Coffee

trza

Well-known member
The other tread I was reading about Other Music closing, the upscale coffee shop next door is doing blockbuster lines out the door level business for high end coffee drinks.
 

luka

Well-known member
So what's the attitude of people who run trendy independent coffee shops towards those people who sit around for hours with macbooks toying with a long-cold latte and pretending they're working on a screenplay when they're blatantly actually on twitter? Is it "I love that we provide a relaxed space where people can tit around for hours without actually buying anything" or more "any chance you could fuck off and make space for some actual paying customers some time in the next two hours"?

I'd have assumed it was the latter, but remarkably few of them seem to get brained with coffee tampers...

The difficulty is these are often your regulars. PhD students and that.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The difficulty is these are often your regulars. PhD students and that.

From a purely business POV it's better to have lots of passing trade that comes in, buys something and then sods off than lots of regulars who make a small filter coffee last three hours, surely?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Currently back on the aeropress. Haven't started grinding beans yet but I've got a grinder so I just need the beans.

Any bean recommendations?

I'm told the V60 pour over is the next level up.

Ideally I'd have an espresso machine but seems a bit wild.
 

jenks

thread death
I use the V60 method as it’s quick clean and convenient. If I can be arsed the Bialetti mocha pot is me favourite.

As for beans - I usually get the special from the Algerian on Old Compton St. Invariably excellent.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
The big question with a lot of coffee stuff is what you're actually after and how much you're willing to spend on it. Do you want to marvel at the sweet blackcurrant notes of a light-roast single estate Kenyan bean or do you actually prefer something that basically "tastes like coffee", ie big on the intense, roasty, dark chocolate thing? It's easy to act like the fancy single-estate stuff is inherently better, but in practice if you actually prefer a more traditional style of coffee then it's not what you want, and a lot of other assumptions that people might make these days about what's "better" won't hold either.

In terms of kit I've used V60 and Aeropress, (among others) and I think they're pretty similar in terms of quality in the cup. I use the V60 on the daily, though, because I find the little ritual of making a pourover to be quite enjoyable. Depending on what grinder you've got (and what beans you're using), you might find Aeropress more forgiving (and French press more forgiving again...)

Home espresso seems like the modular synths of the coffee world - like, it is definitely a valid way of making coffee that can have really good results but it's also a massive time and money sink, particularly if you're into expensive finicky light-roast beans. I am into those beans, and I wouldn't think about getting a proper espresso machine (and a grinder to match) unless I had north of a grand burning a hole in my pocket, and if I did then I'd probably have a lot of better things to spend it on...
 

Clinamenic

Binary & Tweed
The big question with a lot of coffee stuff is what you're actually after and how much you're willing to spend on it. Do you want to marvel at the sweet blackcurrant notes of a light-roast single estate Kenyan bean or do you actually prefer something that basically "tastes like coffee", ie big on the intense, roasty, dark chocolate thing? It's easy to act like the fancy single-estate stuff is inherently better, but in practice if you actually prefer a more traditional style of coffee then it's not what you want, and a lot of other assumptions that people might make these days about what's "better" won't hold either.

In terms of kit I've used V60 and Aeropress, (among others) and I think they're pretty similar in terms of quality in the cup. I use the V60 on the daily, though, because I find the little ritual of making a pourover to be quite enjoyable. Depending on what grinder you've got (and what beans you're using), you might find Aeropress more forgiving (and French press more forgiving again...)

Home espresso seems like the modular synths of the coffee world - like, it is definitely a valid way of making coffee that can have really good results but it's also a massive time and money sink, particularly if you're into expensive finicky light-roast beans. I am into those beans, and I wouldn't think about getting a proper espresso machine (and a grinder to match) unless I had north of a grand burning a hole in my pocket, and if I did then I'd probably have a lot of better things to spend it on...
Oh you’re talking about one of those proper espresso machines right? Those are the ones which can cost thousands of dollars, at least based on what I heard. You ever try one of those espresso pod machines? Much cheaper. I’ve found that those are more likely to pay themselves off in relatively short order, if you’re a daily espresso drinker. The one my family has (Nspresso) also let’s you recycle the little pods when you’re done, because otherwise that would be an unfortunate little trail of waste.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
There's pod machines, there's also home espresso machines that use pressurized portafilters (ie a bit of metal with a small hole in) to provide pressure rather than relying on the coffee grounds themselves. I think either of those is probably okay if you really want espresso shots and you like darker roast coffees that are a bit more forgiving. My experience has been that fruity, acidic, light-roast coffees need a bit more control over the brewing if you don't want them to taste sour and horrible, and since I want to drink those coffees (when they're properly brewed) I'd probably consider something like a Gaggia Classic with the PID mod and a Niche Zero grinder to be about the cheapest setup I'd bother with, and that's going to be about a grand all-told. Since I'm happy drinking filter coffee at home and a £20 V60 dripper is literally as good as anything out there for that, there doesn't seem to be much point.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I really don't like this recent (well, last ten years or so) trend for fruity espressos. It definitely feels like a trend in that I started noticing it in the more hip places. In Lisbon if you go to an old local cafe it's still not like that but if you go to shitty hipster ones like Copenhagen Coffee Co or whatever it's called you can find coffee that is too cool to taste like coffee. So it's a bit of a balancing act... if you want espresso go to a pastelaria cos the hip ones are undrinkable, but if you want one of those ultra-modern new-fangled ways of serving coffee that hasn't yet reached Portugal - for example a cappuccino or flat white or in fact any other way whatsoever - then those ancient flat-capped great grandfathers will not have the slightest clue what you are talking about.

