Ubersnob

If I have to acquire expensive tastes, I hope to become an expert on those, without losing my ability to distinguish among the cheaper tastes that I already know.

I have noticed a prejudice among third-wave coffee snobs, against dark roasts, and iced drinks. ^_^

I don't often have milk with my best coffee either, however, I'm not sure that it's impossible to construct a drink in which milk (or something else) adds to the experience of coffee.

I guess third-wave therefore defines itself as a being on-the-edge (and IMHO therefore, as reactionary - which is never a nice definition to have in the long-run).

Art is only relevant, within a cultural context. Explanation of the motivation for 1st / 2nd / 3rd wave coffee cultures needs to increase.

For example, I think Starbucks gets it absolutely right when it serves a sweet, fruity, Kenyan, over ice. I like cold fruit juice. It tones down the perceived acidity, and gives any bitterness a nice hard edge. I must encourage our chaps to respond to the question, "do you have any fruit juice?" with "we have several, they are from varieties of the coffee cherry."

No wonder wave-3 coffee invented the term "cupping," the alternative is a preponderous phrase, "degustation."

Serving coffee in wine-glasses - now why didn't I think of that? Given the vast variety in coffees out there, I'm willing to bet an arm and a leg that some would work fine, chilled, in a wine glass. Plenty of opponents to that view, I'm sure. Now what would work as a chilled coffee? My plebleian wanderings have led me to actually enjoy Starbuck's iced-coffees, which are typically brewed from dry-processed beans, resulting in a lot of fruit aroma. I'm guessing that a light-roast would bring out further acidity. I'd be interested in pulling low-temperature shots through something like that... to bring out an espresso that'd be too acidic at room temperature. Then serve it in a wine glass, shakespresso style (shaken with ice).

A couple of days later: Dark roast. Increasing extraction rate makes it less bitter, more sour, and no more flavourful. Got it.