They are both black coffee. Is hand brewed coffee more advanced than American coffee?

A few days ago, I saw a picture on WeChat Moments, which depicted a chain of contempt among coffee drinkers: instant coffee drinkers look down on brewed coffee drinkers, thinking they are too pretentious. Brewed coffee drinkers look down on American coffee drinkers, thinking they are not good enough; American coffee drinkers look down on milk coffee drinkers, thinking they are not good at drinking; milk coffee drinkers look down on drip coffee drinkers, thinking they lack a sense of ritual; drip coffee drinkers look down on instant coffee drinkers, thinking they are too low-class. Let's not talk about whether this chain of contempt makes sense, let's just look at the types of coffee mentioned here.

Instant coffee may be one of the most familiar coffee categories. It can even be said that many Chinese people first got to know coffee from instant coffee. It was also my favorite when I was a student, but after professional study, from a health perspective, I recommend that you drink less. First of all, the variety and quality of instant coffee beans are relatively low. Secondly, in order to adjust the taste, many food additives are added, such as non-dairy creamer, flavors, etc., which are not good for our health.

Drip coffee is a very convenient form of portable coffee. It has gradually entered our lives with the rise of the boutique coffee culture. Its quality mainly depends on the quality of the coffee beans themselves, the level of the roaster, and the proper packaging and storage methods. Compared with freshly ground coffee, the biggest disadvantage is that it will lose some flavor, but if the brewing technique is proper, you can also get a good cup of coffee. It is a good choice for coffee lovers when traveling on business.

As for the fact that drinking milk coffee is despised, I personally think it is a cognitive misunderstanding. Of course, this is not everyone's problem, but a state of development of the coffee industry and changes in consumer awareness. The common point between milk coffee and American coffee is that the base of coffee is Espresso, which is what we often call Italian espresso. Italian espresso originated in Italy in the early 20th century. You can imagine that from the introduction of coffee to Europe in 1570 to the early 20th century, after more than 400 years of infiltration, coffee has become an indispensable part of European life. Almost everyone has the habit of drinking coffee. However, the traditional coffee brewing time is too long, which does not conform to the capitalists' business logic of "time is money". So an engineer named Bezerra invented the Italian coffee machine, which can extract a cup of coffee in thirty seconds. Perhaps due to the influence of the conditions of coffee planting, processing, transportation, storage, baking, etc. at the time, Italian coffee uses blended beans as raw materials, and this tradition has continued to this day. And most of the hand-brewed coffee we drink today uses single-origin coffee of better quality. To use an inappropriate analogy, both are beauties, but Italian commercial blended beans are made up or even have plastic surgery, while single origin coffee is naturally beautiful. So, which one would you choose?

In the content just now, we touched upon a very important knowledge point: the blending of coffee beans. The purpose of coffee bean blending is to create unlimited coffee flavors under limited conditions while reducing costs. To achieve this, the roaster needs to have a very deep foundation in coffee tasting, or have a super-powerful taster who knows how to roast as a partner. To put it bluntly, it is the relationship between a cook and a gourmet. A good gourmet may not be a good cook, but a good cook must be a gourmet. Since you are a cook, understanding the characteristics of the ingredients is a basic skill. For example, the biggest feature of Brazilian beans is balance, but Brazil is so large that each estate and each batch of coffee beans are different, not to mention the differences between so many tree species and processing methods. And these differences must be distinguished by the taster's nose and tongue, and recorded and expressed in a language or form that the roaster can understand. Therefore, tasting is a language used by coffee people to communicate. With the information of the beans combined with the needs of the customer or specific uses, the roaster will start blending and roasting the beans. Some friends may ask here, what is different uses. In fact, it refers to uses other than commercial operations. For example, daily practice, playing games and so on.

There are usually two ways to blend coffee beans, raw blend and roasted blend. Raw blend refers to mixing coffee beans from different production areas and with different processing methods in different proportions and then roasting them, usually no less than 3 and no more than 5 kinds. General commercial brands and chain brands will adopt this method. Roasted blend means roasting different beans separately and then mixing them according to the proportion. Because this method is more troublesome, it has higher requirements for roasters and its stability is more difficult to grasp, so it is usually used in competitions or some independent coffee shops with self-roasting. In recent years, with the popularization of coffee culture and changes in consumer awareness, the blending of different roasting degrees of the same coffee beans and the blending of different processing methods from the same production area have also begun to rise.

Therefore, Americano today may not be what everyone originally thought it was, and milk coffee may not be what is generally known as milk coffee. If the beans are good, the formula is good, the roasting is good, the machine is good, and the barista is good, it can also be a cup of coffee that makes you exclaim "delicious". Similarly, not all hand-brewed coffee is good. It is just because of some conventional practices in the industry that the public has the perception that "hand-brewed coffee is more advanced than Americano". And judging from the current coffee retail market, this perception will continue for some time. So how can you have an objective understanding of "good coffee" and find the coffee that suits you by breaking away from the crowd? Improving your tasting ability is an essential skill for a coffee lover.