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Good Coffee Is Now Bad

• lmm 4y ago
  Meh. Complaining that coffee snobbery has got more accessible is like complaining that good cameras have got more accessible. Yes, there are some people whose expenditure outpaces their talent. But a lot of the original coffee snobs weren't people of great judgement either. And complaining about those kind of middlebrow coffee snobs in the same article where you talk about how you'd pick Dunkin over Starbucks is the height of hypocrisy. This guy comes off far worse than the people he's criticising.
  • bombcar 4y ago
    I don’t coffee but I took it as “you used to be able to go to small shop and pay more and get good coffee, but now everything is better across the board and Dunkin’s has decent coffee and many small shops are no better”. Which happens all the time when the (hipster/prosumer/whatever) takes off. Same thing with cameras - any standalone camera used to be better than a phone camera, but the phone cameras got better.
    • nordsieck 4y ago
      > I don’t coffee but I took it as “you used to be able to go to small shop and pay more and get good coffee, but now everything is better across the board and Dunkin’s has decent coffee and many small shops are no better”. > Which happens all the time when the (hipster/prosumer/whatever) takes off. > Same thing with cameras - any standalone camera used to be better than a phone camera, but the phone cameras got better. I feel like that's only a reasonable complaint if the specialty shops have gotten worse. From talking to friends who do drink coffee, that doesn't seem to be the case. There are all sorts of innovations happening in coffee (particularly espresso) all the time that allow for more and more control over the extraction process. To use your camera example: sure, phone cameras have gotten better - in fact, they're so good that many people find them sufficient to use instead of a standalone camera. But dedicated cameras continue to get better as well - albeit at a slower pace. I can understand complaints by working photographers: there are so many pictures out there that it's much more difficult to make a living selling stock photography. But it just seems weird for an amateur to complain that the gap between phones and what the pros use is shrinking as long as both continue to improve.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        If the theory is correct (that some coffee shops now are basically serving the same thing as McDonalds or whatever) then I could see the complaint. When phone cameras were very bad, you were guaranteed to get a better camera with any standalone one; even a point-and-shoot Walmart special. No thought was really necessary beyond price. But now that phone cameras are better, you have to work at it to find a worthwhile standalone camera (and that camera is much more expensive, relatively). Or another way of reading it is "it used to be easy to be a snob! Just pay more and you're guaranteed to get some good shit!" and now that 'trick' doesn't work. I think there's a deeper thing here, which is the "desire for secret knowledge", almost a form of gnosticism or something. We want to "know a secret that isn't widely known" even if it doesn't actually really help us any.
        • nordsieck 4y ago
          > When phone cameras were very bad, you were guaranteed to get a better camera with any standalone one; even a point-and-shoot Walmart special. No thought was really necessary beyond price. But now that phone cameras are better, you have to work at it to find a worthwhile standalone camera (and that camera is much more expensive, relatively). I don't think that this analogy stands up quite so well - if your camera has removable lenses, it'll be better than a phone. It will be expensive, although given the price of phones these days, the phone is actually probably more expensive than a beginner mirrorless. But analogies are known to be fragile when stretched. > Or another way of reading it is "it used to be easy to be a snob! Just pay more and you're guaranteed to get some good shit!" and now that 'trick' doesn't work. > I think there's a deeper thing here, which is the "desire for secret knowledge", almost a form of gnosticism or something. We want to "know a secret that isn't widely known" even if it doesn't actually really help us any. This makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, it's completely foreign to me - I only care about being or getting better than yesterday. I don't care at all about how good I have it in relation to other people. But I understand that that is very motivating to a lot - perhaps most - people.
  • voidwtf 4y ago
    Agreed, I think the average “coffee snob” really just wants people to enjoy coffee that doesn’t have to be 50% cream and sugar. Coffee doesn’t have to be that acrid tasting black water made from over-roasted, stale, coffee grounds that our parents often drank.
    • zeusk 4y ago
      As a kid, I used to love brewing my coffee in milk instead of water. (I did that for tea too!)
  • amelius 4y ago
    I don't agree. This is like the Eternal September, but for coffee. Before you know it, the only coffee you can buy is coffee with hazelnut syrups.
    • ghaff 4y ago
      At least in New England, I tend to associate hazelnut with the ~first wave of "gourmet" coffees, e.g. from Green Mountain.
• sneak 4y ago
  Everything that starts with snobs and crosses over to the mainstream (with "quality" pricing) will eventually revert to lowest common denominator crap quality (while retaining quality branding) because the marks can't tell the difference. Why not cut costs and increase margin if most of your customers don't notice? Apple is one of the few companies in a position to do this who doesn't consistently do it, because quality obsession (far far beyond that of their median customer) is in their DNA. For most orgs it is a no-brainer.
  • porknubbins 4y ago
    This is true in the US but not universally true. We are a commercial society where the money matters more than the prestiege or whatever other reward for making a great product. There are places I’ve been to in Italy or Japan where this is not the case, in fact I wouldn’t even know what good coffee was if not for those countries.
    • rhino369 4y ago
      It’s about food culture. When there is a long history, it is preserved. American food culture is essentially industrial. I’m interested why that is, but I assume it’s because the pre-industrial revolution America food culture wasn't that well rooted. A lot of Europeans drink nasty instant coffee though.
