A bluffer's guide to Coffee
May. 17th, 2010 04:57 pmCoffee
Coffee is what you get if you take coffee beans, roast them, grind them, and use water to extract the flavour. There are almost infinite variations, many of which are termed "normal" coffee or "real" coffee depending who you talk to.
Instant coffee
Instant coffee is what you get when you prepare coffee, but then take the water OUT again, ending up with granules which should dissolve completely in water. This is what you have if you need some emergency coffee you can make anywhere, or make for guests if you have no equipment at all. Put a teaspoonful of instant coffee into a mug, pour hot water onto it, stir, and you supposedly have coffee.
Anthony Stewart Head once starred in a series of adverts that claimed that their instant coffee tasted just as good as non-instant coffee, but I sort of doubt it. When I started drinking coffee at university, I couldn't tell the difference. In fact, non-instant coffee may have tasted bitter to me, I can't remember, and if it did I don't know if that's because I hadn't developed a taste for it yet, or because whoever prepared it did so inexpertly.
To many people, instant coffee is still "normal" coffee. No-one I know habitually calls instant coffee "real" coffee, and if they do, I dread to think what sort of coffee they normally drink!
If someone asks if you have coffee, or if you have normal coffee, or if you have real coffee, and you have instant coffee, you should say "I have instant. Is that ok?" If they're used to that, they'll say "of course". If they don't like it, they'll say "actually, can I have xxxx instead?"
Buying instant coffee
If you don't know anything about coffee, you may even not know, looking at a shelf of coffee in a shop, which is instant, which is ground. Obviously it would be déclassé to SAY on the packaging clearly which was which, because instant coffee manufacturers want to stress how superior and comparable to real coffee their product is, whereas ground coffee doesn't want to even admit the existence of instant coffee.
I'd have to be looking at a shelf of instant coffee to say for sure what the differences are. If it says "soluble" or "instant" or "granules" it's instant coffee. If it says "roast ground coffee" then it's ground coffee. If it says "coffee bean" then it's probably (roasted) coffee beans. If it looks like granules then it's instant coffee. If it looks like powder then it's ground coffee. If it's coffee-bean-shaped then it's coffee beans.
If you have to guess, then if it says "coffee" or "gourmet" or "aromaful" then its instant, whereas if it says "French" or "Columbian" or "full well-rounded coffee with a rich body" then it's ground coffee.
Ground coffee (or drip coffee)
Ground coffee has had the beans roasted, and ground, but not yet combined with water. The aim is to extract the flavour with the water, but keep the remaining little horrible grounds OUT of the drink. In Britain this is normally done with a filter, either a disposable paper filter or sometimes a reusable plastic filter, either put into an inverted plastic cone, filled with a cup-worth of hot water from an electric kettle, or part of a coffee machine which heats water itself, ejects it into a filter, which drips into a pot which is kept warm.
(In other countries, if you want to emphasise how you've been drinking coffee for 700 years, thank you very much, you may simply put grounds in water, and bring just, for a moment, up to the boil. If you want to emphasise how modern and metrosexual you are, you'll use an espresso machine and make something that ends in "-iachino" or something. See below.)
This is "normal" coffee to many people, and "real" coffee to many (non-disjoint) people.
If you normally drink ground coffee, and someone asks if you have "coffee" you should normally just serve it to them. If they were expecting instant coffee, or espresso-machine coffee, it may be a bit different, but will hopefully be acceptable.
Grinding beans
If you're more of a connoisseur of coffee, you may prefer coffee which is prepared as above, but where you buy roasted whole beans, and grind them into powder yourself (with an electric or manual grinder). (I've been drinking coffee for years, but haven't yet got to the point where this tastes better to me.)
Again, this is "normal" coffee to many people, and "real" coffee to many (non-disjoint) people. This is the same for guests-asking-for-coffee, except that grinding beans can be a bit of a pain, so if I'm a guest, and I don't actually care if I get home-ground or pre-ground coffee, then I feel bad for the host going to all that effort. But if that's what they have, it's normally fine to ask for coffee, and if they don't want to, they'll hesitate to indicate that it's a bit of a bother and would something else be just as good?
Espresso-machine coffee
Mediterranean people often drink small cups of strong coffee. At some point, someone in Italy invented a machine which squirted hot (but not boiling) water through coffee under high pressure, which produces an espresso, which process has since taken over the world, and there are now more coffee shops built around espresso machines than all other sorts of shop put together (this may be an exaggeration).
This should extract more of the flavour from the beans, so should taste better (or worse) depending on the type of bean. Honestly, I don't really know the differences at all, I just know that it IS different. I think it depends how much bitterness there is.
You can also produce a more drink-like drink by combining an espresso and with hot milk, which is a cappucino or latte depending which way round you do it.
