Chances are that if you’re reading this article you are in suspicion of yourself…So are you or aren’t you? Do you shine your chrome coffee machine every morning after use? Do you discuss coffee machines in your spare time? Have you dreamed about being a barista or being married to one? Read on…

You will find them everywhere these days. From street corners to kiosks in the middle of the median strip; from holes cut out in shop walls to airport lounges. The coffee snobs seem to be multiplying in uncontrollable numbers together with their paraphanalia of sourced single origin beans, high pressured espresso machines and kick-ass grinders. So, what makes these people coffee snobs as opposed to people with an exaggerated interest in coffee?

As a snob, you look down upon others and you generally tend to associate yourself with others who work similarly. You see yourself as having a higher social standing to others more inferior.

So, in terms of coffee how does this translate? When you search the internet for clues of coffee snob practices, the same words come up over and over again: java, bean sourcing, coffee machines, small batch roasting…After a while you realize what a true coffee snob is and what a coffee snob is not.

A coffee snob is not someone who regularly frequents the same outdoor café just to be seen sipping lattes with newspaper in hand.

A coffee snob is not someone whose first question when they place an order at a café is ‘what brand is your coffee machine?’

A coffee snob is not someone who looks down at someone who doesn’t have a coffee machine in their kitchen.

A coffee snob is not someone who only buys, grinds and brews fair-trade coffee beans.

A coffee snob is not someone who doesn’t take sugar with their coffee.

A coffee snob is not someone who brags about coffee machines and all the knowledge they have of or relating to anything to do with coffee or coffee machines ad nauseum.

All of the above traits and practices pertain to people who are simply bored and a little vain.

A coffee snob is someone who makes their own coffee beans. That’s right; someone who invariably has their own coffee machine and grinder; who usually refers to coffee as ‘java’ denoting to the Indonesian origins of many beans, and who roasts their own small batches of personally sourced coffee beans in order to have more control over the final product – to have their beans just the way they like them.

Now that’s a coffee snob. So are you one?

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