Ilike to reminisce. Times when coffee was just a drink for me. A moment I liked to enjoy with my family or friends. However, this turned upside down when coffee became my job and for many other people around me a passion, even an obsession. I live a life where I try to sell our customers every day some great cups of coffee - but I wonder - is this even possible when sensory in coffee is such a highly subjective matter? Is this even possible when there are so many variables?
Coffee Snob Paradox (noun); to become somehow knowledgeable about coffee, making it hard for its common daily enjoyment
Most of the cups in my life feel average, sometimes even boring, and this radically worsened when I started actively traveling and judging competitions within Europe, or World Championships, where I often have the honor of tasting some of the most expensive, highest quality and most interesting coffees in the world. But I always have to stop and realize how far from reality this really is. From the reality of people’s daily need to have 1-2 cups of tasty coffee, which gives them pleasure and a partial kick. Because in the end, these people - our customers - are the ones who will pay for all this outside reality obsession of ours. I always thought it was so cool. This is how it should be. That we - coffee pro's - are here to be "obsessed" with coffee so our customers don't have to be. So that they can just sit down with us and enjoy within that cup all the knowledge and obsessions which are necessary for the preparation of that cup. Well, the Slovak coffee world is changing...
All the latest "surveys" say that many people today drink coffee for its taste and pleasure, not caffeine or because they need it. This entire article is actually created at the initiative of the readers of Laco Király's blog, who, like him, complain that they feel the CSP syndrome - "since I read your blog Laco, I can't go back to regular supermarket coffee". And so it is. It is easy to get used to good things. The magic of specialty coffee lies precisely in the taste spectrum it offers us. Slovakia has a history of drinking low-quality coffee, but we also know ourselves to be big “connoisseurs” in many things. Understanding and starting to drink quality coffee is like going from a train station buffet to regular visits to Michelin restaurants. Not everyone can handle it, not everyone likes it, not everyone can understand it. But for those who do - there is no turning back. But be careful - the Coffee Snob Paradox will become an integral part of your life, but there is one insidious thing about coffee:
The more you think you know about it, the more wrong you actually are.
But how to deal with all of this? Especially at a time when the prices of everything sky-rocketed, family budgets are getting tighter and you've just tasted coffee that costs five times more per kilo than the one you've been buying so far... Do you think that “less is more” could start paying off here, too? ? People always ask me how many coffees a person like me drinks a day. My answer is always "As much as I want." But not because I have unlimited access to it. Rather, in the sense that sometimes I have several days when I "don't want to". I don't want to, because I'm addicted to fantastic coffee, and none of us have unlimited access to that one…
Alexander Nagy