• baremetal 4y ago
  coffee, when done well, is much better at home i use a french press and the "hoffmann method". grounds go in the press, pour in boiling water. wait a couple minutes and stir gently. scoop off the foam. steep for a total of 5-7 minutes. press and pour. i cant imagine paying $5 for a cup of subpar coffee.
  • ubermonkey 4y ago
    This is true -- and I'm sure you mean Hoffmann -- but "better at home" is easier to accomplish if you prefer brewed or filter coffee. If you want an espresso-based drink, cost or kitchen space can make it much easier to just cultivate a relationship with a good shop (ideally, one that doesn't even OWN blenders).
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • ehnto 4y ago
      What you want is a Moka Pot, very cheap, perfectly capable. It's how espresso was brought to many countries, including Australia. Migrating Italian's/europeans would bring their Moka Pot's with them, and out of those communities espresso would be in the cafes and the rest is history. Especially here in Australia, where there is nothing but espresso coffee or tea.
      • intrasight 4y ago
        I switched from drip to a moka pot after visiting my sister in Italy, and It's all that I've used now for three years.
      • ubermonkey 4y ago
        Moka pot coffee is its own thing. It is NOT the same as a good shot of espresso pulled from a proper espresso machine. I know people say this, but it's a different flavor profile even with the same beans and careful attention to grind. I really dislike it, in fact. If I can't have a proper espresso, I'll drink pour over.
• laurex 4y ago
  In visiting NYC, I decided to stop by one of my old coffee haunts, Gorilla in Brooklyn. An AMERICANO was $7.50 before tip. And it was that burnt tasting roast ala Starbucks that I don't believe is good at all. The proprietor/barista also asked me MULTIPLE times to review them on Google Maps. I'm not sure the argument holds as much sway in other places (I live in a coffee mecca normally, and I think it's far less like this) but in NYC it's convincing.
  • froh 4y ago
    So I hope you did review them on maps? I think it may not have gone how they thought, however I find clear text reviews a great idea...
  • dont__panic 4y ago
    As a coffee lover and former NYC resident, I really struggled to find a decent local coffee shop in NYC. There are lots of decent options, but I honestly feel like the average shop is worse than your average smaller, artsy city in the US. If you've spent much time in Portland or Austin or Seattle or even Boston, most coffee shops in NYC aren't that great. The best ones are equally good and maybe even better, but you really have to sort through a million lookalike wannabe shops to find the good stuff.
• neogodless 4y ago
  > I consider myself an expert on this sigh > the part that’s more offensive than the price is that a lot of times it isn’t good So don't go there and don't buy it. > wish that I took that much interest in the coffee I make. But I don’t So you're saying you don't care enough about coffee to make it yourself, but you have a whole ton of options close to home and some you like and many you don't, and you want to complain about that?
  • drcongo 4y ago
    Substack seems to have turned everyone into an expert on things they know nothing about. This article is terrible.
    • paulcole 4y ago
      Let’s give credit where it’s due. HN commenters have been applying their expertise in programming CRUD apps to medicine, exercise, nutrition, economics, social issues, and more for years longer than Substack has been around.
      • drcongo 4y ago
        This did make me laugh, though I tend to trust the opinions on here more than Substack which, to me at least, has become tainted by the sheer volume of dreadful hot takes. Clicking on a Substack article now I go in with very low expectations of quality, and more often than not it doesn't even reach that threshold.
        • paulcole 4y ago
          I’m doing my best to add dreadful hot takes to HN but I can only do so much on my own.
    • ctrlmeta 4y ago
      Agreed! Makes me wonder if all these blogging platforms are solving problems or creating new ones. For every discerning reader who may be wise to not trust what they read, there are thousands of gullible ones who would believe anything they read just because it is written.
• pram 4y ago
  Even 'bad' coffee is now bad. I have a Krispy Kreme and Dunkin 5 minutes from my house and the quality has hit rock bottom since 2020. It's not even that cheap!
  • lotsofpulp 4y ago
    The volatility in quality labor and ingredient prices is wreaking havoc on the probability of receiving a satisfactory food/drink. If I am going to receive my food/drink with a mistake or just not made well 50% of the time, I will just go without. And/or I am getting older and turning into my dad, but I feel like all the staff turnover and increases in ingredient pricing must have an effect on quality of product and service.
    • mberning 4y ago
      And service. People are so habitualized to going out, spending money, receiving an inconsistent product, delivered with shambolic service, that they just can't stop, even if they recognize how bad things have gotten.
      • badpun 4y ago
        For most of them, it's better than nothing I guess? I personally almost never about crappy service or food quality because I suspect these people are still working harder than me at my dev job, while making a fraction of what I make. I shouldn't expect of other more than I expect of myself.
