• Skullgrid@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Me : I’d like a black coffee please
    USA : And how much whipped cream and sugar would you like with that?

    • BlueFootedPetey@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      I always used to get “should we leave room at the top for cream or sugar?” It makes sense since at that spot the cream and sugar are off to the side to be added by the customer. And black coffee was used to differentiate from the various flavored or specialty jawns.

      But it always made me giggle that the simplest order in coffee needed clarification.

    • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      I know this is a joke but if you ask for black coffee or unsweet tea, you will get what you are expecting in most cases. They may ask as a courtesy if you want sweeteners or creamers with that because many people wish to sweeten their drinks themselves as they may prefer artificial sweeteners or wish to control their dairy or sugar intake for dietary reasons.

      • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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        1 month ago

        Unless you’re in the south you mostly don’t have to specify unsweet for the tea (unless it’s something that sometimes but not always comes with things mixed in like chai). Coffee should be that as well in theory but so many people drink it in different ways that if you just order a coffee or espresso or whatever you’ll get asked if you want it black (and dont get me started on restaurants asking if i want my martini w vodka ir gin). Chains have (or had, it’s been awhile for me) their own lingo as well, like at dunkin a “large regular” meant 2 creams and a sugar (or maybe 3 and 2, I can’t remember)

  • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    Europeans don’t tolerate shit cheap robusto coffee. The brown sour water Americans drink is the typical quantity over quality model.

    • Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 month ago

      Americans mostly drink Arábica beans. The only Robusta coffee out here is in Vietnamese style coffee filled with a ton of condensed milk.

      • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        Nonsense. Dunkin donuts, every office coffee maker, and most fast food coffee is robusta. That’s why people kill the taste with sugar and fat.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          1 month ago

          It’s burnt to hell. That’s why it’s like that. The cultivar doesn’t matter at that point. You could start with the best beans and it’d still be shit roasted like that.

          The cultivar matters, but only when it’s roasted well. These huge coffee companies burn the coffee to ensure consistency. It doesn’t matter what they started with.

          I feel like you might not actually know that much about coffee. You’ve heard two names and that one is supposed to be better (it isn’t, just different, and useful in different circumstances). You then stopped learning and think you know everything.

    • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 month ago

      You know that America basically invented modern coffee culture that exists everywhere else now, right? We’re well beyond truck stop diner coffee.

      Hell, even Mr Coffee was a great improvement for its time.

      Edit: the next European who posts “you need to learn about other countries” while also thinking Starbucks is the only thing the US does for coffee gets . . . I dunno, maybe a gif of a cat falling off a fence.

      • optional@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        Oh, and btw. Mr Coffee was not an improvement, it was a copy of a device invented in Germany 20 years before, perfected by the Danish company EVA. Mr Coffee is unknown outside of North America because these devices already existed in the rest of the world.

        Copying stuff from somewhere else is not a problem. China does it all the time and it’s fine. The problem with the Yanks is, that after copying stuff, they make it worse and afterwards claim they’ve invented it.

        • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          What made Mr Coffee unique wasn’t being the first drip machine. Its design was extremely cheap AND reliable. There’s a reason the design is still the most popular today.

          Nothing else comes close.

          • optional@sh.itjust.works
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            1 month ago

            Mr Coffee was not extremely cheap outside of America, it doesn’t even exist outside of America because the problem it solves was already solved by other companies outside of America.

            I understand that it might have been a great improvement for the American coffee drinkers (I don’t know, I’ve never heard of Mr Coffee until yesterday because I’m not American), but it did nothing to influence “coffee culture everywhere else” as the OP boldly claims, because everywhere else is outside of America!

      • optional@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        Lol whut? Espresso, Cappuccino and Latte macchiato are Italian,
        Drip filter coffee was invented in Germany as well as decaf Cold brew is Duch/Japanese Boiled Coffee is from the Middle East/North Africa Irish Coffee is from Ireland, but similar drinks are known with different names and different spirits at leas in France and Germany. The French Press is from France, first patented by an Italian
        Instant Coffee from New Zealand Frappé is from Greece Iced coffee is from Algeria

        You Americans might have invented abominations like Starbucks, but that’s not coffee culture worldwide. Noone I know drinks that stuff. There are somewhere around 100,000 and coffee bars in Italy alone, 31 of which are Starbucks built for American tourists. (Maybe it’s 35 by now). There are 10 times more traditional Cafés in Berlin alone, than Starbucks in all of Germany.

        • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 month ago

          Lol whut? Espresso, in particular, has been heavily developed over the past few decades with a greater understanding of things like water temperature and channeling. A lot of that started with American baristas.

          Starbucks is what started it. It didn’t finish there.

          • criticon@lemmy.ca
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            1 month ago

            Wait I was about to downvote you because it sounds like something that an AI would hallucinate but actually TIL that espresso drinks (not espresso) were actually modified and popularized by starbucks and peets and their versions, and not the Italian versions, are the ones that are most popular through the world

            • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 month ago

              I really hate that we have to filter everything through “is this post just AI?”.

              Edit: and when I said “Starbucks is what started it”, I was thinking more along the lines of Second Wave Coffee and how that’s led into everything else since, not just espresso. Starbucks isn’t considered top quality even in the US, but they should get credit for moving things along.

              My personal favorite coffee shop, the one that makes absolutely stellar espresso, is from a guy who started it in a friend’s skateboard shop.

          • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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            1 month ago

            Espresso, in particular, has been heavily developed over the past few decades with a greater understanding of things like water temperature and channeling.

            dude…see the world, there is an entire industry of coffee machines in Italy since the 1920s. A hundred years ago. Starbucks was and is second rate shit for suburban moms.

            Americans just turned coffee into hot desserts.

            • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 month ago

              I’m not even talking about Starbucks beyond them starting the second wave. Travel yourself. American coffee does not end with Starbucks.

              If you’re going to continue that strawman, then there’s nothing left to discuss.

              • optional@sh.itjust.works
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                1 month ago

                I just read about the “second wave” for the first time, and allegedly it was Starbucks’ idea to “transform coffee consumption into a social event instead of just consumption of coffee”.

                But I can guarantee you, that that’s a purely American view, as coffee consumption has been a social event long before in the rest of the world. Fika in Sweden was a thing since the 19th century. Sospreso has been a thing in Italy a century before Starbucks copied it. I don’t know since when Kaffe und Kuchen is a thing in Germany, but my Gradma told me how her Grandma used to put out the white table cloth only for the Sunday Koffee. And she was long dead when Starbucks got their Idea of serving pastries with coffee. Austria got their first Kaffeehaus a century before the USA even existed. In Mecca, coffee houses were banned from 1512-1524 as they were too sociable for the imams who feard the politicization of the coffee drinkers.

                And don’t get me started on the “third wave”, a marketing term coined by some hipsters in Los Angeles or New York to sell overpriced “specialty” coffee to other hipsters from San Francisco or Boston.

          • tomi000@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Bro please stop. You are absolutely 100% wrong and have no idea what you are talking about. Just accept it as a an opportunity for uncovering some of the bullshit propaganda your patriot bubble creates.

      • vzqq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 month ago

        Italian coffee snob here. Even Starbucks coffee isn’t bad. They have a lot of stuff on the menu that frankly leaves me with more questions than answers, but you don’t have to order that. The filter coffee is way, way better than the average.

        While I would recommend both learning about other countries as a general principle, and sending me a GIF of a cat, I’m finding it hard to come down on American coffee while living on a continent than thinks French coffee or German coffee is perfectly fine.

      • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        You know that America basically invented modern coffee culture that exists everywhere else now, right?

        What language do you think espresso, cappucino, americano, latte, venti, etc. is?

        • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 month ago

          You’re stuck on the original origin. That’s not where things have ended up. Espresso around the world is nothing like what it was in 19th century Italy. It’s not even what it was like in the late 20th century.

    • butwhyishischinabook@piefed.social
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      1 month ago

      Lol idk when the last time I, an American, encountered robusta coffee except one time I had to order it from a specialty retailer online in order to try it. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Also, unless it’s specifically espresso, “good” European coffee is consistently worse than good American coffee. We just can’t do espresso well.

      EDIT: I said what I said you Nescafe drinking heathens.

  • Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 month ago

    Americans generalizing the whole of Europe again. In Germany, a large coffee is certainly not the American size, but it’s also not the small Italian size.

  • Ice_Cold_Six@lemmy.zip
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    1 month ago

    Is this the “Pocket Rocket” I keep hearing about? Small but packing more caffeine than all the uppers combined?

  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
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    1 month ago

    An American large coffee is a litre-sized flavoured sugar syrup sundae which may or may not contain a homeopathic quantity of coffee. Sort of like British chocolate.

