That's interesting. So you found that while fresh ground coffee is still different (one would assume best, but lets go with different) -- if you're "pre-grinding" one week old is fine.
Did you keep it refrigerated? Room temperature? Dark/daylight? Sealed?
Btw, what do you mean "unlike" wine? Certainly there's a difference between wine that's been left to breathe, and the same wine straight out of the bottle (well "wine" is a bit wide, but for many good wines).
He means that most people cannot tell the difference between different wines based on quality or cost in a blind taste test. If you tell them it's a high quality label, they drink it and act that way. If you tell them it's a low quality label, they don't use fancy descriptors when you ask their opinion. What it really is doesn't correlate with the results at all; it's all placebo.
And what the other commenter said is also true. Most people can't even tell a difference in color. If you serve white wine dyed red, people describe it as they would red wine, and vice versa.
Well... the gaurdian article is fucking useless because it doesn't break down the numbers, for all we know 39% got it right one hundred percent of the time, 39% percent got it wrong one hundred percent of the time and the remainder was just flipping coins. Which may very well mean that 78% absolutely can tell.
That AgEcon paper actually bears that out, though obviously much less dramatically, the hoi poloi can tell the difference and they (to a small extent) 'prefer' the cheap stuff, and the experts can tell the difference and they 'prefer' the expensive stuff.
'prefer' standing in for perceived quality not necessarily enjoyment.
Yes "most" is still legit word to use here, BUT, please try to find anything, anything at all, where "most" people can unambiguously determine 'quality'.
And hell price is a piss poor predictor of quality in just about anything, what with price being some combination of supply, current profit strategy (loss leader?, cash cow?), social signaling, manufacturing cost, number of middlemen, and about a billion other things.
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The color study was a group of like a dozen oenology undergrads.
A handful of oenology undergrads is not "most people". It's not a large enough N, and there are different pressures on a student in field when describing wine than a random consumer. For all we know they could all tell the difference but none of them wanted to be the asshole to look at a glass of red fluid and say "you know I don't think this is a fucking red".
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As for coffee I'll go see if I can dig it up but I'm pretty sure there was a test that recently showed 'most people' couldn't tell quality either and just preferred stronger over-extracted coffee to "good" coffee.
"One of the most famous instances of blind testing is known as the Judgment of Paris, a wine competition held in 1976 where French judges blind-tested wines from France and California. Against all expectations, California wines bested French wines according to the judges, a result which would have been unlikely in a non-blind contest."
So, the judges can taste the difference, but they aren't honest unless it's a blind test. That's very different from saying there is no difference...
Now, that people can't "tell a difference in cost" should be almost a tautology -- what moron thinks that what tastes better will be more expensive, all the time? All things being equal, if you can, from a given, source, make something that tastes good and bad, with approximately the same amount of work, you'd think you make more that tastes good, and due to the benefit of producing large quanta, the good stuff would be cheaper?
In fact, if "most people" prefer the cheaper wines, I guess the wine industry people are doing their jobs, and selling most of what most people want. That doesn't mean it's what I (or you) want, just what "most people" want.
Incidentally, my tastes in coffee doesn't correlate very well to the description of what "most Americans" prefer, in the article, but that doesn't mean that I don't see that it makes a difference in taste what beans you choose, how you grind it, and how you brew it. It just means that I'll consistently make coffee "most Americans" would think is far too strong and bitter. No problem, let them drink whatever kind of coffee they prefer. But don't try and tell us there isn't a difference in taste.
by unlike wine ze means that there's a couple studys out there showing
a) price is suuuuper loosely correlated to quality
b) you can get some undergrad oenologists to describe (some unspecificied) whites like reds if you add food coloring
From which people --who apparently think color is the only differentiator in wine-- leap to the conclusion that the there is no discernable difference between a chianti and a reisling ice wine. Hell no difference between a malolactic chard and and non-mal chard. And that only posturing fools would drink anything but boones farm.
Which is funny, as a far as I know, the main reason for price difference in coffee is scarcity, not "quality". Although, as for most things, the crappy stuff is cheaper.
Did you keep it refrigerated? Room temperature? Dark/daylight? Sealed?
Btw, what do you mean "unlike" wine? Certainly there's a difference between wine that's been left to breathe, and the same wine straight out of the bottle (well "wine" is a bit wide, but for many good wines).