the no-slurps audio is really clever
this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Coffee
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The Magical Fruit
The Oromo people would customarily plant a coffee tree on the graves of powerful sorcerers. They believed that the first coffee bush sprang up from the tears that the god of heaven shed over the corpse of a dead sorcerer.
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I can't watch right now but I'm genuinely interested because creamers fascinate me. It's a super American concept I just don't understand. Why not use milk instead of palm oil and corn syrup concoctions
They’re often creamier and sweeter than milk. I find them gross though.
Steamed milk is plenty thick, and also adds sweetness! Then add more sugar if you feel you need it. Much better for your body!
I feel like when you get into creamer territory, people aren't drinking coffee because they like it, but because they just want a sugar and carb hit and coffee is a socially acceptable way to do so.
EDIT: finally watched, and not surprised the most mentioned words are 'artificial' and 'synthetic' haha.
Most people can't afford a steamer. I'd still rather have plain milk and sugar
Is there a way to buy milk with any of these flavors and sugar already in it?
It’s so simple for people to open the fridge and dump some International Delight creamer into their cup. I’m sure if there was a good alternative then a lot of people would do it. These creamers are no effort, no cleanup, cheap, and have a much longer shelf life than milk.
Well no. Is it that hard to add a spoonful of sugar if you need it, instead of pouring in some artificial palm oil, corn syrup based junk? You're killing yourself and the planet with this stuff.
What effort, cleanup, or cost is needed with milk and sugar? 🤣 I bet it's cheaper than creamer in fact.
I’m mostly referring to flavor. No one is buying these for “sugar + milk” flavor.
So buy real monin syrups that aren't so artificial tasting and live a tastier life! And stop pretending you like coffee 👀
Now I'm waiting for the Hames Joffman edit
Those never fail to make me chuckle
I mean I am interested but doubtful that he would like any of them.
A thing that's interesting to me is that a lot of folks have a strong aversion to the oils and sweetener in creamer that they seemingly don't have to plant-based milks, which generally (especially in their "barista" versions) rely on both those things to get the correct flavor, texture, and foamability. Or at least, I see those objections deployed against creamer constantly and against plant-based barista milks pretty infrequently.
Ditto for flavored syrups in espresso-based milk drinks which add tons of sugar (obviously) as well as flavors that are no more inherent to the coffee than "irish creme" flavored creamer. (See also: stuff like cereal milk lattes, which are just, like, a more artisanal way of obtaining basically the same types of artificial flavor.)
This isn't to say that creamer is healthy or good, just that it feels like some people are selectively applying a health judgment to products that are coded as lower class which they do not (or, not as commonly and loudly) to similarly unhealthy products that are coded as higher class.
(FWIW: I generally drink filter coffee black, but often use oat milk in small espresso drinks.)
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Come on. It's still coffee. Milk has been added to coffee for at the very least 400 years and probably way longer than that.
Just because it's not how you prefer your coffee, doesn't make it any lesser of a drink. It's just not your preference. It's still coffee.
I'd even venture to say that coffee without milk or sweetener is the abnormal version. There's no need for this gatekeeping.
White russian is a drink. A very tasty one, too. It's not gatekeeping, it's about naming things correctly.
Unless you're doing science or law (and even then often), if people know what you mean when you refer to something, then you've used the "name" correctly. It is so common to add milk or sugar to coffee that there is minimal connotation of "black coffee" in the word "coffee" as people use it, at least in US English. For this reason, specifying "black coffee" is much more necessary than "straight vodka" in actual speech.
It's very funny to want people to invent a whole new word that is the equivalent of white russian for putting milk in coffee. There's no benefit to it. If you want to be pretentious about preferring to drink your coffee a certain way, you can do that anytime. Or maybe you can give it a special name. From now on drinking coffee black is called Asshole Coffee. Put it in the dictionary.
It's a bit different with espresso drinks because those do have specific names that are in common usage and ostensibly those names refer to something like a recipe.[^1] If you order a cortado and they hand you a large latte, it would be reasonable to be annoyed. If you order a cortado and they ask you how many ounces of milk you want in it, it would be reasonable to be confused. If you order a cortado and then go add a bunch of milk to it, it would be reasonable for them to be confused.
But nobody's confused if you ask for a coffee and someone asks if you want milk in it (or room for milk), and nobody's confused if you get coffee and add milk to it. Or if you don't. Because we all have a shared usage of the word coffee which does not stipulate additives.
BTW where things can get weird is when there are significant regional differences in certain terms. There was a fun thread on reddit a while back about a US barista who took an order form a British customer who asked for a latte made with "cream" and was shocked when the barista used heavy cream to make it. (After the barista had asked what they thought were sufficient clarifying questions to confirm that the customer didn't just want whole milk or something else more normal.) The ensuing discussion turned up hugely different expectations from different parts of the anglophone world as to what "cream" means or can possibly mean, including a surprising degree of variation within users from the UK.
[^1]: Although there is so much variation from shop to shop that the definitional boundaries between espresso drinks can get very fuzzy.
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What's it called, then? If you have to make up a name, then maybe you're just being stubborn on this point. I like where your head is at, but what things are called are based on historical and social norms a lot of times. If someone likes putting cucumbers on their pizza, it's still pizza (I side with Kramer on this, as there's a Seinfeld episode about it).
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