Coffee from most cafes in Dublin

dubstepper

I can't speak for the rest of Ireland but I am amazed at how poor coffee is from most regular cafes in Dublin. Outside of specialty places it can be terrible. Maybe it's that they are supplied by the likes of Bewleys.


It's gotten to the stage where I rarely buy takeaway coffees unless i am desperate. They are so expensive, while being poor enough quality, that I end up feeling robbed.



A lot of coffee places are charging €3+ for milk based coffees. I love espresso too but when buying for others it tends to be milk based. You can end up spending 10 quid for 3 averages coffees.

godtabh

Or you go find some where and buy a good one. There is enough choice out there and they arent all bad.

km991148

Dublin (pre COVID..) has in my mind two types of coffee shop.

A lot of really good independent shops with decent baristers that know their coffee types etc.

Then there is the general cafe where they let anyone have a go at the coffee machine.
In the later the milk based coffees are always dreadful. Milk is used over and over and the goal always seems to be to get the mill as hot as possible.

In these places it doesn't really matter what coffee they are serving, as it will always taste of burnt caramel milk. A lot if people don't seem to mind this.

dubstepper

godtabh wrote: »

Or you go find some where and buy a good one. There is enough choice out there and they arent all bad.

That's why I didn't say all. The general level of most cafes is poor especially that they are charging near what the better places do.

Coffee in Dublin makes me sad. If I want a coffee I have to go to Milan, Torino, and even in the train station I can get better, for €1.00!

HopsAndJumps

My experience is different, I have lots of places on my door step that do excellent takeaway coffee. Two beans, Hatch, bear market etc.

Got to a specialised coffee shop. The think a lot of the problem with regular cafes is that have non coffee drinkers making the coffee. You end up with horrible grainy textured coffee with not body.

km991148

HopsAndJumps wrote: »

My experience is different, I have lots of places on my door step that do excellent takeaway coffee. Two beans, Hatch, bear market etc.

Got to a specialised coffee shop. The think a lot of the problem with regular cafes is that have non coffee drinkers making the coffee. You end up with horrible grainy textured coffee with not body.

I think tho its typical Ireland - Dublin particularly seemed quite good at having an independent coffee 'scene' (I hate that word. .but whatever..). Then as usual lots of people jump on that bandwagon (as a cafe can be quite profitable). The demand is (was at least) there to support all this badly made coffee.

Also - I don't think you really need to be a 'coffee drinker' to know when you get a crappy coffee - it would just taste a bit off (especially if it was milk left in the jug before re streaming) and then the next time you get one from the same place it wouldn't taste the same.

It winds me up tho when you pay near 4 quid for a cup of burnt milk. I'd almost rather just get an americano from a chain where I know at least its consistent than take a punt on some random place where they don't care.


I really hope after COVID these smaller places can survive (laine my love, Bear MRKT etc), otherwise it will be wall to wall Starbucks and Costa.

Seamai

I find the coffee I get even in the places that pride themselves in sourcing the best quality beans pretty poor. I hear people waxing lyrical about particular places but when I try their coffee it's always the same complaint for me, far too bitter. I'm not sure whether it's the bean or over roasting but I cannot remember the last time I had a cup of coffee here that I actually enjoyed. I don't even get the proper smell of coffee in cafes anymore. What I look for beside richness is smoothness, funnily enough the only place I've found this on my travels was not Italy but in Germany.

HopsAndJumps

Seamai wrote: »

I find the coffee I get even in the places that pride themselves in sourcing the best quality beans pretty poor. I hear people waxing lyrical about particular places but when I try their coffee it's always the same complaint for me, far too bitter. I'm not sure whether it's the bean or over roasting but I cannot remember the last time I had a cup of coffee here that I actually enjoyed. I don't even get the proper smell of coffee in cafes anymore. What I look for beside richness is smoothness, funnily enough the only place I've found this on my travels was not Italy but in Germany.

I love bitter coffee!

Cloud Picker do some lovely smooth coffee. It reminds of the coffee in Portland.

dubstepper

We are getting work done to our home at the moment so I can't get into the kitchen. As a result I have been popping out to local places to grab a coffee and most are really poor. In fairness most are just regular cafes, where you can get your sandwich or soup but they still have proper machines and grinding the coffee beans in front of you.

Kevhog1988

Got a flat white in citywest last Thursday. for a place that is usually great it was absolutely rotten!!

Seamai

HopsAndJumps wrote: »

I love bitter coffee!

Cloud Picker do some lovely smooth coffee. It reminds of the coffee in Portland.

I like mine with just a tiny splash of milk and no sugar, so there's little to tone the bitterness.

Coffee is pretty much the same as anything else: it varies greatly from one place to the next and that's a good thing!

One person's idea of a 'good coffee' differs to the next. If every café or coffeeshop sold what you might consider to be good, it just wouldn't suit everyone else's tastes and most places would be out of business in a week. While I'd accept that there are some places where I'd find it awful, they are few and far between. I've had maybe 3 coffees in Dublin that I couldn't finish in maybe the last 6 or 7 years and each place has either gone under or been replaced with new staff and/or beans.

People like to give out. We had next to zero "coffee culture" in Ireland until very recently, now every second person is a coffee snob. Just like everything else, most people wouldn't be able to pass a double blind test if their life depended on it. And just like everything else, there are those who will tell you to your face that your opinion is wrong and you should do things the way they do because they're right.

Drink your coffee*, if you like it then go back there again and vote with your wallet. If you don't like it, there's only 16,000 others for you to try. It's not that long ago where basically Bewleys filtered canal water was your only choice.

