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Comment by harrytuttle | Hacker News Reader

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 :)

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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.)

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.

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.

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.)

I can only tell the difference between cheep coffee we make at work and what I'd consider decent to good quality coffee. Since I don't drink a lot of coffee I just use a Keurig machine since I can tell the coffee is a lot higher quality then instant but don't notice a difference between it and Starbucks.

The only difference I can tell is if it's french pressed or not. You do get more oily coffee with a french press if that's your kind of thing.

I don't notice the oil with the french pressed coffee at all. The coffee was much more oily when I used my moka pot. French pressed reminds me more of turkish coffee, just less sediment.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

> I actually drink medium roasted Columbian

No, you don't. You drink medium roasted Colombian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia

No, I get coffee from the same guy who used to supply Peter Falk.

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". :)

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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

[2]: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tas...

[3]: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/handle/37328

[4]: http://www.yumsugar.com/Wine-World-Reels-2-Buck-Chuck-Wins-A... (not a citation in the strict sense, but a demonstrative reference)

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.

From the wikipedia article:

"One of the most famous instances of blind testing is known as the Judgment of Paris, a wine competition held in 1976 where French judges blind-tested wines from France and California. Against all expectations, California wines bested French wines according to the judges, a result which would have been unlikely in a non-blind contest."

So, the judges can taste the difference, but they aren't honest unless it's a blind test. That's very different from saying there is no difference...

Now, that people can't "tell a difference in cost" should be almost a tautology -- what moron thinks that what tastes better will be more expensive, all the time? All things being equal, if you can, from a given, source, make something that tastes good and bad, with approximately the same amount of work, you'd think you make more that tastes good, and due to the benefit of producing large quanta, the good stuff would be cheaper?

In fact, if "most people" prefer the cheaper wines, I guess the wine industry people are doing their jobs, and selling most of what most people want. That doesn't mean it's what I (or you) want, just what "most people" want.

Incidentally, my tastes in coffee doesn't correlate very well to the description of what "most Americans" prefer, in the article, but that doesn't mean that I don't see that it makes a difference in taste what beans you choose, how you grind it, and how you brew it. It just means that I'll consistently make coffee "most Americans" would think is far too strong and bitter. No problem, let them drink whatever kind of coffee they prefer. But don't try and tell us there isn't a difference in taste.

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.

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.

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.

> It has no bearing on My enjoyment.

Exactly so. I just wanted to note that "expensive wine doesn't always – or even often – taste better" and "experts can reliably spot the difference between cheap and expensive wine" are not incompatible statements.

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.

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.

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-win...

>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 :)

Beer snob here, with a nitpick!

The beers you picked (PBR, miller, bud, etc) are all one single beer style, which BeerAdvocate classifies as an American Adjunct Lager. I'm not at all surprised that you couldn't tell one from another, but if you picked beers out of a wide variety of styles, I'm positive your taste buds could differentiate them.

American Adjunct Lagers: http://beeradvocate.com/beer/style/38

All Beer Styles: http://beeradvocate.com/beer/style

Right, right. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that all beer is the same! The specific thing under test was the assertion that some of the "shitty" beers are better than others -- the stuff you can get a 12 pack of for under $10. The thing that spawned the test was someone objecting to me picking up a pack of Coors because it was on sale, to which I asserted that all of the cheap stuff is indistinguishable from one another, and thus snobbery is not needed. Which ultimately lead to our science throw down.

It was a very narrowly scoped test.

If you want to do blind tests on beer snobbery, why would you choose a bunch of shitty American Lagers? If you had put in higher quality beer along side those lagers, I'm sure any seasoned craft beer drinker would know the difference. If you put a line up of different beers of a similar style, most "beer snobs" would be able to distinguish them, which ones they prefer, and most likely would be able to pick out their favorite if it was among the lineup.

I'm not sure how blind testing a bunch of cheap beer helps with your hypothesis that "Drink snobbery, whether relating to coffee, beer... has always seemed like confirmation bias in action."

I failed to make it clear, but the thing under test wasn't that Guinness is better than Bud Lite, but the assertion that some cheep beers are better than others -- a snobbery which pops up every time I order a pitcher in a bar. That one was really more of a fun testing anecdote of narrow scope.

The wine test on the other hand, I don't think you could take issue with, as its snobbery is second only to -- I'm not even sure, whiskey drinkers? The test was set up exactly as you'd want the beer one to be

>If you put a line up of different beers of a similar style, most "beer snobs" would be able to distinguish them

Just sub in "wine" for "beer." And the snobs failed.

