes it'll be amazing; sometimes, what is probably objectively the same thing just falls flat. I assume it's connected strongly to mood as well as whatever else I have eaten recently, ambience, expectations and so on. I can't think of another food or drink with the same variation between experiences, except perhaps alcohol, which I don't use often enough to make the same claim.
The correct technique is the technique that consistently makes you the coffee you like.
> Ultimately I think fancy coffee is the same as fancy beer - it's not about the quality of taste of the thing, but rather it's about tribal membership and signaling.
Most people aren't usually looking for novelty in their daily coffee, which is why they are often loyal to a particular coffee shop or method of preparation. This is true whether its Folgers instant coffee or shade grown Ethiopian.
If one is a daily beer drinker, then sure, the very experimental and unique flavored ones can be too much. But for me, beer isn't a daily beverage. It's a weekend or special occasion thing, like a cocktail, and for that, I'd rather have a more unique flavor.
I love coffee, but don't differentiate it nearly as much. I can enjoy a fancy expresso just as much as a cup of supermarket coffee.
Given most people drink coffee on their own at home with remote WFH standardized, who exactly are we signaling to?
Well, hmmm, it would only take a few minutes to learn. Frankly I think your post is signalling (on a meta level). I know it probably doesn't feel like it, but that's what signalling usually feels like from the inside (it doesn't feel like you're doing it).
On the object-level, I think there are huge differences in quality when it comes to... most anything, including coffee, beer, chocolate, you name it. I don't think it's usually about "1%" gains.
This is how I do it too. I highly recommend trying out a V60 (which is only $9.20) and trying the techniques in this video :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI4ynXzkSQo
You may find your coffee suddenly tasting significantly better
There continues to always be a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/915/
Were caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol not pleasantly mind altering and addictive, I highly doubt many people consuming them, regardless of minor adjustments in their preparation.
That said I’m firmly of the opinion that french press, and moka make the best coffee for my taste.
Going back, the food is good. It’s definitely worth a visit. But nothing will be as tasty as that night. Now that to realize that, I try and seek out those chances to “make a memory” where I can.
Doing X may be enjoyable, but doing X with friends can be a memory that last forever.
(Tangentially: emotion is a superpower when wielded correctly, but can also be a devastating weapon when wielded incorrectly. I've always bowed down to logic, but emotion has the unquestionable ability to upstage logic - in any circumstance involving a human anyway).
I don’t think this is the point the author is making. He or she is saying that they _prefer_ “bad” coffee. And yeah, drink what you prefer. I don’t see the controversy here.
heston blumenthol talks about this in his book on The Fat Duck, a 3 star restaurant in the UK.
Two memorable coffee experiences come to my mind.
One was a dinner I had with the late John Vlissides (probably known to some HN denizens as one of the Gang of Four design patterns folks) at a basement Indian restaurant in San Francisco. The meal was excellent, and for some reason we had coffee afterward instead of the usual masala chai. The coffee was far from bad, in fact it was quite good, so we asked about it. The waiter came back with the answer. It was not Peet's, not Graffeo, not some gourmet roaster I had never of. It was Hills Brothers. Hills Brothers was (I guess still is) an old school coffee roaster founded in San Francisco in 1900.
Soon after, I went to the grocery store and bought a can of Hills Brothers coffee and brewed a pot. It was disappointing. Not nearly as good as the coffee we had that night in the restaurant. It could be that Hills Brothers delivered different coffee to bulk buyers such as restaurants as opposed to the retail market. Or the difference could have been my dining companions.
Another coffee memory is hauling my late parents' 50+ year old Pyrex glass percolator out of the closet and brewing a pot. I remember when I was a kid, watching the clear water start to boil, and droplets of coffee falling from the grounds basket into the water, turning it first reddish brown, then darker brown, and then finally black. There is something mesmerizing about watching coffee percolate this way. After it was done I had a cup. It tasted kind of burnt, but at the same time kind of thin and weak. Not terrible, but not really very good. I don't think I made it incorrectly; I think this is how coffee always was for my parents. Hm, that was a while ago. It's about time to haul out the percolator again.