• paganel 4y ago
  The reason for the high price of a cup of coffee (compared to its "production" costs) is that there's no other way to keep the business afloat. Almost no specialty coffee shop makes its money out of selling pastries or even "hipsterish" breakfasts (no matter how good, and some of them are really excellent), but out of selling coffee at many times said "production" costs. If you don't do that you can't pay the high rent (because you need to open the place where people would come, not in the middle of nowhere), and then you can't pay salaries. In that order. Paying for the product that you're actually selling is the least of one's worries, so in that respect I can't actually understand that nickel-and-diming about buying the cheapest possible coffee the author mentions, but most probably those people have run their numbers, so they must be right. I'd say those coffee cups sellers managed to save a lot more money by doing business out of those trailer-like thingies (of which the article has a photo of) instead of renting a real coffee shop location. And last but not least, good coffee culture is (happily) still alive and well over most of Eastern and Central Europe capitals and big-ish cities, I highly recommend the area for those crazy enough to visit some place just to drink good coffee. Bucharest (from I'm from), Bratislava, Prague with its Vinohrady area (excellent breakfasts on top of the good coffee, just excellent), Vienna, Cluj, Budapest (I've not yet been there, but I've heard very nice things about the coffee they sell) are just excellent places to visit if one's into that. For comparison, in most of Western Europe capitals you have to hunt like a coffee-obsessed crazy person until you get to anywhere that is serving anything other than Lavazza (with Madrid and its Chamberi area a nice exception).
• ravenstine 4y ago
  People expect more from everything as time goes on. I remember the days when In N' Out was unanimously considered one of the best fast food chain burgers. Though they still get long lines, I've polled people recently about it, and most seem to think that In N' Out is somewhat beneath them because so many places sell "gourmet" burgers now. I try to enjoy the simple things in life because snobbery, while a bit of it is not necessarily a bad thing, isn't sustainable.
• Maursault 4y ago
  Starbucks makes delicious cappuccinos and mocha espressos probably by dumping a month's worth of recommended daily allowances of sugar in them. But they are yummie. Their house blend drip coffee of various roasts, however, is burnt. Starbuck's signature flavor for their drip coffee is burned coffee. I don't know how Starbucks thought that burning their coffee was a novel idea, and I don't know how anyone can drink it.
  • bitlax 4y ago
    I don't know if this is true but I've heard the burning is deliberate in order to maintain a consistent flavor across all of their stores, much like McDonalds wants a Big Mac to taste the same no matter where you are.
  • PaulHoule 4y ago
    The 7/11 across from where the Starbucks used to be is worse.
  • gilbetron 4y ago
    They burn their coffee (make it bitter) because it then works better with sugar. Too much sugar and we don't like something, too much bitter notes and the same thing, but when you combine bitterness and sugar, our body really likes it for some reason. Hence Starbucks. (Have to add fat in there, too ;)
    • Maursault 4y ago
      Your explanation makes perfect sense. One of my reasons for drinking coffee black is that it isn't water (which is mostly what I drink), and there's no sugar. Now I understand: Starbucks drip coffee is not for black coffee drinkers.
  • rhino369 4y ago
    The blonde roast is a lot better, if you are ever stuck in a place without other options.
  • Terretta 4y ago
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  Good coffee is good business. It is in the best interest of a gas station to serve good coffee because it keeps customers coming back to buy other things. Coffee is so profitable they can afford to use good beans. Not every gas station has good coffee (the 7/11 downtown is awful), but the one nearest to me is pretty good. As for Starbucks they closed the store near my office to spite the union. Before that they had the strange policy that you couldn’t walk in and order a coffee but instead had to order ahead on a mobile app which turned me off. That area is a ‘coffee desert’ the way Manhattan was in the 1990s. Back then there seemed to be 2 or 3 Starbucks on every block, I think they were trying to fool financial people into thinking that the whole country was full of Starbucks. Independent coffee shops were driven out of business and you could not get a good cup of coffee anywhere in Manhattan. At that time, however, you could already find a decent espresso bar in a one horse town in a flyover state, even if getting any food other than pizza, subs, and greasy Chinese food was a struggle.
• 3pt14159 4y ago
  Theres this Orwell piece that just absolutely resonates with me. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/a-hanging/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... My favourite bit in there is: > All the organs of his body were working –bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming–all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. I'm not the type to turn away from a nice, refined experience; provided it isn't so expensive as to lead me to feel bad about the economics of it all. So I like a wonderful coffee bean, a nice pull, and all that jazz. But across the vast expanse that is human existence, I really do not understand snobbery when it comes to the trivialities in life. That guy Orwell was writing about, moments before his hanging was complete, I don't think he or anyone around him cared too much about where they got their coffee that morning. There are more important things to life.
  • michaelt 4y ago
    Eh, when it comes to important things in life I'd say good food and drink is right up there with friends, family and good health. I don't personally have great taste in coffee - but a person's gotta have some things in life that they enjoy, otherwise what's the point?
  • rpmuller 4y ago
    Thanks for the link to that essay. I feel changed after reading it.
