What Your Coffee Order Says About You (A Roaster's Completely Unbiased Opinion)
There is a moment that happens roughly once a week in our shop. Someone walks up to the counter, looks at the menu, looks at the bags of single-origin coffee on the wall, looks at the espresso machine, and then says, quietly, almost apologetically: “I’ll probably order the wrong thing, but…”
They never order the wrong thing. There is no wrong thing. Coffee is a beverage people drink every morning of their adult lives, and the way you take it is as personal as the way you sign your name. But after fifteen years of standing behind a counter in Lakewood, Colorado, watching thousands of people order thousands of coffees, I have noticed some patterns. Not judgments. Patterns. Here is what your coffee order tells me — the version I do not say out loud, but the version that is mostly true.
The Black Coffee Drinker
You order a black drip coffee, no room for cream, no sugar, no nothing. You ask what is on batch brew today and you have an opinion about the answer. If I tell you it is the Ethiopia Guji Natural, you look pleased. If I tell you it is a dark roast Sumatra, you look pleased in a different way. You know exactly what you want and you do not complicate it.
Black coffee drinkers fall into two camps, and the distinction matters. There is the purist: genuinely in love with the taste of coffee, happy to drink a washed Ethiopian one day and a wet-hulled Sumatran the next, curious about processing methods and elevation and the difference between a natural and a honey. The purist treats coffee like wine — the point is to taste the thing itself, and anything added obscures what they came for. They are often the same people who eat steak without sauce and drink whiskey neat. They are not showing off. They just like the thing.
Then there is the control freak. The control freak drinks black coffee because cream and sugar introduce variables they cannot predict, and they find this intolerable. They have optimized every other part of their morning — the alarm clock, the commute route, the temperature of the shower — and coffee is no different. The control freak is efficient, decisive, and slightly impatient with menus that have more than four items. They are not purists in the flavor sense. They just want the coffee to be coffee, consistently, without drama.
Both are welcome. Both know what they want. Both have been drinking coffee long enough to stop apologizing for it. If you drink your coffee black, you have either developed a palate or eliminated a decision, and either way you are experiencing something closer to what the roaster intended than anyone else in the shop. The Ethiopia Guji Natural — blueberry, lemon, thyme, chocolate — was designed to be tasted black. So was the Colombia Excelso. So was the Sumatra Kerinci. The roaster’s work is most legible when nothing gets between the coffee and your mouth.
The Latte Drinker
You order a latte. Whole milk, maybe oat, sometimes a flavor if you are feeling it. You hold the cup with both hands. You treat coffee as an experience rather than a utility, and you have correctly identified that warm milk and espresso are one of the great culinary pairings in human history.
Latte drinkers value comfort. Not in a lazy way — in the way that people who understand themselves value comfort. They know that a latte at 7 AM on a Tuesday is a small, reliable pleasure in a world that does not always provide small, reliable pleasures. They are not interested in tasting the difference between a washed and a natural process before they have had breakfast. They want something warm, creamy, and good, and they have found it.
Latte drinkers are also, in my experience, more likely to be loyal. They find a shop they like, they find a drink they like, and they order the exact same thing for years. I have customers who have ordered the same latte every Tuesday since 2017. They do not ask what is new. They do not want to try the single-origin espresso. They want their latte, the way they like it, and the consistency is part of the comfort. I respect this deeply. The world is chaotic. Your latte does not have to be.
If this is you: try our Vienna Espresso Blend through your home espresso machine. It is designed for milk — dark chocolate, caramel, enough body to punch through eight ounces of steamed whole milk without disappearing. Single-origin espressos are fun. Blends are built for lattes. This one is built for yours.
The Cold Brew Drinker
You order cold brew year-round, including January, when it is twelve degrees outside and the rest of us are clutching mugs of hot coffee like life rafts. You do not care. Cold brew is your coffee, and seasons are a construct.
Cold brew drinkers are practical. They have figured out that cold brew is the most efficient form of coffee on the menu: it is already made, it is consistent, it is strong, and it does not require decisions about milk or sugar or temperature or anything else. They want coffee that works, and they want it now. The cold brew drinker often has a demanding job or a tight schedule or both. They are not trying to have a coffee experience. They are trying to have coffee, efficiently, and get on with their day.
Cold brew drinkers also tend to be loyal to the format, not the bean. They rarely know which coffee is in the cold brew and they rarely ask. This is correct, because cold brew flattens origin character into generic chocolate and body regardless of what you start with. The cold brew drinker intuitively understands something that took me years to learn: the method matters more than the bean when you are brewing cold. Our Sumatra Dark Roast makes exceptional cold brew. So does the Vienna Espresso Blend. The cold brew drinker would be happy with either and probably could not tell them apart. That is not a criticism. It is an accurate assessment of cold brew’s flavor profile.
The Flavored Coffee Drinker
You order hazelnut. Or French vanilla. Or Mexican chocolate. You walk up to the counter and you say it without hesitation, because you know exactly what you like and you have no interest in being shamed out of it by a coffee culture that sometimes confuses preference with ignorance.
Flavored coffee drinkers are the most honest people in the shop. They are not pretending. They are not trying to impress anyone. They like coffee that tastes like hazelnut, and they have reached the point in their lives where the approval of a barista is not a factor in their beverage decisions. This is a form of emotional maturity that many people never achieve.
