As the Wurzels are cider drinkers – they drinks it all of the time – so I am a coffee drinker. I am also, to be fair, a cider drinker, too, but I don’t drink it all the time. My day never really gets going properly until I have worked my way through two, maybe even three, hot mugs of filter coffee. Nothing sophisticated, though, just coffee from one of the supermarket chains, mainly Asda or Morrisons. But am I not being a little old fashioned when calling coffee coffee in the first place?
If I visit, say, a Costa or a Starbucks, I usually find myself bewildered at the choices before me. My conversation with the barista, the Italian for bartender by the way, goes something like this:
Me: “A coffee, please.”
Barista: “Certainly, Sir. Would that be a Latte, a Spanish Latte, a Skinny Latte, a Cappuccino, an Americano, a Flat White, a Mocha, an Espresso, a Cortado or Mocha Cortado?”
Me: Er …
Barista: “We also have a variety of ices over coffee or some tea. We have nine varieties of tea for Sir to choose from.”
Me: “How about a black coffee, with just a hint or milk and the tiniest mini spoon of sweetener? I’m trying to cut down, you see, ha ha ha.”
Barista: “Well, the nearest we have is an Americano. That’s where you pour hot water over an Espresso …”
None the wiser, I go for the Americano. The rest of the coffee drinks don’t bear any resemblance to what I would call coffee but perhaps that’s because of my Dutch heritage and my lack of education on the subject. Coffee meant buying coffee beans and grinding them into coffee powder and next pouring boiling water over the powder.
The Americano I end up with bears more than a resemblance to the filtered coffee I brew at home, except that each mug in the coffee shop costs about the same as a whole bag of coffee in Asda and Morrisons. And despite being far more expensive, it’s not as nice as the stuff I make.
Money does come into it, as well as home comforts. What is the point in me driving to a nearby shopping centre just to consume something that in my opinion isn’t as nice as the stuff I make in my own kitchen? Today, I read that there’s a new coffee in town. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Long Black. So, what exactly is a Long Black.
One barista is quoted in The Guardian – where else? – who said, “It’s basically exactly the same as an Americano.” How so? Here’s a simple explanation: “A Long Black is brewed by pouring an espresso over hot water while an Americano is brewed by pouring hot water over the espresso.” Apparently, it tastes different and the Long Black is not as hot, which immediately marks it right down in my book. Coffee has to be hot. But what have we learned here? It’s that they are essentially slight variations of the same drink and what they both are is black coffees. Call it an Americano, call it a Long Black. I call it a black coffee.
Costa, these days owned by Coca Cola, knows what it’s doing. Along with rivals like Starbucks, it has created a product people like and think they need. The High Streets are crowded with people carrying their store bought ready made coffees. People, it seems, love them and good luck, I say.
However, I will mainly stay with my kitchen brewed filter coffee and take filter coffee bags when I go on holiday. I have no objection to coffee shops – where I live, I think there is one Costa for every 10 people, or at least it feels like that. I can’t help but feeling that the names Americano and Long Black sound like gimmicky names for coffee, in their cases pretty well the exact same coffees.
For what it’s worth, my coffee of choice is Asda’s Extra Special Ethiopian Fairtrade Ground Coffee, a snip at £3.50 a bag. That’s just about a large Americano in Costa, you know, and far, far nicer.