• philip1209 4y ago
  If specialty coffee stops being "different", then it's no longer specialty - it's a commodity. I'm reading the "Best of Jimseven 2004-2015" [1] book, where then-blogger, now-Youtuber [2] James Hoffman explores his own journey starting a cafe. And, in it he talks about the original marketing challenges of positioning a specialty cafe: > What those of us in specialty coffee offer isn’t necessarily unilaterally better coffee, but among our offerings are different lots of coffee someone will probably enjoy more than what they’re drinking > My concern is that when our tone implies we have something better, because we think what they are drinking is terrible, then we're likely to have them become closed rather than open to trying something new and better. James concludes that calling specialty coffee "better" is counter-productive, and that specialty coffee should instead market a "diversity" of experiences. As nondescript cafes like Blank Street rise in prominence - that means that baseline coffee expectations of society have increased, from gas station sludge to robot-brown-water. But, "better" doesn't mean "specialty." There's still room for cafes that offer different experiences - like a nice Sey roast. Specialty is best defined by "different" or "unique". And, what qualifies as "different" may be a moving target. And, that's ok - not every cafe can maintain a unique experience and not every customer wants a challenging cup of coffee. You can have a great cafe without superlative-inspiring brew. Let's face it - the customer service of a local cafe impacts people's experiences far more than the particular coffee they're served. [1] https://tenshundredsthousands.com/products/the-best-of-jimseven-2004-2015 https://tenshundredsthousands.com/products/the-best-of-jimse... [2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMb0O2CdPBNi-QqPk5T3gsQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMb0O2CdPBNi-QqPk5T3gsQ
  • mc32 4y ago
    I think that’s very fair. Branded coffee shops strive for consistency in their offerings in order to produce revenue. Specialty coffee shops strive for a specialized variety of offerings to drive revenue —although regrettably sometimes it’s packaged as exotic or unique and as a non sequitur that it’s therefore better and the consumer is superior to those not in the know.
  • dont__panic 4y ago
    Heh, I read that very same chapter from that very same book last night. What a coincidence! It sounds like the author of this article isn't interested in specialty coffee. If they're regularly going to Dunkin or Starbucks -- and particularly if they prefer the donut shop blend that Dunkin serves -- then the highbrow "tasting note" styled coffee probably isn't to their taste. Folks have to figure out a price:performance ratio they're comfortable with, and the author just isn't interested in shelling out for high quality coffee. They're satisfied with something simpler. But just because that style of coffee isn't the author's favorite is no reason to hate on the coffee industry as a whole. Best of Jimseven really opened my eyes to just how much the specialty coffee industry has evolved and improved over the past decade. It would probably be a good read for the author of this article!
• tuatoru 4y ago
  Disappointed. Thought this was going to be an article about how climate change is affecting coffee growing regions, changing the terroir of the beans (and yields).
  • cooperadymas 4y ago
    That's an unusual thing to be disappointed to discover is not the case :-)
• talkingtab 4y ago
  Good coffee, really good coffee is easy. You get a heat gun, you get an old fashioned flour sifter. You order some interesting green beans from sweetmarias.com. You roast the beans over the heat gun while holding the flour sifter and cranking. I do 2/3 pound batches. There are lots of fast and easy ways to brew the coffee. My current favorite is an aeropress because it takes a few minutes, but moka pots are very good. This is good coffee. Truly good. I can roast dark, light, Kenya, Java, Mexican. I can make my own blend. Or I can go down the street or drive and get some coffee and pay a huge amount to someone who can't roast as well as I can. Doesn't know which coffee beans are best. Where I will never be able to try Yemeni Bani Haraz. You could call me a snob, but I work for my coffee.
  • analog31 4y ago
    I've never tried it, but a friend of mine says he uses a hot-air popcorn popper to roast coffee beans.
    • soylentcola 4y ago
      Yep! You need the right kind for it to work, but they're not particularly expensive. Granted, it's not a whole lot cheaper to buy good beans and roast them at home, but it's kinda nice to experiment and get your own personalized blend if you're interested. Guess that goes for cooking your own food, mixing your own drinks, and lots of other things too, though.
      • analog31 4y ago
        Indeed, my friend prefers to roast his beans in very small batches, to minimize the storage time before brewing. And home cooking is definitely a personal / cultural thing. In my own case, I don't like restaurants: The crowding, noise, huge portions, and challenge of finding decent selections for the variety of people I hang out with, including vegetarians of all stripes. Having kids put a damper on my enjoyment of restaurants as well.
  • jrm4 4y ago
    I legit 100% cannot tell if this comment is satire.
• mxstbr 4y ago
  I'm an SCA (Speciality Coffee Association) certified barista and have, as part of my work travels, drank speciality coffee all around the world in many different coffee shops. Most of it is terrible. It's not that I have the best palate or anything like that; it's that most of the places have undertrained staff behind the counter and serve under- or overextracted coffee all day! Most of it is either acidic or bitter to the point where you're losing all the qualities of the coffee beans and upsets my stomach. I've only found a handful of shops around the globe that genuinely care about the craft and will serve genuinely good coffee every time. (e.g. Prufrock in London, Tim Wendelboe in Oslo) The rest of the coffee shops are worse than useless, I'd rather go to a Starbucks or even McDonald's for my coffee than upset my stomach with that crap.
• Bakary 4y ago
  I find the concept of taking pride in consuming differently from others to be a bit bizarre. You're not a farmer growing the coffee, or an agronomist planning for it, or a jovial Italian man running a shop for it, or even an engineer building a cool or stylish device for it. You're just a person who makes a purchase. Somehow, the modern world has fooled us into believing that this is a sufficient criteria to exist as an individual.
