Nick Name wrote:Well, there already is the Beanhunter app...

I would love H-B'ers to get going on making Beanhunter useful worldwide. It's not yelp where just anyone posts-by it's nature it's for those hunting for good coffee exclusively. Sure, you have to read a few reviews to get the feel for a place but it sure narrows down the list of shops to try!

When my wife and I travel we always consider the proximity to a coffee shop or three we think sounds like a good place to try. In Australia Beanhunter was really useful with insightful reviewers.

So let's do it!

peacecup wrote:Many, including myself, have shared the OPs experience of underwheming espresso quality in the average coffee bar in Italy. It seems to be universal, however - we've had a lot of posts about similar experiences in the US (Dan had a good thread about that years ago). It's the same here in Sweden - lots of cafes have great equipment, but don't live up to the possibilities.

I had this conversation a few hours ago with one of the baristas at my favorite local shop. In addition to a surprisingly wide range of quality shots, he described finding many shops in Italy in which the steam wands had globular accretions of hard, disgusting milk on the tips and shafts. Simply being Italian seems not to convey a genetic predisposition toward good coffee.

Getting mediocre (or worse) espresso drinks from baristas who talk the talk and use great equipment is commonplace in the US as well. For example, we spent a week in Naples, Florida over the Labor Day holiday and visited several of the "best" coffee shops in the region. None offered a truly great drink, even though most had great equipment. Old beans? Poor technique and attention to detail? All this and more.

I've also discovered something I find very useful. Italians don't seem to care much about art in their caps, with most stirring sugar into their drinks. And art itself doesn't improve the taste or mouth feel of a cap or latte. But I find that the foam tastes and feels best when it's right for art. It doesn't matter whether or not you pour a swan or rosetta, but it matters whether or not the foam would let you do it. So I watch the drinks being made while I'm in line - and if I see poorly timed shots, stiff or thin foam, etc, I have brewed coffee or a non-coffee drink. It saves disappointment.

This is supposed to be a latte. It tastes like reheated filter. Or -as the spelling checker suggests- folter.

Lovely photo!

A colleague of mine once remarked that he only drank tea while on the road. He was a coffee geek, but figured that it was harder to screw up a cup of tea than a cup of coffee.

I've had both great and poor coffee and espresso traveling in Italy and Europe. It's kind of luck - both in whether the nation is enthusiastic about coffee and the individual cafe quality. Tastes vary over Italy. I've found better examples of coffee in the Piemonte region than in the big tourist traps in the south. But I've had absolutely first rate espresso in 5-star hotels in the middle of Rome. I've had terrible espresso in busy Italian cafes and surprisingly decent espresso at a travel stop (basically a truck stop) on the highway.

In general, Italy views an espresso as nothing special. Just a hot pickmeup. Something that is ordinary. It should be cheap, fast, loaded with caffeine and sugar and about a euro. But exceptions exist. You'll also have a hard time finding the "coffee shop" culture of lingering for a long time over a computer in a coffee shop. Pretty much, if you sit, you get a service charge and they want to turn your table ASAP. Most "bars" you pay at the register, take your ticket to the counter and then the barista makes you a coffee, which you consume promptly while standing. Breakfast is a little different, with a cornetto and a cappuccino, a little banter with the regulars and then off to smoke and work.

Scandinavian coffee is lighter roasted BUT - like the folks at Chromatic Coffee pointed out with their Radio Espresso offerings, they are prepared with very soft water and higher temperatures. I found that indeed, Chromatic has a point and I was quite surprised with the Radio Espresso after reading their blog on the matter. Brewed with very soft, hot water produced a very nice, fruity and sweet espresso. With conventional roasting, one would have gotten a cup of yuk with the same settings. But it works.

So - the world is full of commodity coffee. Most of it is not very good. One reference says that about 95% of coffee produced is commodity and of relatively low quality. Only 5% or less falls into the speciality range and not all of that is very good. Most people want something hot and not too bitter, with a nice jolt of caffeine to get them going.

Travel means you have to look. It can be really hard to guess. Like reading Yelp reviews, where McDonalds and Starbucks have the overwhelming positive reviews, you have to read between the lines. There's a very popular indian restaurant near my office. The food is mediocre at best. I asked why so many people of Indian heritage eat there. "It's cheap!" was the answer. LOL.