Good coffee

Is good coffee better than bad?

A bit of a philosophical question today. Our lives are made-up of experiences. We pay attention to some of them, less attention to others. There are things which happen right in front of us which we don’t even notice. There are things that don’t happen in front of us which we pay a lot of attention to. And so very quickly we should realise the story we tell ourselves, or the narrative of our life, is very important and crucially, it’s something that we can to some degree change.

This is not to say that things in the world around us don’t have objective characteristics. And if we look at coffee, it is entirely legitimate to say some cups of coffee are better than others. Perhaps the coffee has been made improperly, it is too hot, too cold, too sweet, not sweet enough, too watery, too thick, etcetera. Beyond how well made the coffee is there’s also presentation. Is it in a nice mug? In a bag? A cheap paper cup?

Underneath all of that, there is the quality of the coffee itself. How good are the coffee beans and the process used to turn them from bits of a plant into a beverage.

One of the most common and shared narratives we have as a species is that better things are worth more than their inferior counterparts. Should you go into a coffee shop a basic filter coffee which is considered OK rather than good will nearly always cost less than a specialist coffee which is considered better and more valuable.

Certainly it would be amusing for a coffee shop owner to serve as their general filter coffee the finest coffee they can get their hands on, while the stuff that they sell as specialist all comes from inferior beans. I know that that’s the sort of thing that would amuse me and I wonder how many of their customers would notice.

So where does the question come in? Coffee is a drink. And when you drink it, you get a series of experiences. Anticipation, aroma, taste and after-taste. When you drink it there are the initial flavours as it enters your mouth and then after you’ve swallowed the mouthful you have whatever is left. Coffee has a really very short life in the mouth.

Why does how “good” that experience is matter so much? What motivates us to buy the £4 coffee as opposed to the £2 or to make a cup at home for a few pence? Let’s even say the experiences as you go down the scale are objectively worse.

You drink the cheap cup of coffee. You observe it is not as good as your usual or the one that you sometimes get from that lovely little coffee shop across the road with the handsome barista. Why does it matter? Why do we find ourselves drawn to ‘better’ experiences when any experience can be savoured and considered and appreciated.

We tell ourselves we enjoy good experiences, better things, more. But drinking coffee is an experience, regardless of how good or bad that experience might be. Reflect upon it. You can still smell the aroma, drink the hot drink and feel the warmth. There’s something about simply appreciating an experience rather than aiming for best all the time.

Drinking a bad cup of coffee is as much an experience as drinking the best cup of coffee. So why not? Just sometimes, not worry about how good or bad the coffee is and instead seek appreciate to investigate, to be present for the experience you are having in that moment. Good or bad. There is the added bonus that drinking a bad cup of coffee may well save you a great deal of money too. Certainly you need to learn some appreciation skills if the cup of coffee that you’re drinking is both terrible and very expensive. That calls to mind a certain emperor’s new suit of clothes.

Is it possible to appreciate and even enjoy an experience indepdent of how good or bad we might consider the experience to be?