I mean, like 90 percent of the coffee that's consumed is bad coffee.
Yeah.
I don't really love it which is the nice way of saying I hate it.
Yeah, it's bitter. Okay, bad.
So my favorite cup of coffee is from the street cart right outside of my apartment.
I mean, we all have our go-to spots for a good cup of coffee,
whether it's because it's cheapest,
fastest or we just like that taste the best.
My go-to spot for coffee is a independent place with $4 cold brew.
Probably, Starbucks just because I live in
New York and there's one on almost every block.
Starbucks, closest to the office.
Starbucks.
Opinions aside, it got me wondering,
what makes an objectively good cup of coffee?
Objectively speaking, a good cup of coffee is sourced well,
roasted well, and has a balanced flavor.
A bad cup of coffee is the opposite,
it's the opposite of everything I just said, right?
The majority of people that drink coffee drink bad coffee.
The percentage of people that drink good coffee is under 10 percent.
That's because Americans never really drank good coffee in the first place.
Oh boy.
So we are doing a taste test,
and there are three levels of quality which are low, medium, and high.
We are basically going to smell the grounds,
drink the coffee, and then compare.
Let's see who can pick out the good coffee and who's been conditioned to like bad coffee.
Wow. That's like someone put a piece of charcoal in water and said,
"Here, there you go."
So this one just tastes acrid and bitter and burnt.
It's very watery. It doesn't go down smooth,
it's a sharp taste.
I don't want to finish drinking this small amount,
let alone a whole cup.
It's not like drowned out with milk and sugar.
I can't. That tastes worse, and worse, and worse.
Did I like that at one point?
Ultimately, while most people think coffee is subjective, it is not.
It either is or it isn't.
Like restaurants in New York City have a set grading system,
coffee has its own grading system as well.
All coffee is graded by
certified Q-Graders who are certified by the Coffee Quality Institute.
They had to take the equivalent of the bar exam for coffee,
and analyze coffee through a process called cupping.
It is based on a number of components.
So those components are all graded,
and if coffee scores an 80 or above,
it is considered a specialty-grade coffee.
There's a line that happens at specialty,
and anything that falls below it,
it's so bad, right?
It tastes so bad.
The majority of franchises serve below specialty-grade coffee.
Yeah, that one's a lot better, it's about less acidic and it does
not taste like what I'd imagine garbage juice to taste like.
This one tastes a little more watered down, I think.
I hate it less.
The aftertaste's nice.
It's definitely way better than that was.
This is okay.
For right now, people are drinking terrible coffee,
and they have absolutely no idea how bad it is.
It has a lot to do with marketing.
One hundred percent Arabica beans sounds like it's promising a really good cup of coffee,
when really it's just promising not to be the absolute worst.
The language that people use.
Heavy words, right? Like bold and dark.
Well, who's using those words?
It's not us. We're not using those words.
We become so accustomed to this language that we don't know anything else.
Until the Boston Tea Party in 1773,
America was a tea country.
But during the American Revolution,
a large number of Americans switched to coffee because tea had become unpatriotic.
Fast forward to the 1900s when it really started to become popular.
Instant coffee started making the rounds during World War One.
American soldiers were drinking the coffee daily to
increase mental awareness and mobility during battle,
and they needed something to make quickly in the field.
This instant fix became addicting,
and when soldiers went home they wanted something familiar and tasty.
But as we all know,
instant coffee isn't exactly high-quality coffee.
Honey, your coffee just doesn't taste any good.
If I tell you that this is the delicious cup of coffee and you taste it,
you don't know any better than it's a delicious cup of coffee.
You're going to go, "Oh, interesting."
But then you have a feeling to it, right,
and so we become accustomed to the warmth of it,
to the caffeine high that we get from it.
We can become conditioned in that.
So this wave of instant coffee that entered the homes of millions
across America was known as the first wave of coffee.
The second wave of coffee came with the creation of Starbucks coffee in 1971.
They introduced fresh-roasted coffee beans to
the mass public and started to change the public's expectations when it came to coffee.
According to today's standards,
Starbucks doesn't have the absolute best cup of coffee.
But at the time,
this was the best coffee that was accessible to the mass public.
Starbucks cemented America's coffee-drinking culture and paved the way for
the modern specialty coffee industry to exist
today which leads us to the third wave of coffee shops that are happening today.
Smaller independently-owned specialty coffee shops are on the rise.
From harvesting and roasting,
to the cup that's handed to you at the counter,
these shops and roasters are paying
special attention to the product that's being delivered.
This one tastes like a little bit of the acrid one,
little bit of the balanced one,
so maybe it's the Goldilocks one. I don't know.
Is this the same one as the first one? No.
This one tastes the most like water,
which means I like it the most.
I think this one tastes best.
Does that mean this is the right one?
Am I right? I am right. All right, that's awesome.
Lowest, middle, highest.
Second best, worst.
Best, medium, worst. Oh, I drink it all.
One, two, three.
Liking this one the most.
Wow, so I liked the best coffee.
What a sophisticated palate I have because all I drink is water.
This one's the best, this was the second best, this was the worst.
When people drink a cup of coffee,
they're not focusing on those components of the coffee.
They're focusing on whether or not they can actually drink the cup of coffee.
So what they do is they add milk,
and they add tons of sugar,
and they add all these other things to make it taste like
what they believe coffee is supposed to taste like.
From the wars to Starbucks,
we've been conditioned to believe that the vast majority of coffee is good,
but it's objectively not.
For me, I'm okay with that because street-cart coffee hits the spot.
But for others, it might not be the case
I hate coffee.
I think it's really bitter.
I hate the way it smells,
it's brown which is not appealing.
I don't know. I don't really care for caffeine or coffee or anything about this.
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