Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Aches and Pains of Customer Coffee Transition

John says...

Most coffee and espresso served is the United States is bitter, stale, over-roasted, unflavorful dreck. In order to make this bitter, unflavorful swill palatable, you need to add sugar to it, but this presents a problem for the growing number of quality oriented shops.

Adding sugar to the latte, or God forbid a cappuccino or macchiatto upsets the flavor balance of the espresso and the drink. Each roaster logs many hours of sourcing the proper beans, blending, roasting and tasting in order to create an espresso that works wonderfully alone, with milk, or both. Tweaking the roast to pull out the proper amount of sweetness, or wonderfully flavored acidity, which becomes smooth and sweet in milk... these all become corrupted, and honestly become over-sweetened if marred with sugar. And this all goes back to the habitual pour and stir, as a defense mechanism of the bitter brew consumed at most caffe.

Taste, drink, enjoy the subtleties of flavor that dance across your tongue and linger quizzically in your mouth. Do not treat such fine brew as the commoner's beverage. Rejoice at the coffee splendor you are about to partake.

Honestly, it is an offense to everyone in the chain. So for the thousands of coffee shops that serve horrendous bitter swill or under-extracted, over-roasted, old and stale espresso; please tell your customers, "it isn't this bad everywhere."

Come. Taste. Enjoy.