You shouldn’t be worried about the results of a side by side quality vs “pedestrian” coffee. I’ve been doing that type of comparitive cupping with the public for years and it never, never fails. The difference is just so night and day. People pick it out of the lineup dead red. Their PREFERENCE might be for more traditional (read: stale) coffee tastes. But at least you can neutrally show the difference quality makes.

James H:

As always, thanks for the catalyst springboard. I’ve had my share of burst personal bubbles while putting a stellar coffee on the table versus stale coffees. I have to remind myself what a convoluted world we live in with coffee: so familiar with very, very good coffee that we chase wholesale after the great rare ones and forget the general public hasn’t even come close to awareness of the fairly good stuff yet.

Great post.

Another thought provoking post! I enjoy your “thinking out loud” because much of what you write echoes what we are thinking. Wonderful.

I’ve often found many of the Ethiopian coffees to be a great transitional coffee as they can contain darker, bolder elements such as chocolate, cocoa, or spice, and then also have distinctive fruity elements.

What I have observed is that coffees that have very distinct flavors, be it sweet spice, berry, chocolate, nut or fruit can really catch a customer, or coffee newbie’s, attention. Also, as I briefly mentioned above, it’s a safe bet to choose coffees that do have both typical flavors dark caramel, nut, chocolate, etc. and atypical flavors such as sweet spice, vanilla, berry, etc. I’ve found that sometimes coming right at them with an “in your face” coffee, like a bright Kenyan, or a super clean Costa Rican might be too much for them to absorb. But there are plenty who “get” it and who are enlightened when that first sip is bursting with mangoes and tangerines.

Keep the coffees clean, keep them flavorful, keep them fresh, and most of the populace will be astounded.

Ditto on the peppermill analogy.

True it’s scary, but we can’t forget why we truly believe in quality fresh roasted. If we truly hold to it tasting better we have to be willing to allow it to be put on the chopping block.

Hearing you guys talking about how the public will prefer Folgers to actual real coffee, is parallel to my problem of people preferring Sickly sweet sugary cupcakes vs. our fresh fruit, fresh flavoured stuff.

It’s a hard thing to ‘unteach’ childhood memories and what your expectations of particular foods are –there’s always an ‘archetype food’ in our heads. I think it’s a balancing act of whether we choose to fully break from the archetype and go for what we think is the ultimate, or compromise to reach a broader audience.

-b

The simple fact is that most people don’t know what they like in coffee. What seems basic to us (brew method, grind size, roast level etc) is revelatory to many people who have simple never imagined that these things affect what they taste in their cup.

When recommending individual coffees themselves we always run the risk of seeming patronising or just out out and out charlatan. Ultimately it is about getting a sense for your customer, and then giving them a choice that fits their specific relationship to coffee.

I think certain high quality coffees are lost on people. I took an amazing micro lot Colombian to the America recently which I consider to be one of the best coffees I’ve ever tasted. Most of my (non coffee geek) friends hated it, thinking it sour and over acidic.

People are on a journey. I have to accept that many people are going to prefer what seems like a ‘safe’ coffee to me, but perhaps after drinking that for a while they might be intrigued to be a bit more adventurous. Like the customers who have been buying the espresso blend for ages and love it, but want to try some single origin coffee that will less approachable.

We just need to be grown up enough to let people discover for themselves, and educate them where they are at, not where we want them to be.

Inspire in Breda did the same, but with an extra Douwe Egbert market leading coffee added. this gives people a better idea how good fresh quality coffee can taste.

it’s a whole lot of work to keep on doing this, but if we don’t bring the coffee to people, I don’t see how we can improve the overal coffee intake and appreciation for premium coffee.

June 22 we have our next Non Professional Barista jam with same type of coffee tasting. I’ll post an article with all our observations.

keep up the good work

An example, I presented a really good dry processed ethiopian coffee to my parents last christmas . They are generally open-minded about taste and flavour experiences, but high consumers of decent dark roasted off the shelf-coffee. The response I got was, “wow, this is a great coffee for dessert, it is so sweet and flavourful you actually don’t even need a dessert with this coffee”. But the next morning they still wanted the dark roasted stuff, as it tastes stronger and their palates wouldn’t enjoy the complexity of the ethiopian anyway.

To me their response tells me that we enter a dangerous zone if we dismiss anything but high grown, sweet and acetic, exclusive coffee as being bad, or using only bad descriptors since people actually like it. Trying to find occasions where and when they might prefer it is in my opinion a much more attractive way to introduce specialty coffee.

More expensive and exclusive does not generally mean better, in my opinion, but definitely more complex and interesting and often worth the extra cost. Still I am able to enjoy cheap stuff on its own merits, for sure. I, for instance, often prefer a mars bar to a piece of valhrona chocolate, and I don’t feel the least bad about it.