And there's this general attitude of snobbishness, like you have to spend at least 600 on gear to have a "real espresso". Pretty much r/coffee in a nutshell (r/espresso even worse). And in typical reddit fashion, calling them out on their bullshit isn't allowed
And I don't have a problem with spending more to get nicer stuff, it's just if there's no objective measure of how it's "nicer" (e.g. pixel density on a monitor), then it raises my bullshit meter and makes me wonder if there's some shilling going on
That’s my limit, though. All my research indicates you can get “better” cups by spending (a lot) more, but the difference is slim and possibly nonexistent if you aren’t some aficionado.
Fanboys get obsessed with the story telling; except hollow body electric guitars, the wood makes no difference to sound; it’s all the electronics. People have setup body less electrics and get the same recorded wave form. But humans reduce the truth to manageable snippets to circumlocute
My mignon grinder and rancilio silvia set me back 1000$, but I have been using them daily for 4 years to make lattes for my partner and I. That's over 2920 lattes at an average of 0.34$ each!
The alternative is using a pressurized portafilter to simulate espresso, which ends up with a much thinner, much less flavorful espresso shot. Not what should be considered espresso, even if it is a simulacrum.
There are lots of objective ways to compare grinders and espresso machines. With grinders you have obvious ones like speed, but also consistency (does every run give you the same size particles) and particle size distribution (are all the particles more or less the same size). With espresso machines the big ones are temperature and pressure stability, both within a single shot and also shot to shot. All of these things can measurably affect the end result of the coffee you make. That isn't to say that there isn't also a lot pseudoscience and snobbishness also in coffee, or the diminishing returns don't kick in quite quickly.
All of this is ignoring things like design and ergonomics that many people also value. If I'm going to have a large machine that I use every day taking up counter space in my kitchen then I might be willing to pay a bit extra just for it to be pleasing to look at and enjoyable to use, even if those things cannot be detected in a blind tasting of the resulting coffee.
Grinders make the biggest difference for espresso quality and consistency, it's the espresso machines that people generally over spend on.
However that’s not me. I did my best to recognize the “notes of blueberry and molasses” or “floral hints with nutty aftertones”. I can’t.
The most I can tell apart is sour vs. bitter vs. smooth (some snobs would call the last one as “tasteless”).
Nowadays I’ve mostly given up on expensive coffee and usually just get the cheap brew from the newsstand on my commute. My sole indulgence is the bag of Kona I buy every now and then to grind in my $300 grinder and brew on my $400 drip machine - artifacts from when I delved into the hobby.
maybe for granularity but the mess is probably god awful to deal with
But this article is about the cafe setting, where it'd be irresponsible to limit customers based on how fast you can handgrind beans, and that's where salesmanship works its magic. And yes, some of it's pure snobbery, but even that's a marketing point if you're the only coffeeshop on the block with the all-copper setup :P
The trap a lot of people get themselves into is thinking they'll "upgrade" to an espresso setup (usually spending $500+ to do so), only to be disappointed compared to their even modestly priced ($60, as you say) pour over.
The absolute peak of pour over setups only really needs to cost maybe $300-400, and most of that is in the grinder. Anything more is essentially a waste. But espresso can easily get you into the $10k+ range with expensive machines, silly grinders, accessories, and more.
I do espresso, that's just my preference. If the shot comes out right, it has these flavors that are really hard to describe (can't find an appropriate word here)
But consistency is hard
Frankly, if you just enjoy coffee a whole lot, that investment makes sense for most people. Coffee is a major part of people's lives.
The issue with espresso, is that the process itself is NOT simple, and involves tons of heat an pressure. I'm not 100% sure what makes it expensive, except that it obviously pays to make it heftier.
You don't have to drink espresso. There's lots of reasons not to go with espresso that don't involve cost/difficulty. Some very well regarded methods involve just leaving the beans in water with a $20 piece of cookwear.
Regarding grinders, people just find that they don't get a consistent grind. It's functional concerns, not hipsterism or consumerism. In all cases, there's options at every price range.
> it's just if there's no objective measure of how it's "nicer"
I think with all of these topics there is a fundamental test: make the person do a blind test and see if they can see the difference.
Sometimes people can (somebody challenged me to taste-test filtered water vs tap, a coworker could identify bottled coke vs normal) and others can't (a friend couldn't identify FLAC file vs normal).
If the person is afraid to do the test, that's a good indicator to me that they might already know it's more of a hype thing.
Sort of. What a lot of people don't realize is that coffee used to be very popular even in England. Isaac Newton was a coffee drinker. The intellectual elite of England met in coffee houses in the 1600s and 1700s. The Boston Tea Party may have led to the decline of tea in the US, but it wasn't as if coffee was some weird unknown drink to them that they had to learn to drink in the aftermath of it.
OTOH, for per capita consumption, it has tended to flip between The Netherlands and Finland, wherein for example here[0] it's said that the Dutch drank 8.3 kilograms of coffee per capita in 2020, while Finns drank 7.8 kilos per capita. For comparison, the Americans used 3.5 kilos.
Of course, TFA could have also meant that drip coffee is more popular across the Atlantic than here, but even that I do find hard to believe. Besides, if that's the case, then this point was expressed in an odd manner, frankly.
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[0]: <https://www.statista.com/chart/8602/top-coffee-drinking-nati...>
I say "unsubstantiated" because a cursory web search didn't turn anything up. Anecdotally, it seems true.
Again, it's a matter of taste, but I was an espresso bar a few weeks ago and had the worst coffee I've had in many years because I decided to wait for pour-over (and they roasted the beans in-house so I assume they were fresh!)
FWIW I had Clover coffee once and I hated it too; maybe I just have bad taste in coffee.
0. Science 2.0. The Acceleration of Spirits Aging Using Ultrasound. https://www.science20.com/scott_beers/the_acceleration_of_sp.... Published May 31, 2018. Accessed September 6, 2024.
I wonder if the Starbucks story was one of those situations where the CEO had a pet project but the rest of the company silently conspired to kill it? I feel like I'd be the exact target market for this, yet I've never heard of either Clover nor Starbucks Reserve before.
