Of course, the majority of coffee drinkers have a cappuccino or latte every morning as their routine, but there are a few outliers who I’ve come across over the years and I thought you might like to hear a bit about them.
SOMETIMES DRINKERS
My Mother is one of these types of drinkers. They are the people who (I have no idea how) can go an entire week on just one coffee. They drink loads of tea but only one coffee. They enjoy the taste, and they love a good coffee when they do eventually have one, but they don’t need to have one to survive like the rest of us mortals.
REGULAR COFFEE (WITH ONLY 1 BUCKET OF SUGAR)
I love these guys! It’s like they got stuck as a kid-wanting-to-be-an-adult but not wanting to have to get used to the taste coffee. What do you do? Add sugar. And then add some more sugar until the taste of sugar kills the taste of everything else. There’s no point in getting just a meager whiff of sugar, you might as well go all the way. I have served someone who asked for 12 sugars – YES TWELVE!! – you can imagine how many times I repeated the order back. Eventually I got the customer to reduce the coffee down to six sugars, but I guess they just really liked the crunchy coffee-flavoured sugar at the bottom of the cup.
One lump or two? How about TWELVE
DECAFFEINATED PEOPLE
You would think these guys would be hard to convert since they are used to only drinking the left over dregs of some bad cafe. These were usually easier than you think. They wanted to drink coffee but they didn’t like the effect. So when I gave them real decaf, properly made from fresh and high quality decaf coffee beans, they were regulars.
I KNOW WHAT I WANT AND I WANT WHAT I WANT
No regular latte’s here. These people want a 22 second extraction with 1.5 shots in 8 oz of hot water with a dash of cold water added. Unfortunately, I now preside in this category myself but hey, if the shoe fits…
IMPATIENT COFFEE DRINKER
Is my coffee ready yet? I’ve been waiting for AGES (ie: 2 minutes). My response: Thankfully you know I’m not making you an instant coffee then.
HEMP/SPELT/QUINOA/WALNUT MILK DRINKERS
Thanks for finding yet more exciting ways to ruin the great taste of coffee.
Just because you can milk hemp seeds, doesn’t mean you should.
THE MCDONALD’S HIPSTER COFFEE AFICIONADO
Just because they call it “The Corner”, have muted their garish mustard yellow and serve you espresso with Quinoa salads and pulled pork sandwiches does not mean they aren’t still a Mcdonalds. And it certainly does not mean they make better coffee suddenly. You can keep trying to justify it all you like. But just because Ronald now sports a red beard, nose piercings, hoop earrings, has a tattoo sleeve and argues that his coffee is better than Starbucks, he is still a creepy, borderline-paedo clown that serves sub-par “specialty”(by name only- not quality) coffee. What’s next?
Secretly, that’s a Doppio Ristretto tucked into his shirt.
THE SCIENTIFIC COFFEE LOVER
Yes Coffee is part science. However, if you focus too much on weighing in 18.1g of coffee grinds at 300μ and water temperature set to 93.5C 4 second preinfusion with a ramp up to 6.7bar of pressure over 22 seconds and weighing the output to 36.2g with a 25% TDS yield then you’ve probably already lost sight of the magic of coffee ART. (If you don’t understand any of this language, you are probably safe!).
Then, in my opinion (again, it’s only my opinion) you have completely missed what coffee is all about. If I wanted to have a robot make my coffee I would have bought a Eversys e’Barista System super-automatic espresso machine. or go to McDonalds.
You have forgotten that exquisite coffee is a balance of art and chemistry. Because, a coffee without the flair that a creative barista contributes is tantamount to a 1990’s ringtone of Debussy’s Clair de Lune or pixel art of the Sistine Chapel.
Hey, I’m not a technophobe, I love gadgets and I’m a geek at heart. But there is a line, and when people cross it it makes my heart die a little.
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