As I mentioned above, I was wondering why do people love to drink coffee and mostly importantly why people love to drink coffee in Starbucks. All over the world... The Coffee in Starbucks is more tasty? I drink a lot Starbucks Coffee, but nothing very special compared with other coffee...
I love coffee, because I, um, think it tastes good? But personally, I think most of Starbuck's coffees are disgustingly over-roasted and I have **absolutely** no idea why anyone with a choice in the matter drinks it at all, much less "loves" it...
It seems that you are into this new wave underroasted coffee fad. Blue Bottle is a few blocks from me and I've only been once, when somebody took me there. I won't be back.
No. The occasional espresso or after-dinner coffee in a French restaurant aside, I'm just "still" into the traditional brown roast I grew up around (starting in the mid 60s) that, at least until Starbucks started infesting every corner of the country, was the norm here in NYC and pretty much the rest of the East Coast. (Darker roasts were apparently more the norm on the West Coast, though from what I've gathered, not as dark as Starbucks "blowtorch-charred" versions..)
As for "Blue Bottle", maybe I should be ashamed to admit it here on Chowhound, but while the name rings a very vague bell, I actually don't even know what it is. (Is it/are they mostly an importer/roaster, or some sort of prepared coffee chain like Starbucks?) While I do like reasonably freshly roasted coffee (and have been buying it since long before Starbucks showed its face here), I'm generally on the "old school" side and (partly because I'm never looking for a convenient place to plug in a laptop and start doing office work in public places) tend to shun trendy new "purveyors" of coffee on general principle. (And while I'll concede that my prejudice might possibly work to my experiential detriment, it's a risk I'm willing to take.<lol, sigh>)
BB is a San Francisco, now Oakland, roaster which has popularized a "new wave" (or whatever they call it) experience for millenials. I think it's just a SF Bay Rea brand, but I suppose it's equivalent in Portland would be Stumptown.
I apologize for making an assumption. I'm old school myself, and think Graffeo the best in San Francisco. I've never thought of Starbucks as especially overroasted, however. Peets had a reputation for that. I don't go to either often enough to have an opinion on that, however.
In other words, what goes around, comes around.<lol> Partly via those insidiously over-sweetened "coffee beverages" they first popularized, Starbucks made dark roasts far too ubiquitous on the East Coast (as far as some of us are concerned, anyway) and now Blue Bottle is apparently trying to do the reverse in your neck of the woods.<g> Your comment actually kind of makes me want to try Blue Bottle at least once, just to see if for myself how light is "too light" for someone who doesn't think Starbuck's is over-roasted.;) I'll have to see if we have one (or more) here in NYC...
There's a blue bottle near bryant park. Their cold brew is excellent, but somehow their "new orleans" cold brew coffee became very popular which is sweetened and has chicory and cream (I really really disliked it)
Their regular drip coffee of the day is always a mild roast. Slightly obnoxious that if you want milk in your coffee they don't have it out for customers you have to ask when ordering
Thanks. I'm not a fan of cold-brew coffee generally, but the next time I'm in that area, I"ll give their regular drip a shot (no "pun" intended<g>.) As for the milk issue, if I can't get half & half (which I only use sometimes anyway), I actually prefer it black, so that's not a big deal. ;)
There's also a location at rockafeller center and the original on w15th st by the highline and chelsea market. Just ask for your milk when you order (or maybe the other locations do have it out?)
I actually really liked their espresso, it's very smooth with a nice crema to it- but i think it was also just shy of $4 for a double espresso which seemed rediculous even for nyc
Starbucks makes many different level roasts. I like an occasional light roast, but I think the current light roast snobbery is pure pretense and has little to do with taste. This fad has also been promulgated by middling "artisanal" roasters who prefer the lower risk/expense of the lighter roasts. No thanks. I'll take the flavor of the oils extracted in a city roast over whatever the diet was of the goat who ate and then pooped out my coffee beans. I think the folks in Italy, where I grew to love coffee, would agree. You'd be hard pressed to find a light roast, or a bad cup of Joe, in Lucca. I don't need to to taste every aspect of the soil in a particular mirco-climate of Uganda in order to enjoy my coffee. I'd rather take good beans from a professional roaster and then make the coffee in a good coffee maker or espresso machine with quality water.
Then until about 15 years ago, you certainly must've been unhappy drinking coffee pretty much anywhere on the East Coast except Italian or French restaurants, since what most people call "light" roasts were the norm here until Starbucks and Co started showing up on every street corner and mall nationwide, making darker roasts the latest Thing.
