Finally got a used Delongi bean to cup for less than $200 and my god what I've been missing. I also discovered that, for me, reducing the amount of water that passes through the coffee puck for each shot makes the coffee so creamy and less acidic.
Also, the ristretto shot is often used in flat whites - one of the main differences (the other lesser one being milk texture)
The reserve locations are better seen as flashy celebrations of coffee and basically ignore the entire Starbucks Corporate supply chain, in that way they are: 1: Vastly better quality coffee with actual light roasts available. 2: Absolutely not Scalable.
I'm not saying they aree somehow better than other high-end roasters but
There is uniform espresso at every corner, with quite dark roasts that cover up potential differences in flavor for the beans/crops. That's a side effect of expecting coffee for ~1 Euro, regardless of quality: quality generally goes down. We Italians are used to that (you could say we don't know better), and dislike any variation from the norm, so that doesn't bother most people; in actual coffee countries you have places that do care about coffee quality and experiment with single-origin, different roasts, etc. In Italy these places are a tiny minority, and for the rest is the same burnt expresso everywhere (and, if you're unlucky, very acid).
It might be different in big cities like Milan, but I doubt it.
However, in the US, even at the fanciest hipster coffee places, the espresso is incredibly bitter and astringent/acidic. Is that on purpose? Do Americans actually want their coffee to be super bitter and astringent/acidic? The other thing I've noticed is that in Rome and Madrid, most coffee drinkers are just drinking the coffee. But in the US it is rare to actually see someone drink a coffee without milk. So I just assumed that the reason for the bitterness and astringency was because the people making it never actually drank it as espresso.
So - American espresso drinkers - tell me - do you actually prefer that super bitter taste of the thin espressos that you get at supposedly good coffee places like, e.g., Blue Bottle over the rich and frothy espressos of Rome?
Haha, yeah. The new "hipster" coffee I'd tend to say leans more on the side of expressing the acidity of the bean through light-roasts over the chocolate-y flavors from dark roasts.
> But in the US it is rare to actually see someone drink a coffee without milk.
I think this is true with espresso, but not with pourovers. I think the people who like to drink espresso by itself won't go to a cafe to get an espresso since they'll likely get a better shot with their own machine than a cafe's machine.
The reason being is that cafes don't have time to re-dial in their shots midday, and they don't need to be as detailed with their shot-pulling since most customers order milk-based espresso drinks (so most bitterness/sourness from over/under extraction gets masked with milk).
There is a 'fourth wave' coffee pushing back on this trend that anchors more to big dark espressos sometimes even using robusta beans for extra creama and caffeine.
Honestly even Nespresso is better than that shit. And Lavazza Blue pods are an order of magnitude better than Nespresso, so that's what I drink daily when I need a quick fix
I'd say you can't generalize who uses milk or not, either. Also the super thin third wave espressos are more acidic than bitter. Read up on third wave or Nordic espresso. I don't think you have a full grasp on that aspect of coffee outside of Southern Europe...
So yes, when people praise Italian coffee it's because you're pretty much guaranteed it will be ok.
I learned to appreciate the fruity coffee of light roasts, but it is an acquired taste. If you want bitter roasts that tastes like burnt ash, get any Starbucks.
Agreed on Starbucks being roasted too hard, though. I suspect that’s because most of their coffee will be diluted by large amounts of milk and sugary stuff and this way some of the bitter flavor people associate with coffee.
I’m also in NL and tbh while it goes sometimes horribly bad (also when visiting people, they offer you a coffee but you end up with a kut senseo…) it’s on average actually quite ok… but I only drink a regular “koffie” here unless it’s a fancy coffee place, so maybe that’s the secret :)
Hmm. I roast my own beans and I feel like I know good coffee when I drink it.
For me Starbucks (I've tested in US, UK, and Japan mainly) provides a) a reliably consistent quality that is b) about 80% of ideal.
To me this is the killer feature of Starbucks, and it's why I'm a stockholder. When I buy coffee at non-Starbucks coffee shops, it's a total crap shoot what I get. Perhaps 10% of the time I get a stellar cup. But perhaps 40% of the time I get undrinkable crap.
Starbucks solves this problem for me by giving me an experience where I have perhaps a 95% probability of getting a pretty decent cup of coffee.
Disclosure: I drink mostly their Latte drinks with extra shots (depending on size and regional variations in base shot count).
Well seeing you are a stockholder you may want to know my experience.
I'd say Starbucks at least in my city in Canada has degraded mainly due to the talent or workload of its staff. They got too fancy and also try to make orders too fast. Getting it fast but junk is pointless. It seems to have started when mobile orders became a thing if I had to guess when it began.
I used to like their flat white when they actually made it correctly. They used to bang the pitcher to get out the big bubbles, it had a nice uniform beige with a white dot of milk on the top. It had a nice astringent taste from the ristretto shot.
Then the workers started (told to?) pouring milk ending with a leaf on the top for every cup. I felt like saying who cares or don't worry just pour it and move on to the next person. They don't seem to bang the pitcher to remove big bubbles. The look of it is mostly white not beige as if someone dropped their latte picked it up and gave it to you.
What a mess! And it's 100% time. I ask for a flat white now and then but realize there no way they'll ever make it right again.
I've found Indy hipster coffee shops can rarely deliver a consistent cup at their single location on any two days. I don't know what I actually like from those places. Sure Monday's cup made by Alex in the morning was good but Sam's cup of the same roast on Wednesday was a waste of money.
It's impressive that a chain with thousands of locations can provide such a consistent experience. It's definitely not as bad as most people claim provided you like a roast they sell.
Starbucks completely failed the first time they tried here, and are having a second shot (there must be at least a dozen stores in my 2.5M population city now). They seem to be relying mostly on fashion (seeing people with Starbucks cups in the media) - while I don’t like to stereotype, there do seem to be fairly clear demographics of people I see in the one I go past a bit - apart from some that look like tourists, you mostly see the late teens to just below middle age female crowd and a few of their partners there.
Really? I use the hario switch for my medium roasts and I brew 2 min tops, usually a hybrid immersion/pourover, but I can do just straight pourover in that time.