Starbucks coffee is an affront to all things good about coffee
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I disagree. Apple (hardware) products are very, very well designed. Their phone works well as a phone. Their laptops work extremely well as laptops. Their music players shaped what we came to expect from a music player. Starbucks coffee isn't, as far as I can tell, actual coffee. It doesn't actually fulfil its basic purpose. I think people go for Apple because they like the design, the ecosystem, the simplicity (we can argue about this later) and the cache that comes with Apple products. I think people go for Starbucks because of laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice. There are also those who treat Starbucks as a caffeine delivery system: give me a bigun' and I'll plug 'er in and I'm good. Taste is not even part of the equation. This makes me sad.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Starbucks = Apple Overpriced and driven by fanboys
cheers,
Super
------------------------------------------ Too much of good is bad,mix some evil in it
super wrote:
Overpriced and driven by fanboysgirls
FTFY (in the case of Starbucks)
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
Personally I don't go into into Starbucks, Costa or any other coffee chain. I prefer to frequent local coffee shops where they use higher quality beans and take the time and effort to produce a drink that actually tastes of coffee. If you enjoy coffee then avoid all coffee chains and especially Starbucks.
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I disagree. Apple (hardware) products are very, very well designed. Their phone works well as a phone. Their laptops work extremely well as laptops. Their music players shaped what we came to expect from a music player. Starbucks coffee isn't, as far as I can tell, actual coffee. It doesn't actually fulfil its basic purpose. I think people go for Apple because they like the design, the ecosystem, the simplicity (we can argue about this later) and the cache that comes with Apple products. I think people go for Starbucks because of laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice. There are also those who treat Starbucks as a caffeine delivery system: give me a bigun' and I'll plug 'er in and I'm good. Taste is not even part of the equation. This makes me sad.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice
But isn't that how every human makes every decision, ever? I mean, I know I like to crow about how much research I did over my latest widget purchase, but I can guarantee you I didn't research absolutely every last granule of data available on widgets before I made my decision. Which means my decision was based largely out of ignorance and convenience.
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
I've been there only twice, coffee is a different thing in each country, in USA is big, soft, and like hot water with some residual coffee taste, in European northern countries (i.e. Denmark) coffee is not very tasty as it's done using the same coffee machines, but they are drinking it all day, continuously, in Brazil, Italy and Spain coffee is short, tasty and hot, usually people there take it after eating lunch and on afternoon meetings (i.e. meeting someone in a bar). Then Starbucks is a different thing: it is like adding plenty of things to coffee to get a softer taste and a big thing, I can take it just to taste something sweet, that reminds more something like a cake or a milkshake than a coffee itself... I don't think you can call it an affront, it is a chain company that supplies meals, like burger king, McDonalds... you know what is there, in this case Starbucks tries to sell their goods as a premium thing which, from my point of view it is not. The good thing on these meal chains is that if you have any allergy then you know exactly what to expect: i.e. years ago in Russia a girl that was doing the same travel than me saw a Starbucks and told me: "now I know a place I can eat in case of emergency as it will follow all the regulations as expected". It's the same when travelling with my wife, she has the celiac disease and those chains have specific products that, given it's simplicity and the mechanical way they make things you are safer than in most other places...
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Taste is not even part of the equation.
Surprisingly, this is designed in. Starbucks use reverse osmosis filters to remove all minerals (and impurities) from the local water, to make it all the same. And that badly affects the taste of coffee: Secret to perfect cup of coffee lies in the quality of the water researchers say - Telegraph[^] If you want coffee to taste good, you need a water high in magnesium!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
So - a subjective subject has an objective standard. I've heard the same sheit about who makes the best Pizza. But, let's look at this objectively - i.e., not about taste but about the wet-chemistry methodology used to produce coffee. You have the beans: Surface area will control the rate of various extractions, hence the grind is important to control the following: Soluble products: With few exceptions, hotter water extracts more quickly and in larger quantities than colder water. This is potentially both positive and negative, depending upon what you wish to extract from the medium. Conventional coffee wisdom is that boiling water is preferred - and except in pressurized espresso makers, that waters' at 100 C. Most minerals must be in an ionic form if one wishes to extract them with water. There's an effect (common ion effect) that could potentially inhibit the extraction of certain minerals if the extraction medium is already high in said mineral. Organically bound minerals, on the other hand, typically are non-ionic and not particularly soluble (e.g., iron in your blood, copper in lobster blood). There's also the possibility of chelation, further complicating the issue (and the effect of temperature), as it may increase the solubility of poorly soluble minerals (eg, most forms of Calcium). The (nauseating) Organic Product: These are basically extracted into the system because they're mobilized by the hot-water (not dissolved in it to any significant degree!). If you look up what is called a soxhlet extraction, you'll see the relationship (Wikipedia [^]has a neat animated image). Again, super-heated water will affect this rate. In the typical drip coffee maker, this is a one-pass event so the variation (based upon water temp and grind) will be much more pronounced. Bare in mind that none of the above even mentioned the degree of roasting (which would be a coffee specific modification to the processes). The roasting, however, causes a breakdown of many of the components (for the paranoid amongst us, like almost all thermal decomposition, it's free-radical chemistry). The partially oxidized oils may take on some partially ionic character, making them easier to extract (except they may bind more firmly to the substrate) - but they may also polymerize and become less soluble
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
Read most, not all, of the comments. I used to take my coffee the same way my mother did - 1 teaspoon of sugar and some milk (we didn't have cream). Drank it that way for close to 30 years. A couple years back, I dropped the milk and then the sugar... now, it is black. I will go to Starbucks as a last resort.. I prefer almost anything else (except McDonald's) I like the dark roast; the caffeine is a bonus, but I like the flavour of a heavy, dark roast. Coffee is my beverage of choice; I make it the way I like it, just as I would expect others to.