As for finding light roasts in Italy, of course not. But then you'd be hard-pressed to find good drip coffee generally in Italy, just as finding good espresso outside of Italy is no small feat (the US recent "barista explosion" notwithstanding.) You also won't typically find 100% arabica coffee in Italy (except as a "specialty" item.) But no one in their right mind (except maybe Italians unfamiliar with anything but Italian coffee - not exactly a unbiased crowd in general where food is concerned<lol>) would ever suggest that robusta is "generally superior" to arabica except for espresso. It is great, even ideal, for that (generally better than arabica, in fact) and if you like a strong basic coffee flavor without much nuance, you can't beat a darker-roasted good-quality robusta even made by the drip method. But not everyone does, or ever has. And I'm not talking about minor differences in so-called terroir here, but the significant differences in acidity, body and aroma among beans (generally more noticeable in arabicas than robustas) grown in different parts of the world that have been recognized by coffee drinkers for centuries.
not only this, but also other products like Hershey chocolate, turkey, white meat vs. dark, homogenized vs. UHT milk, jelly, etc ... plenty of local shinny stars which would not even get the least traveled globetrotter to put his shades on.
it's trendy, hip, expensive, very well marketed and designed for mass consumption, but not world good taste.
so you said it, "nothing very special compared with other coffee ... All over the world".
see how starbucks fares in other countries and even continents, with either no growth or no profit at all.
Hey, I don't go lumping white meat turkey in with Starbuck's coffee!<lol> And for what it's worth homogenization and UHT pasteurization are unrelated, I assume you meant "(ordinarily) pasteurized" vs "ultra-pasteurized? Do NOT get me started about UHT. It's gotten to the point where literally the only place I can find non-UHT heavy cream anymore is Trader Joe's (the non-organic version, ironically enough, or so it seems to me) and the occasional specialty store (where for now anyway, at least it's not exorbitantly expensive, though I do have to buy it by the half-gallon which needless to say doesn't happen that often since the shelf-life **is** relatively short!<sigh>)
The situation is changing as free wifi becomes more available everywhere, but Starbucks offers free wifi everywhere, and when traveling, that means a lot.
I love coffee. Asking why people love coffee is sort of like asking why people love chocolate.
We usually hit Starbucks when we are away from home because it is consistent and easy to find. I have tried a number of the local coffee places and had really mixed results. Coffee that tastes like water served by someone so stoned they could barely assemble a latte. Rude staff and nasty coffee. Weak coffee overloaded with syrup. These are some of the things I have run into at local coffee places where I live. So Starbucks is a serious improvement. I have had decent coffee at non chain places when we have traveled but where I live, most of the indie places are horrible.
Why do people love to drink coffee? Poets have been writing about that for hundreds of years. Flavor, aroma, warmth, the companionability of the coffee house, and...the caffeine. I do not ordinarily drink caffeinated tea or coffee, for health reasons, and when I do, man, can I tell the difference. It makes me feel as if all my broken-up parts are coming together and getting re-glued into one integrated structure.
I love coffee too. Sometimes the smell of it is enough to energize me. I know this probably ain't good as it's a kind of addiction, but yet i just love it.
Note: I posted this originally in coffeegeek to answer the question: "what is coffee supposed to taste like?" But I now realize I was actually closer to answering the question: "why?"
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Although the following description is just my personal experience, I'm betting it applies to more than a few of my fellow coffee drinkers out there. I will therefore don the mantle of absolute certainty and loudly proclaim:
THIS IS WHAT WE CRAVE WHEN WE DRINK COFFEE:
Prior to brewing, coffee taste cravings influence our nervous system and cannot be eliminated from the final mix post-tasting. At this stage, flavors and tactile sensations are particularly indistinguishable from other situational criteria, much as a dog smells locational data, seeing with its nose as if scents were visible. The coffee tastes of breakfast predominate in the morning, whereas in the evening there are generally post-meal resolution tastes, yet both share elements of sweetness, robustness, and satisfying richness or clarity, depending on your leaning. For the morning drinker, these recalled sensations are magnified by caffeine addiction to include chocolate addiction, the acute absence of caramel and roasted richness impelling the drinker to engage the grinding mechanism and begin the brew cycle lest they die alone and unloved. The sound of the grinder triggers an increasing awareness of roasted nutty flavors wafting from newly crushed beans. The onset of hot, steaming water (concentrating on darker roasts now) elicits sympathetic taste sensations of dark, rich cocoa-laden goodness now competing with nutty roasty smells until first actual tasting is accomplished. With the sensory expectations now maxed-out, the first sip often disappoints this sea of anticipation; but the agile brain quickly recalibrates, whereupon the second sip announces complexity in the form of dark chocolatey roasted bass notes surrounding fruity honey-like/wine-like/baked fruit pie sour/sweet flakey piecrust liquid dreams until the final sips accentuate the dark intensity but maxing out the richness (we're obviously leaving the paper-filtered camp behind on this one), and the sight of the empty cup will leave one with a satisfying memory of that richness until the next morning, when the absence of same begins the cycle anew.
I don't think it's that Starbucks' coffee is better. It's that Starbucks is everywhere, so wherever you are you will have a consistent experience. Most people prefer consistency. There is always a risk to going to a one-of-a-kind place. Besides, it is just a matter of available seats. Because Starbucks has the most locations, they have the most seats. If everybody started looking for a coffee place which was not Starbucks, there wouldn't be any seats.
I like to find one-of-a-kind coffee shops myself, but sometimes they don't pass. It's a risk, but a small one.
I like to drink coffee because sometimes it's too early for whisky or cognac.
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