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I don't get all this fanfare over coffee with respect to all these processes and equipment etc. In a blind taste test, much like wine, I reckon a lot of it is t

I don't get all this fanfare over coffee with respect to all these processes and equipment etc. In a blind taste test, much like wine, I reckon a lot of it is the knowledge and observation of the process rather than flavour or the outcome. For me, a dirty knackered Bodum french press bought in a charity shop in 1997 for £1 and the cheapest value brand ground coffee the supermarket sells works. Sometimes I can't be bothered with that and just instant. Perhaps I'm sad but I've spent the last decade playing a game with people. When I lie about the coffee's heritage just to see, they remark that it's good. If they do know the genuine story, they make no remark. I've even thrown some instant in a cup or two next to people drinking pressed as a control and there is still a consensus. YMMV but I think it's mainly hokum. Suppose I better tell them all now :)

poke111 13y ago
These things are detectable in blind taste tests, unlike wine. I did one myself to test how much the time-since-ground made a difference in flavor. I had 1 month, 2 weeks, 1 week, 2 days, and fresh grounds. In a blind test I correctly put them in order, except for transposing the 2 day and 1 week old grounds.
- e12e 13y ago
  That's interesting. So you found that while fresh ground coffee is still different (one would assume best, but lets go with different) -- if you're "pre-grinding" one week old is fine. Did you keep it refrigerated? Room temperature? Dark/daylight? Sealed? Btw, what do you mean "unlike" wine? Certainly there's a difference between wine that's been left to breathe, and the same wine straight out of the bottle (well "wine" is a bit wide, but for many good wines).
  - Avshalom 13y ago
    by unlike wine ze means that there's a couple studys out there showing a) price is suuuuper loosely correlated to quality b) you can get some undergrad oenologists to describe (some unspecificied) whites like reds if you add food coloring From which people --who apparently think color is the only differentiator in wine-- leap to the conclusion that the there is no discernable difference between a chianti and a reisling ice wine. Hell no difference between a malolactic chard and and non-mal chard. And that only posturing fools would drink anything but boones farm.
    - e12e 13y ago
      Which is funny, as a far as I know, the main reason for price difference in coffee is scarcity, not "quality". Although, as for most things, the crappy stuff is cheaper.
  - dylangs1030 13y ago
    He means that most people cannot tell the difference between different wines based on quality or cost in a blind taste test. If you tell them it's a high quality label, they drink it and act that way. If you tell them it's a low quality label, they don't use fancy descriptors when you ask their opinion. What it really is doesn't correlate with the results at all; it's all placebo. And what the other commenter said is also true. Most people can't even tell a difference in color. If you serve white wine dyed red, people describe it as they would red wine, and vice versa. EDIT: Citations: [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting#Blind_tasting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting#Blind_tasting [2]: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tas... [3]: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/handle/37328 http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/handle/37328 [4]: http://www.yumsugar.com/Wine-World-Reels-2-Buck-Chuck-Wins-Award-404101 http://www.yumsugar.com/Wine-World-Reels-2-Buck-Chuck-Wins-A... (not a citation in the strict sense, but a demonstrative reference)
    - Avshalom 13y ago
      Well... the gaurdian article is fucking useless because it doesn't break down the numbers, for all we know 39% got it right one hundred percent of the time, 39% percent got it wrong one hundred percent of the time and the remainder was just flipping coins. Which may very well mean that 78% absolutely can tell. That AgEcon paper actually bears that out, though obviously much less dramatically, the hoi poloi can tell the difference and they (to a small extent) 'prefer' the cheap stuff, and the experts can tell the difference and they 'prefer' the expensive stuff. 'prefer' standing in for perceived quality not necessarily enjoyment. Yes "most" is still legit word to use here, BUT, please try to find anything, anything at all, where "most" people can unambiguously determine 'quality'. And hell price is a piss poor predictor of quality in just about anything, what with price being some combination of supply, current profit strategy (loss leader?, cash cow?), social signaling, manufacturing cost, number of middlemen, and about a billion other things. --- The color study was a group of like a dozen oenology undergrads. A handful of oenology undergrads is not "most people". It's not a large enough N, and there are different pressures on a student in field when describing wine than a random consumer. For all we know they could all tell the difference but none of them wanted to be the asshole to look at a glass of red fluid and say "you know I don't think this is a fucking red". --- As for coffee I'll go see if I can dig it up but I'm pretty sure there was a test that recently showed 'most people' couldn't tell quality either and just preferred stronger over-extracted coffee to "good" coffee.