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Obviously I meant fast temporary storage :rolleyes:
cheers Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote:
laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice
But isn't that how every human makes every decision, ever? I mean, I know I like to crow about how much research I did over my latest widget purchase, but I can guarantee you I didn't research absolutely every last granule of data available on widgets before I made my decision. Which means my decision was based largely out of ignorance and convenience.
But if that widget gave you an electric shock every time you used it would you get another? Unless, of course, that was the only widget you could find and you needed one NOW, dammit! NOW!! That's how I see Starbucks. Taking advantage of my habit and shocking me in the process.
cheers Chris Maunder
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I drink my coffee at home in "turkish style". It means a tea spoon of milled coffee beans with hot water.:java: So a coffee pot costs me about 5 cent per pot. :cool:
Press F1 for help or google it. Greetings from Germany
How to make Turkish Coffee with detailed instructions[^] Sounds a little more than just milled coffee with hot water, unless you were being high-level in your explanation.
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
Don't care for Starbucks. I've got an old camp percolator that brews awesome coffee.
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
It's delicious. I like the peppermint latte that while it's not on the menu can be had for the asking year round. That said, I find it distasteful to pay that kind of money for coffee. Or wait in lines to get it.
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I disagree. Apple (hardware) products are very, very well designed. Their phone works well as a phone. Their laptops work extremely well as laptops. Their music players shaped what we came to expect from a music player. Starbucks coffee isn't, as far as I can tell, actual coffee. It doesn't actually fulfil its basic purpose. I think people go for Apple because they like the design, the ecosystem, the simplicity (we can argue about this later) and the cache that comes with Apple products. I think people go for Starbucks because of laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice. There are also those who treat Starbucks as a caffeine delivery system: give me a bigun' and I'll plug 'er in and I'm good. Taste is not even part of the equation. This makes me sad.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
cache
Cachet, actually. But I like your choice better. :) /ravi
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Chris Maunder wrote:
cache
Cachet, actually. But I like your choice better. :) /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
Are you accusing my iPhone's autocorrrect of being wrong?
cheers Chris Maunder
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Wrong on every imaginable count. Coffee:* Most stores, at least in the US, are company stores. For that reason they discard and replace unsold coffee on schedule, not when it's all sold or too nasty. Usually, however, it's sold out first.
- Dark roasted - although those admittedly nasty light roasts were made available for those who used that as an excuse not to buy coffee there
- They use more coffee to make their coffee - never watery - and, much as some like the element of surprise, no mystery about the quality=reliably high
- I haven't bought a fancy mixed coffee beverage in years (that wasn't alcoholic) there or anyplace else.
Environment:* Each Starbucks is different - usually with real furniture - the one nearest me has a fireplace. - and their business model is to encourage people to linger over their coffee - making it easy to study, use laptops, etc., with free WiFi and electrical connections
- Their planned niche is to make their place one of your comfort places - and there's nothing wrong with that
Social Consciousness:* Part Time employees, a great many of them, earn vacation time, sick time, medical benefits, college tuition, etc., which is rare, indeed, in the US for a chain (especially q.v., Walmart, McDonalds, etc.) - They were trend-setter in their coffee sourcing, getting the money directly into the hands of the growers when possible - and now it seems everyone's doing it
- Even their 'card' program - I don't have one, but apparently the changes reflect customer requests. A customer is now 'fully credited' for buying multiple items in a transaction, rather than 'per visit'. This would not be to my advantage, but it's clearly fairer.
Now, they don't sh^t as sweetly as the whip-cream that tops many a beverage, and have made mistakes, but when it comes down to it, they're a reasonably socially responsible company. And they, at least in the US, are the ones who really popularized the concept of drinking real coffee instead of the traditional swill that used to pass for coffee. Uh-Oh! There goes my CP account!
