The coffee connoisseur's conundrum

When she was growing up in the southern US, my friend Anna and her mother had a secret language. She spoke fondly about how the ability to talk covertly in public made her feel special. But then, at about the age of seven, Anna went on her first trip to visit relatives in Italy. It was there she discovered, to her horror, that millions of people also understood and spoke the secret language, which turned out to be Italian. The feeling of being special vanished. It took her years to get over it, she told me a decade later when I first met her.

I was thinking about Anna's childhood epiphany last week as I elbowed my way through the overcaffeinated masses at the London Coffee Festival. It turns out that a lot of people speak coffee now, and it's me who's left feeling not so special any more. Devoted fans of indie bands who went on to make it big, long-time swing dancing enthusiasts or high-quality cocktail nerds may well relate.

The distaste for one's niche interest going mainstream is perhaps partly related to how many people are professional generalists now. It's the curse of the social scientist - or the liberal arts major - although in truth it can strike anyone.

Those afflicted can self-diagnose by estimating how many times they've caught themselves thinking: "If I'm honest about it, anyone could do my job"; or "I knew I should have studied something practical . . . I guess it's too late now." Unable to carve out a distinct identity by way of a trade or professional specialism, one instead enlists hobbies, relationships or objects in an effort to be seen as a unique snowflake. Such is the way of societies that encourage individualism.

When I moved to London in 2009, with my two degrees in highly stylised economics, the coffee geek community was small and exciting. A coffee aficionado could attend rounds of Ultimate Barista Fighter (billed as "a bit like fight club but with latte"), visit Penny University for a tasting flight of three different coffees paired with chocolates, or endeavour to fill a "disloyalty card" by going to eight different cafes in east London's "emerging coffee scene".

All of this is no more. That it won't ever be the same again was merely confirmed to me at the festival this month: east London's Old Truman Brewery could barely contain the mob of coffee enthusiasts and exhibitors' stands. At one such stand James Hoffman, the 2007 World Barista Champion and cofounder of Square Mile Coffee Roasters, was holding court and kindly offering tasting flights. He's well known in the community, and one of the few things that made me feel special about my coffee snobbery at the festival is that I was easily able to recognise him.

After the activities wound down, I went to meet Mr Hoffman at his roastery in Hackney to complain and drink coffee - and not just because these things complement each other. He pointed out that the situation was more manageable when the core community in London was about Dunbar's number of 150, which is posited to be the optimum size of a social group. Of the early days, he recalls, the challenge of convincing people to drink better coffee and open specialist cafes seemed at first formidable. "It felt like there was a big door and we were going to shoulder-barge it down. We went for it, and it was made of polystyrene. We stumbled through and we were like, 'wait, what? Oh, God, what do we do now? There are lots of cafes!'"

There are so many, in fact, that there is a book of 185 independents and a few apps with maps, too. When a new outfit opened near the Financial Times, it popped up on one such app, prompting me to invite people to go for walks there. I basked for as long as I could in grateful colleagues' praise, usually along the lines of: "This place is great! How did you find it?"

On the sheer quantity of cafes, Mr Hoffman tells me that when Square Mile started in 2008 they had an ambition that London would be the one city in the world with 30 great cafes, which felt weirdly do-able back then. As for the present, he doesn't think London has 30 great cafes. "But it has way more good cafes now than we would have expected," he says.

And, if you ask me nicely, I might tell you which ones are which. I speak great coffee, you know.

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