  • RedFrank24@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    That’s because “A Coffee” means ‘an espresso’, as my Portuguese friend told me. She also told me that “Lemonade” doesn’t mean sprite like it does in the UK, much to my dismay when I asked for one in a restaurant.

      • RedFrank24@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        …Yes it does, Sprite, Schweppes, even the own-brand stuff you get in the shops is all called Lemonade colloquially.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        1 month ago

        I feel like you don’t know what real lemonade is because yeah you always get sprite or whites, if they think they’re being posh they’ll give you whites, which tastes exactly the same as Sprite so I don’t know what the point is.

        • RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          In the states, Sprite is a carbonated mildly lemon tasting soda pop. Lemonade is squeezed lemon and sugar, and maybe with something else like Strawberry, but fairly tart. And no carbonation, unless it’s specifically made with Seltzer or something. Or spoiled.

          • Threeme2189@lemmy.zip
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            1 month ago

            Lemonade is squeezed lemon and sugar, and maybe with something else like Strawberry, but fairly tart.

            I don’t know about American lemonade being tart. Every lemonade recipe I’ve tried has a fuckton of sugar added to it. Even when I cut the amount by 1/3 it’s still super sweet.

  • Mark@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    And it will be infinitely more tastyl then the swill I get in a dinner from the pot that has been stewing for hours…

  • Geometrinen_Gepardi@sopuli.xyz
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    1 month ago

    The difference between an European and American cup of coffee is that the former doesn’t contain 70% palm oil, high fructose corn syrup and artificial flavorings.

    • Sundray@lemmus.org
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      1 month ago

      Caramel macchiatos haven’t been a hit the Old World, I take it.

      What’s interesting to me is just how popular massively sweet, milky tea has become in the USA. Never thought I’d see anything challenge coffee’s dominance.

      • danekrae@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        I tried one by accident once. If it’s normal to just use caramel flavor, it’s fucking disgusting.

      • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        My mother’s mom was from Ireland; Pop was a mutt with an absolutely fucked up upbeinging, so no idea! But my mom and her brother, as well as her 40 first cousins, all drink Lipton tea with milk. They just love basic tea with milk. No sugar, nothing, just black water with milk in it. I bring up the heritage because I assume it’s something they brought over, because outside of my family I don’t know many people who put milk in tea.

        I’m a black coffee with a little stevia guy myself. Wife got me into stevia and it placebo’s away the heartburn I got from just drinking straight black.

        • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Breakfast tea with a splash of milk is super common in the UK, that’s not weird at all.

          Also, the whole of southeast Asia, and at this point the world, loves milk tea - especially with tapioca pearls, aka “bubble tea”.

          • Dozzi92@lemmy.world
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            I’m from Jersey and it’s weird here. I included the whole Irish thing because I assumed it came from there. They were south Irish, but presumably had similar tea habits.

      • Skua@kbin.earth
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        1 month ago

        They are popular enough here in the UK, certainly, but I suppose we already had a fairly sweet tooth for our tea. Coffee that isn’t a sugary milkshake does remain the default if someone just says “coffee” though

        • phdepressed@sh.itjust.works
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          1 month ago

          Thats still the same in the US. The portion of people willing and able to spend the money on making coffee not taste like coffee is just very vocal about it and chain coffee (starbucks, dunkin, etc) is pretty horrendous without other flavors covering it up. McDs is ok because they buy out a lot of the bigger “ok” suppliers but then you have to go to McDs.

          • doctordevice@lemmy.ca
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            1 month ago

            Good home coffee doesn’t have to be expensive! Moka pot is the way to go, IMO. Been using the same one I bought like 8 years ago for $30 every day. I do replace the rubber gasket every once in a while, but it’s still very cheap on the whole.

            • Skua@kbin.earth
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              1 month ago

              I’m a cafetiere fan, but I’ve got a moka pot and a V60 as well because sometimes you just want something else. Getting a nice double-walled pot for ~£20 and some good coffee to put in it is some of the best value for money I’ve gotten. I don’t spend big on anything or go for any fancy gear. There definitely is space to treat it as a hobby/artform and go into all the tiny details if you want, but you don’t need to do all that to get great results

    • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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      1 month ago

      as much as I love SI units, coffee sizes for decent cafes are already pretty standard across the globe:

      4oz (shots) 6oz (small) 8oz (regular) 12oz (large) 16oz (iced, etc)

      • Aqarius@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        ??? A .5l iced coffee is not “regular”, nor is “shot” the smallest. A typical shot of espresso is 30ml (1floz), half for ristretto, double for lungo.

        • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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          1 month ago

          these are cup sizes… you typically get a shot of espresso, ristretto, etc in a 4oz cup

          like these: https://foodpackagingonline.com.au/products/cups/paper-coffee-cups/single-wall-coffee-cups/ccswwh04

          similarly you get things like a magic (3/4 cup double ristretto flat white served in a tulip cup - a tulip cup is ~180ml - same as 6oz) in a 6 or 8oz (depending on the cafe) just not entirety full

          also, regular that i put in the comment is 8oz, which is ~256ml - not 500ml; 250ml is a metric cup, so it’s a pretty reasonable regular size even in roughly metric terms

          • Aqarius@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            …But that’s cup size, not coffee size. And even then, an espresso cup is something like 80ml (illy US specifies 3oz), which makes sense if a lungo is 60ml. A metric cup is legally defined as 240, not because cups made in Europe are 250ml, but because the US customary unit of “cup” translates to about 240ml of volume. Actyal, physical metric cups are generally 80-150ml. A 240ml “cup” is more of a mug than a cup, really, and even mugs are usually .3l or so.

            And I don’t think I’ve ever, in my life, gotten served a half-liter of anything non-bottled, other than beer or maybe soup.

            • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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              1 month ago

              yet again the US does weird af stuff:

              The cup currently used in the United States for nutrition labelling is defined in United States law as 240 ml

              Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and some other members of the Commonwealth of Nations, being former British colonies that have since metricated, employ a “metric cup” of 250 millilitres

              Canada now usually employs the metric cup of 250 ml

              Similar units in other languages and cultures are sometimes translated “cup”, usually with various values around 1⁄5 to 1⁄4 of a litre.

              so let’s not base anything metric on what the US does

              and as for cup sizes

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_cup

              Cafes use various sizes of coffee cups to serve mocha, lattes, and other coffee drinks. They are typically 225, 336, 460, and sometimes 570 ml

              225ml = 7.61oz

              336ml = 11.36oz

              460ml = 15.55oz

              which pretty much exactly matches up to the 8, 12, and 16oz standard cup sizes as i mentioned

              if you walk into pretty much any cafe in the world that has a barista and not just a machine, you’ll be able to ask for an 8oz flat white and you’ll get roughly the same amount of beverage in the same sized cup

              • LwL@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                This might be true for the non-US anglosphere but I guarantee you if you walk into a normal coffee shop in germany and ask for 8 ounces (or rather “Unzen”) of anything they’ll blink fast and ask if ounce wasn’t a measurement for gold or something.

                And a cup of espresso is usually around 25ml (so a bit under 1 fl oz).

                • Pup Biru@aussie.zone
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                  1 month ago

                  i don’t know what to tell you mate, but i have, and do this regularly: i travel to berlin yearly and drink multiple coffees per day when im there… they have them labelled as their size names, but they are 8oz-12oz sizes: what they call them is irrelevant; it’s the standard when buying the cups, so they are 8oz etc sizes

                  it’s also kinda irrelevant what a shot of espresso is: they come in 4oz cups… this is the standard that a cafe will give… a shot of espresso is a shot of espresso; the volume of liquid doesn’t really change, and you wouldn’t pay more for a larger amount without extra coffee anyway

                  for flat whites etc, the standard GLOBALLY is an 8oz cup with a single shot (or sometimes 2 depending on the bean - really that can vary depending on the cafe and how mild their beans are) full to the top with steamed milk… that’s it - there’s no ifs buts or maybes… it’s the same in germany, it’s the same in france, it’s the same in belgium, it’s the same in australia, and yes it’s the same even in the US

                  even starbucks behind their ridiculous names for their cups use standard cup sizes: a short is 8oz, a tall is 12oz, a grande is 16oz

              • Aqarius@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                They are typically 225, 336, 460, and sometimes 570 ml

                You mean “They are typically 225, 336, 460, and sometimes 570 ml.[1]^”? I agree, it is dubious - it’s like someone assumed the whole world makes coffee in 8, 12, and 16oz. Also, they’re just below the “cup holding 50−100 ml” for espresso and “cup holding approximately 160 ml” for cappuccino.


                1. dubious – discuss ↩︎