Starbucks roasts their coffee very dark - until there is a distinct char flavor. Can you tell the difference if I lightly parboil asparagus, or throw it on the grill until it is blackened? Of course you can. Are their flavor differences between rare and extremely well done steak? Huge differences. Same with coffee beans.

Note that is not a judgement on the roast level - obviously tons of people like it. But the more you roast, the more the char (carbon) flavor dominates. I don't know if it destroys the rest of the flavors, or just masks them, but for me it removes all of the reasons to drink the coffee. I don't see the snobbery in that statement.

Do tons of people like Starbucks as drip coffee or plain espresso, or do tons of people like it whacked out with half a cup of sugar and 14 ounces of steamed milk? There's a big difference. (And by that point, as many joke, it's not coffee anymore but a milkshake).

What you call "char" I call "burnt", and I've seen a lot of opinions that agree and bring up multiple conspiracy theories as to why (cheaper shipping costs, higher caffeine concentration among others).

I'm agreeing that it's not snobbery to say that Starbucks wrecks some of the great flavors that properly made coffee can have. This isn't like wine where anything that isn't spoiled is usually drinkable. You can make bad coffee, accidentally or deliberately.

I love doing blind wine tasting, and I do it every time I can get enough people together who are down for it. That said, I think it's easy to draw a hasty conclusion from a very small sample of wines.

The thing with wine is that, regardless of price, there is a huge variation between wines at any price point, and a huge variation between individuals' palates. Until you know what you like, then you should expect that, with a set of randomly chosen wines, there will only be a mild correlation between price and enjoyment.

On the other hand, once you know that, for example, you like aged traditional Barolos and don't care much for Napa cabs, then it won't surprise you if you like the $40 Barolo more than the $150 cab.

I'm super into coffee. I have a ton of different pieces of brewing hardware, roast my own beans, etc. I've always hated the snobbery aspect of people who are super into anything, so I've thought of a few general rules of thumb for coffee drinkers that can up your game.

First and foremost, just cleaning whatever you brew your coffee in makes a huge difference. Even if you use a $9 Mr. Coffee drip machine, wash the glass carafe, drip cone, etc. with mild soap, and rinse. You will taste a huge improvement in the taste of your cup of coffee.

I've landed on a simple ceramic drip cone, kettle, and coffee mug for being the absolute best brewing system because its so easy to clean.

Freshness of the beans is a big factor. Coffee beans are exploding with flavor 1 to 7 days after they're roasted. After that it still tastes like coffee, but complexity around the flavor starts getting lost. This is why I roast my own beans, and its also really cheap ($6-$8 per pound as opposed to $14-$20). http://www.sweetmarias.com/ is a great place to buy green coffee beans in the Bay Area and you can roast them stove top without buying additional equipment.

When you start getting into roasting your own coffee or buying stuff that's 1-2 weeks from the roast it makes sense to get a decent grinder to preserve flavor. Lots of people buy blade grinders because they're so cheap, but they make it really difficult to brew coffee with a ceramic cone filter. You want to shop for a burr grinder which cost $40 for a hand grinder up to $80 for a decent electric grinder.

Whenever I wash my glass carafe with soap, either I rinse for more than ten minutes or I can still taste the soap - so I don't do that. I usually do successive rinses for a minute, but if I'm feeling serious I use (cheap, store bought) lemon juice and baking soda. If I haven't rinsed those enough, I don't mind the trace of citrus and sodium.

As an analogy, you might be hard pressed to tell the difference between two burgers cooked the same, but made with different kinds of ground beef. (Grass-fed, organic, etc.) However, you might well notice the difference between cooking one rare vs. well done, or one cooked on a charcoal grill vs. fried in a pan. Hand brewing vs. using a Mr. Coffee or an Aeropress is much the same. It does make a difference in how it tastes, and the big difference is a matter of preference.

There's also the matter of doing things right vs. wrong. Whether your ground beef was from Whole Foods might matter a whole lot less than whether it was properly refrigerated or whether the cook burned it. When it comes to coffee, Americans have been trained to tolerate beans and grinds that are a bit on the old and stale side. Some people go to a shop for beans roasted yesterday or today for the improved flavor, and some go to that shop as a matter of conspicuous consumption, and for some it's a mix of the two. It's the same as any foodstuff.

"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.

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.

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...

Have you tried Starbucks in the Keurig cups? That tastes better than Starbucks VIA, to me.

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".)

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.

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.

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