Re: Do home-roasters achieve top drawer results?

Hi Jim

I've appreciated all of your advce proffered here and personally. I
don't want to be combative either, but I need to ask this question to
get to the heart of the matter, at least in my own mind.

If at some level of experience people "graduate" from understanding
coffee flavors in a relative way to understaning them in an absolute
way, and if you think you have crossed that threshold:

What is the absolute best coffee (blend or S.O.) for making espresso
this year?

If you can't answer that question the reason, IMHO, is that people
have different tastes, which is an idea that blows away the whole
concept of objective measurements of espresso flavors. Disagree?


On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 01:41:29 -0500, jim schulman
<jim_schulman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Wed, 12 Apr 2006 03:04:51 GMT, "Ed Needham"
<ed@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I just think it's absurd to presume the perception of taste is objective.

It's equally "absurd" to assume that the perception of anything is
objective. Try getting through one day without assuming there is wide
ranging agreement and accuracy in the things we sense, in the meanings
of the words we use, in our estimates of what will please or not
please others. According to your dispensation, these are all
"subjective."

It's a superstition among many social scientists and psychologists,
akin to the worst religious fuindamentalism, to think that there is
such a thing as a unified "method of science" that estanblishes
objective truths across all disciplines and areas of life. The
standards of evidence used in one science do not apply to any other,
never mind to everyday life, or non-scientific disciplines. Each area
of life has its own standards of evidence.

The "method of science" is a myth that owes most of it's existence to
the indoctrination courses to which first year social science and
psychology students are subjected. No historian of science takes this
idea seriously anymore. And if physicists or any other scientist had
listened to philosophers about what was the universal standard of
objectivity, no science would have gotten off the ground. Methods and
standards of truth arise among the peers dealing with each of these
subkects; they do not come from the outside.

And so the evidence about coffee taste are centered around the
judgments of those who know and care about coffee. These judgments are
discussed, correlated to what is known about that coffee in general,
how it varied in that particular year, and how it was processed from
bean to cup. If there's something odd about the the reported taste,
recognized experts are given the benefit of the doubt, newbies are
not.

Much the same thing happens when a corportation considers a new
product, or even when a physiscist comes up with a new theory.

The final proof is always in the result. If the product bombs, the
mode of making the judgment was off; if the theory fails some hard
tests, it was wrong; if the vaunted coffee is rejected by the public,
the expert consensus of the tasters was wrong. In each case, people
revise the way they do things in response to the failure. In physics
the revisions tend to accumulate, while in product launches or coffee
tasting they don't nearly as much. That just makes these different
parts of life, rather than sending one to the heaven of perfect
objectivity and the rest to the hell of subjectivity.

I apologize for sounding combative; but I hear this red guard chant,
"if it can't be measured, it isn't true" twaddle from first years
almost every day. To me it is the rude arrogance that those who don't
know anything and don't want to know anything throw into the face of
those who do.

The most measurable thing about coffee is how much it sells. So if
objectivity is in measurement, not in our taste, there would be no
point in trying to grow it, process it, roast it or brew it with what
we regard as high standards. Instead, we should all pursue our
aberrant tastes in furtive secrecy, since Folger's and Nescafe instant
are objectively the best.
.

Relevant Pages

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