You can instead add hot water, which is called an Americano, and though it has some differences, is very similar in spirit to a traditional filter coffee, and the many places that only serve one will automatically have the habit of substituting the other.
People disagree about which is better, or whether it depends on the circumstances. One advantage of an Americano is that it can be produced one-off from a espresso machine, rather than coming from a big or large pot of filter coffee, which goes on simmering all afternoon, slowly becoming more and more bitter.
Buying espresso-machine coffee
I mean, from a coffee-shop. If you're buying an espresso machine yourself, then a I can't help you. (Both that you already know more about coffee than I do, and that I just don't think in those terms.) But many people live for years, reluctant to embrace chain coffee shops, and maybe even a little confused about what the thousands of different options are. I spent many, many years just refusing to learn coffee-shop lingo. I still don't really want to learn the proprietary chain-specific stuff, but things like "cappucino" are well-respected words that are the best way of referring to a specific concept.
If you've never been in a coffee shop before there may be a bewildering array of choices. I don't think this is a perfect concept, but in my head the most common options are espresso, cappuccino or latte, Americano or maybe mocha, though I'm not sure if that's true.
If you like concentrated coffee, you should order an espresso. But if you like concentrated coffee, you probably know this already. I have the distinct impression that in countries which are practised at this, you get a small cup of strong coffee, and a glass of water, which makes it less like asking for a big kick to the kidneys, please. But that in UK/USA, you'll just get an espresso, and get to feel all cosmopolitan whilst not ACTUALLY being like any actual country which actually does this for real. I know that's false, because I know friends who DO like concentrated coffee or espressos, and who have absolutely no habit of doing things they don't like for the look of it, so espressos actually ARE a good answer to a specific question, I just don't know or care what.
If you don't know what you're doing but want to look like a confident coffee-shop habituée, order a latte or a cappucino.
If you want to look like you despise the whole coffee-shop concept but have been reluctantly dragged into accepting it, order an Americano.
If you want to look like you despite the whole coffee-shop concept and are categorically refusing to accept it, order a "black filter coffee" or a "white filter coffee" and throw a blue fit if they try to offer you an Americano instead.
If you're still coming to terms with the whole "coffee" thing but want to show willing, order a Mocha, which is a coffee/hot-chocolate hybrid. If you don't want to come to terms with the whole coffee thing at all, order a hot coffee.
Some places have got used to reading the body language of people who resent the whole concept, and if you radiate uncertainty or hostility will quickly guess that you want a simple, no frills coffee, and give you a good default. If not, you may be subjected to a choice-blinding barrage of choices.
The first will probably be size. Some drinks only have one size, some a subset of the available sizes. This is often "small, medium, large" although in some places "medium" is one or other end of the scale, and in others they have the same concepts but give them stupid proprietary names which are misleading to people who gain their knowledge from classical or romance languages or common sense, rather than from coffee shops, which is a whole rant in itself but one which is played out so I do NOT intend to rehash it here!
If you order a coffee of unspecified size, and they ask "do you mean [something]", you can normally just say "yes". If you say "medium", they will normally understand what you mean, although they may translate it into the local terminology. But it's nowhere near the scorn you might get if you accidentally use the proprietary language from a different coffee shop, even if people know what you mean.
Then there may be a series of things you may want ON your coffee, or IN your coffee, such as whipped cream, chocolate powder, fruit-flavoured syrup, a little heart drawn in the foam, etc, etc. Curmudgeonly people should ask for none of these. Reluctant or straight-forward people for two. Pretentious people for 3/4 of them, and insanely enthusiastic people for all of them, and a giraffe-pattern straw.
My personal prejudices
I like filter coffee with milk. In fact, I probably get quite unfairly grouchy if I'm even OFFERED any other sort of coffee, as you can probably tell from my oblique rants above, but that's purely my own personal peccadillo, it's not your fault. In fact, I'm quite prematurely middle-agedly grouchy, although not so much as some friends who adopted a similar attitude since the age of 14. This may also be an exaggeration.
It's just that I'm very, very pretentious in all other sorts of life. I'm pretentious in my choice of grammar and conversation topics, in music, in my preferred programming language, in my reading material. I have a monochromatic phone with little blinking lights. And so on and so on. Obviously not in every topic. In many topics, I'm very common. But the point is, I feel I'm quite pretentious enough, and have absolutely no desire to also be pretentious in my choice of hot drink.
My pretension is limited to preferring filter coffee where it is available. But if it's not, then I'll happily drink instant or something other than coffee. If I'm in a coffee shop, I'll happily order a mocha or whatever. And in neither case secretly hate anyone. Fancy coffees are not objectively bad. I just really, really like ranting about them.
Postscript
This leaves out most of the basic differences between different sorts of coffee, let alone basic yet subjective differences I don't really understand myself, but is not intended to let you bluff being an expert, is intended to let a non-coffee-drinker get as far as avoiding major misunderstandings.