  • lm28469 4y ago
    > Somehow, the modern world has fooled us into believing that this is a sufficient criteria to exist as an individual. > You're just a person who makes a purchase. That's how you know capitalists won, most people don't even question it, dangle the new toy in front of their eyes and they'll buy it in a heartbeat. You _are_ what you consume. Most hobbies are now consumption hobby, you have to get the most exotic or expensive gadget to show your peer you're better than them. Go to bicycles, watches, pencil, cameras, &c. subreddit and witness it, it's the weirdest thing ever, it's almost like watching another form of life > The proliferation of faddish gadgets reflects the fact that as the mass of commodities becomes increasingly absurd, absurdity itself becomes a commodity. > Reified people proudly display the proofs of their intimacy with the commodity. Like the old religious fetishism, with its convulsionary raptures and miraculous cures, the fetishism of commodities generates its own moments of fervent exaltation. All this is useful for only one purpose: producing habitual submission. > The pseudoneeds imposed by modern consumerism cannot be opposed by any genuine needs or desires that are not themselves also shaped by society and its history. But commodity abundance represents a total break in the organic development of social needs. Its mechanical accumulation unleashes an unlimited artificiality which overpowers any living desire.
• ISL 4y ago
  Almost everything has improved by at least some important measures (quality, safety, availability, or inflation-adjusted price) since the 1980s.
• hattmall 4y ago
  It's not wrong, but the same truth from 40 years ago is still relevant, you need to know where to go for a good cup of coffee. Just because a place is expensive or gourmet has no real significance. The best coffee near me is at a mediocre diner that mostly serves overnight prison guards. Next best is a gas station.
  • deebosong 4y ago
    I like your style. As someone who isn't particularly invested in finding great coffee, but does appreciate a good cup if it's not out of my way, what qualities do you look for in a fantastic cup of coffee?
    • hattmall 4y ago
      Nothing special just flavor, strength and the consistency of those qualities. The best I've determined is from someone whose job requires them to make coffee but also basically to drink it as well. E.g. the overnight gas station attendant and diner waitresses. They want to make good coffee because they will also be drinking it. Of course you can find someone who fits that description and their taste buds are completely shot out or they just have very different preferences too, so compatibility matters.
• andorsk 4y ago
  I live in India, but grew up in the U.S, and am a coffee aficionado. I love Indian food, but it's coffee culture bugs me. In India, there is an obvious lack of care for the quality of coffee (IMO). I found a few vendors to supply me beans, but it take time to find the right ones, mostly from a region called Coorg famous for it's coffee beans. I've been there and went to look at the coffee plantations and processing ( Chikmagalur is the also very common if you know India well). I love my coffee and take it seriously. In India, coffee is typically packaged with a mix of chicory. Chicory is a root, that is meant to preserve the coffee longer. In the end, it's also way cheaper to make produce chicory, so the production cost is lower. I personally hate chicory with my coffee as it gives a weird "non coffee" taste to it. What I've found ( anecdotally ), is that an often my conception of "good" or even "ok" coffee doesn't align with a typical India. Nescafe doesn't cut it. Sorry. And how Indians typically enjoy coffee ( with tons of milk and sugar ), always made me put coffee in almost the "dessert" category. When I try to share my coffee with them, it is usually wayyy too bitter for their preference. Of course, I know exceptions that like a good roast. A few coffee bean shops have popped up to change the culture here: Blue Tokai being one of the more premium and popular coffee places. I live next to a coffee consulting business and visit them regularly. So it is growing. Starbucks is here as well, but WAY too overpriced relative to quality and local shops that do just as good a brew. A good, cup of coffee here at a premium place (Bangalore) is around 140-210 RS (or 2-3 dollars). A normal (Indian) cup of coffee costs 15-30 RS (or $0.20-0.50). As much as I rag on Indian coffee sometimes with my friends and family (I'm married to an Indian), every once in a while I find myself picking up a cup of "sugar milk with coffee" on the street.Maybe there's something to it....
  • linuskendall 4y ago
    Blue Tokai (and the other specialty roasters - must be at least 5-10 now) is certainly an improvement in the diversity of coffee we get, though pricing is quite high. However, there has been a good option for coffee beans (and ground if you prefer) for many, many years and that’s Devans in Delhi. Used to be mostly available at INA market but they also started online a few years ago. They are much cheaper than Blue Tokai etc and will provide reasonably freshly roasted beans and ground coffee. No chicory.
• paulsutter 4y ago
  Nice if the author gave more specific criticisms. I read it from top to bottom hoping to learn something, anything. But I can't honestly tell if the author has excellent taste, or is just making this up Anyone have links to what makes truly great coffee? I got a Jura machine for the office and I'm happy with the coffee (the machine seems to make a bigger difference than the beans). I'd like to understand better because I'm probably missing something
  • brk 4y ago
    IMO, it is a lot like wine, there may be some tastes-bad-to-almost-everyone options, but there are not universal tastes-good-to-everyone options. Making coffee is really basic chemistry. The beans themselves, the degree of roast, the water chemistry, the water temperature, the filter, and the brew time all affect the outcome. A combination that tastes great to you may not taste great to me. I have found it best to read a bit, and experiment. One benefit of coffee chain stores is that you should be able to know what you are going to get when you order a "Foo", whereas independent shops will likely all make a Foo slightly differently. If you read the history of the Clover machine and the initial concept it was pretty cool. You as the user would have a token that held data on how you liked your coffee brewed. You could go to a non-chain coffee store with a Clover machine, scan your token, and get a cup that was made with your specific preferences, allowing you to get something more consistent to your ideal cup at a greater variety of places. Then Starbucks bought out the company, and now you can get a Clover brewed coffee at select stores, and it's good, but it's not the initial vision.