- poke111 13y ago
  I kept all grounds in a ziplock freezer bag in a dark room-temp cabinet. As I went from freshest to least-fresh I found that there were flavors missing and more bitterness and acidity. What I meant about wine is that there is a lot of stuff in the wine world that people obsess over, but is not detectable by even experts. For example, the differences in regions of origin, price of the bottle, etc. I'm not saying that everything in the wine world is BS but there is plenty of if. Even experts have been fooled with food coloring into describing white wines with adjectives normally used to describe reds.
  - stdbrouw 13y ago
    There's two separate issues here. One is whether wine experts are able to detect certain flavors or even figure out the grape variety and origin of a certain kind of wine. The other is whether in blind tastings cheap wine is consistently rated as inferior to expensive wine. I've found people in the wine industry can figure out where wine is from with surprising accuracy. But their skill is not in the least based on a judgment of how much they like the wine. It's about having an encyclopedic knowledge about which wine is associated with which flavors and production techniques, and then matching up what your nose tells you with one of those taste profiles in your head. Once you know what type of wine you're tasting, you can infer the price category: * French Pinot Noir is generally more expensive than New Zealand Pinot Noir. * Wine that's been in new oak barrels (evident from e.g. vanilla and toasted flavors in the wine) is more expensive than wine that hasn't been. * Wine that tastes only of red and black fruit is probably young and thus cheap, wine that tastes of weird things like truffles and what-not is likely to be older and thus more expensive. * Sweet white wine which tastes like marmalade and honey and nuts has a good chance of being made from grapes with noble rot, which are picked individually, berry by berry, and thus result in incredibly expensive wine. * ... and so on. So the link between quality and price in wine is very tenuous, but that doesn't mean professionals "can't tell the difference". They can.
    - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
      Professionals are a self-selected group, perhaps with vastly superior noses or some such. It has no bearing on My enjoyment. Other trials use undergrads, who couldn't tell any wine from any other wine, no matter how you run the experiment. I'm probably like the novices tested, less like the professional. Maybe you're different.
- lostlogin 13y ago
  Try doing it as days since roast. I like 30 mins old (well, cool enough to grind) lightly roasted (just after first crack). This type of roast seems to get progressively worse for 2-3 days then gets particularly good from for 2 or three days. After that it's stale. The darker the roast, the less effect time has on its taste as far as I can tell.
e12e 13y ago
I think we're all susceptible to mood affecting taste, and like in medicine, where the placebo-effect may often be real -- if the goal is to enjoy the best taste, then being "fooled", doesn't have to be a bad thing (just like being "tricked" into getting better isn't a bad thing, but basing medical research on it, probably is). Ceremony can add to any experience; and it may be overdone and detract from it. As for taste varying by how you make the coffee; I'd say that it does -- but assuming you're not doing anything "wrong" -- the differences would be subtle and dominated by the type and preparation of the beans. Just like you can take a prime cut of meat and burn it to a crisp, you can ruin good coffee -- but the difference between getting it "just right" and "almost right" are much more subtle.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Marazan 13y ago
A French press ( cafetieres for non-colonials ) will produce great coffee without a doubt and I certainly don't use anything more expensive than that. Cheapest value-brand coffee though I will take exception to, there is a massive difference in taste between freshly roasted, roasted some what recently and dust in a packet even of the same bean variety. I can't tell the difference between 1% and 2% milk in a blind taste test, I can tell the difference between good and shit coffee by blind smell alone never mind getting it to my mouth.
- twelvechairs 13y ago
  as a black coffee drinker I'd just like to point out the obvious here - crap coffee is clear when you drink it black. in your latte nobody notices. oh, and lots of expensive brands with Italian names including often wat you get from a trendy Batista, are actually crap coffee.
- lostlogin 13y ago
