Guys, I think this whole thing is just one person's opinion. The next dude has his...

Personally I enjoy espressos as well as cappus. I really don't need anybody telling me what I should like.

Naturally I understand why someone might think that milk should be skipped to truly enjoy the pleasures of specialty coffee, but if a person happened to only enjoy his/her coffee with milk, is someone really seriously implying that in that case ingredients of poor quality are the only way to go?

Coffee is, and will always be, a matter of personal taste.

Live with it.

Back and forth "Troll" accusations have been removed from this discussion. I left the meat of the dialogue intact for sake of continuity of the discussion. If any member has an issue with what anyone else has written, click the report icon and a moderator will deal with it.

It seems like this thread is teetering already. Unless someone has any new insight they want to offer, I imagine the points have been made and argued sufficiently. Folks are entirely free to disagree.

I hope I'm not repeating something already said here.

It seems one rarely addressed assumption among the no milk vs. milk debate is an abstract, uniform entity that makes up "specialty coffee". For every rare 90-plus scoring Panama gesha, there are dozens of 80-to-85-scoring coffees from other parts of the world that still nevertheless wonderfully count as specialty due to meticulous processing. Do I want to put milk in a nice pressure-profiled, 90-plus Ethiopian espresso? Probably not. But it feels like much less of a sacrilege for me to put a blend espresso from 80-plus beans in a milk drink like cortado or a small cap.

This debate reminds me of debates among whiskey drinkers about diluting their sips by either putting ice, water, or mixing them in cocktail recipes. But again, I feel the debate doesn't have to feel like a yes or no question. You may feel appalled if you meet anyone who mixes a 23-year-old Pappy Van Winkle in an Old Fashioned. But not so much with a mid-priced ($30) whiskey like Bulleit Rye. Bulleit is a perfectly fine whiskey that can be nice on its own with some subtle tasting notes, but it's not so high-priced or rarefied to make it feel like a waste to put in a cocktail. (If anything, I think both Bulleit bourbon and rye are pretty common in American craft cocktail bar menus).

Back to coffee, I guess the question is: how do you personally define specialty in coffee? And does the answer to that question determine where you draw that line between milk and no-milk, if at all?

TheJavaCup77 wrote:This debate is nearly pointless... this is merely a matter of preference

Thank you.. One would think the obvious would be obvious but apparently it isn't when emotions are high. Some folks here clearly haven't had enough coffee.

weebit_nutty wrote:Some folks here clearly haven't had enough coffee.

Or maybe too much.

With or without milk.

TomC wrote:Utter bull crap.

I don't understand the prevailing attitude of popular appeal in coffee. If you want to stand out as an "expert" you have to tell everyone what they're doing is wrong. I don't give a damn what someone else thinks or says about "how coffee should be" if it contravenes what I personally enjoy. Neither do I expect anything I appreciate to be widely adopted and praised by the masses. Why should it? Who's taste buds are in your mouth? Reiss's? Perger's? Rao's? Or your own?

Give up on specialty coffee if you enjoy milk? Yeah right.

Now that's a good response! I'll drink my espresso however want, and use the beans I enjoy the most and if some so-called expert doesn't like it, too bad. I'm the one who's drinking it and I'm going to enjoy it my way. Given what I've seen in this thread, the article isn't worth the electrons it takes to display it.

When the four letter words employed in the discussion go from "damn" to much worse, it's time to edit the offending words out and lock the thread for a cool down period. Thanks.