The one thing I found slightly odd about this article from my perspective is that the majority of the anecdotes are about buying coffee and coffee as a commodity. My coffee takes about as long to make as instant and while roasting takes about 1 1/2 hours a month or so it's a bit of a wash time wise considering how often I used to have to run out to get coffee from the grocery store. Really good green beans are also very cheap, $6/lb for premium to $2/lb for frankly incredible bag ends. I only really buy new beans a few times a year.
I don't even consider myself a huge coffee nerd (I used to), I just like roasting, grinding and brewing my own coffee each morning because it's something I consume everyday that I can make as much from scratch as possible for a product that fundamentally depends on global trade. I feel about coffee the same way I do about grilling a hamburger in the evening for dinner. I suspect if I grilled hamburgers every day I'd get a meat grinder and just grind my own beef.
When I drink coffee in the morning, my daily brew is probably some of the best coffee I've ever had, but I don't spend much time thinking about it. Most of the time what I'm drinking in the morning is no different than the cup of instant described in the post, just something in the background of every breakfast while my wife and I chat about the world. But, we do sometimes pause and note that it is a really good cup of coffee.
Nice guy other than that though; spent quite some time chatting about various things.
They all taste more or less the same to me. Maybe there are minor differences but if I’m not intentionally trying one cup right after a different one, I’m not going to notice. It all tastes like “coffee” to me. (I drink it hot and black. I can’t stand the taste of any coffee if it’s just warm.)
I don't understand. How are these not directly conflicting statements?
But I enjoy hand grinding some beans I get that are reasonably priced and pretty good, and putting them in the French press with turmeric and mint from the garden. I sit out and listen to the birds chirp and sip on it for about 20 minutes in the morning. It's not fancy, it's not a $10k espresso machine, but it's a little more then Folger's in a percolator and I like it.
I don't get the snobbery but I don't see how people can drink swill day after day either.
Developing a taste for good coffee (or wine, etc) doesn't seem attractive to me. You end up needing more and more equipment. You need expensive high quality beans. It's typically messy, time consuming, takes up valuable kitchen space and expensive. I'd rather something ok, which is quick, cheap and convenient.
It's like when I tried on some audiophile headphones and discovered that they sounded the same as my $20 cheap ones. Saved myself months of "research" and hundreds of dollars, and marketing/ads bounce right off me.
It’s coffee for people who don’t like flavor. “A taste without creamer or sugar has an initial bitterness that immediately becomes smooth and gentle. With sugar and milk, it is the mildest coffee you may ever taste. In fact, the coffee is specially processed in order to remove any bitterness yet still keep the flavor of a fine European coffee.”
There is a cappuccino chocolate milk in my local 7-11 (asia) that is about 50 cent. When I walked pass someone who drank it, i was accidentally breathing smell from their exhalation and surprised its smell is so good.
I feel fresh coffee beans is as good as ok-ish product in different way (excluding healthy ingredient aspect).
I do kind of like diner coffee... endless mugs of black stuff that can be doctored with milk. But my ritual is brewing a V60 or Moccamaster of the good stuff each and every morning and slowly getting going.
Drink what you enjoy. Honestly, I couldn't care less. Just don't ever take an espresso in a paper cup to go.
The cheaper stuff is weighed down with sugar for some reason but even that's not bad. About 1-1.50 a bag for the same amount. I haven't had it outside of convenience stores when in a pinch but it's not that bad. It's so ubiquitous that I stopped drinking it daily just to enjoy it a little more.
Whatever the hell gets sent up north gives me digestion issues and doesn't taste great when black. Some of the less cheap instant brands aren't as bad but anything in that category still needs to have milk and sugar in there for it to be tolerable and that's not really my style. Oh yeah, the secret of starbucks coffee is that it's actually really terrible quality coffee at an insane price and what they really serve is coffee milkshakes.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorreador
[3] https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1095/7444/articles/el-chor...
