A bluffer's guide to Coffee

[jack]

Coffee

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.

Comments

[onyxlynx]

I can occasionally pass as a coffee snob. It's the grinder.

When I was, let's say, somewhere in the neighborhood of your current age, I was totally uncaring about coffee. To be honest, so was the world. I drank instant. I liked instant. I drank the coffee at The Dingleman (for Coffee an'... Mercifully gone about 30 years) and in bars and at all hours. I voluntarily (but very seldom) drank Sanka.

Sometime between the first drive to California and the first time I heard "Don't Stop Believin'," I got into ground coffee. I'm trying to remember when I first went to Porto Rico (coffee bean and tea leaf retailer, not the island) and was totally overwhelmed and converted on the spot to buying beans and grinding them. (If you don't like the smell of freshly roasted beans, you should avoid places like that. For me, it's like opera done well, only for the olfactory sense.) I do not roast my own beans. I am not yet that far gone. I hear there's nothing like it.;-)

My mom and (late) dad were perfectly content to drink instant. However, when I (or my late brother) visited they got to have the good stuff.

I like your overview (I've had lattes. They're...OK). I would merely add that expensive beans do not necessarily translate into good coffee.

[jack]

Thank you! And thank you for the additions!

I was totally uncaring about coffee. To be honest, so was the world.

:) That's true. I'd forgotten that some people would have seen fancy coffee bars slowly appear...

totally overwhelmed and converted on the spot to buying beans and grinding them

That's really interesting, because having occasionally had home-ground coffee it didn't taste better to me, as ground coffee didn't used to taste better than instant coffee, and I don't know if that's because I've reached my natural level of coffee snobbery, because what I drank wasn't carefully enough chosen or prepared, or because I'm not enough of a connoisseur and drink coffee with milk and am happy to do so.

[seryn]

You know, this is the kind of thing I want to be on wikihow. Some ridiculous amount of detail about something that most people get trained into them by living with actual human beings but is impossible to figure out if you grew up under a rock.

There was a point which was very British to me... that anyone would consider instant coffee "normal". There was a brief period in my childhood when people actually offered instant coffee (to adults) because it was the only way to reliably have decaff on hand. I had instant coffee on hand in my first apartment because I didn't drink coffee myself and was moving too frequently to buy a machine.

I have, however, grown up to become a coffee snob. And the best way to avoid accidentally buying instant coffee when you don't mean to is to buy coffee grounds (freshly ground from the beans in front of you) from a coffee roastery. Supermarket coffee is usually mediocre at best.

I agree with the previous comment that price and quality are not always directly related when purchasing coffee. Starbucks sells "gourmet" coffee beans and they are not stellar quality, but the price is quite similar to the independent roastery I buy from which does really phenomenal coffee.

When buying a latte or cappuccino, the quality of the milk is of high importance. Unfortunately most places do not pay any attention to the milk itself.

(I liked that you talked about this right after I wrote about it yesterday. It's like I'm not actually talking to myself.)

[jack]

You know, this is the kind of thing I want to be on wikihow. Some ridiculous amount of detail about something that most people get trained into them by living with actual human beings but is impossible to figure out if you grew up under a rock.

Thank you so much! Yes, that's exactly how I thought of it, but you describe it better. I'm sure for most people it's just funny (or not) but honestly, it's quite possible to NOT pick up this information -- I didn't have most of it until the other day when I deliberately thought of it -- and if you're not inclined to pick it up piecemeal by following friends into coffee shops then having the basic framework explained is actually useful (and the sort of thing which is often lost on encyclopedias etc because either it's so basic it's not even mentioned (like "an introduction to tables") or it's buried under a long list of other information without a clear "if you just arrived from Mars, here are the four things you need to know FIRST, at which point you can begin to fit other observed behaviour into the framework").

I liked that you talked about this right after I wrote about it yesterday. It's like I'm not actually talking to myself.)

:) *sympathy* Unfortunately, I'm really sorry, but it's totally coincidence: I didn't read your yesterdays' entries until just now... :)

[naath]

Coffee roasteries are sadly lacking in Cambridge (and indeed most of the UK I think). Apparently Lakeland (purveyors of all manner of kitchen gadgetry that you probably don't want as well as things you might) sell both un-roasted beans and roasting gizmos but presumably at great expense.

Here probably the 'best' you can do is to buy coffee beans that are weighed out in front of you (rather than pre-packaged) on the market or from Whittards.

I'm afraid I'm insufficiently coffee snob to pick out the "best" beans though; I usually prioritise buying Fair Trade coffee.

(coffee is starting to not look like a word)

[jack]

I remember fishpi buying something that at the time I considered gourmet from market square or a nearby small shop, but at the time that could simply have been ground :) I think it was probably beans, but probably pre-roasted pre-packaged.

[naath]

There's a guy on the market who does tea and coffee, he sells coffee beans I think (but pre-roasted).

[lavendersparkle]

He sells them pre-roasted and will grind them for you if you want.

[jack]

Of course, now told me about some kind of gadget which is like a cross between an espresso, a french press, and a horse-impregnating syringe, which is apparently popular in America, for people who want something espresso like but made from glassware rather than steam machinery which has the downside that you have to press REALLY REALLY HARD to get the plunger down, but the upside that it doesn't require cleaning, just upending over a bin and wiping.