  I'll go one further. I bought the nastiest robusta as green beans, roasted it myself, and I liked it more than instant or supermarket stuff. Sure it was rough, strong and had an aftertaste like overheated rubber, but I enjoyed it. If it was purely about taste (doing it yourself seems to give a somewhat more positive feel to bad coffee) I'd probably rank it pretty damn low. However good green beans as a home roasted option are unbeatable IMHO. Cheaper than the cheapest supermarket brand, always fresh (I roast probably 2x per week). The heatgun I use for roasting cost about $5US. Try it.
- Marazan 13y ago
  And in case anyone thinks I'm some kind of coffee snob who's trying to justify his purchase of obscure double-cat-shit-only-harvested-on-a-full-moon-by-blind-virgins coffee beans I actually drink medium roasted Columbian, the most middle of the middle of the road when it comes to coffee.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > I actually drink medium roasted Columbian No, you don't. You drink medium roasted Colombian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia
dylangs1030 13y ago
I wanted a [citation needed] on that blind taste test bit, but I went ahead and found it myself. For the curious, it's true, most people can't tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine[1]. [1]: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/apr/14/expensive-wine-cheap-plonk-taste?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487 http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/apr/14/expensive-win...
sanityinc 13y ago
If you tell someone that the coffee you're giving them is special, won't good manners dictate that they compliment it?
maxerickson 13y ago
Maybe you don't taste bitter very much. Most coffee that isn't fancy is weak and bitter. I could certainly spot weak coffee, and dark vs light roasts.
gnaffle 13y ago
I'd suggest that you try serving the same people freshly roasted and ground coffee from a clean french press and pass it off as cheap coffee. Afterwards, serve them the cheapest coffee you can find from dirty coffee equipment and tell them it's high end coffe. I'd be surprised if they don't prefer the "cheap" coffee. The only exception is that some people will actually prefer old, bitter coffee made with dirty equipment because they're used to that taste. Just like some people will prefer McDonalds to a good restaurant because that's what they're used to. Still doesn't make good coffee or food "mainly hokum". :)
- tel 13y ago
  A lot of people expect coffee to taste bad. That's why it's rare to find someone drinking it black. I conducted a fairly large number of ad hoc singly-blinded tests in college on friends to get them to see what I saw in coffee. People often do "like" "bad" coffee but never once believed that it had more flavor or was preferable to drink black.
epo 13y ago
"Don't know what all the fuss is about", "good enough for me" may mean that you have low standards as much as it might mean other people are faffing about needlessly. Perhaps your friends are just being polite and laugh at your cheapskate ways when you're not there.
- Mr_N 13y ago
  Mind you, I wouldn't call a friend polite who laughs about someone behind their back, nor a friend, for that matter. I tend to trust people on face value, and I've seen that these sorts of blind studies apparently vary in their success depending on whether the person implementing them claims to have or not have this magical "coffee pallet" as I'll put it. Long and short of things, I don't expect people to be QUITE as backhanded as you suggest, I also don't trust people to do "good science", and I'd need to see a properly empirical study before I made up my mind in either case.
thenomad 13y ago
I've performed limited double-blind taste tests to check whether I'm fooling myself about liking quality coffee, and the results indicate that no, I really can tell the difference. In fact, it turns out I can taste the difference between beans ground with a high-quality burr grinder and a blade grinder, brewed in an otherwise identical way. If you can't, then I don't see any problem with continuing to use what are perceived as lower-quality beans. But assuming that everyone has exactly the same taste sensitivity as you probably isn't 100% accurate. (Note: all of this assumes you're drinking the coffee black, that you're using at least a reasonably well-controlled brewing process, and that your water isn't utterly horrible. If any of those things aren't true, it's entirely likely it's much harder to taste the difference.)
- JoeAltmaier 13y ago
  Ok, maybe so. But its pretty easy to fool yourself. Did you do the brewing? Then any difference in color/particulates you notice ruin the experiment.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 13y ago
    I've been into coffee for a while now. I've been lucky enough to know people in the industry. You can absolutely tell the difference between brewing methods, beans, roast levels, cleanliness of the machines, etc ... I can't say what method is better or worse, that is up to the individual, but there is a difference. The beauty of coffee, is that you can brew multiple cups quite easily and do proper experiments.
  - thenomad 13y ago