I don't hear people say this very often but a big part of how people consume coffee is the weather. Southern countries where it's hot all the time it makes sense to drink a little cup, one of those huge buckets from Starbucks or Cafe Nero will raise your body temperature and people will look at you slightly askance and perhaps they're not wrong. But in the UK a big cup of caffeine that warms you up too makes sense, and so if you're gonna drink those often it makes sense for someone to spend time thinking about how to make it good. Here it's just an afterthought, apart from things like the aforementioned Copenhagen one where they just export their menu wholesale like McDonald's.
 

sufi

lala
... but i am a bit of a coffee snob tbh & morrison blend in a cafetiere gets me up nicely in the morning
236544011_0_640x640.jpg

It tastes like coffee and is cheap (none of that fruitiness also)
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
the coffee shop evolution thing in the UK has really reflected the desire that people have for predicatablity. hardly existed 15 years ago or whatever and then the thing that grew out of the cities even into towns and service stations was costa coffee. people really like things being the same wherever you go, its a really intense quirk of the UK i think (well fuck knows what happens outside of england to be honest, i'm talking about england really)
 

sufi

lala
the coffee shop evolution thing in the UK has really reflected the desire that people have for predicatablity. hardly existed 15 years ago or whatever and then the thing that grew out of the cities even into towns and service stations was costa coffee. people really like things being the same wherever you go, its a really intense quirk of the UK i think (well fuck knows what happens outside of england to be honest, i'm talking about england really)
yeah i was thinking it's a 2010's thing innit, the expansion of these chains all over
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
the coffee shop evolution thing in the UK has really reflected the desire that people have for predicatablity. hardly existed 15 years ago or whatever and then the thing that grew out of the cities even into towns and service stations was costa coffee. people really like things being the same wherever you go, its a really intense quirk of the UK i think (well fuck knows what happens outside of england to be honest, i'm talking about england really)

I think it all originates with McDonald's ultimately. That guy with a name like the leader of an alien invasion force in a 50s b-movie - I think he was called Krug or something - who bought the chain off the McDonald brothers (Ronald and Donald) and ruthlessly enforced standardisation.

First he insisted that the menus were the same but he realised that they still weren't getting it. He travelled round the country checking them and they would say "Yeah it is basically the same but the locals here just really like chitlins so we sell them too" and he would go mental saying they hadn't understood properly, it had to be EXACTLY the same EVERYWHERE. And after years he managed to make that happen literally as described... but it still wasn't the same enough for him, the quality of the fries varied or they were just different or whatever and so he insisted they use the same potatoes, but then there weren't enough of that type of potato so he went round all the farmers and used McDonald's financial muscle to bully all the farmers so that they stopped growing any except the taters McDs wanted.

So that was really the start of monoculture in growing veg etc the diversity of potatoes grown in US was hugely decreased, everyone switched to growing huge fields of maris piper or whatever, and then the same for bread, tomatoes, lettuce no doubt. And then they conquered the world with this standardisation and other companies saw that too, so I guess that standardisation itself became the standard
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
I think it all originates with McDonald's ultimately. That guy with a name like the leader of an alien invasion force in a 50s b-movie - I think he was called Krug or something - who bought the chain off the McDonald brothers (Ronald and Donald) and ruthlessly enforced standardisation.

First he insisted that the menus were the same but he realised that they still weren't getting it. He travelled round the country checking them and they would say "Yeah it is basically the same but the locals here just really like chitlins so we sell them too" and he would go mental saying they hadn't understood properly, it had to be EXACTLY the same EVERYWHERE. And after years he managed to make that happen literally as described... but it still wasn't the same enough for him, the quality of the fries varied or they were just different or whatever and so he insisted they use the same potatoes, but then there weren't enough of that type of potato so he went round all the farmers and used McDonald's financial muscle to bully all the farmers so that they stopped growing any except the taters McDs wanted.

So that was really the start of monoculture in growing veg etc the diversity of potatoes grown in US was hugely decreased, everyone switched to growing huge fields of maris piper or whatever, and then the same for bread, tomatoes, lettuce no doubt. And then they conquered the world with this standardisation and other companies saw that too, so I guess that standardisation itself became the standard
i think all of that found fertile ground in england for whatever reason. some quirk of the culture, people love things being the same from one place to another. it's the only place i've seen on the planet where the town centers all have basically exactly the same shops in them. i don't have any idea why. people must love it. i love it.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Do they? I always hear people moaning about it... but maybe it's like the Brooklyn Cultural Mafia thread and they secretly love it.
 
Top