Bitter Press

Essay: Words I’d Love To See Disappear From Coffee Articles

There’s a problem I have: before I became a full on coffee nerd, I was working my way into writing as a possible career. That didn’t quite pan out. Turns out, I’m much more useful professionally as a coffee maker than an editor. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t lost my growing passion for the written word.

So I’m left with, now, a deep passion and professional immersion in the world of coffee, while I continue to write and read articles with a fervor. And anytime I can catch a newspaper or magazine article written about coffee? Why, that might just be the conjunction of two worlds. But there’s a problem. Most mainstream outlets really don’t know much about coffee, and instead of educating themselves, they tend to fall to a few horrible cliches to carry their piece instead of in-depth information. So without further ado, the following is a short list of words I’d love to see disappear from articles written about coffee in mainstream outlets.



1. “java”

Java is an island that produces coffee. In the mid-century, it became a marketing stamp and was eventually adopted as an encompassing slang to mean coffee. In the modern day, there is no excuse to interchangeably use java to mean coffee. If the beans didn’t come from the island of Java, then it’s just creating confusion.

2. “buzz”

We get it. Caffeine affects neuro-receptors in the brain and blocks whatevers that make you feel tired and triggers a small release of dopamine. This is just a lazy term to throw in to make the writing more colorful, but it doesn’t really mean anything.

3. “heart-attack inducing,” “heart-stopping”

Look, I understand that espresso has a higher concentration of caffeine, but it won’t give you a heart-attack. Again, this is colorful caffeine language that skews the message. Also? No one who actually likes coffee is really that big of a fan of caffeine. It’s there, sure, but the focus is on the flavors.

4. “bold,” and subsequently, “mild”

These two words are proprietary terms. Starbucks, in an attempt to simplify coffee descriptors for a wide audience, adopted these two terms to easily separate their output into two categories. There are issues with this, though. Bold, at Starbucks, refers to coffees with either a darker roast, or a more in-your-face flavor profile, as in an African coffee with a very bright acidity. Mild is a term used for breakfast blends, but also for their Guatemala, due to its balance. The first issue is that bold as a term incites excitement, and entices people. Mild  itself is a dismissive term. People tend, then, to overlook extremely balanced coffees, like a Guatemala, when in fact, coffees from Guatemala tend to be some of my favorites. But the biggest issue here is that these terms are not transferable. You can’t walk into any coffee shop around the world, ask for a bold or a mild coffee, and be handed the same thing. The terms are subjective, and empty. And they are proprietary. They have no business being in a coffee article.

5. “grande-venti-mocha-frappa-cappa-choochoo”

It’s 2010. We get it. No need for complicated, customized drink beverage name jokes. They’ve all been made.

6. “crushing the beans”

This is just a pet-peeve. An attempt to get more colorful language into the piece, it is just sort of distracting and vulgar. It’s called a grinder; it is grinding the beans. Crushing makes it sound like the beans are being smashed to death. It’s a little more delicate.

7. “jolt”

See: “buzz.”

8. “jive,” “jazz”

See: “buzz,” but with icky racial undertones that stem from our post-WWII pop culture economy.

9. “hipster” (submitted by Coal Creek Roastery)

Ah yes. There are many ways in which this word is used. The first? Backlash. Folks who like things the way they like them and no other are pretty wary of anyone who might have a strange penchant for obscure mid-70s LA rock and facial hair, and the term “hipster” is meant to be a barb in our sides. Folks who are willfully ignorant of alternative pop culture might throw out the term in the same way they would for “cave troll” — they’re not sure what it is, exactly, they may have seen one as a kid, and they know for sure it refers to a monstrous subset of creature with strange mores and an alien consciousness. But let’s face it: are we still referring to the black clad, poetry-sprewing, drug-addled wanna be beats of the 60s, or are we going cutoff denim shorts, brunchin’ in Williamsburg? Either way, does the term “hipster” really mean anything? It’s been adopted into our lexicon. It’s become part of our vernacular in a recognizable way. But it’s just another way of stereotyping, and it distracts from the meat of the story — that would be the coffee, and the preparation methods employed by said “hipster.”

10. “spill the beans”

Ugh. Really? Puns? There is so much rich information available out there, do we really need to get chummy and bland in order to rope in the reader?

11. “cup o’ joe” (submitted by Collin Moody)

The phrase was apparently coined in the 1840s. I think it’s done it’s time.

When it gets down to it, a lot of these are just picky little pieces of text. But the harm they do to the coffee world is more subtle. The general public is heading into a coffee awakening. Most larger cities now have a growing population of cafes and coffee bars that are pushing the boundaries of coffee, and the word is getting out.

Relying on snappy cliches just puts the message out to the reader that your publication A) assumes a certain level of intelligence of its reader, or B) purports that there’s really only so much you need to know about coffee, and quippy copy trumps all.

In my opinion, the best possible tool in the Specialty Coffee industry isn’t a refractometer, but rather the media. No matter how hard a roastery or coffee bar works to perfect their coffee, if the message isn’t getting out to customers, it doesn’t really mean much. Phrases like “cup o’ joe” homogenize the idea that a cup of coffee is a cup of coffee, while most people doing great work in coffee recognize the extreme difference that can be in the cup from place to place. So why are we letting traditional media control the message?

It’s 2010 — we’re immersed in new technologies and social media isn’t a hot new trend anymore: it’s a day-to-day basic standard of living. Twitter alone has connected me to hundreds of excellent coffee people, and in turn, to their own blogs and journals, where I’ve made some of my best discoveries about coffee yet.

This isn’t quite a radical’s manifesto. I’m not suggesting a complete blacklisting of newspapers and magazines (not yet, at least), but I feel that coffee folks need to immerse themselves deeper into the interviews and and articles being written about them. There’s a simple first step that I recommend. As soon as the interview is over, just lean in and say to the interviewer:

“Whatever you do, please don’t use these words.”

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