Coffee snobs are everywhere
September 21, 2008
I like coffee. Just strong, black coffee. But, what I don’t like about coffee are the coffee snobs who know everything there is to know about the bean and figure that if you don’t also, you have no business drinking the black gold.
Phooey! Why can’t I just appreciate the smell, the warm goodness flowing down my throat, the atmosphere of an old coffee house without spoiling the romance that is contained in the unknown, the mystique of the bean? I don’t really want to know how it is grown, harvested, roasted, brewed, etc. Knowing that makes it real, familiar. I want a magical, mysterious relationship with my cup of coffee.
So, all you Joe haters who think that we’re not “real coffee people” because we enjoy a good cup of coffee while talking about things other than coffee…. phhhttttttttttttt!
Yeah, real mature, Joe.
Who cares. When you’re not a snob, you don’t have to act like one.
PS Guy, still waiting on the coffee link.. please tell me I don’t have to be a snob to get in 
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5 Responses to “Coffee snobs are everywhere”
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What you’re advocating for is blissful ignorance — and the refusal to learn anything about what’s behind your own personal likes or dislikes. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. But I would hardly consider intentional ignorance a virtue.
Sounds like you’re too caught up on the people and not caught up enough on the coffee itself.
@Plain Jane Perhaps… perhaps people are really the only thing that eventually matters.. coffee is like money.. if you don’t make it to give people more comfort or pleasure, it really has no value. Eventually, it is always about people. Or perhaps I am just being willfully ignorant… hang on, gotta get another cup of coffee and think deeper about this.
Coffee is not at all like money — that presumes that there’s a universal, interchangeable value to it, i.e., “your dollar is worth as much as my dollar.”
In the 20th century, food producers tried to convince us that a tomato was a tomato. But our grandmothers would never recognize what they sell in the stores today as tomatoes they knew. Why?
When consumers aren’t discriminating and presume one is just like the other, then producers have no incentive to make a better product. They cannot profit on quality. So instead they seek profits exclusively by cutting corners - using inferior ingredients, finding factory automated ways to bring production costs down, finding ways to use cheaper and less skilled labor, etc.
This is how we ended up with oranges that are shipped green and dyed orange for the store shelves. This is how we ended up with truck-ripened tomatoes. This is how we ended up with factory farmed chickens that are injected with anti-biotics so that they can survive all the diseases they are exposed to while cramped in factory farms.
No, coffee is not like money. Otherwise your coffee would be just as good and interchangeable with whatever generic sawdust in a can goes for $3/lb on the supermarket shelves.
@Plain Joan Oh, I just meant coffee is like money in that: a) you can’t take it with you so enjoy it while you are alive and b) unless you spread it around to other human beings, it has no value.
Having eaten only garden-grown tomatoes growing up, though, I know what you mean!
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