Coffee is what you get if you take coffee beans, roast them, grind them, and use water to extract the flavour. There are almost infinite variations, many of which are termed "normal" coffee or "real" coffee depending who you talk to.
Instant coffee
Instant coffee is what you get when you prepare coffee, but then take the water OUT again, ending up with granules which should dissolve completely in water. This is what you have if you need some emergency coffee you can make anywhere, or make for guests if you have no equipment at all. Put a teaspoonful of instant coffee into a mug, pour hot water onto it, stir, and you supposedly have coffee.
Anthony Stewart Head once starred in a series of adverts that claimed that their instant coffee tasted just as good as non-instant coffee, but I sort of doubt it. When I started drinking coffee at university, I couldn't tell the difference. In fact, non-instant coffee may have tasted bitter to me, I can't remember, and if it did I don't know if that's because I hadn't developed a taste for it yet, or because whoever prepared it did so inexpertly.
To many people, instant coffee is still "normal" coffee. No-one I know habitually calls instant coffee "real" coffee, and if they do, I dread to think what sort of coffee they normally drink!
If someone asks if you have coffee, or if you have normal coffee, or if you have real coffee, and you have instant coffee, you should say "I have instant. Is that ok?" If they're used to that, they'll say "of course". If they don't like it, they'll say "actually, can I have xxxx instead?"
Buying instant coffee
If you don't know anything about coffee, you may even not know, looking at a shelf of coffee in a shop, which is instant, which is ground. Obviously it would be déclassé to SAY on the packaging clearly which was which, because instant coffee manufacturers want to stress how superior and comparable to real coffee their product is, whereas ground coffee doesn't want to even admit the existence of instant coffee.
I'd have to be looking at a shelf of instant coffee to say for sure what the differences are. If it says "soluble" or "instant" or "granules" it's instant coffee. If it says "roast ground coffee" then it's ground coffee. If it says "coffee bean" then it's probably (roasted) coffee beans. If it looks like granules then it's instant coffee. If it looks like powder then it's ground coffee. If it's coffee-bean-shaped then it's coffee beans.
If you have to guess, then if it says "coffee" or "gourmet" or "aromaful" then its instant, whereas if it says "French" or "Columbian" or "full well-rounded coffee with a rich body" then it's ground coffee.
Ground coffee (or drip coffee)
Ground coffee has had the beans roasted, and ground, but not yet combined with water. The aim is to extract the flavour with the water, but keep the remaining little horrible grounds OUT of the drink. In Britain this is normally done with a filter, either a disposable paper filter or sometimes a reusable plastic filter, either put into an inverted plastic cone, filled with a cup-worth of hot water from an electric kettle, or part of a coffee machine which heats water itself, ejects it into a filter, which drips into a pot which is kept warm.
(In other countries, if you want to emphasise how you've been drinking coffee for 700 years, thank you very much, you may simply put grounds in water, and bring just, for a moment, up to the boil. If you want to emphasise how modern and metrosexual you are, you'll use an espresso machine and make something that ends in "-iachino" or something. See below.)
This is "normal" coffee to many people, and "real" coffee to many (non-disjoint) people.
If you normally drink ground coffee, and someone asks if you have "coffee" you should normally just serve it to them. If they were expecting instant coffee, or espresso-machine coffee, it may be a bit different, but will hopefully be acceptable.
Grinding beans
If you're more of a connoisseur of coffee, you may prefer coffee which is prepared as above, but where you buy roasted whole beans, and grind them into powder yourself (with an electric or manual grinder). (I've been drinking coffee for years, but haven't yet got to the point where this tastes better to me.)
Again, this is "normal" coffee to many people, and "real" coffee to many (non-disjoint) people. This is the same for guests-asking-for-coffee, except that grinding beans can be a bit of a pain, so if I'm a guest, and I don't actually care if I get home-ground or pre-ground coffee, then I feel bad for the host going to all that effort. But if that's what they have, it's normally fine to ask for coffee, and if they don't want to, they'll hesitate to indicate that it's a bit of a bother and would something else be just as good?
Espresso-machine coffee
Mediterranean people often drink small cups of strong coffee. At some point, someone in Italy invented a machine which squirted hot (but not boiling) water through coffee under high pressure, which produces an espresso, which process has since taken over the world, and there are now more coffee shops built around espresso machines than all other sorts of shop put together (this may be an exaggeration).
This should extract more of the flavour from the beans, so should taste better (or worse) depending on the type of bean. Honestly, I don't really know the differences at all, I just know that it IS different. I think it depends how much bitterness there is.
You can also produce a more drink-like drink by combining an espresso and with hot milk, which is a cappucino or latte depending which way round you do it.
You can instead add hot water, which is called an Americano, and though it has some differences, is very similar in spirit to a traditional filter coffee, and the many places that only serve one will automatically have the habit of substituting the other.