Most instant coffees have sugar and milk powder mixed in and taste disgusting. The Nescafe does the job and it's done in less than a minute.
Xykon: Hell no, it's the most disgusting sludge I've put in my stomach in years. But you see, nothing really compares to a cup of truly awful coffee.
Right-Eye: Uh, how about a cup of really good coffee?
Xykon: Not the same thing at all. When you drink a cup of really good coffee, you try to immerse yourself in that cup. You focus all your senses on what you're drinking. How it smells, how it tastes, how it feels on your tongue. You savor the experience. But when you drink a cup of absolutely horrid coffee, you do everything possible to NOT immerse yourself in it. You try to shut out your senses from what you're drinking. Inevitably, you try to stave off the assault on your poor innocent tongue by mentally comparing it to all the better coffee you've had in your life, reliving each cup in comparison to the godforsaken sludge you're pouring down your gullet right now. So when you drink a good cup of coffee, you're only drinking that one cup... but when you drink a bad cup of coffee, you remember every good cup you ever drank. And at my advanced age, that's a helluva lot of good coffee.
I used to occasionally get starbucks on the way to work but the line ups at the drive through have made 'fast' food not fast, and the price of starbucks coffee seems to have risen so high it wasn't hard to stop doing it.
I've had maxwell house instant, its not great, but its also not sour or acidic, so its just drinkable. Nescafe instant is fine too.
Luckily, for me, my definition also coincides with the overpriced coffee.
In short: my version of bad coffee is burnt, over roasted stuff. Like Starbucks.
I'd rather have Maxwell House. Which thankfully for me is also cheap.
Instant coffee is much closer to that peculiar American burnt drip coffee horror which is what Americans seemed to used to expect out of coffee. I think it should be termed "american coffee" just so we know what you're talking about.
Strangely, despite Starbucks using espresso machines, they managed to almost perfectly capture that burnt, watery horror which I assume is why people go there for sugar laden, syrup filled concoctions rather than just decent coffee.
Although far worse than the drip coffee is that also peculiar american invention called "coffee creamer". It's a shameful product.
I do feel it's important to remember that we get interested in things for a reason though, and you can't fault yourself for being enthusiastic about something. I'm not saying when we get disenfranchised that we should crawl back, but try not to be too hard on yourself for having enjoyed something in life, even if you no longer do.
Getting OK coffee scales wonderfully. Easy and cheap.
You can still get tired of great coffee, or at least start to feel like it's routine rather than pleasant.
I just feel like there are vetter things to spend time on that are more intellectually rewarding. Learning an old craft, or music, or reading a book. Or cooking. At least with cooking there is a real difference in the nutritional quality... I doubt that's true of fine coffee vs bad coffee.
It works well - you don’t go to a chain here expecting good coffee, if you’re somewhere you’re not familiar with, you just jump in Google Maps or something to find a decently rated cafe nearby and you should get good coffee.
In terms of home prep, when many cafes are selling great beans all around the place, you can easily always have great coffee. Once my machine is warm it takes something like two or three minutes from bean to cup, including grinding, steaming milk, etc… I’ve only been doing it for 15 years but don’t see myself getting tired of it anytime soon. I enjoy the tactility, the smell, the feel, and of course the end result. It’s a nice break from mentally taxing work!
This is why I brought a plain coffee brewer to my workplace of whole-bean espresso machines. Filtered and unfiltered coffees differ quite remarkably. Taste and texture aside, there's health factors to consider. Filtered coffee can reduce cholesterol raising components by 80% compared to unfiltered preparations, which may add up if you're a big consumer.
Espressos and such quickly reaches a physical threshold of minor caffeine poisoning if you're trying to substitute water.
edit: Instead, "coffee" means filter brewed, household-name coffee labels, "the usual" roast (so no one need to think too much of it). This is why I brought a plain coffee brewer to my workplace.
