Are there any coffee experts out there?

[seemenow]

I had a coffee in a Neros today, and it was awful. I think it tasted burnt?
The issue is that coffee in almost every coffee shop I’ve tried in the UK has this taste? I’ve lived in Italy, and the worst bar, in the tiniest village doesn’t make coffee this bad. Why are these massive corporations, with training programmes, not able to produce a good cup of coffee? Just to mention, I drink lattes or cappucinos, so maybe it’s the milk? Put me out of my misery please, am I deluded, or is there something wrong with their coffee?

I’ll just add my “coffee shouldn’t be too hot” to the pile too! You can hear the sound of the milk steamer changing when it’s getting too hot, I’d tell them to stop if I wasn’t such an introvert
I do a lot of my work meetings in cafes and so end up drinking a lot of rubbish coffee but sometimes I get a nice surprise when an unassuming place gives me a great cup.
My biggest dislikes are too hot, and too milky.

@seemenow London water is the absolute worst! I have seen what it can do to the inside of an espresso machine pretty much every cafe will have a water filter attached to their espresso machine otherwise it will be out of action within a year. However the filters can only do so much (in the same way that a Brita filter jug cannot recreate the water of a glacial stream!)

I drink coffee black so I doubly taste the shytness. We have an aeropress at home for travelling and camping and an ordinary filter machine, which is consistently ok. It doesn't burn the coffee.

@cannaethink

I’ll just add my “coffee shouldn’t be too hot” to the pile too! You can hear the sound of the milk steamer changing when it’s getting too hot, I’d tell them to stop if I wasn’t such an introvert I do a lot of my work meetings in cafes and so end up drinking a lot of rubbish coffee but sometimes I get a nice surprise when an unassuming place gives me a great cup. My biggest dislikes are too hot, and too milky.

My coffee order is always followed with “… that’s not too hot please”. I think there’s an actual term for it - nursery style or something but I’d feel too much like an idiot for saying it!

I never drink coffee in these places. Its awful.

Go to an independent cafe. Pay a decent price in a small cafe, they will appreciate your custom.

But my cafetière if my life come 6am

@Deadivy

I live in Italy and the one thing I notice when I visit the UK is the temperature of the coffee is much higher. I had cafe lattes and cappuccinos there which take ages to drink as they are so hot, where as a cappuccino in Italy can be drank in one as it's tepid, and only comes in one size ;-)

This is exactly the issue. It isn't the beans that causes the coffee to taste burnt, it's because the water that many of the coffee chains use is too hot hence the burnt coffee.

There are some excellent coffee shops in the UK but almost all of them are small independents (for example, Prufrock in London). If you live in Hackney, you have good coffee all over the place. Go a few miles west and the standard drops significantly.

I'm extremely fussy about my coffee and would only have Starbucks/Costa/Nero if I was desperate for the caffeine and somebody I was meeting particularly wanted to go there. Even then I might have a Pepsi Max for the caffeine instead.

I agree with a previous poster that McDonalds is surprisingly acceptable coffee in a pinch.

I'm lucky that there are a few independent cafes near me that do good coffee, but even then I check out who the barista is before I order.

I grind my own beans at home (Monsoon Malabar from a small local-ish roastery) and make pour-over coffee with a stainless steel filter rather than proper barista style and tbh it's my favourite.