Coffee

capulus non carborundum Em!

I've been holding off commenting on this thread as I find coffee in UK coffee houses to be indescribably vile.  You might like to look away now...

The first time I ever went into a Staryucks I was in such disbelief at the warm, dirty water they served I actually went into another one the next day, thinking I'd got the work experience child or something...only to discover that, yes, they do, indeed, pass that dirty brown stuff off as coffee. The whole place stinks of old, boiled indeterminable...um.. stuff and I avoid the place like the plague.

As to the other two main chains - it actually depends on who makes it. If the water is boiling it burns the coffee and makes it unpleasant. I used to like Costa, but they changed their beans 2 or 3 years ago and now it just tastes insipid. Also, those wonky, off-centred saucers make it impossible not to spill some, which is just annoying. 

Nero is bearable if they make it properly (see above!)

And dear Baristas (or whatever you're calling yourselves today) an Americano is coffee without milk. Please stop asking if I want milk. If I wanted milk I would ask for a cappuccino or flat white or one of those other millions of things that are all, let's face it, just simply coffee with milk. Thank you. *Squidgy squeeze.*

Foyles. I do not want to pay £3 for a coffee, only to find a large chunk of china missing from the side of my cup and then have you merely pour the contents into another cup, thank you very much. Make another one you lazy gi so-and-sos. Who knows where that chunk of china ended up, but if I wanted a pottery sandwich I'd simply pop down to Subway. 

At home it's either dark blue capsule (Kazaar, strength 10) Nespresso (3-4 a day - take to work as Gold Blend makes me hea...) or one of those old fashioned Italian screw-together coffee makers that go on the stove top.

I'm wracking my brains as to where you can buy a decent cup of coffee in the UK and I'm struggling - it's all crap this side of Barcelona to be honest.

Well. You asked.  

You've got to try the Monmouth coffee experience. Then you'll change the last sentences

Often just one, but I make it strong. I consider it a community service: I don't just drink coffee because I enjoy the taste, although I do enjoy the taste. I drink it so that others may live.

What? Where? How? Map please!
Ah. So is it warm milk they tip into that teeny jug the 90% of times they ask if I would like milk and then do that teenage thing of not bothering to listen to my reply?  Surely on that looooooooong list on the wall behind them there is an option for coffee with cold milk? If not, couldn't you simply ask for Americano with cold milk if you're that weird  ahem...way inclined? I don't want the stuff anywhere near me. It was the one good thing Maggie did for this country, stopping the agonising, sloooow drip-drip of milky torture of many young, innocent children by sadistic primary educators.

Anyway. All this is immaterial. Americano is a long, black coffee. Fact. 

(Looking fine there as Bareeeeeeeesta Burly, if I may say so.)

Funnily enough, yesterday, I opened a fresh packet of ground coffee and that smell for me is right up there with new mown grass and seaside as a favourite smell. It takes me back to a beautiful coffee shop in Mahon, Menorca where I spent a happy few hours watching the world go by whilst it pi**ed down with rain thus spoiling the rest of the holiday!

Wow, already feel like an idiot when I walk not a coffee shop, some of the things I see being drunk look like desserts and have no idea what half the coffee’s are already, this would leave me like a rabbit in lamplight frozen in an alternate universe.

Is it? As someone who never had any great interest in coffee and suddenly found that if you ask for a coffee after a meal it's like the waiter has switched to another language I often find that I'm offered an americano with milk as the closest they can get to a plain ordinary simple coffee.

Yes!

They are wrong. 

www.primermagazine.com/2013/live/the-americano-your-new-go-to-coffee-order


If you want to ask for an Americano with milk that's fine. They shouldn't be offering you one as an Americano is a long black coffee. 

I'm going to invent another name for an Americano with milk. Um. Let's see. I think 'cappuccino' has a certain ring to it....

I hereby REJECT your Cappuccino. I do not require unnecessary froth on top of my coffee. Furthermore I require cold unfrothed milk to cool down my Americano, which I like to start off with very hot.  

I confess I'm also among those who order "An Americano with milk" since plan regular black coffee seems to have been abolished in the modern coffee shops with all their fancy names.

Cappuccino is, as Emily and Burly say, something different with a lot of froth, Flat White something with less froth but still frothy and Latte has a completely different different milk:coffee ratio than "black coffee with a bit of milk in it".