- for the farmers and workers (low, inconsistent pay)
- for the environment (mono-cropping)
- for the roaster (inconsistent quality and needs to be over-roasted to equalize)
- in the cup (tastes over-roasted)
sorry. just because we have all gotten used to commodity coffee pricing "for your daily fix" doesn't mean it's good or acceptable. it's inextricable from it's history in colonialism.
This same fallacy applies to criticisms of FoxConn factory jobs in China or construction jobs by imported labor in Dubai.
To you, the jobs are terrible, but to the people who get them, they are a significant improvement over the status quo. Eliminating those low pay jobs, by mandating higher paying jobs, would not lead to a one-to-one substitution of those "bad" jobs for what you consider to be good jobs. It would replace a huge number of low paying jobs for a small number of high paying jobs, leading to many going without.
Fundamentally you're making a fallacy of misattributing the cause of the poor conditions those workers experience to the people offering them their job, when in reality the cause is their low skill level, combined with the low capital concentration levels in their country, making their labor worth little.
I drink instant coffee, black, sometimes with ice in the summer. I make a big mug or bottle full and then get started on my day. If I'm out traveling, it's diner or hotel coffee, black. Get a cup, wait for it to cool a bit, and start the day.
I'm not thinking or talking about the coffee. I'm talking about how last night went, what today holds in store for us or what we could do. Where we've been before and where we're going. If it's my day off and I'm alone, I'm thinking about my chores, or old hobbies, or about exploring that new city that I saw in the distance in the videogame I was playing last night. Not about the coffee.
The coffee's just a comforting, familiar presence that's always there.
I've tried some of the pretentious coffee before. It's just not as good. It distracts from life. Cheap standard coffee just gets out of the way and enhances life.
While my personal preference is the opposite, I guess I feel the same way about vehicles, to the point where I've found a freedom in having a slightly beat up, feature lacking car because it doesn't matter if it gets scratched and there's less to break.
That gets me thinking one could make this statement about virtually anything though. "It's just not as good" is completely subjective and one's "it distracts from life" is another's "enhances life". To each their own
I can totally relate to the what the author is saying. I went through a mini-version of the same journey.
For a while I was buying expensive beans, grinding them on a Baratza Vario (a mid-level grinder) to make espresso in my E-61 based heat exchanger machine. I made some excellent coffee with that setup and more than a few sink-shots.
I gave it up though because I found that the better I got at making coffee, the less I enjoyed it in general. I couldn’t enjoy a mug of diner coffee. I couldn’t drink the stuff they give you on an airplane or at a donut shop. I couldn’t deal with k-cups that work provided so I brought in a kettle and aeropress.
I’m better these days. Like the writer, I’m now able to enjoy just about any coffee I can get my hands on (although IHOP coffee still seems impossibly watery).
It turns out that over the course of the pandemic I've really refined what I actually like in coffee (for myself, not trying to say it's generally better) and basically nowhere serves it. Now I'm in a pickle - I absolutely love love love the coffee I get to have every morning when I wake up, and I don't generally enjoy the bulk of the coffee that's available in the world at large.
Before I enjoyed coffee so much I was able to enjoy coffee much more broadly.
Same with coffee. Same with most food. Not sure if it was my steady diet of microwave dinners growing up but the fancier the food the less I usually like it.
Home brewery stores get people asking if they can make Budweiser to start and have to be steered toward a stout or Porter as those are much more forgiving.
After you’ve had 1,000s of cups of single origin coffees, the next one will surely not be anything terribly surprising. All connoisseurship eventually meets its finite ends, and with it, the excitement of the process of discovery.
It’s a wise lesson to take friends with you wherever you go. Don’t have your best cup of coffee alone. It won’t be worth it.
In Israel everyone drinks instant coffee. It’s standard in every house. When I first moved here I hated it. Now I love it. It’s become comforting - the ritual of a quick, warm drink in the morning to start my day.