    I did the brewing myself. But I'd invite you to repeat the test and see if you can distinguish between the two brews by colour. The visual difference between two identical-bean, identical-brew-method cups of coffee where the only variable is the grinder is, to my eye, zero. The placement of the cup in the room relative to the primary light source will be by far the most significant element. (Note: this was cafetiere-brewed coffee, not espresso. Had it been espresso, I'd 100% agree with you that the trial wasn't appropriately blinded.)
ImprovedSilence 13y ago
Haha, I can kinda agree with you on this point. And I will admit I do love a good Starbucks VIA Italian Roast (Instant Coffee). But Keurig stuff just tastes like shit to me. Also the local coffee shop only sells watered down lightly roasted acid.. So can I tell handmade from instant, no, not always, but I can always tell you whether I like it or dislike it. And I always, ALWAYS drink coffee black. If you don't you get no say it what tastes better, cuz you just watered it down with milk and destroyed any flavor it had with sugar...
- RougeFemme 13y ago
  Have you tried Starbucks in the Keurig cups? That tastes better than Starbucks VIA, to me.
  - ImprovedSilence 13y ago
    I have not, perhaps I should. My biggest beef with the K-cups is that it always seems to be too watered down. With the VIA (or actually brewing my own) I can control the strength(water/coffee) ratio more to my liking. Granted, I probably like my coffee darker and more "dense" (full bodied) than most... I tend to gravitate towards the French Press and Moka pot brewing methods. (The moka pot is something I discovered when I lived in Italy, it was really the only method I saw people brewing in their own homes, and I found it works great for me, in that it's smaller quantities (I'm only a single dude, I don't need a full drip pot..) and "fuller bodied".)
cmbaus 13y ago
Years ago I used to buy and store wine, but I lost interest in it for this very reason. It is difficult to tell the difference between an inexpensive Cote Du Rhone and a $200 Hermitage, or the differences don't justify the cost (in my mind). With hand brewed coffee the difference is much more noticeable. If are you in SF, stop at 50/50 on Geary. They spend more effort prepared their coffee than any place I've been. I think you will be surprised by the difference in quality.
goostavos 13y ago
>I think it's mainly hokum. Ha! I completely agree. Drink snobbery, whether relating to coffee, beer, wine, or [insert beverage here], has always seemed like confirmation bias in action. Is Startbucks really undrinkable sludge to some people, or is only that way because of that sweet, sweet feeling of smug superiority that they feel when they say it? I am one of the few that is nerdy enough to blind test myself and friends with things that have an entire culture of snobs around them -- a trait which I picked up after working in the audio industry for years (where people will believe and argue to the death about magical cable properties (give me measurements, or give me death!)). If I could assemble enough coffee samples, I would love to put myself under test and see if one is empirically "better" to my taste buds. However, logistically it's not possible. That said, beer and wine is readily available, transportable, and easily testable! So, my girlfriend and I set up a tasting night a few months ago. We grabbed a 6 pack of every cheap beer in the grocery store (pbr, miller lite, Natural Ice, bud, etc..), and then a whole range of wines -- everything from the $70 2011 wine of the year, to a $3 ABC brand bottle. We randomized each trial, poured the wines into glasses and then left the room so others could enter so we wouldn't influence their decisions (our attempt at setting up a double blind test). We had people log their impressions of each one, and then attempt to rate them in ascending order of "quality." After 4 or 5 trials (it stopped being fun around the 3rd set of trails) we called it quits and looked at everyone's results. It was pretty interesting. In with cheep beer, there was only one consistent looser, and that with Miller Lite (I honestly expected it to be Natural Ice), the rest were all randomly distributed. No one could tell one from the other -- or if one was better than the other -- with any reliability. It actually made it a little frustrating while testing, as some people (including me) though they were being messed with by having several glasses all with the same beer. The wine had similar results. No clear winner. Result were all over the place with the "best" tasting wine being different for each person each time. With my pallet, I couldn't discern one as being "better," so much as just "different." This one is a little more X, while this one is a little more Y. It was an interesting experience. So, moral of the story, I only buy cheap wine now, because I honestly can't taste the difference. That $70 bottle wasn't even distinguishable from the rest. I've rambled, but I highly suggest self testing! It's fun, and I can now say that, empirically, Miller lite is undrinkable piss water to my taste buds :)
- 13y ago

