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Good Coffee Is Now Bad

meltedcheeseonwhitefish.substack.com

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Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#111

Post by intrasight »

ehnto wrote: post #54
ubermonkey wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#112

Post by 19h »

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.

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#113

Post by recursivedoubts »

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..."

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#114

Post by asdadsdad »

iddan wrote: post #60

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…

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

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#115

Post by jkmcf »

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…

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.

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#116

Post by ksherlock »

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.

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#117

Post by [deleted] »

jkmcf wrote: post #115
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…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#118

Post by readthenotes1 »

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…

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....

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#119

Post by paulcole »

drcongo wrote: post #92
paulcole wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Good Coffee Is Now Bad

#120

Post by rstuart4133 »

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…

> 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?

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