We still have a fancy machine, and a nespresso machine too. But the instant coffee wins the day for my wife and I every morning.
I had two life experiences that beat the culinary snobbery out of me. Many years ago I was a tea-totaller but I decided I wanted to develop a taste for wine (because social pressure) so I started a wine tasting group. It consisted of six couples. We met once a month and rotated hosting duties. About a year in, someone did a blind tasting of cabernets which included a $3 bottle of Barefoot Cab at the low end and a $50 bottle of Silver Oak at the top. (These prices will give you some idea how long ago this was.) Every single one of us rated the Barefoot first or second, and the Silver Oak dead last.
Fast forward a few years and I was looking for a gift to give me parents for their 50th wedding anniversary. They are really in to coffee so I decided to buy them an espresso machine. You can spend a truly ridiculous amount of money on one of those do I decided to do some taste testing to try to find the point of diminishing returns. We ha a $1500 machine at our office and so I decided to use that as a baseline. I enlisted the help of some local coffee snobs for guidance and they instructed me where to get the "proper" beans, which I dutifully sought out. After several hours and many, many attempts, no one was able to produce a cup that any of us considered even remotely drinkable. I ended up getting my parents a Keurig.
On the other hand, whenever I'm in Italy, the coffee there is consistently superior to anything I get anywhere else in the world. I have no idea how they do it, but the Italians obviously know something that the rest of us don't.
I consider myself a slight coffee snob. I regularly browse /r/coffee, /r/espresso and /r/pourover, and also enjoy YouTube videos from well-known coffee snobs such as James Hoffmann.
Basically every opinion I have encountered in any of those channels concurs with your statement that it's about what you enjoy, and not how much it cost or where it came from. If anyone feels judged by coffee snobs (or wine snobs, or whatever) for their tastes, I suspect that comes more from a place of insecurity than actual experience of being judged.
If I want to sit down and enjoy a nice cup of coffee at the coffee shop, then of course I'll want something that's a bit more interesting than Maxwell House. But if it's a weekday and I'm just looking for something to drink with my breakfast before a Zoom meeting with Germany at some ungodly hour on the west coast, then just about anything that's dark and coffee-like will do.
It's the same thing with food, going to a fancy restaurant is about the food and experience itself, while going to Taco Bell is about satiating hunger in a perfectly acceptable way.
just because you can't doesn't mean the differences aren't there and throws away a massive tradition of expertise and artistic direction, and is wildly arrogant. obviously, drink what you enjoy. most folks enjoy barefoot and folgers alike. though they are both commodity wine/coffee that are meant to appeal to "mass market".
Along the lines of the article, I'll even offer that bad coffee can be more memorable.
I have, however, gone too far in the past: I once roasted some Robusta beans just to see what they're like (some cheaper coffees are a blend of Robusta with superior Arabica beans). It was remarkably vile, even fresh: it was as though there was tire-fire in my mouth and the after-taste lingered for far too long.
Bad coffee I can get behind. One of my Covid era goblin mode habits is instant coffee. When I do make coffee in the drip machine, it's almost always Folgers Black Silk anymore. Meanwhile the conical burr grinder takes up counter space unless my mother-in-law visits with a bag of my favorite blend from the roaster out her way.
I'm starting to think some kind of viral marketing campaign run by instant coffee makers is being waged here...
We live in a world where fast food and TV diners are doing their level best to extinguish the homemade meal. Cooking is hard and time consuming. Why not do things the easy way? It would appear that instant coffee manufacturers are now trying to repeat this operation the simple cup of joe.
Here's the thing. Making good coffee isn't time consuming, expensive, or hard. Sure, lots of people do go through "The Quest" stage when learning how to do something that's new to them. You strive for the best cup of coffee that human hands can make and go to increasingly exotic and difficult ends to achieve that end. It's like how, when cooking, you might keep chasing Michelin star worthy fare every night and just burn out.
