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Coffee snobs are leagues ahead in terms of snobbery of any other snobbery I know. And I am from a wine heavy culture, so born and raised in snobbery.

And your comment highlights everything that can be irritating about coffee enthusiasts. Every paragraph is quote-worthy. Almost climactic.

I don't know what has triggered such an elite-like culture in coffee but it never ceases to amaze/amuse.

It's pure boredom.

Compare it to BBQ culture. In simpler times, one would have a cheap metal grill and throw some raw meat on it. By the time it almost turns black, you'd eat it.

Now people have a design baking skirt, a machine that can grill 50 things at once, temperature management, a slow cook schedule lasting days, hipster recipes for the sauce, and this doesn't even begin to describe what is now a "science".

Back to coffee, the standard stuff is fine. Most machines at work now grind beans at the spot and mixes it under high pressure. It's much better compared to the work coffee from decades ago where you could see the bottom of the cup.

The only meaningful difference with high-end coffee is that those have a softer, smoother taste. Less bitter. That's it. Yet you'd only notice if you pay attention, drink your coffee strong, with no milk, and very little or no sugar.

To mess with me, my g/f regularly switches beans in our machine at home, and won't tell me that she did. Unknowingly, I was exposed to many types of beans. I did not notice any change whatsoever.

Why not? Because I don't pay attention to coffee when I drink it. I don't analyze it, I just drink it.

One time she did directly ask: how's the coffee? I asked why...did you change it? Yes. As I had already drank it and didn't notice a difference, I made up a reply: does seem to taste a little bit better.

"Well, they're the cheap ones".

Ok then. Feeling like an idiot, I then started to pay attention and actually analyze the taste, which is something a normal person doesn't do. I can now tell the beans apart consistently, without prior knowledge. But only by actively focusing on it.

The only detectable change is softness. The problem is, now you're aware of it, and internally associate it as superior. And this is how new coffee snobs are born.

>The only meaningful difference with high-end coffee is that those have a softer, smoother taste. Less bitter. That's it.

respectfully disagree, and i'm not even a coffee snob -- just a life long addict who doesn't analyze, just drinks.

Wine tastes like shit to me, but i'd never be so sure that my interpretation of it was correct that i'd try to explain why wine snobs exist. I understand there all wines have nuances that I may miss as someone who is inexperienced with wine and without a preference towards it.

Coffee , more so than most other plant products, has a wide variety of tastes. How could it not? It's a plant grown in varied areas with varied problems, varied soils, and then roasted or treated in varied manners.

We disagree, I understand I won't convince here, but I can confess my own experience : coffee is a spectrum of flavors , and not everyone has the tongue (or time) to notice -- but to dismiss it as 'pure boredom' is something I absolutely disagree with.

You don't need a 12kUSD espresso rig to notice that there are more than two taste profiles in the world of coffee.

No. there's only two coffee tastes: hard and soft.

Relax, I was intentionally simplifying. I am fine with people deeply exploring every nuance of every coffee, the only real challenge and pushback I have is that much of it is learned.

People think coffee at work (or any other "regular" coffee) is bad because somebody else said it. Not because they discovered this on their own. Likewise, discovering "better" coffee is not having superior taste buds, this too is largely acquired knowledge and taste.

I'd take this even further to say that the entire categories of coffee, wine, and beer are learned. If you'd take anybody from an uncontacted tribe and let them drink any of it, they'll think you're trying to poison them. It's not natural to our taste buds, and instinctively rejected. You actively need to be told and learned that all this stuff is actually very good, you just don't understand it yet.

If it's learned, it's malleable.

I don't agree with this; I don't consider myself of a coffee snob, but I do generally buy what I think are 'high end' coffees, because I buy fair trade coffee and that's basically what you get.

There is so much variety between types of coffees, and even preparation methods (we mainly use french press and aeropress, but the grind size, brew time, water temperature, and of course the amount of grind, all make enough of a difference that the same beans can give different flavours)

And yes of course I like the flavour of coffee, but mainly drink it for the ritual and the increased alertness in the mornings. There's something so satisfying about a good cup though; again, I don't get science-y about it and measure things accurately, just throw the water in the kettle, and mix it with a few scoops of coffee in the french press sometime after it boils.

