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Good Coffee Is Now Bad

meltedcheeseonwhitefish.substack.com

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Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#91

Post by bombcar »

nordsieck wrote: post #51
bombcar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bette…

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.

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#92

Post by drcongo »

paulcole wrote: post #55
drcongo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#93

Post by Kaibeezy »

paulsutter wrote: post #36

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 becau…

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?

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#94

Post by dilap »

Semaphor wrote: post #16
dilap wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#96

Post by andorsk »

linuskendall wrote: post #62
andorsk wrote: post #34

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 (…

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 To…

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.

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#97

Post by richeyryan »

twawaaay wrote: post #49

> 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 kno…

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.

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#98

Post by vidanay »

iamdamian wrote: post #78
ctrlmeta wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#99

Post by jrm4 »

talkingtab wrote: post #27

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…

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

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#100

Post by dont__panic »

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.

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