Good Coffee Is Now Bad | Hacker News Reader

Good Coffee Is Now Bad

meltedcheeseonwhitefish.substack.com

59 pointse2e4123 comments

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.

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 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

As a kid, I used to love brewing my coffee in milk instead of water. (I did that for tea too!)

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.

At least in New England, I tend to associate hazelnut with the ~first wave of "gourmet" coffees, e.g. from Green Mountain.

> 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.

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

> 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.

I think most people who come for coffe don't care about espresso machines. My wife was shocked when I told her how much a good grinder and espresso machine costs. Forget about knowing particular brands and product lines.

And people who care tend to care in an unhealthy way. I would put them in same category as people focusing what kind of photographic equipment you use to make a photo.

From purely practical point of view the espresso machine is one of the least significant ingredients. An espresso machine is essentially a heater and a pump that is supposed to push water through coffee puck at a given pressure. Some bells and whistles can help make a touch better coffee more consistently.

A good grinder and well dialled is on the other hand essential and any misstep here will basically preclude you from getting good coffee.

And if you don't get quality, freshly roasted coffee no of the above will save you.

Its often more nuanced than that, for example often cafes will get free machines and service if they agree to only use a particular brand of beans.

Great for the cafe owner, but typically its mediocre beans like vittoria or similar which are stale by the time they get to the cafe and a barista can only do so much with them.

So that then dictates the quality of baristas you get, any baristas with pride in their work will try and find cafes with better quality ingredients, so you are left with mediocre baristas than can just pump out okish coffee.

This is a theory I hold about cocktails as well. At the end of the day, most cocktails are very simple and it boils down to a matter of ingredient ratios.

The fact most bars make crappy cocktails likely is due to the lack of such a feedback loop as you say. Anecdotally, almost every bar I have been to where the bartenders sample the drink have top notch cocktails.

The article touches on this but often, just having the appearance of somewhere that is serious about coffee or cocktails is enough. The owners probably don't care, so long as they do enough business to keep things going. People will go somewhere that looks like an excellent cocktail bar, order something called an Aperol Spritz, receive something that is mostly soda water, a bit of prosecco and a tiny dash of Aperol and be pleased because doesn't it look great? And if that represents value for money to them, then that's fine. The whole idea of speciality anything eventually has to overcome the fact it will be commoditised, and there will be an abundance of low to middling quality offerings that are using the signifiers of high-quality offerings to make money.

Tea drinkers enter the chat...

With all the focus on coffee, it's nigh impossible to find decent tea or someone that understands you can't double the water for a grande using the same amount of tea.

> 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.

This resonates with me. I have a home machine. Sometimes it produces coffee perfection, most times not.

There aren't really a lot of variables: the bean and its age, the grind size and the grind time. So it sounds simple.

But the bean and it's age change continuously, which means you have to change the grind size and time to compensate. Probably daily. The grind size and time effect each in a highly non-linear way. I do it more by trial and error, which takes time and a lot of wasted shots. It is a lot of effort - so I don't do it as often as I should. Which is how we get to "Sometimes it produces coffee perfection, most times not".

Was the barista course useful?

> Was the barista course useful?

It very much was. I already knew a lot about making espresso but the course taught me a lot of small tips and tricks. It also gave me better understanding of end to end process and what is and what is probably not as important. In the past I would be spending a lot of time on gimmicks (like a grinder that could grind to exact weight) which I learned are completely unnecessary for the most part. The course was meant for people who will be working as baristas and so it was not oriented on getting best coffee but rather teaching you the process and how to make various drinks. The other students were not super interested in coffee but the teachers were.

> It is a lot of effort - so I don't do it as often as I should.

I pull about 2-3 double shots for myself every day and probably, on average, one another for my wife and daughter.

I got in a habit of observing every single shot I make. I weigh the grounds that came out of the grinder, the espresso, the time it took to pull it as well as the profile (I look at the weight vs time profile in my head). I also look at the bottom of the naked portafilter during first couple seconds to see how well I have distributed it so that I don't start correcting in response to incorrect distribution. I have been doing it for long enough that I don't have to think about it anymore. Over time you also learn to intuitively know what kind of correction you need to introduce and how large magnitude to fix the problem.

