I have measured out my life in coffee spoons

[venta]

Popping upstairs for my morning toast-and-evil, I fell into conversation with a couple of colleagues. One of them tells me that the French refer to American coffee as jus de chaussettes (or "sock juice").

I like this phrase, and may adopt it. Not for American coffee, which I have no particular opinion on, but bad coffee in general.

Comments

[broadmeadow.livejournal.com]

Hmm. IMO, coffee is foul, nasty stuff. So a better phrase may be jus de merde. But, that aside, isn't most coffee (south) American? Am I just wrong, or does this refer specifically to the Starbucks kind of thing from the US?

[venta.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing they mean the sort of coffee that's sold as "Americano" - ie ordinary espresso topped up with hot water. So yes, Starbucks/US stuff rather than Colombian coffee.

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

Most "Americano" coffee is probably shit anyway, because there are very few suppliers of decent espresso beans (for a long time the Monmouth coffee house in Covent Garden didn't do Italian style coffee for this very reason).

And the French like very dark roasted coffee but made using a filter drip, so you don't scorch the beans. So to them, the difference between French Press/Drip coffee and "Americano" is like the difference between Tropicana OJ with bits and tesco long-life value OJ from concentrate.

And they drink gallons of the stuff at the same strength as espresso, but never need to go to the pissoir, what's up with that?