Ahh, had to throw a down vote.

Every coffee snob I’ve ever met runs this same routine.

Also, it’s pointless as well as a badly framed idea.

You do know that different roasts, and different beans, each have subtleties that can be brought more to the front, or moved back, with the application of milk, cream, sugar, honey, salt, lemon, and other less popular options? Or are you not aware?

Because that’s just roast and species. Once you get into regional varieties, it opens up even more. An Arabica grown in Ethiopia and roasted blonde is going to be different than a Kona, or a generic Columbian.

Take Kona and Ethiopian as perfect examples. Depending on exactly what you want out of the coffee, most Ethiopian beans favor darker roast. Kona tends to be better with a light or medium (again, depending in desired results).

You take Ethiopian black, and it’s good. Great even. But it’s going to be more bitter, less fruity, and decidedly not floral. You add in a splash of milk or cream, and that bitterness fades to the background, and you can taste the spicy notes and the earthiness. Add in some sugar, sparingly, and the spice climbs further front, while the bitterness almost disappears.

Kona, however is a highly fruity, bright coffee no matter how it’s roasted, but when it’s done dark, it tastes burnt without milk or cream. And, at lighter roasts, a hint of sugar or honey opens up the fruit and deepens it. So, in both cases, Kona may be better with one or both.

Both of those benefit from the tiniest pinch of salt, whereas something like a Blue Mountain suffers from any of it, with the possible exception of a teeny tiny splash of milk if it has been sitting for a while. Blue Mountain tends to lose it’s complexity and develop a certain sourness if it isn’t stored well, as its normal acidity just doesn’t seem to like being too dry.

Now, yeah, once you dump enough in, it’s about the caffeine rather than flavor. But the truth is that your average cup of grocery store coffee isn’t that great to begin with. It’s flat, one note. Which is fine, and there’s a strong argument that wasting money on fancy coffee that you aren’t going to be able to sit and really savor is kinda silly. So why not douse it with whatever makes you happy, and very your caffeine fix?

Black coffee is great, but it isn’t some kind of automatic thing where it’s going to be pleasant by default. Have you ever been in a hospital break room? The stuff that gets stocked in most of those is shit by even grocery store coffee standards. But it’s hot, cheap, and usually free for the employees that may have to abandon it at no notice. So who cares what’s in it to make it bearable?

Coffee snobs love to bag on Starbucks for being mid tier at best. And I ain’t gonna argue against that. But you know what makes mid tier coffee drinkable when you’re stuck in traffic? Cream and sugar. Maybe even pumpkin spice, if that’s your fetish.

There’s as many ways to enjoy coffee as there are mouths. Trying to coffee snob black coffee as some kind of purity test is just snobbery