The PC brigade vs Dunkin Donuts
- Thread starter gkmacca
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I don't understand how you can not drink coffee.
Bex hates coffee yet still drinks it occasionally (albeit destroyed with tonnes of milk & sugar). Sometimes you just need coffee.
Bex hates coffee yet still drinks it occasionally (albeit destroyed with tonnes of milk & sugar). Sometimes you just need coffee.
I've been to Starbucks a handful of times in my life. I've been to a few in Vancouver when friends or work colleagues would want to go. I'd be the only one not drinking coffee so out numbered.
I've always wondered if I was missing out Jon. One of my friends has a total dependence on coffee though. I'm better off in the long run I think. I make do with Tea or water in the office.
Yeah, g'wan.
Coffee done right is pretty easy to do, if you can spare 5 minutes to make it. It need not be super expensive either.
There are simple rules. Fucking it up for me is as infuriating as a place fucking up tea. There are only two ingredients, and one of them is water.
1) Use fresh beans. Beans very quickly go stale, they should be used within a month of roasting. A great single origin thats old is worse than a fresh mediocre bean.
2) Grind beans fresh. Ground beans go stale VERY quickly, so grind before you brew.
3) Have some consistency in your method. You need not be totally whacked out like me and weigh everything, but use a scoop, or something at the least so you can understand how much you are using. Use a timer.
Those rules make sense, regardless of whether you use pourover, french press, aeropress etc.etc.
If that all makes me a snob, thats cool. I've been doing a lot of freelance food writing recently and have come to embrace my snobbery even more. Starting to get free beans too 🙂 I spend very little time making it and its a nice ritual every day. I fucking love my coffee.
There are simple rules. Fucking it up for me is as infuriating as a place fucking up tea. There are only two ingredients, and one of them is water.
1) Use fresh beans. Beans very quickly go stale, they should be used within a month of roasting. A great single origin thats old is worse than a fresh mediocre bean.
2) Grind beans fresh. Ground beans go stale VERY quickly, so grind before you brew.
3) Have some consistency in your method. You need not be totally whacked out like me and weigh everything, but use a scoop, or something at the least so you can understand how much you are using. Use a timer.
Those rules make sense, regardless of whether you use pourover, french press, aeropress etc.etc.
If that all makes me a snob, thats cool. I've been doing a lot of freelance food writing recently and have come to embrace my snobbery even more. Starting to get free beans too 🙂 I spend very little time making it and its a nice ritual every day. I fucking love my coffee.
Italy makes some great espresso/espresso based drinks. But you can find equally as good stuff at any top end coffeeshop in the US, and indeed anywhere. There are hotspots where the culture of coffee is elevated and makes it more likely (Portland/Seattle) as well as hipster enclaves, but if you know what you are looking for, every major US city and a bunch of tiny ones have 3rd wave coffee shops doing great stuff.
You're more likely to find good coffee (i.e. brewed in a frenchpress or pourover etc.) outside of Italy. Some would argue that Japan is more influential here. I'd say that the US is probably THE hotspot for microroasting single estate coffee. But that's certain places. It doesn't mean that all of a sudden because some people are wise to good coffee that Dunkin donuts is going to be good. Italy has a higher floor and higher average quality of coffee. I think the US actually has a higher ceiling, but it has a way lower floor.
You're more likely able to do this better at home than in the vast majority of places as well, whereas espresso is impossible to do well at home unless you are willing to spend a crap ton of money.
You're more likely to find good coffee (i.e. brewed in a frenchpress or pourover etc.) outside of Italy. Some would argue that Japan is more influential here. I'd say that the US is probably THE hotspot for microroasting single estate coffee. But that's certain places. It doesn't mean that all of a sudden because some people are wise to good coffee that Dunkin donuts is going to be good. Italy has a higher floor and higher average quality of coffee. I think the US actually has a higher ceiling, but it has a way lower floor.
You're more likely able to do this better at home than in the vast majority of places as well, whereas espresso is impossible to do well at home unless you are willing to spend a crap ton of money.
That was the same in Japan - When one of the English teachers went back home for a visit they'd be expected to bring back boxes and boxes of Yorkshire tea (no other will do obviously) They became highly prized. That and condoms. Japanese condoms rather amusingly are fucking tiny and in my case just couldn't handle the job! 😛
So is the stereotype true then?
I suppose I'm lucky enough that I can find decent tea here, I just have to head into town to get it.
Well judging by condom size it certainly is. They are about half the size! It was a real problem for some of the Gaiijins there. I was forever getting mates to send me some out othewise it was a trip into central Tokyo to get them in. A mate of mine blamed a split Japanese condom on the birth of his daughter!
1.5 inches?
Nah.
I'm not that racist.
Never have and never will drink coffee.
Wasted living in Melbourne as apparently some of the best coffee in the world is sold here.
You can get really long queues for the coffee shop down the road from in East St Kilda.
I used to drink 5 cups of tea a day at home in Ireland and anytime I go back for a visit but never have it over here.
As for the crest issue, can't believe its gotten so much air time.
Wasted living in Melbourne as apparently some of the best coffee in the world is sold here.
You can get really long queues for the coffee shop down the road from in East St Kilda.
I used to drink 5 cups of tea a day at home in Ireland and anytime I go back for a visit but never have it over here.
As for the crest issue, can't believe its gotten so much air time.
'Cos it's shit and weak?.
And while we're on the subject of beverages - both coffee and wine are the Emperor's new clothes, you pay some con-artists an arm and leg for their products so you have to go with the "oooh isn't this so good much better than the shite them oiks drink". Fuckin' nazis.
You want Tea and Beer not dried poo nuggets and stomped grapes.
Wine has a collectors market associated with it, where there is little correlation to taste vs price, to a point.
There's some of that in the single estate coffee commodities market.
But, like anything, they are a craft. There's an understood way to prepare them correctly. It's not particularly complicated. You pay the same amount to make it shitty, or buy a shitty coffee, that you do to get a great coffee. Sometimes less. You pay a little more to get better beans, but not necessarily, and mostly its just knowing where to get beans that are freshly roasted.
There's definitely a price difference between Dunkin Donuts, or other mass produced coffee, and small batch brewed coffee made preperly, just like there's a price difference between Magners and a decent scrumpy, or budweiser vs a cask ale, or flowery orange pekoe assam and some 2 year old dust in a bag. It's not an invented difference. There are errors being made for the sake of production. Just like I can make a sausage egg and cheese sandwich that will shit on something you can buy at mcdonalds, and it's not because I'm a brilliant cook.
If you think those price differences aren't worth the additional taste, that's fine, but if you think you can't discern the difference between quality on that broad a scale, then you have fallen sway to some food related moral relativism, where everything tastes the same and nothing is better. And that's just wrong. And if you think that, then you're wrong. Yea, people go overboard, yes there's social status and identity bound up in this shit. But there's also some very basic chemistry.
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