4 ms·

Good grief. If you enjoy it then by definition it is not bad, it is good, even if it didn't cost you an arm and a leg and you got it at the grocery store or th

by lisper 4y ago

Good grief. If you enjoy it then by definition it is not bad, it is good, even if it didn't cost you an arm and a leg and you got it at the grocery store or the diner. The coffee snobs can just go fuck themselves. 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.

nextos 4y ago
What Keurig did you end up buying?
- lisper 4y ago
  I don't remember what it was called, and apparently it isn't made any more. It was a low-end model without any fancy features. I got one for my wife and me as well, but my daily brew comes from one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-DCC-450BK-Coffeemaker-Stainless-Steel-Carafe/dp/B0000A1ZMS/ https://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-DCC-450BK-Coffeemaker-Stain... I like Seattle's Best Post Alley blend or Starbucks Cafe Verona. But I drank Folgers at work for years and was perfectly happy with it.
- lovehashbrowns 4y ago
  I had the k-slim or whatever not too long ago but gave it away when I moved. It has a reservoir for multiple servings and makes manageable coffee. I really loved it so I figured I’d get it again but accidentally got the slim without a reservoir. So then I was making a cup of coffee and having to fill the water before every use. Nothing has upset me more than having to fill the water before every cup of coffee. I know it sounds incredibly stupid but I think this article puts it into words better than I could. I don’t want /good/ coffee, I just want coffee that’ll get the hell out of my way so I can focus on other things. I ended up getting a ninja coffee machine which can make drip coffee and k-cup coffee, and it has a giant water reservoir. Probably the best investment ever. I think it cost only slightly more than that first k-slim machine I had. I’ll probably get an aeropress so I can get extra fancy on occasion and maybe roast my own coffee beans eventually because I’ve heard it makes a giant difference. But really 99% of my coffee consumption is around “ok” coffee from my ninja machine thing. A lot of the time I don’t even know what flavor cup I used, or care. But there’s nothing more comforting than running into a problem at work, getting a cup of coffee while I think about the problem in my head, and sitting down at my desk to start on my work as I take my first sip.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jfim 4y ago
In my opinion, it's really about whether or not one wants to pay particular attention to it or not, and that applies to coffee and other things. 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.
NoboruWataya 4y ago
> Good grief. If you enjoy it then by definition it is not bad, it is good, even if it didn't cost you an arm and a leg and you got it at the grocery store or the diner. 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.
markmark 4y ago
Having a $1500 (or any dollar) machine is absolutely no measure of the quality of coffee it is able to produce.
LesZedCB 4y ago
growing fruits is a wildly complex process, fermentations are an Astoundingly complex process, barrel aging is a surprisingly complex process. myriad things in each step can and do go very wrong. experts are absolutely able to taste fruit defects and fermentation defects. 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".
- lisper 4y ago
  > just because you can't doesn't mean the differences aren't there But that's the point: we could tell the difference. We just all preferred the Barefoot when we didn't know what we were drinking. Nowadays my tastes have evolved beyond Barefoot. But there isn't anything wrong with you if you just happen not to like Chateau Petrus.
  - LesZedCB 4y ago
    right, and i completely agree on that point. the counter-point is that everybody uses the "taste is subjective" as a bludgeon for there being not quantifiable difference in quality between offerings.
    - lisper 4y ago
      Of course there are differences. But, with a very few exceptions, none of those differences make one product objectively better than the others.
      - diffeomorphism 4y ago
        There are lots of "objectively better" cases, you just have to fix what you want to measure. If you dislike bitter, then some coffees will be "objectively less bitter". Or Kraft Mac and cheese vs pricy one: one uses "objectively better quality ingredients", one tastes "objectively closer to your childhood". Or dark roasted coffee that is basically burnt is "objectively worse" than non-burnt at being coffee, but might be "objectively better" at being a roasted-tasting beverage.

by lisper 4y ago

nextos 4y ago

What Keurig did you end up buying?

lisper 4y ago
I don't remember what it was called, and apparently it isn't made any more. It was a low-end model without any fancy features. I got one for my wife and me as well, but my daily brew comes from one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-DCC-450BK-Coffeemaker-Stainless-Steel-Carafe/dp/B0000A1ZMS/ https://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-DCC-450BK-Coffeemaker-Stain... I like Seattle's Best Post Alley blend or Starbucks Cafe Verona. But I drank Folgers at work for years and was perfectly happy with it.
lovehashbrowns 4y ago
I had the k-slim or whatever not too long ago but gave it away when I moved. It has a reservoir for multiple servings and makes manageable coffee. I really loved it so I figured I’d get it again but accidentally got the slim without a reservoir. So then I was making a cup of coffee and having to fill the water before every use. Nothing has upset me more than having to fill the water before every cup of coffee. I know it sounds incredibly stupid but I think this article puts it into words better than I could. I don’t want /good/ coffee, I just want coffee that’ll get the hell out of my way so I can focus on other things. I ended up getting a ninja coffee machine which can make drip coffee and k-cup coffee, and it has a giant water reservoir. Probably the best investment ever. I think it cost only slightly more than that first k-slim machine I had. I’ll probably get an aeropress so I can get extra fancy on occasion and maybe roast my own coffee beans eventually because I’ve heard it makes a giant difference. But really 99% of my coffee consumption is around “ok” coffee from my ninja machine thing. A lot of the time I don’t even know what flavor cup I used, or care. But there’s nothing more comforting than running into a problem at work, getting a cup of coffee while I think about the problem in my head, and sitting down at my desk to start on my work as I take my first sip.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jfim 4y ago

In my opinion, it's really about whether or not one wants to pay particular attention to it or not, and that applies to coffee and other things. 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.

NoboruWataya 4y ago

> Good grief. If you enjoy it then by definition it is not bad, it is good, even if it didn't cost you an arm and a leg and you got it at the grocery store or the diner. 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.

markmark 4y ago

Having a $1500 (or any dollar) machine is absolutely no measure of the quality of coffee it is able to produce.

LesZedCB 4y ago

growing fruits is a wildly complex process, fermentations are an Astoundingly complex process, barrel aging is a surprisingly complex process. myriad things in each step can and do go very wrong. experts are absolutely able to taste fruit defects and fermentation defects. 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".

lisper 4y ago
> just because you can't doesn't mean the differences aren't there But that's the point: we could tell the difference. We just all preferred the Barefoot when we didn't know what we were drinking. Nowadays my tastes have evolved beyond Barefoot. But there isn't anything wrong with you if you just happen not to like Chateau Petrus.
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  right, and i completely agree on that point. the counter-point is that everybody uses the "taste is subjective" as a bludgeon for there being not quantifiable difference in quality between offerings.
  - lisper 4y ago
    Of course there are differences. But, with a very few exceptions, none of those differences make one product objectively better than the others.
    - diffeomorphism 4y ago
      There are lots of "objectively better" cases, you just have to fix what you want to measure. If you dislike bitter, then some coffees will be "objectively less bitter". Or Kraft Mac and cheese vs pricy one: one uses "objectively better quality ingredients", one tastes "objectively closer to your childhood". Or dark roasted coffee that is basically burnt is "objectively worse" than non-burnt at being coffee, but might be "objectively better" at being a roasted-tasting beverage.