The result of this is that I get a very good shot probably 50-70% of the time. Which I am happy with, it is very difficult to get consistent results at home when you just pull couple of shots every day.

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-jimse...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMb0O2CdPBNi-QqPk5T3gsQ

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.

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!

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

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.

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?

It reads like the author drank ten cups of coffee and felt like he had to say something using a lot of words and typed them out to the beat of his favorite heavy metal song but forgot what he wanted to say....

Theres this Orwell piece that just absolutely resonates with me.

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.

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?

Thanks for the link to that essay. I feel changed after reading it.

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

You tried every coffee in London? How long did that take?

From this list, TLV is probably the best. Most of Europe is still stuck in espresso land, shitty coffee.

There's a reason watered-down espresso is called Americano ;)

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).

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.

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....

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.

I have used Devans before and yes, they were my goto at one point! To my point earlier though: it took a while to find it.

There's a few others I know of. Lately I found shop in Bangalore that gets beans from Coorg. Reasonably priced and decent beans. Ainmane https://www.ainmane.com/. Shop is good. A little more expensive than Devans though I think.

Devan's is a good option though. Malakodu Estate has some decently priced coffee.

There's a website that aggregates all the coffee vendors, but the name is slipping my mind for some reason.

>There's a website that aggregates all the coffee vendors, but the name is slipping my mind for some reason.

Sixteen grams, Somethings Brewing...there are a few of those now.

> 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....

I ask for strong (filter) coffee without sugar, and that works reasonably well in Bangalore and Chennai.

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.

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...

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.

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.

The 7/11 across from where the Starbucks used to be is worse.

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 ;)

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.

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.

The blonde roast is a lot better, if you are ever stuck in a place without other options.

Every Dunkin will make a half Dunkaccino half black coffee that is far less terrible than the Dunkaccino straight.

Interesting note on the "burnt", just commented same above. Read why somewhere, can't find it now.

Top suggestion for "why does starbucks taste" is "burnt".

> 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.

It's only yummy if you're addicted to sugar in the first place, it's closer to a soda than coffee for me and I definitely can't drink more than a few gulps without feeling disgusted

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.

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?

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.

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

>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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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?

Substack seems to have turned everyone into an expert on things they know nothing about. This article is terrible.

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.

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.

I’m doing my best to add dreadful hot takes to HN but I can only do so much on my own.

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.

> Makes me wonder if all these blogging platforms are solving problems or creating new ones.

Why is this a new problem? The same complaint has been made since the invention of the printing press (and, later, with the advent of the Internet).

Pontificating from ignorance existed long before Johannes Gutenberg.

I kept waiting for the part where compelling information would be presented. It boils down to “some businesses don’t care to make great coffee because people will buy mediocre coffee”.

The entire article could be about any other food or drink and would be just as true, but also similarly obvious.

I felt a little ripped off after getting to the end. I was looking forward to expert information to provide some interesting insights.

I got the equivalent of “some places make a bad ribeye, but they’ll still charge you $50!”. Of course, and you just make a mental note and go somewhere else next time. That’s it.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

I've never tried it, but a friend of mine says he uses a hot-air popcorn popper to roast coffee beans.

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.

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.

I legit 100% cannot tell if this comment is satire.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

5 years of security updates for my coffee? :)

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).

That's an unusual thing to be disappointed to discover is not the case :-)

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

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.

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..."

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

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.

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.

Almost everything has improved by at least some important measures (quality, safety, availability, or inflation-adjusted price) since the 1980s.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

It is the same process, but variance in execution would get you different tastes, as in time and pressure variances compared to an esspresso machine. Moka ppts are also not very uniform in their execution. Heated water is forced through a cup of grounds at high pressure though, just like an espresso machine. Pour over is a very different process to espresso, though it might suit your preference compared to what you get from your Moka pot.

It's only the "same process" by a gross oversimplification -- ie, yes, you put ground coffee and hot water together with some pressure.