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The discussion is about he coffee, not the social responsibility or consistency. Consistently bad and catering to the lowest common denominator are awful things we need to avoid. Life is more exciting with a little inconsistency! Besides, at 5am in the morning I'd probably buy from someone using baby seals as seat cushions if the coffee was good enough. Sure, I'd feel _terrible later on, but the coffee would get me through those bad moments.
cheers Chris Maunder
_
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Taste is not even part of the equation.
Surprisingly, this is designed in. Starbucks use reverse osmosis filters to remove all minerals (and impurities) from the local water, to make it all the same. And that badly affects the taste of coffee: Secret to perfect cup of coffee lies in the quality of the water researchers say - Telegraph[^] If you want coffee to taste good, you need a water high in magnesium!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
OriginalGriff wrote:
If you want coffee to taste good, you need a water high in magnesium!
It also helps to not use over roasted beans that have no caffeine and an atrocious flavor.
Computers have been intelligent for a long time now. It just so happens that the program writers are about as effective as a room full of monkeys trying to crank out a copy of Hamlet. The interesting thing about software is it can not reproduce, until it can.
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I disagree. Apple (hardware) products are very, very well designed. Their phone works well as a phone. Their laptops work extremely well as laptops. Their music players shaped what we came to expect from a music player. Starbucks coffee isn't, as far as I can tell, actual coffee. It doesn't actually fulfil its basic purpose. I think people go for Apple because they like the design, the ecosystem, the simplicity (we can argue about this later) and the cache that comes with Apple products. I think people go for Starbucks because of laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice. There are also those who treat Starbucks as a caffeine delivery system: give me a bigun' and I'll plug 'er in and I'm good. Taste is not even part of the equation. This makes me sad.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
Their phone works well as a phone.
I know a few people who've had an iPhone that didn't work (even after returning it) :rolleyes:
Chris Maunder wrote:
Their music players shaped what we came to expect from a music player
I hope you don't mean iTunes. It's not only the worst music player in the world, it's easily one of the worst pieces of software in the world! I won't say Windows Media Player is much better (well, not anymore) though. If you're referring to iPod, I have an iPod Classic and I've come accustomed to it. Before this, many, many, many years ago, I had a Creative. Back then that was just so much better! Too bad they didn't come in 160GB (and neither does iPod anymore).
Chris Maunder wrote:
[...] ecosystem [...] the cache that comes with Apple products
You mean vendor lock-in. Really Apple is no better than other tech companies. You should know it's just software and software has bugs. They have bugs just like Microsoft, Linux, Google, Facebook, and what have you. True, their design is different from Microsoft (and others) and some like it (although personally I like the MS Phone better). Apple's different, but not necessarily better. It -is- a lot more expensive though. Many people buy Apple for status. I could now point you to many websites that show that people liked Android much better when they were told that it was the new iPhone. They even liked the "new" features! Or studies that show Apple fanboys are much less critical towards Apple than MS fanboys are towards MS. One study even showed that the part of the brain that's active when people practice their religion is also used when Apple fanboys talk about Apple. But one can question the validity of such studies. I'm pretty sure there's at least a bit of truth in them though.
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Regards, Sander
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I disagree. Apple (hardware) products are very, very well designed. Their phone works well as a phone. Their laptops work extremely well as laptops. Their music players shaped what we came to expect from a music player. Starbucks coffee isn't, as far as I can tell, actual coffee. It doesn't actually fulfil its basic purpose. I think people go for Apple because they like the design, the ecosystem, the simplicity (we can argue about this later) and the cache that comes with Apple products. I think people go for Starbucks because of laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice. There are also those who treat Starbucks as a caffeine delivery system: give me a bigun' and I'll plug 'er in and I'm good. Taste is not even part of the equation. This makes me sad.
cheers Chris Maunder
Whether Apple products are well designed or not, people buy it for the coolness factor. Same with Starbucks, you've gotta get your coffee from Starbucks or else risk looking cheap.
Regards, Nish
Website: www.voidnish.com Blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
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I disagree. Apple (hardware) products are very, very well designed. Their phone works well as a phone. Their laptops work extremely well as laptops. Their music players shaped what we came to expect from a music player. Starbucks coffee isn't, as far as I can tell, actual coffee. It doesn't actually fulfil its basic purpose. I think people go for Apple because they like the design, the ecosystem, the simplicity (we can argue about this later) and the cache that comes with Apple products. I think people go for Starbucks because of laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice. There are also those who treat Starbucks as a caffeine delivery system: give me a bigun' and I'll plug 'er in and I'm good. Taste is not even part of the equation. This makes me sad.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
I think people go for Apple because they like the design, the ecosystem, the simplicity (we can argue about this later) and the cache that comes with Apple products. I think people go for Starbucks because of laziness, ignorance, convenience, or because there's no other choice.
I'd make the argument that people flock to Apple for those exact same reasons: Their products are sold on the premise that they "just work", and nobody wants to give themselves the trouble to learn to use the products offered by their competitors (or they just gave up on them). How is that *not* laziness, ignorance and convenience...