Embrace the quest for what it's worth. You learn a lot in its punishing tutelage, but there comes a time to settle for what is merely good. The quest begins with rapid advance up an logistic curve of quality vs time and effort, but the perfect result requires infinite effort. Pick a spot before the slope of that curve levels off too much and you can get great results with comparatively little effort.
Recognize that the results axis of this curve are personal and subjective. One person may indeed decide to jump off the curve at the level of instant brew, while another will jump off with an espresso machine in their kitchen. You don't need articles like this to tell you where to jump off. Learn how to make coffee that's good enough for you with just enough time and effort to be worth it, and then be happy with that.
I'm not trying to tell you where to abandon The Quest and jump off the curve. I'm just saying that, for most people, that point will probably be a little bit beyond instant coffee.
I think I'm in the same boat as the author - I went through every fancy brewing method under the sun, sung praises to £50/kg coffee, and now I'd happily buy Lidl's own beans over whatever fancy nonsense the local roasters are selling .
I see no value to obsessing over perfect coffee. I have friends who do and love to talk endlessly about it. Holy crap how boring.
Nor am I going to drink Maxwell house unless I have no other reasonable option.
1: typically light or medium roast... if nothing else, dark roasts clog up my grinder
> Then put sugar and milk in because black coffee is nasty.
If you think your coffee is nasty, maybe it's the coffee?
I won't turn up my nose at diner coffee but you don't have to be a snob to notice a huge difference. Besides I have bonded over flat whites before :(
It was actually a local radio station (WERS Boston) that got me into a similarly local coffee roaster (Atomic Coffee). I got a bag of their coffee with a donation to the station, and I was hooked. Enough so that I now take friends to their cafe to hang out, and work with them to cater the coffee for an event I help run every year.
What's more, a number of my coworkers are coffee drinkers - sometimes, we'll bring in coffee to share; sometimes, we'll discuss the merits and demerits of such-and-such single origin blend; sometimes, there will be holy wars about the use of a moka pot versus a Chemex, or whole-bean with a burr grinder versus pre-ground. But all in good fun.
Cynical, I know, but like I said, I read the same thing a few times. This also happens with many other interests/hobbies/obsessions.
That said, it’s possible to have memorable conversations and moments over a Nespresso, a Blue Bottle pour over, a Nitro cold brew, a Jamaican Blue mountain aeropress, a cup of fresh ground Columbian drip, a fresh pulled espresso shot of Ethiopian yirgachiffe, or Taster’s Choice with condensed milk. (I chose these because I can vividly remember fond times with all of them). It really depends what you stock at home or work, whether you have friends and family over, and/or where you hang out.
OP had a good story but seems he had a period with not a lot of friends but lots of artisanal coffee. It’s possible to have both, though this requires some perspective: good coffee doesn’t have to be fussy.
I read an article on instant coffee that said it uses a bean that is easier to grow “and therefore considered inferior in Europe and America”, but apparently the choice in many parts of the Middle East and Asia.
I never really got coffee, I usually only have one a day, I found I do prefer the stuff I make in my mocha pot, and that's not too much hassle, I get pre ground, I really cannot tell the difference between really good coffee and what the pot makes. I def find it better than instant.
I watched some guy on youtube explaining how to make the perfect coffee from the pot and just thought it was a bit too much hassle, and I preferred the way I was making it anyway, so gave up on that.
What's happening in our lives with what flavors we enjoy. I have enjoyed chocolatey, earthy dark roasts and then discovered that roast wasn't a great predictor of those flavors because they came from different roast levels. I've been into pairing natural washed roasts with French press. Lately, in really into syrupy, fruity coffees that are still mild acidity.
It can be a great shared activity to make coffee together, share recipes, and watch techniques.
Preferences are individual and the best coffee is one you like. If you don't keep an open mind, you might miss out something new and something special, but that's ok too.
I visited Italy during grad school and was enamored of moka pots. I got a Bialetti and started experimenting. I moved on to French presses. I would've gotten an espresso machine if I had the cash. (but as a grad student, I didn't)
Yet I went back to liking brew coffee. You know what the problem was with all the above? They all just took too darned long. I just want my coffee in the morning with minimum fuss.