  • Kaibeezy 4y ago
    There’s no such thing as “truly great”. At one end of the spectrum, of course, there’s overcooked diner and gas station glop from the Bunn-O-Matic. In the middle of the bell curve is more-or-less drinkable stuff, whether from the Dunky or Peet or the mermaid place or my personal favorite, Mickey Dee’s, which really came up nicely a decade ago once they stopped melting old ladies’ thighs and realized they could make money with it. But at the “great” tail of the curve there’s a problem. Variety. You might prefer a hypertangy Sightglass espresso 3.5, but to me, that’s not the espresso I’m looking for. I want a warm and toasty old school Tazza d’Oro. My naughty secret is that the mer-people make an OK espresso with their roasty beans, but have you ever seen someone order that there?
• deleted 4y ago
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• cosmoloc 4y ago
  Probably a conflicted opinion.. but I always thought the reason why people buy Starbucks coffee or from any costly brand... is the same reason why people buy iPhone
  • michaelt 4y ago
    5 years of security updates for my coffee? :)
• Myrmornis 4y ago
  My usual way of drinking coffee is espresso with warm milk, so, a latte. In the USA, I believe that espresso-with-milk drinks are vastly superior at Peets or Starbucks, than they are at smaller, more "sophisticated" places. I'm not a coffee expert, but it seems to me that the big chains sell espresso that tastes more like espresso traditionally does in, say, Italy. I'm guessing that the smaller boutique / specialty coffee shops in the USA are using specialty beans (lighter, more acidic? more floral?) that they've selected for how they taste when prepared as filter coffee, or americano, i.e. when drunk black, and that these are unfortunately terrible as espresso mixed with milk.
  • Terretta 4y ago
    Starbucks aims to taste burnt*. Espresso in Italy doesn't. Agree boutiques often have a flavor too far forward for espresso as you'd find it in Italy. * I read why somewhere a long time ago, can't find it.
    • amanaplanacanal 4y ago
      I think the reason is volume. They have to buy so many beans that the individual flavors and quality are all over the map. They have to roast them very dark to get something like a consistent product.
    • criddell 4y ago
      Traditionally, espresso in Italy varies significantly from the north to the south. Starbucks most popular roasts are to a level that was popular in Southern Italy. Starbucks does sell some lighter roasts and can do pour overs and press pots. Talk to the people working there. In my experience they are knowledgeable, care about the coffee, and are friendly (especially when they aren't crazy busy).
• blfr 4y ago
  Most people/customers don't really have a good taste. This is why high quality stuff, even when competitive price-wise, have a hard time in the market. In Warsaw, one of the best cafes, I mean world class, they make their own tonic for tonic espresso, is a short stroll away from Starbucks[1]. Yet, that Starbucks does just fine. Same with clothing. Luxury brands clothes are now more expensive than custom tailored, bespoke items. And HHVM is doing great while small tailors are going out of business. People simply can't spot quality. [1] https://goo.gl/maps/np8KbybFpSoo4bqFA https://goo.gl/maps/np8KbybFpSoo4bqFA
  • pydry 4y ago
    >In Warsaw, one of the best cafes, I mean world class, they make their own tonic for tonic espresso, is a short stroll away from Starbucks[1]. Yet, that Starbucks does just fine. I read an article once about a starbucks moving next door to a specialty coffee shop. They freaked out initially, but counterintuitively, sales actually went up. I think these markets may actually be more separate and complementary than we realize.
    • blfr 4y ago
      I've never been there but I don't mind the Starbucks. I'm just pointing out that plenty of people still go there when a vastly superior choice is easily available.
      • pydry 4y ago
        I know a few people who do this. They tend to value consistency and familiarity, I think - not just with coffee but with other areas of their life. Theyll usually order the same drink every time they go.
• twawaaay 4y ago
  > My theory on good and bad coffee, oddly, can be summed up by something they talk about in Top Gun: Maverick, about how it isn’t the plane but the pilot flying it that matters. This is the first thing I learned on barista course (I am not a barista, I got the course as a birthday present because I care a lot about coffee). As of now there exists no way to get a great coffee without having somebody with taste and knowledge to actually check the coffee, diagnose the problem and then fix it. A lot of bad coffee should be understood as coffee shops without a feedback loop that would understand that the coffee is bad and how to fix it. The customers certainly are not good enough, they will just not return and you will be none the wiser about why. I have been to many coffee shops for coffee to observe what looks like a lot of expensive, good quality equipment and then a barista that definitely don't know or don't care about what they are doing. And nobody in sight to spot and fix the problem. It seems like the owners' idea of the business was to have upscale coffee place for coffee snobs like me but like many people missed the critical lesson of quality control, constant improvement and the importance of hiring people who care. Which for some reason is a lot of businesses where the owners' first goal is to make as much money as possible.
  • cush 4y ago
    Shops are opening left and right with specialty beans, great atmosphere, pastries, and the $30k La Marzocco espresso machine, yet the baristas have no training, can't steam milk, and pull shots that taste like battery acid. The reason the coffee costs $6 a cup is to pay the pilot
    • criddell 4y ago
      > the $30k La Marzocco espresso machine I think it's interesting how a coffee shops are starting to hide their machines beneath the counter and just the group head is above (much like a beer tap). They don't get to show off their super expensive machine, but it does open up the counter for more human interactions (the barista isn't hidden behind a giant machine. I personally think it's a big improvement.