But sometimes a cup is just perfection, tones of chocolate, smoke, warmth, boldness. And sometimes the cup is just meh. Then when I'm at a hotel, it's almost painful trying to choke down whatever passes for coffee in their lobbies.

I'd say it's not as much better or worse just because it was learned to be better or worse; it's more like comparing things you know with each other.

Say you taste something with a very generic taste that you can't really describe other than 'brown with a bit of a toasty taste', then if taste something else that makes you have a much more descriptive or complicated taste and you also like that new taste, you now have something to compare against.

This has nothing to do with coffee per se or 'better vs worse', just with what you taste and if you want to explore it.

The same goes for details within a taste. A raw potato tastes different from a cooked potato, and the texture of that same cooked potato but mashed makes you experience it differently as well. If you fry that same potato, now it's different again. It doesn't really change the potato itself into something else (like changing it into a carrot or something silly like that), but it does change what you experience when eating it.

> By the time it almost turns black, you'd eat it

No thanks. Not 20 years ago and not now.

> the standard stuff is fine.

For some people maybe. There is no universal truth. Most people 'make due' and don't really form an opinion about anything. (yet engage in discussion anyway)

> I don't pay attention to coffee when I drink it.

So you have no stake in this. Why did you bother to write about it anyway?

Are you the type of person that takes a clearly juicy/humorous/exaggerated post and dissects and fact-checks every single part of it? To take it all literally?

It was a light stab at coffee snobs.

I find it weird that there are two kinds of snobbery for goods. (Harmless snobbery - de gustibus non disputandum est).

Coffee, wine and whisky lovers adore the rarest and most refined, and insist the everyday stuff is vile. But lovers of crime novels, science fiction and anime adore the widest range, and insist that the most obscure trash contains treasure. I've never met a wine lover who would rave about obscure objectively-bad wines, or a sci-fi fan who will only read the most perfect works. I don't know quite what the difference is - consumability? Physical flavour?

I'm all for letting people enjoy what they enjoy. Personally I wouldn't want my palate to become so refined it became a hassle.

You're probably reading in to it too much. I wrote about 3 personal experiences, 1 generalisation and 1 thing about tea in there, and a joke about coffee snobbery making your life harder.

I'd compare wine snobbery to the coffee snobbery that is about beans that have to be eaten by a cat and pooped out to be "good". I think those are illegal in most countries anyway, but that's about the same level of nonsense as a 20+ year old bottle of alcohol.

> I'd compare wine snobbery to the coffee snobbery that is about beans that have to be eaten by a cat and pooped out to be "good".

That is a profoundly unfair comparison, but ok.

> as soon as you know the taste of real coffee

De gustibus non disputandum est. I am one of those who tasted "real coffee". I read books about "real coffee", I bought equipment, I tried this and that, I went to coffee shops with stellar reviews (I live in NYC). I just apparently don't like what aficionados rave about. Instead, I used to love the ordinary Peet's coffee that I could buy in my office building. They don't sell it anymore, and I switched jobs anyway. Now I'm fine with Starbucks. I simply drink the coffee for the caffeine and not the taste. I guess 90% of the people do the same.

> I am one of those who tasted "real coffee".

I don't think those words mean the same thing to us. There is no "official" real coffee or what someone else can decide is the best coffee for you. That'd be like someone deciding for you that apple juice is the only real juice. It's about finding something that interests you and has properties you value.

> I simply drink the coffee for the caffeine and not the taste.

So you don't have much of a stake or (refined) opinion but you felt it necessary to tell everyone how much you don't care?

> to paper coffee pads

They're plastic, actually, but the other ones you mention are worse.

> we have things like infusions (ginger, mint, fruits, but also Rooibos) that doesn't really "do" anything but definitely make for a tasty hydrating drink.

Rooibos, for certain, 'does' a lot. It lowers your blood pressure. You can use it as a downer though it might be unnecessary if you don't use caffeine otherwise.