Instant coffees aren't good but they're good enough.
(though I will say, Swedish coffees like Gevalia that are made from Arabica beans are smooth and pleasant and much better than Folgers -- unfortunately they don't sell the instant versions in the US)
Spoiler alert: it is not really about the coffee.
When it comes to "artisan" foods like coffee, wine, cheese, etc. I think people over-estimate the subjective value of pedigree brands. They can be different or unique but ultimately no one type of coffee is objectively better than another.
I can prepare a homemade cappuccino in 5 minutes - with milk froth, from freshly ground beans, using an improved version of the classic Moka Express. While i empty and clean the pot, the water is boiled in an electric water cooker and the beans are ground. Then the milk goes in the frother. Hot water and beans go in the pot which goes on the stove. Froth into cups, a quick rinse of the frother and then the coffee is already ready to be poured.
The quality is not that of an espresso made with a high-pressure espresso machine but it's still pretty good.
Maybe it's a local/German thing, but here you will not find a single brand that will not praise its 100% arabica beans content.
Now, we lived close to an old Italian guy who roasted coffee for a living in a small garage. A lot of it went to his families restaurant, coffee and ice cream place.
Whenever he got the chance he went on a rant that arabica beans were overrated and that the robusta beans he was using were superior in quality (and more expensive).
No idea if that is true, but his roasts were great, so there must have been at least some truth to it.
You are aware that roasted coffee is a perishable product? After roasting, it is at its best for just a few weeks. After just two months it has lost the best of its flavours, but for "bulk" coffee the taste is often considered acceptable for up to 18 months if sealed (at which point most cheap supermarket brands seem to have their "best by" dates.)
I am afraid you will find your 40kg of coffee degrade in quality over time.
This is about experience, which is the stuff of life.
When I was vacationing in a tropical paradise, and the best coffee on the island was still in the 2nd wave, I didn’t pretend it was amazing, but I also didn’t have a problem with it.
I mean, I think I mostly agree with this person. Check your perspective when your not in the comfort of your perfect coffee bubble.
I've eaten in 5 start restaurants, had meals by the best chefs, but when you're seating on a tropical beach at sunset with a girl on your arm, a beer in your hand and you're pretty sure you're gonna get laid tonight.... that chicken wing tastes fucking amazing.
Even when I started making way more money I've stuck with the can of ground coffee.
The reason is cause most days I just down the cup really quickly, black. Or with a little cream.
I don't savor it. To me, coffee is a utility. Not a lifestyle.
I just need a couple of cups to stay awake and do my job.
But after that I don't touch it for the rest of the day. Not if I want to fall asleep at a reasonable time anyways.
Every now and then I will pay for an expensive gourmet coffee but that's not the norm.
I don't have fond memories of drinking my Father's shitty instant coffee, but I do have fond memories of exploring hip Cafes doing great coffee up and down Queen Street and Karangahape Road in Auckland, New Zealand - university years where I was able to find who I am.
My best cups where made by my late father. Using a steel coffee pot with multiple layers of burned tarry substance on the inside, he was able to brew and fill the whole house with a scent that drew every family member to the kitchen, to grab a cup.
We would then all sit and talk for a long time. The 90's and no mobile phones.
Not because it is the best tea. I like it because the only times I drank it, when I was a child, I was with my grandfather, visiting one of his cousins.
About coffee, as a colombian living in Europe I despise the Italian espresso and will fight for the best coffee in the world to be either in Medellin or Brasilia. Never in an Italian city. And never espresso.
PSA : Overall purpose of this community apart from talking about coffee, is to share inputs to small coffee brands/makers create better coffee products.
it's kind of interesting how BAD coffee can be. out of curiosity i googled to see if there has ever been a contest to see who can make the worst coffee and it turns out that's a thing. https://sprudge.com/the-horrible-true-story-of-the-worlds-wo...
