The curious case of Milk Coffee

When we first started recruiting for barista’s, a young female came to the interview — ecstatic about the opportunity. She said she loved coffee, and that she drank coffee everyday.

We asked her what made her fall in love with coffee.

And she replied, “Well I find it interesting that coffee has such a variety of flavors. Some are a bit more sour. While some taste more chocolatey”

Wow! — we thought. What a great first impression. We decided to press her on this. We asked, “How did you come to that conclusion?”

“I tried Kopi Kenangan, and thought that was more sour. Then I tried Kopi Kulo, and that was more chocolatey — and I tried..”

That was when we stopped the interview.

This is the problem we’re facing. On one side, the kopi susu boom of last year opened unimaginable doors for people in the coffee industry. It gave the market so much growth, and brought people into coffee’s “second wave”. On the other, it gave people the impression that coffee is something sweet, and milky.

I own a specialty coffee shop. And I have an issue with people of the specialty coffee world. Here’s my issue: the knowledge gap.

Specialty coffee people love to use these sophisticated, high brow jargons like: crema, microfoam, siphons, and my favorite — carbonic maceration. These terms separate this simpleton from the intellectual, sure. But you, without realizing, separate yourself from the market majority. Believe it or not, the average joe isn’t aware of “the ideal ratio of coffee to water”, nor are they aware of “the relationship between water pressure, temperature and grind size”. Heck, if it wasn’t for Starbucks — the world would probably not know what a latte is.

Look, sophistication is a good thing. Sophistication means you take your coffee seriously. But intelligence is nothing without proper communication.

There is a reason why milk coffee is so popular — it’s easy to understand! You can’t fuck up ordering milk coffee. But specialty coffee, man. Even I sometimes stumble. You have to first choose the beans: house blend or single origin? Then you go through the cities/countries: Ethiopia, Aceh, Brazil, etc etc etc. Finally, you’re are the end of the line — and you still have to choose the brew: americano, latte, V60, french presses. THAT’S LIKE 72963x OPTIONS FOR A CUP OF COFFEE.

What ever happened to: One Latte please?

I’m in the specialty coffee world and I’ll be the first to admit — milk coffee tastes pretty good. There’s something satisfying about milk + cream & sugar. It’s worked on the tea market, and it’s only natural that it would work on coffee.

But it’s not coffee.

If less than a 1/3 of milk coffee is actually coffee. Is that really a cup of coffee? If I were to say that your wife was only 1/3 woman, would you look at her differently? On top of that, the quality of coffee that they use. It has so many defects, it would take a whole other post to talk about it.

Humanity can only progress as fast as their slowest individual. This is true in many industries. Smartphones are more intuitive because the market isn’t as smart. John Mayer, despite his talents, had to make pop songs because the market wanted pop songs. Art museums had to transform from paintings & sculptures exhibits to instagrammable installs. Shall I go on?

No matter how you look at it, milk coffee’s success is simply due to a reflection of the market’s demand. The majority of the Indonesian market is not well-off, wages in this country is not enough to support the average joe a 50K+ cup of coffee. That’s the reality. Life is tough.

On top of that, Indonesians — particularly Javanese (since Kuroiwa House is based in Jakarta) love sugar. There’s a reason why sachet coffee are sweetened out of the packet.

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