      • twawaaay 4y ago
• shp0ngle 4y ago
  I guess this style of writing is not for me; I don't really understand what is the author trying to say. At the end of the day, it's just coffee... if you like good one, fine; if you don't, go somewhere else? Why all this talk about "snobbery"? Who cares? There are interesting things to write about coffee, its production and varieties. None of this is really mentioned here? Just some random ramblings about high class-low class. I guess I am not at Twitter enough
• debacle 4y ago
  I almost never eat steak in restaurants. The most critical part of a steak is the butcher + the aging. Yes, you can screw up a steak on the grill or in the pan, but you're not going to turn a poor steak into an incredible steak, and you're not going to ruin an incredible steak unless you burn it. So I buy good steaks, and I prepare them exactly how I like them - a little pink, a ridiculous sear, a bit of thyme, and too much salt. I do my coffee the same way. I buy good beans, roasted the way I like (medium going on light), and I make my coffee exactly how I want, sometimes even with a bit of pumpkin spice. There are products where the quality of the raw material so outweighs the rest of the process in production that it almost doesn't matter. You would be pressed (no pun intended) to make bad coffee with the beans I buy.
  • tyjen 4y ago
    Yep, we're the same with steaks and coffee. Buy a terrific cut of meat from the local butcher and cook via reverse searing or sous vide. My family and I went through the coffee experimentation phase while living in Seattle. Prior to this we simply bought coffee from an assortment of shops or huts, narrowing which local vendors produced the most consistent quality cups. After calculating the costs, relative to the quality though, we swapped to trying various beans from local roasters and home brewing methods--some of which took considerably more time and effort than what's reasonable for a single cup. Presently, we use a Moccamaster and purchase beans from a small-scale roaster on the West coast, even though we moved to the East coast. We swap bean type based on seasonality and try "new" beans to see if we want to rotate them into our normal lineup. Matches our lifestyle and provides consistency in quality. Maybe we're just becoming old and don't want to risk a bad cup from a vendor as well. The wife still buys her pumpkin spice latte one-pump with soy milk once a year on the first day of fall.
• iddan 4y ago
  Sorry to break it to you, but there is such thing as good coffee. In Tel Aviv, Rome, Vienna, Athens, Berlin, Tokyo, Kyoto and Warsaw when I went to specialty coffee I’ve got supreme coffee: roasted correctly, reach in flavour and creating a lasting good feeling. Unfortunately I can’t say that about other places. For instance in London I couldn’t get a single good cup of coffee (and i tried them all, really). I agree not any snobby coffee is necessarily good and also what I consider “good” can be different than others “good”. I was never a fan of sour light roasts (but I can still appreciate that more than bad coffee). I encourage everyone that this article resonates with: look for other coffee places. Not necessarily shiny and stylish but places that are operated by people who care about coffee and if you still can’t find a good cup of joe travel somewhere else that have it. I can vouch for Tel Aviv all the specialty coffee places here worth their title or close because the standard for good coffee is just high enough
  • skywhopper 4y ago
    You tried every coffee in London? How long did that take?
  • asdadsdad 4y ago
    From this list, TLV is probably the best. Most of Europe is still stuck in espresso land, shitty coffee.
    • Sebb767 4y ago
      There's a reason watered-down espresso is called Americano ;)
• intsunny 4y ago
  The article says: > This is a very arbitrary assessment, but of the six (yes, six (I do live in Brooklyn, remember) places [...], I’d say that four of those places just aren’t worth the cost. The coffee just isn’t that good. The two-dollar cup I get at the bodega does the trick. If there was ever a 'duh' moment. The customers aren't paying for good coffee, they're paying Brooklyn rent. A not-insignificant percentage of the price customers pay in shallow Brooklyn (Park Slope, Clinton Hill, Billyburg, etc) goes directly to the rent. Not the quality, the labor, etc.
• Finnucane 4y ago
  A long time ago we had a local coffee chain called Coffee Connection, run by George Howells. One of the people responsible for changing Americans' idea of what 'good coffee' is. When Charbucks got here, they bought Howells out and destroyed the Coffee Connection. To this day I hold a grudge against them for that and won't drink their crappy coffee.
• scombridae 4y ago
  tl;dr The bean quality and brewing time for artisanal coffee is not significantly better than Dunkins -- the premium you pay is all hipster branding. I wish these mf's would get to the point faster with less ruminating about their favorite movies.
• nindalf 4y ago
  I tried really hard to find a point somewhere in there, but couldn’t. It felt like the author was padding out his complaint, whatever it was, for the sake of word count. Was this written by GPT-3?
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  The creation of 'high-value' coffee is really just taking the natural variation among coffee from different regions and plant strains, differentiating them into different products, and slapping an additional 50% or so onto the price tag. Here, I think the coffee industry took a page from the wine industry and started talking about things like 'terroir', 'single origin', 'unique flavor notes' and so on. This isn't all snobbery, and it has some good side effects - the field-to-table graph is a bit clearer and shorter, and coffee producers seem to be getting better prices on their product relative to past eras. However, to get these 'unique flavors' the roasters have cut back on roasting times, resulting in lighter roasted beans with higher levels of acidity. Some appear to like the result; personally I like the darker roasts much more, and the time-since-roasted factor has more to do with the quality of the brewed cup than anything else.
