Fears!

I have fears about catch words...

This very nice older lady comes up to me at work with a sincere concern of not wanting high 'acidity' in her coffee as she swore that she could tell the difference between low and high acidity coffees.  Now, at first I just told her that we don't label our coffees or identify our coffees on a basis of low-high acidity as it was just a catch-phrase by the corporate industry to sell more coffee.  She was very serious that she could indeed tell the difference between a low-high acidity coffee but that she couldn't tell which of ours was indeed low or high.  I tried to relay the information that I have acid reflux and am very sensitive to spicy foods (ketchup is spicy to me) and know her plight, but again she was just not believing me that there was virtually no relevance to her wanting a low-high acidity coffee.  Anyway, to cut to the chase I told her to stay away from our bold coffees like the Dark Roasted Sumatra (our only dark roasted coffee) since it would brew much stronger and give off the noticeable 'bite' that she so disliked.  Right now I would recommend that you click on Coffeeresearch.org or Coffeereview.com where they tell you that acidity is a sensation your tongue experiences while drinking coffee, the sensation that a cupper talks about.  But, as she was confusing the experienced term acidity with the acidity of pH balance in her cup, which is more commonly found in lighter roasted coffees and most recognized in coffees from Kenya. This older lady didn't seem like the type of person who spends a whole lot of time on the internet researching coffee acidity vs. pH so I avoided my go-to answer of  'internet=information." What to do in this situation when there is the loss of understanding?

I guess the moral of the story is that I am becoming more and more offended by the very high proportion of people in and around the coffee industry that ignorantly miss-sell information and knowledge to people.  I do not just mean that these dealers of ignorance do not know the coffee, but that they will knowingly use buzz-terms to hook the publics mind and forever shape the idea that people have in their minds' of what coffee is.  Terms like 'low-acidity,' 'french-roast,' and my least favorite "cappuccino-flavored" are all methods of devaluing and dumbing down the consumers and coffee person's nomenclature.  It does not end with just the people who drink their coffees at home, but it extends out into the innocence of a mislead older lady in my coffee shop looking for something that she is unable to properly define because the buzz-term she knew really just helped to confuse when the idea behind it was supposed to aid in her digestion problems (I suspect?)

It really just hit me. I do not want to hear about hazelnut coffee creamers and 32 ounce quad-shot caramel  mochas filled with high fructose corn syrups.  It is unfair to consumers that they are mislead to devalue the hard work of so many people around the world.  I have faith that humanity really does care about what they consume, and how it is consumed.  I have faith that humanity cares about what it wastes and what is done with their waste.  I also have faith that no-one wants to be ignorant and lied to.