because as a group they are not educated in coffee, and how you get round that is anyone's opinion. and again some more comment from the side lines/......have said it before and will say again.....too often in these sites the "coffee thing" is broken down into too simple a form which does not reflect reality. There is no point bashing large roasters that arent even trying to look like a specialty roaster, when there are enough emerging small roasters that do a worse job of it while spruking about the high quality of the greens they use. That's reality. By "high quality" I mean gourmet types, plantation origins and grades, ethically ticketed brands (any of the fair trade movement brands) etc. etc etc Example: I cup plenty of others offerings. Some emerging roasters seem to have a monopoly on ruining good greens ( in effect this is a little like the charbuck phenomenon where you buy high quality greens and burn them to a black oily mess and tell everyone how good they are/were). Beans roasted in low set up cost roasting equipment by those that have little to no experience in the real profession of coffee roasting are not necessarily charred, but they can be roasted very very badly, inconsistently / unevenly and with a very high proportion of scorching and detachment of tips, resulting in a very disappointing acrid cup. How is that different from the larger "commodity" roasters buying mediocre greens, roasting them with a certain level of expertise in very good roasting equipment, also resulting in very mediocre cups... Especially when both are in the end subject to the same high occurence, of low quality "remanufacture" in cafes by inexpert brewers / espresso machine operators / brew-istas? Before bashing larger roasters for doing their job well enough therefore, spare a thought for all the emerging roasters that bombard their clients with marketing information about how "passionate" they are or how many barista comps they've done well in or how fantastic their origin greens are, before destroying them in their low set up cost roasters with their actual short term expertise ...... As usual, this has less to do with coffee and more to do with business, image marketing and market manipulation, and client perceptions...in the race for greater market share. Just annunciating a broader perspective, call it Food For Thought if you like! As is usually the case....education is the key so that clients and restaurant owners alike can also use their palates instead of only their eyes and ears and manipulated perceptions, to choose their coffee supplier. A.