• dont__panic 4y ago
  Let me save you a click: > “specialty” coffee from roasters like Sey or Counter Culture, Partners or Intelligentsia meltedcheeseonwhitefish isn't drinking small roastery specialty coffee. They're drinking small chain roasted coffee. More importantly, they're visiting coffee shops that don't roast their own coffee, and then they act surprised when the baristas don't know much about that coffee and don't put much effort into a decent cup. Coffee shops that put lots of effort into their process are few and far between. Even the best are often inconsistent, because there are lots of variables to control and when you get busy it's hard to keep those variables consistent. I find that combination roasteries + coffee shops frequently do the best job, because they tend to understand the process better. Perhaps more importantly... it's tough to find a decent cup of drip coffee (not espresso) at a random coffee shop. Frequently shops just buy a decent drip machine and run it regularly, but don't doing anything special. And if they charge more than $2 for a cup of plain old joe, don't bother. You're almost certainly better off on price and quality if you make your coffee at home, especially if you just want drip. That being said, if you want a good cup from a coffee shop, there are some alternatives. Order an Americano instead -- if a place cares about espresso, it should taste pretty good. If the place seems pretty bougie and the barista seems competent and business is slow, order a pourover. But you're likely to get the best results by investing in a home coffee setup -- a decent grinder, an aeropress or a clever or a french press, and a kettle -- buying fresh beans, and brewing yourself, instead of going to the shop every day. If you truly want a good cup from a coffee shop... you're going to have to hunt for a shop that you like.
• brudgers 4y ago
  Freeze dried coffee was better than most coffee in 1979. Today, I like Medaglia d’Oro's instant espresso coffee. Give me that over a k-cup any day. YMMV...note I didn't say I only drink instant coffee. https://www.medagliadoro.com/coffee/instant/espresso https://www.medagliadoro.com/coffee/instant/espresso
• rpmuller 4y ago
  It’s even stranger than the author makes out. When I got into coffee in the 80’s, being a coffee snob meant buying beans, grinding them in a $30 Braun chopper, and brewing them in a $50 Braun automatic drip machine. The beans were often from the grocery store, and normally roasted very dark. When a Peet’s opened in the town where I went to grad school, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. A Blue Bottle coffee opened up in that same town, and I had a cup last time I visited. It was almost unrecognizable as coffee. Light roasted, fruity, what is now called “specialty coffee”. I got that cup pour over, but coffee is very often made today on expensive espresso machines. I have a $500 machine. I have friends with $1000 machines and $600 burr grinders. People debate the merits of flat vs conical burrs in machines. I was still buying dark roasted coffee, now from a coffee roaster subscription, but it hasn’t been tasting as good to me. I miss the taste of the dark roasted drip coffee I made in the 80’s, and I don’t seem to be able to recreate it with my manual burr grinder or my v60 pour over set. I think my taste as probably changed. I changed my coffee subscription to explore some of the lighter “specialty” roasts. Still doesn’t taste like coffee to me, but I’m starting to appreciate it more. There’s no Peet’s in my current state, and I find Starbuck’s drip coffee so strong as to be hard to appreciate. Around 10 years ago I was in a diner and had a fantastic cup of coffee. It was full bodied and nearly perfect. I asked what kind of coffee it was and they said Maxwell House. I haven’t started buying Maxwell House (yet), but it made me realize how much of current coffee culture is fetishism around our addiction, and how little is about the ultimate taste. A good cup of drip coffee can be amazing. I haven’t had one in a while, but am trying to find the beans and the grind that will bring me back to the excitement I had about coffee in the 80’s.
  • j-kent 4y ago
    > Around 10 years ago I was in a diner and had a fantastic cup of coffee. It was full bodied and nearly perfect. I asked what kind of coffee it was and they said Maxwell House. I find that I can get used to a type or method of coffee, and just drinking something different to change it up leads to it tasing delicious. After a couple weeks of dark roasted illy in a french press, a cup of Folger's in a drip maker will taste great, after a couple weeks of that, I switch types/methods and it's like rediscovering coffee.
• 19h 4y ago
  You can't convince people to spend more money by giving them the same old thing, so you need to invent a better narrative that encourages people to spend money on premium consumption. Consumers feel better when they reward themselves with something extraordinary, and your narrative makes that old coffee something special.
• recursivedoubts 4y ago
  the rise of coffee has been a tremendous boon for a small, ashamed minority: those of us who, as adults, like to drink milk if i bring a cup of foamed milk into a meeting, i'm just a weirdo if i put a small dash of coffee (really, any coffee) in it, now I'm a sophisticate drinking an "oh, this? it's a flat white. you've probably never heard of it..."
• ksherlock 4y ago
  Go into any garage or workshop, older than 30 years or so. You know what you'll find - a Chock Full o' Nuts can holding roofing nails. A Folgers can holding assorted nuts and bolts. A Maxwell House can holding chainsaw files. Maybe you can re-use your starbucks coffee bag for collecting dog shit.