poke111 13y ago

These things are detectable in blind taste tests, unlike wine. I did one myself to test how much the time-since-ground made a difference in flavor. I had 1 month, 2 weeks, 1 week, 2 days, and fresh grounds. In a blind test I correctly put them in order, except for transposing the 2 day and 1 week old grounds.

e12e 13y ago
That's interesting. So you found that while fresh ground coffee is still different (one would assume best, but lets go with different) -- if you're "pre-grinding" one week old is fine. Did you keep it refrigerated? Room temperature? Dark/daylight? Sealed? Btw, what do you mean "unlike" wine? Certainly there's a difference between wine that's been left to breathe, and the same wine straight out of the bottle (well "wine" is a bit wide, but for many good wines).
- Avshalom 13y ago
  by unlike wine ze means that there's a couple studys out there showing a) price is suuuuper loosely correlated to quality b) you can get some undergrad oenologists to describe (some unspecificied) whites like reds if you add food coloring From which people --who apparently think color is the only differentiator in wine-- leap to the conclusion that the there is no discernable difference between a chianti and a reisling ice wine. Hell no difference between a malolactic chard and and non-mal chard. And that only posturing fools would drink anything but boones farm.
  - e12e 13y ago
    Which is funny, as a far as I know, the main reason for price difference in coffee is scarcity, not "quality". Although, as for most things, the crappy stuff is cheaper.
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  He means that most people cannot tell the difference between different wines based on quality or cost in a blind taste test. If you tell them it's a high quality label, they drink it and act that way. If you tell them it's a low quality label, they don't use fancy descriptors when you ask their opinion. What it really is doesn't correlate with the results at all; it's all placebo. And what the other commenter said is also true. Most people can't even tell a difference in color. If you serve white wine dyed red, people describe it as they would red wine, and vice versa. EDIT: Citations: [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting#Blind_tasting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_tasting#Blind_tasting [2]: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk-science-analysis http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tas... [3]: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/handle/37328 http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/handle/37328 [4]: http://www.yumsugar.com/Wine-World-Reels-2-Buck-Chuck-Wins-Award-404101 http://www.yumsugar.com/Wine-World-Reels-2-Buck-Chuck-Wins-A... (not a citation in the strict sense, but a demonstrative reference)
  - Avshalom 13y ago
    Well... the gaurdian article is fucking useless because it doesn't break down the numbers, for all we know 39% got it right one hundred percent of the time, 39% percent got it wrong one hundred percent of the time and the remainder was just flipping coins. Which may very well mean that 78% absolutely can tell. That AgEcon paper actually bears that out, though obviously much less dramatically, the hoi poloi can tell the difference and they (to a small extent) 'prefer' the cheap stuff, and the experts can tell the difference and they 'prefer' the expensive stuff. 'prefer' standing in for perceived quality not necessarily enjoyment. Yes "most" is still legit word to use here, BUT, please try to find anything, anything at all, where "most" people can unambiguously determine 'quality'. And hell price is a piss poor predictor of quality in just about anything, what with price being some combination of supply, current profit strategy (loss leader?, cash cow?), social signaling, manufacturing cost, number of middlemen, and about a billion other things. --- The color study was a group of like a dozen oenology undergrads. A handful of oenology undergrads is not "most people". It's not a large enough N, and there are different pressures on a student in field when describing wine than a random consumer. For all we know they could all tell the difference but none of them wanted to be the asshole to look at a glass of red fluid and say "you know I don't think this is a fucking red". --- As for coffee I'll go see if I can dig it up but I'm pretty sure there was a test that recently showed 'most people' couldn't tell quality either and just preferred stronger over-extracted coffee to "good" coffee.
poke111 13y ago
I kept all grounds in a ziplock freezer bag in a dark room-temp cabinet. As I went from freshest to least-fresh I found that there were flavors missing and more bitterness and acidity. What I meant about wine is that there is a lot of stuff in the wine world that people obsess over, but is not detectable by even experts. For example, the differences in regions of origin, price of the bottle, etc. I'm not saying that everything in the wine world is BS but there is plenty of if. Even experts have been fooled with food coloring into describing white wines with adjectives normally used to describe reds.
- stdbrouw 13y ago
  There's two separate issues here. One is whether wine experts are able to detect certain flavors or even figure out the grape variety and origin of a certain kind of wine. The other is whether in blind tastings cheap wine is consistently rated as inferior to expensive wine. I've found people in the wine industry can figure out where wine is from with surprising accuracy. But their skill is not in the least based on a judgment of how much they like the wine. It's about having an encyclopedic knowledge about which wine is associated with which flavors and production techniques, and then matching up what your nose tells you with one of those taste profiles in your head. Once you know what type of wine you're tasting, you can infer the price category: * French Pinot Noir is generally more expensive than New Zealand Pinot Noir. * Wine that's been in new oak barrels (evident from e.g. vanilla and toasted flavors in the wine) is more expensive than wine that hasn't been. * Wine that tastes only of red and black fruit is probably young and thus cheap, wine that tastes of weird things like truffles and what-not is likely to be older and thus more expensive. * Sweet white wine which tastes like marmalade and honey and nuts has a good chance of being made from grapes with noble rot, which are picked individually, berry by berry, and thus result in incredibly expensive wine. * ... and so on. So the link between quality and price in wine is very tenuous, but that doesn't mean professionals "can't tell the difference". They can.
  - JoeAltmaier 13y ago
    Professionals are a self-selected group, perhaps with vastly superior noses or some such. It has no bearing on My enjoyment. Other trials use undergrads, who couldn't tell any wine from any other wine, no matter how you run the experiment. I'm probably like the novices tested, less like the professional. Maybe you're different.
lostlogin 13y ago
Try doing it as days since roast. I like 30 mins old (well, cool enough to grind) lightly roasted (just after first crack). This type of roast seems to get progressively worse for 2-3 days then gets particularly good from for 2 or three days. After that it's stale. The darker the roast, the less effect time has on its taste as far as I can tell.