Moka pots provide very little in the way of control vs. a proper espresso machine, and at best produce only about 20% of the pressure. The result is a VASTLY different beverage.

By your logic, an Aeropress is also "the same process" since it's forcing water through grounds under pressure, but nobody would call that espresso, either.

I adore proper espresso, but I have never enjoyed Moka pot coffee.

I also adore pour-over coffee, but no one would mistake any filter-coffee process for espresso.

two things:

(1) depending on how good you are, you'll be better than X% of the coffee shops out there. but the converse applies too: somewhere out there, i'd bet, there is a coffee shop making coffee as good or even better than your own.

(2) a least half the pleasure in going to a coffee shop is going to the coffee shop. it's nice to get out and experience some of the community around you!

> somewhere out there, i'd bet, there is a coffee shop making coffee as good or even better than your own.

I doubt the "better" part for people preferring the french press. It is not a complicated method. Now there might be one with better beans, but that’s always the case.

> a least half the pleasure in going to a coffee shop is going to the coffee shop.

Heh, depends, for me that does not sound like pleasure at all ;)

Both good points!

I do feel coffee is remarkably subtle. You can easily make a pour-over twice, using exactly the same method and same beans, and have different results. Which is crazy, but true. So there's a lot of room for technique.

Lattes are the same way. I enjoy making lattes at home using a moka pot for esspresso(ish) and a stovetop steamer -- and even though I've been doing this for years now, I'm still not consistent. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's just OK. Adding in the steamed milk is a whole new dimension that can vary in very subtle ways.

I think you're right, though, that the french-press is more of an old-school, give-it-to-me-good-and-hard-and-bitter method. Not as subtle, probably not as much variation.

I use the "I’m really lazy" method: Boil water, just before boiling, grind beans. Pour in beans, add water. Wait 4 minutes. Press down.

I tried the hoffman method, it tasted the same to me, was a lot more work and the only advantage was fewer grounds in the cup, but I don’t mind those (barely any).

But yeah, I always drink coffee at home and if I’m somewhere else, I hope they have a french press as it is by far my preferred taste.

That's a false dichotomy for me. If I am near my french press, I will never pay for a cup of coffee. However, if I am not near an available french press, i.e. on the road, I have no other choice than to buy a cup of coffee, unless I pass on coffee entirely. But since I can't really whip out my french press in an airport, I still occasionally pay too much for mediocre coffee.

> But since I can't really whip out my french press in an airport

You can whip out an aeropress in an airport, and can probably finnagle 200mL boiling water from one of the eateries or shops (I would assume that to be the bigger challenge as you can’t exactly start a fire at the gate, not to mention carrying a gas cartridge through security).

I can't even prevent my pre-coffee self from making a mess in my own kitchen with an Aeropress... god forbid my travel-exhausted self balancing my stuff on a suitcase in an airport lounge!

There’s mitigation options but they all have their limitations / issues:

- caffeine pill to wake up, then coffee for the taste / comfort

- brew in the evening (at home when flying out, at the hotel when flying back in) and store in a quality insulated mug, using a zojirushi, freshly brewed coffee in yields too-hot-to-drink 10 hours later (but that’s nothing a travel mug and waiting a few minutes can’t solve).

- there’s also the flash-frozen thing which Hoffmann showed and seemed happy about, but I think it needs to remain frozen (it can’t be stored at room temp) which is not super convenient when travelling unless you have good logistics (or regularly travel back and forth so could have stashes at critical locations)

- similar situation (travel between known location), do better recon and find an acceptable coffee shop on the way (then hope they don’t go out of business)

They're certainly not going to let me into the airport with my Svea backpacking stove, fuel, and Moka pot. ;-)

Making my afternoon coffee that way on my front porch has been a ritual since the pandemic began.

I French press my grounds at home too, but I bring water to 200F (93C) instead of boiling, as I was taught in my barista days that boiling water makes the coffee too bitter. Are you supposed to use boiling water for Hoffman method? A cursory googling told me 197F was optimum for Hoffman but I have never done it.

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.

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