People disagree about which is better, or whether it depends on the circumstances. One advantage of an Americano is that it can be produced one-off from a espresso machine, rather than coming from a big or large pot of filter coffee, which goes on simmering all afternoon, slowly becoming more and more bitter.
Buying espresso-machine coffee
I mean, from a coffee-shop. If you're buying an espresso machine yourself, then a I can't help you. (Both that you already know more about coffee than I do, and that I just don't think in those terms.) But many people live for years, reluctant to embrace chain coffee shops, and maybe even a little confused about what the thousands of different options are. I spent many, many years just refusing to learn coffee-shop lingo. I still don't really want to learn the proprietary chain-specific stuff, but things like "cappucino" are well-respected words that are the best way of referring to a specific concept.
If you've never been in a coffee shop before there may be a bewildering array of choices. I don't think this is a perfect concept, but in my head the most common options are espresso, cappuccino or latte, Americano or maybe mocha, though I'm not sure if that's true.
If you like concentrated coffee, you should order an espresso. But if you like concentrated coffee, you probably know this already. I have the distinct impression that in countries which are practised at this, you get a small cup of strong coffee, and a glass of water, which makes it less like asking for a big kick to the kidneys, please. But that in UK/USA, you'll just get an espresso, and get to feel all cosmopolitan whilst not ACTUALLY being like any actual country which actually does this for real. I know that's false, because I know friends who DO like concentrated coffee or espressos, and who have absolutely no habit of doing things they don't like for the look of it, so espressos actually ARE a good answer to a specific question, I just don't know or care what.
If you don't know what you're doing but want to look like a confident coffee-shop habituée, order a latte or a cappucino.
If you want to look like you despise the whole coffee-shop concept but have been reluctantly dragged into accepting it, order an Americano.
If you want to look like you despite the whole coffee-shop concept and are categorically refusing to accept it, order a "black filter coffee" or a "white filter coffee" and throw a blue fit if they try to offer you an Americano instead.
If you're still coming to terms with the whole "coffee" thing but want to show willing, order a Mocha, which is a coffee/hot-chocolate hybrid. If you don't want to come to terms with the whole coffee thing at all, order a hot coffee.
Some places have got used to reading the body language of people who resent the whole concept, and if you radiate uncertainty or hostility will quickly guess that you want a simple, no frills coffee, and give you a good default. If not, you may be subjected to a choice-blinding barrage of choices.
The first will probably be size. Some drinks only have one size, some a subset of the available sizes. This is often "small, medium, large" although in some places "medium" is one or other end of the scale, and in others they have the same concepts but give them stupid proprietary names which are misleading to people who gain their knowledge from classical or romance languages or common sense, rather than from coffee shops, which is a whole rant in itself but one which is played out so I do NOT intend to rehash it here!
If you order a coffee of unspecified size, and they ask "do you mean [something]", you can normally just say "yes". If you say "medium", they will normally understand what you mean, although they may translate it into the local terminology. But it's nowhere near the scorn you might get if you accidentally use the proprietary language from a different coffee shop, even if people know what you mean.
Then there may be a series of things you may want ON your coffee, or IN your coffee, such as whipped cream, chocolate powder, fruit-flavoured syrup, a little heart drawn in the foam, etc, etc. Curmudgeonly people should ask for none of these. Reluctant or straight-forward people for two. Pretentious people for 3/4 of them, and insanely enthusiastic people for all of them, and a giraffe-pattern straw.
My personal prejudices
I like filter coffee with milk. In fact, I probably get quite unfairly grouchy if I'm even OFFERED any other sort of coffee, as you can probably tell from my oblique rants above, but that's purely my own personal peccadillo, it's not your fault. In fact, I'm quite prematurely middle-agedly grouchy, although not so much as some friends who adopted a similar attitude since the age of 14. This may also be an exaggeration.
It's just that I'm very, very pretentious in all other sorts of life. I'm pretentious in my choice of grammar and conversation topics, in music, in my preferred programming language, in my reading material. I have a monochromatic phone with little blinking lights. And so on and so on. Obviously not in every topic. In many topics, I'm very common. But the point is, I feel I'm quite pretentious enough, and have absolutely no desire to also be pretentious in my choice of hot drink.
My pretension is limited to preferring filter coffee where it is available. But if it's not, then I'll happily drink instant or something other than coffee. If I'm in a coffee shop, I'll happily order a mocha or whatever. And in neither case secretly hate anyone. Fancy coffees are not objectively bad. I just really, really like ranting about them.
Postscript
This leaves out most of the basic differences between different sorts of coffee, let alone basic yet subjective differences I don't really understand myself, but is not intended to let you bluff being an expert, is intended to let a non-coffee-drinker get as far as avoiding major misunderstandings.