e12e 13y ago

I think we're all susceptible to mood affecting taste, and like in medicine, where the placebo-effect may often be real -- if the goal is to enjoy the best taste, then being "fooled", doesn't have to be a bad thing (just like being "tricked" into getting better isn't a bad thing, but basing medical research on it, probably is). Ceremony can add to any experience; and it may be overdone and detract from it. As for taste varying by how you make the coffee; I'd say that it does -- but assuming you're not doing anything "wrong" -- the differences would be subtle and dominated by the type and preparation of the beans. Just like you can take a prime cut of meat and burn it to a crisp, you can ruin good coffee -- but the difference between getting it "just right" and "almost right" are much more subtle.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Marazan 13y ago

A French press ( cafetieres for non-colonials ) will produce great coffee without a doubt and I certainly don't use anything more expensive than that. Cheapest value-brand coffee though I will take exception to, there is a massive difference in taste between freshly roasted, roasted some what recently and dust in a packet even of the same bean variety. I can't tell the difference between 1% and 2% milk in a blind taste test, I can tell the difference between good and shit coffee by blind smell alone never mind getting it to my mouth.

twelvechairs 13y ago
as a black coffee drinker I'd just like to point out the obvious here - crap coffee is clear when you drink it black. in your latte nobody notices. oh, and lots of expensive brands with Italian names including often wat you get from a trendy Batista, are actually crap coffee.
lostlogin 13y ago
I'll go one further. I bought the nastiest robusta as green beans, roasted it myself, and I liked it more than instant or supermarket stuff. Sure it was rough, strong and had an aftertaste like overheated rubber, but I enjoyed it. If it was purely about taste (doing it yourself seems to give a somewhat more positive feel to bad coffee) I'd probably rank it pretty damn low. However good green beans as a home roasted option are unbeatable IMHO. Cheaper than the cheapest supermarket brand, always fresh (I roast probably 2x per week). The heatgun I use for roasting cost about $5US. Try it.
Marazan 13y ago
And in case anyone thinks I'm some kind of coffee snob who's trying to justify his purchase of obscure double-cat-shit-only-harvested-on-a-full-moon-by-blind-virgins coffee beans I actually drink medium roasted Columbian, the most middle of the middle of the road when it comes to coffee.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > I actually drink medium roasted Columbian No, you don't. You drink medium roasted Colombian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia

dylangs1030 13y ago

I wanted a [citation needed] on that blind taste test bit, but I went ahead and found it myself. For the curious, it's true, most people can't tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine[1]. [1]: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/apr/14/expensive-wine-cheap-plonk-taste?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487 http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/apr/14/expensive-win...

sanityinc 13y ago

If you tell someone that the coffee you're giving them is special, won't good manners dictate that they compliment it?

maxerickson 13y ago

Maybe you don't taste bitter very much. Most coffee that isn't fancy is weak and bitter. I could certainly spot weak coffee, and dark vs light roasts.

gnaffle 13y ago

I'd suggest that you try serving the same people freshly roasted and ground coffee from a clean french press and pass it off as cheap coffee. Afterwards, serve them the cheapest coffee you can find from dirty coffee equipment and tell them it's high end coffe. I'd be surprised if they don't prefer the "cheap" coffee. The only exception is that some people will actually prefer old, bitter coffee made with dirty equipment because they're used to that taste. Just like some people will prefer McDonalds to a good restaurant because that's what they're used to. Still doesn't make good coffee or food "mainly hokum". :)

tel 13y ago
A lot of people expect coffee to taste bad. That's why it's rare to find someone drinking it black. I conducted a fairly large number of ad hoc singly-blinded tests in college on friends to get them to see what I saw in coffee. People often do "like" "bad" coffee but never once believed that it had more flavor or was preferable to drink black.

epo 13y ago

"Don't know what all the fuss is about", "good enough for me" may mean that you have low standards as much as it might mean other people are faffing about needlessly. Perhaps your friends are just being polite and laugh at your cheapskate ways when you're not there.

Mr_N 13y ago
Mind you, I wouldn't call a friend polite who laughs about someone behind their back, nor a friend, for that matter. I tend to trust people on face value, and I've seen that these sorts of blind studies apparently vary in their success depending on whether the person implementing them claims to have or not have this magical "coffee pallet" as I'll put it. Long and short of things, I don't expect people to be QUITE as backhanded as you suggest, I also don't trust people to do "good science", and I'd need to see a properly empirical study before I made up my mind in either case.

thenomad 13y ago

I've performed limited double-blind taste tests to check whether I'm fooling myself about liking quality coffee, and the results indicate that no, I really can tell the difference. In fact, it turns out I can taste the difference between beans ground with a high-quality burr grinder and a blade grinder, brewed in an otherwise identical way. If you can't, then I don't see any problem with continuing to use what are perceived as lower-quality beans. But assuming that everyone has exactly the same taste sensitivity as you probably isn't 100% accurate. (Note: all of this assumes you're drinking the coffee black, that you're using at least a reasonably well-controlled brewing process, and that your water isn't utterly horrible. If any of those things aren't true, it's entirely likely it's much harder to taste the difference.)

JoeAltmaier 13y ago
Ok, maybe so. But its pretty easy to fool yourself. Did you do the brewing? Then any difference in color/particulates you notice ruin the experiment.
- 2muchcoffeeman 13y ago
  I've been into coffee for a while now. I've been lucky enough to know people in the industry. You can absolutely tell the difference between brewing methods, beans, roast levels, cleanliness of the machines, etc ... I can't say what method is better or worse, that is up to the individual, but there is a difference. The beauty of coffee, is that you can brew multiple cups quite easily and do proper experiments.
- thenomad 13y ago
  I did the brewing myself. But I'd invite you to repeat the test and see if you can distinguish between the two brews by colour. The visual difference between two identical-bean, identical-brew-method cups of coffee where the only variable is the grinder is, to my eye, zero. The placement of the cup in the room relative to the primary light source will be by far the most significant element. (Note: this was cafetiere-brewed coffee, not espresso. Had it been espresso, I'd 100% agree with you that the trial wasn't appropriately blinded.)