McDonalds even does pretty decent coffee these days, ffs, you'd think we were living in 1980s Ukraine the way people go on sometimes.

*or eat your burger, drink your pint, listen to your music ad infinitum

mcginty28

McDonalds on taste and price, cant go wrong

DilD

There are so so so many good speciality coffee shops in Dublin you should never have to get a coffee from a non speciality coffee shop. It is the same outside of Dublin and also outside of Ireland. Normal 'cafes' just don't do good coffee. If I can't get to a proper dedicated coffee shop then I do without. Take Costa for example, terrible, absolutely terrible coffee but they are more expensive than speciality coffee shops, it makes no sense to me to pay for bad coffee when I can do better than them at home.

Ireland in general actually has a great coffee shop and roastery presence and the scene is continuously growing!

dubstepper

DilD wrote: »

Take Costa for example, terrible, absolutely terrible coffee but they are more expensive than speciality coffee shops

Costa coffee is one of the worst going. How have they become so successful with such an awful product?

Hodors Appletart

their cakes must be nice

DilD

dubstepper wrote: »

Costa coffee is one of the worst going. How have they become so successful with such an awful product?

Same business model as Starbucks, stick one on every corner and people will buy, it's based on convenience rather than quality IMO. Props to them, it works, but not for me.

Weepsie

Deleted User wrote: »

Coffee in Dublin makes me sad. If I want a coffee I have to go to Milan, Torino, and even in the train station I can get better, for €1.00!

It's a very particular type of coffee you're getting there though. That said, I like pottering around Venice on a sunny autumn morning drinking espressos and having various little pastries. A very simple pleasure.


The independent shops here, and what I would call now independent chains 3FE, Coffee Angel etc, all do very good coffees. Some better than others. Some do amazing filter coffees.

Some of it's down the baristas, some of it is down the quality and consistency of the beans. Some places, I'll order and it will taste exactly how I expect. Others not so much. There are a few places using 3FE for example, but they don't all make coffee as good as one another, despite using the same beans.


Meet Me in The Morning/Reference, Driftwood (Finglas), Coffee Angel (IFSC) and Cloud Picker on Pearse Street have never let me down thus far.

Vice was good too as was whatever the cafe in Jacob's Inn was. I find 3FE near grand canal a bit inconsistent and pricing is higher than elsewhere

Hodors Appletart

Deffo have to cycle over to Driftwood some morning.

There's a coffee shop/bistro in the general Ashtown area that has nice coffee, they are a front for a coffee equipment company who also do beans, and supply a few small coffee shops around the place

the house beans are pretty nice and I've purchased a bag or two for home use over the lockdown when the shop wasn't going to be open - the staff are friendly and we've been going into the shop for Friday afternoon coffee ever since my kid was in creche near it (since they opened really) and the staff are chatty. know our names and generally look after us.

Mr Magnolia

Seamai wrote: »

I find the coffee I get even in the places that pride themselves in sourcing the best quality beans pretty poor. I hear people waxing lyrical about particular places but when I try their coffee it's always the same complaint for me, far too bitter. I'm not sure whether it's the bean or over roasting but I cannot remember the last time I had a cup of coffee here that I actually enjoyed. I don't even get the proper smell of coffee in cafes anymore. What I look for beside richness is smoothness, funnily enough the only place I've found this on my travels was not Italy but in Germany.

Bitterness is often caused by either over extraction or burnt beans in my experience. Not pleasant at all.

Deleted User wrote: »

Coffee is pretty much the same as anything else: it varies greatly from one place to the next and that's a good thing!

It's not a good thing if it varies due to to poor beans, poor equipment or a poor barista which is my experience.

One person's idea of a 'good coffee' differs to the next. If every café or coffeeshop sold what you might consider to be good, it just wouldn't suit everyone else's tastes and most places would be out of business in a week. While I'd accept that there are some places where I'd find it awful, they are few and far between. I've had maybe 3 coffees in Dublin that I couldn't finish in maybe the last 6 or 7 years and each place has either gone under or been replaced with new staff and/or beans.

People like to give out. We had next to zero "coffee culture" in Ireland until very recently, now every second person is a coffee snob. Just like everything else, most people wouldn't be able to pass a double blind test if their life depended on it. And just like everything else, there are those who will tell you to your face that your opinion is wrong and you should do things the way they do because they're right.

Drink your coffee*, if you like it then go back there again and vote with your wallet. If you don't like it, there's only 16,000 others for you to try. It's not that long ago where basically Bewleys filtered canal water was your only choice.

McDonalds even does pretty decent coffee these days, ffs, you'd think we were living in 1980s Ukraine the way people go on sometimes.

*or eat your burger, drink your pint, listen to your music ad infinitum

Coffee has had a 'culture' in Ireland approaching two decades now.

Taste is subjective but deciding on whether a coffee is 'good' or not isn't subjective when the person that's tasting it knows what they're talking about wrt a properly extracted coffee.

Also, it's not necessarily the great unwashed in here. Its a coffee forum. Not everyone I'll grant you, but most know a little about what they're talking about.

Hodors Appletart

yeah there's a difference between a good product and someone simply disliking something.

godtabh

HopsAndJumps wrote: »

My experience is different, I have lots of places on my door step that do excellent takeaway coffee. Two beans, Hatch, bear market etc.

Got to a specialised coffee shop. The think a lot of the problem with regular cafes is that have non coffee drinkers making the coffee. You end up with horrible grainy textured coffee with not body.

I like Two Bean and go out of my way to go there.