[seryn]

You should see the stuff that passes for tea around here... :-) It takes some actual effort (and a trip to a specialty shop) to get anything not pre-bagged and full of tea dust.

I've been served "iced tea" that was made from a pre-sweetened powder that dissolves in cold water!

I have read, repeatedly, that when in Italy one should drink coffee but never drink coffee in England. It's interesting as a curiosity, but unlikely to be applicable knowledge for me.


I don't roast my own coffee beans. It's too much work and too stinky to make me popular with the neighbors. I actually buy my coffee already ground which irks the coffee roasting people hugely. I finally told them, "Your coffee is better a bit stale than anything else is fresh. Sure yours is better fresh, but you've got a 3 pound minimum purchase."


I don't buy "Fair Trade" coffee unless it's the same bean/roast I'd buy normally. There are a lot of places here selling Fair Trade items while not providing health care or sick leave for their US employees. It's not fair trade then, even if it's "Fair Trade". So I don't worry about it and just buy what I like.

[naath]

Ugh, that's BAD tea.

Coffee in the UK is a bit of a mixed bag, you certainly *can* get good coffee here, but a randomly selected eatery might not be able to provide it.

[seryn]

Coffee in the UK is a bit of a mixed bag, you certainly *can* get good coffee here, but a randomly selected eatery might not be able to provide it.

So, no difference then. :-D I don't order coffee in restaurants anymore. Even cafes have mediocre coffee in comparison to making my own. Even the places that have tolerable coffee have horrible milk. (And I have no problems with how adding milk makes me so unmanly as to seem girly. For the obvious reason.)

[lavendersparkle]

You haven't mentioned cafeterias. Alec and I don't really drink coffee, so we have ground coffee in the freezer, which we make with a cafeteria if guests request it.

[jack]

Yes, that's a good point, it also came up on LJ. I don't know, but that's probably the best way of having coffee to offer.

Although the spelling "cafeteria" conjured up quite the wrong image :(

[naath]

IME the purpose of grinding your own coffee is less "it tastes better" and more "it keeps better" (as beans than as ground). The electric grinder is very easy (if noisy) and not at all effort (Edith had a manual one at Oblivion... now THAT was effort).

I can tell the difference between Americano and filter coffee, personally I think Americano tastes nasty but obviously that is a matter of personal preference. Further I despise milk in coffee (also sugar, and all the flavoured sugar syrups). Thus I order espressos in coffee shops if I want coffee unless I know that they do filter coffee in which case it depends how much coffee I want :-) (I do actually like espresso, although it's not a good answer to "I want a refreshing drink" but then IMO neither is filter coffee).

If you really want to shun coffee-shop coffee most also sell non-coffee drinks such as tea and hot chocolate. Also they do (usually) a variety of cold coffee drinks (also possibly cold non-coffee drinks) which are rather different in taste to hot coffee and rather nice in summer (IMO).

[jack]

IME the purpose of grinding your own coffee is less "it tastes better" and more "it keeps better" (as beans than as ground)

Well, that's more precise, but presumably the point is that, assuming you are in fact going to have to store it, it will taste better afterwards if it wasn't ground to begin with...

Further I despise milk in coffee

Oh yes! I was going to have a long rant about how I was a long-time effete girly-man on the subject of having milk in my caffeine as well... :)

If you really want to shun coffee-shop coffee most also sell non-coffee drinks such as tea and hot chocolate.

Yes. I always used to order hot-chocolate if I didn't want to venture into the word of fancy drinks. But I'm not sure I'd rather have tea made by a company that makes questionable coffee, than coffee... (Well, OK, maybe I would in England, but not in Seattle :))

[naath]

Milk> oh, I don't think it's a girly thing. I just think it tastes REALLY NASTY. I just don't like milk.

Mmmm. Tea from a coffee shop in Seattle might be a bit... random. I have however never tried. Starbucks in the UK do OK tea though, not very interesting :-( But few places do do interesting tea really (sadly the nice tea place in Cambridge is shut).

[jack]

Oh yeah. But I'm not in touch with my feelings as often as I like, so I have to grab my effete effeminate metrosexual non-macho credentials while I can :)

might be a bit... random

:) My totally uninformed impression is that just like places at high altitude, in America there's some sort of strange invisible atmospheric affect that stops the water for tea boiling properly. (People who have spent time in the UK seem to have acquired an immunity.)

[naath]

Coffee is properly made with water that is not quite boiling. Presumably a coffee shop is thus not set up to produce boiling water?

Perhaps they should serve green tea instead (which also should be made with not-quite-boiling water).

[jack]

Well, I was thinking more that they may not be temperamentally disposed to making tea with boiling water, and may not necessarily have boiling water to hand, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that there has to be boiling water SOMEWHERE on the premises. Espresso machines involve... steam sometimes? Whcih is very very boiling :)) But yes, exactly. I'm not convinced, say, Starbucks, will have got the tea thing down-pat. (They may have, I'm purely extrapolating from their failures in the not-looking-like-pretentious-dorks front, possibly unfairly.)

[liv]

Starbucks in the US absolutely astonished me by being reasonably competent at making basic, English-breakfast style black tea with milk. Nothing fancy, nothing that a tea-snob would get excited about, but yer basic cuppa, they can do. I mean, I kind of resented paying $3 for the privilege, but if you're in the middle of Manhattan, there aren't many other places where you can get a decent cup of tea for any money at all.