ImprovedSilence 13y ago

Haha, I can kinda agree with you on this point. And I will admit I do love a good Starbucks VIA Italian Roast (Instant Coffee). But Keurig stuff just tastes like shit to me. Also the local coffee shop only sells watered down lightly roasted acid.. So can I tell handmade from instant, no, not always, but I can always tell you whether I like it or dislike it. And I always, ALWAYS drink coffee black. If you don't you get no say it what tastes better, cuz you just watered it down with milk and destroyed any flavor it had with sugar...

RougeFemme 13y ago
Have you tried Starbucks in the Keurig cups? That tastes better than Starbucks VIA, to me.
- ImprovedSilence 13y ago
  I have not, perhaps I should. My biggest beef with the K-cups is that it always seems to be too watered down. With the VIA (or actually brewing my own) I can control the strength(water/coffee) ratio more to my liking. Granted, I probably like my coffee darker and more "dense" (full bodied) than most... I tend to gravitate towards the French Press and Moka pot brewing methods. (The moka pot is something I discovered when I lived in Italy, it was really the only method I saw people brewing in their own homes, and I found it works great for me, in that it's smaller quantities (I'm only a single dude, I don't need a full drip pot..) and "fuller bodied".)

cmbaus 13y ago

Years ago I used to buy and store wine, but I lost interest in it for this very reason. It is difficult to tell the difference between an inexpensive Cote Du Rhone and a $200 Hermitage, or the differences don't justify the cost (in my mind). With hand brewed coffee the difference is much more noticeable. If are you in SF, stop at 50/50 on Geary. They spend more effort prepared their coffee than any place I've been. I think you will be surprised by the difference in quality.

goostavos 13y ago

>I think it's mainly hokum. Ha! I completely agree. Drink snobbery, whether relating to coffee, beer, wine, or [insert beverage here], has always seemed like confirmation bias in action. Is Startbucks really undrinkable sludge to some people, or is only that way because of that sweet, sweet feeling of smug superiority that they feel when they say it? I am one of the few that is nerdy enough to blind test myself and friends with things that have an entire culture of snobs around them -- a trait which I picked up after working in the audio industry for years (where people will believe and argue to the death about magical cable properties (give me measurements, or give me death!)). If I could assemble enough coffee samples, I would love to put myself under test and see if one is empirically "better" to my taste buds. However, logistically it's not possible. That said, beer and wine is readily available, transportable, and easily testable! So, my girlfriend and I set up a tasting night a few months ago. We grabbed a 6 pack of every cheap beer in the grocery store (pbr, miller lite, Natural Ice, bud, etc..), and then a whole range of wines -- everything from the $70 2011 wine of the year, to a $3 ABC brand bottle. We randomized each trial, poured the wines into glasses and then left the room so others could enter so we wouldn't influence their decisions (our attempt at setting up a double blind test). We had people log their impressions of each one, and then attempt to rate them in ascending order of "quality." After 4 or 5 trials (it stopped being fun around the 3rd set of trails) we called it quits and looked at everyone's results. It was pretty interesting. In with cheep beer, there was only one consistent looser, and that with Miller Lite (I honestly expected it to be Natural Ice), the rest were all randomly distributed. No one could tell one from the other -- or if one was better than the other -- with any reliability. It actually made it a little frustrating while testing, as some people (including me) though they were being messed with by having several glasses all with the same beer. The wine had similar results. No clear winner. Result were all over the place with the "best" tasting wine being different for each person each time. With my pallet, I couldn't discern one as being "better," so much as just "different." This one is a little more X, while this one is a little more Y. It was an interesting experience. So, moral of the story, I only buy cheap wine now, because I honestly can't taste the difference. That $70 bottle wasn't even distinguishable from the rest. I've rambled, but I highly suggest self testing! It's fun, and I can now say that, empirically, Miller lite is undrinkable piss water to my taste buds :)

13y ago