Do you have coffee breadth?
I meet a lot of people working in coffee who express frustration with how far consumers lag behind coffee professionals in their understanding and appreciation of good coffee. It seems to be a common barista lament.
I don’t believe this frustration is well founded or fair, for a number of reasons. For starters, I suspect that even the most dedicated coffee lover has limited opportunities to experience as broad a range of samples as fans of other beverages. To explore this idea a bit further, I’ve put together a very quick, very informal survey I’d like as many folks as possible (coffee pros and novices alike) to take…
I’ll share the results in a few days, once I’ve accumulated a good number of responses.
There are a lot of other interesting questions I could’ve included, but I wanted to keep this simple for me and easier for you. Much appreciation to anyone that helps spread links to this page beyond my 14 remaining dedicated readers.
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(The google docs iframe sort of messes up my page layout, but don’t let that stop you from adding any comments below).
Tags: beer, coffee, coffeegeeks, connoisseur gap, survey, wine
December 10th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
This strikes me as a “why don’t you love what I love” kind of problem. Bike geeks say the same thing about someone riding a Huffy. I could lament the general populace’s musical selections or lack of appreciation of flavors of Linux, but that hardly seems fair…they’re just into other things. That is why it’s good to know lots of diverse people - you know you can rely on person X to recommend the very best of thing Y! I know I can always ask you for a cafe protip when I’m in a new city. I know I can always ask my friend Chip for an excellent wine recommendation. Traci always has a good critical theory recommendation. Jon knows the good restaurants. Jolene knows the up-and-coming DIY clothing kids. Jenny can always point me to a new good DJ. I’m leaving far too many people out by cutting the list off here, but you know what I mean.
December 11th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
I used to work in coffee, now I bartend. It’s hard to know how many individual samples of these things I’ve had this year, I know it’s over 50 for coffee and wine, over 100 for beer. While I have been able to taste a lot of coffee this year, it’s been from a few key local sources- especially stumptown, who offers daily public cuppings and trips to san francisco, portland and new york. The general public is not exposed to this kind of diversity in coffee, it has to be sought out at great effort. For beer and wine though, most major cities have hundreds of beers and wines available every night of the week. There is simply no comparison. It will take decades before there is broad enough cultural change to where any meaningful portion of the population will know the different between central american and african coffees, or between washed and natural coffees the same way they know the difference between IPAs, stouts and pilsners.
December 15th, 2009 at 10:35 am
I wonder what the broad-leaf lettuce experts would have to say about my love of not-local grocery-store Romaine… or worse, Bagged Spring Mix!
Patience and Understanding, as cheesy-hug-each-other-all-the-time as it sounds, is the only way to “win” people over into specialty coffee. One can achieve this and still be a connoisseur of something. That’s why we’re the “coffee people,” like sdbrown said just before me, so “the uninformed masses” can ask us when they want an opinion about it. And we can ask “them” when we need to know about something they’re passionate about, whether it’s Nascar results or the latest Twilight episodes.
No one reacts well to unsolicited advice.
December 20th, 2009 at 11:27 am
It’s a tough world out there in coffee land. I’ve spent about a year trying to get to k now the ins and outs of coffee and that’s barely a sip of the cup. I challenge coffee lovers (beginners and experts) to just keep exploring. Sad is the taste bud that only gets instant coffee. :)
December 21st, 2009 at 1:23 am
Looks interesting. I’ll take the survey.
I do find it funny when coffee folks lament about those that aren’t as well educated on coffee.
Do computer programmers lament when their customers don’t understand C++ or brain surgeons when their patients don’t understand brain surgery?
Then why should a Barista lament when a customer doesn’t understand coffee?
January 14th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
Thanks for this great post. As for me, here in the Philippines, I am a die hard coffee enthusiast. But the only problem with us here is that sometimes, we don’t have enough coffee variants to appreciate to be able to experience the wide range of coffee knowledge even if we want to. Thanks to coffee blogs like this, we are able to enrich our knowledge on coffee.
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:08 pm
@Michael, it’s too bad you don’t get to enjoy enough coffee variants there. Have you tried looking at different coffee shops already? I know there are a lot of them there. Maybe you still have to explore more - go to places that you have never been… ask other people, maybe that will help
February 24th, 2010 at 12:48 am
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/022410/i-like-my-coffee-like-i-like-my-coffee.gif
March 3rd, 2010 at 8:36 am
Hey Tonx
What about the analysis of this survey. I’d love to see some graphs on how people answered!
greets
marco
March 21st, 2010 at 7:24 am
Milk is the future.
June 7th, 2010 at 8:29 am
One can only be a connoisseur in so many things over a lifetime, so it never hurts to keep an open mind when you run into somebody who is a connoisseur of, say, board games or, say, kitchen cookware. My general philosophy is to always try my hardest to be open to trying new things, regardless of personal bias and to not judge others by their level of knowledge.
Seek out the best of the best for yourself and enjoy sharing the knowledge with others - they won’t always share in your enthusiasm, but those who do will make it fulfilling. I collect scotches and wristwatches and I actually know very little about coffee…but I am actively trying out new bean varieties and different brewing techniques as I gain access to the appropriate resources.