I wish more post would come with a tag line like this, straight to the point “this is where I am, what I strive for, read this piece in this frame of mind”
Half of the article doesn’t make any sense without this framing.
One way that works wonders in terms of fixing bad coffee for me is diluting the drink with lukewarm, warm or hot treated water (mineral, brita, etc).
https://www.costco.com/kirkland-signature-coffee-organic-sum...
https://www.costco.com/kirkland-signature-coffee-organic-pac...
Like many others I don't have time to get all fussy about coffee.
Andy Warhol
‘It getting harder and harder to find a real bad cup of coffee.’
I used to drink one big cup a day each morning of one and a half teaspoons of Nescafé Gold and throughout the day multiple cups of tea.
There was a constant feeling of anxiety or irritation or nervousness in me which has gone away.
Let's break down this specific context (food and drink), because I think it's interesting.
Good generally refers to quality (quality of the beans, quality of the machine, skill of the maker, etc), but what this article touches on is that good can also mean 'nostalgic' or 'evocative'. They're different kinds of good, perhaps more psychological kinds, but our perceptions of taste are functions of our brain anyway. Good can also mean 'what I grew up with' or 'what I'm used to'. Similar to nostalgia, but worth breaking out because temporally it's what you used to like, and you still like it, instead of merely harkening back to simpler times occasionally.
In terms of fast, usually we think of the coffee at the corner store that's always ready, or instant. But there's also an element of great food where you need to spend time understanding what you enjoy, and this is something that rarely comes quickly. In this thread there are many people saying they don't enjoy acidic coffee, and equating this with not enjoying specialty coffee. Spending lots of time understanding roast levels and finding a specialty roaster with less acidic coffee is something that would take lots of time and understanding. Wine and beer are similar, people who claim to hate either can generally be convinced that there is some style of wine or beer that they like if you take some time to understand what other foods and drinks they like and pick something that matches. But this takes time and expertise, and it would take even longer for the person to discover on their own.
Cost is similar to speed. Developing your palate, trying lots of different coffees, buying all of the equipment, it's all expensive.
"bad coffee" magically hits all three: good, fast and cheap. But the good is the nostalgia/evocation/what you're used to, and well since you didn't pick quality you can have good, fast and cheap.
It is perfect, to some people. But for me, who has no strong nostalgic association with "bad coffee", and who enjoys food and drink and deep-diving and learning, picking good and fast (in the case of espresso) is a better choice for me.
If I can end my post on a slightly inflammatory note: my goal in writing this is to make sure that people realise that loving low quality things when they can afford and have the time for higher quality things is on some level blissful ignorance. There's nothing inherently great about the low quality product, there are just other choices and tradeoffs you're making, which low the appeal of higher quality products (time and cost investment in exploring them) and raise the appeal of the bad quality product (nostalgia).
If you're fine with this (and there's no reason not to be), then enjoy!
- only light roasts. Lots of acidity. No option to get a chocolaty or nutty flavor
- baristas with a mission to sell you pour-over or cold brews
- no sugar! I really hate that one. No I don‘t think light-roasted coffee tastes sweet.
- raw cane sugar. So you got the rolling eyes and the barista gives you sugar, but with a tiny wooden spoon and a tiny wooden sugar box so you need to scrape raw cane sugar out of that and it‘s all horrible
- what milk? No I don‘t like your soy/almond/oatmeal craziness. Just milk. Full fat. We are surrounded by small farms who get their milk processed by their milk processor that they own as part of a cooperative. They have happy cows.
Luckily we have a roaster in vicinity that is still old school. I love getting my medium/dark roasted arabica there, with a full-bodied chocolate flavor and lots of crema. Goes well as capuccino. I have a 15 year old heat exchanger machine with a classic E61 brew head and almost no electronics. It has a personality on its own, makes funny sounds that have evolved over time, but I know which sounds I need to attend to to make a great brew.