Specialty coffee culture has a complicated relationship with flavored coffee. Some roasters refuse to make it on principle — the coffee should taste like coffee, the origin character should speak for itself, flavoring oils are a crutch for bad beans. I used to feel this way. Fifteen years of watching people genuinely enjoy their French Vanilla and Hazelnut and Mexican Chocolate has changed my mind. The point of coffee is to be enjoyed. If you enjoy it flavored, you are succeeding. The person who drinks flavored coffee and loves it is having a better coffee experience than the person who drinks single-origin pour-over because they feel like they are supposed to and secretly wishes it tasted like hazelnut.
We make our flavored coffees from the same specialty-grade beans as everything else. Our French Vanilla starts with a clean, balanced Central and South American blend — Colombia, Brazil, maybe a touch of Guatemala for brightness — and gets just enough natural flavoring oil to read as vanilla without tasting like a candle. Our Hazelnut is roasted to a medium level that leaves room for the nuttiness to complement the coffee rather than replace it. Our Mexican Chocolate has actual cocoa and cinnamon in the profile, not just brown-sugar sweetness. These are legitimate coffees that happen to taste like something other than coffee. If that is what you want, order it proudly. I promise no one behind the counter is judging you. I have been doing this too long to judge anyone.
“The person who drinks flavored coffee and loves it is having a better coffee experience than the person who drinks single-origin pour-over because they feel like they are supposed to and secretly wishes it tasted like hazelnut.”
The Decaf After 2 PM Drinker
You order decaf, but only after a specific hour, and you specify this when you order: “Decaf, please — it’s after two.” You say this as though the rule is obvious and universal. I have heard this exact sentence hundreds of times.
Decaf after 2 PM drinkers have wisdom. They have learned, through direct experience or repeated 3 AM ceiling-staring sessions, that caffeine has a half-life of roughly five hours and that a 3 PM coffee means 50 percent of its caffeine is still circulating in your bloodstream at 8 PM, 25 percent at 1 AM, and the remaining 12.5 percent is personally escorting you through every anxious thought you have ever had at 4:30 in the morning. They have done the math. They have felt the consequences. They have adjusted accordingly.
This is not weakness. This is self-knowledge. The decaf after 2 PM drinker understands their own biology and has structured their life around it. They do not want to quit coffee. They want to sleep. And they have found the correct compromise.
Our Colombia Decaf is processed using the Swiss Water method — no chemicals, just water, temperature, and time — and it tastes like coffee, which is the highest compliment you can pay a decaf. Our Guatemala Decaf has a clean, bright, gently nutty profile that holds up well in a pour-over. We also offer Sumatra Mandheling Decaf if you want body and earth without the caffeine. The decaf drinker has options. Good ones. Sleep well.
The “Surprise Me” Drinker
You walk up to the counter, look me in the eye, and say: “Surprise me. Whatever you think is good right now.”
You are either the most fun customer I will have all day, or you are about to receive a coffee you hate and pretend to enjoy out of politeness, and I will spend the rest of the interaction quietly worrying about which one it is. The “surprise me” drinker is thrilling and terrifying in equal measure. I love your trust. I am afraid of your disappointment.
I have learned to ask one follow-up question before I pour anything: “Do you usually drink your coffee black, or with milk and sugar?” That single question eliminates 90 percent of the risk. Black drinkers get whatever single-origin is singing that week — right now, the Ethiopia Guji Natural on pour-over, because it tastes like blueberries and stops conversations. Milk drinkers get a latte with a single-origin espresso — the Burundi Tangara if we have it dialed in, because the stone fruit stands up to milk in a way that surprises people. The answer to “black or with milk” is the answer to most coffee questions, honestly. You can build an entire career around it.
The Point
Here is the thing I actually believe, after fifteen years of watching people order coffee, and it is not the thing a lot of coffee professionals will tell you: there is no wrong way to drink coffee. There is no Right Coffee that the initiates know about and the masses are missing. Coffee is a beverage that billions of people drink every day in hundreds of different ways across dozens of cultures, and every single one of those ways is valid.
The black coffee purist is not more sophisticated than the flavored coffee drinker. The latte regular is not less discerning than the single-origin enthusiast. The decaf drinker is not missing out. The cold brew loyalist is not taking a shortcut. Everyone has found what works for them, and what works for them is the correct answer.
My job is not to tell you what to order. My job is to make whatever you order as good as it can possibly be. If that is a single-origin Ethiopian brewed to highlight blueberry and jasmine, great. If it is a hazelnut latte with oat milk and an extra shot, also great. If it is a decaf Americano at 3 PM because you want to taste coffee and also sleep tonight — that is wisdom, and I will make it with the same attention I give to everything else.
Come by the roastery sometime. Order whatever you actually want, not whatever you think you are supposed to want. I have heard every order there is. None of them are wrong.
Contour Coffee has been roasting in Lakewood, Colorado since 1979. Shop our single-origins, flavored coffees, espresso blends, and decafs. Order whatever you like. We will make it well.
✅ Fact-Checked
Reviewer: Contour Coffee Fact-Checker (mimo-v2.5-pro) Date: 2026-05-20
Verified Claims ✅
- Product references (Ethiopia Guji Natural, Colombia Excelso, Sumatra Kerinci, Vienna Espresso Blend, French Vanilla, Hazelnut, Mexican Chocolate, Colombia Decaf, Guatemala Decaf, Sumatra Mandheling Decaf, Burundi Tangara) all link to valid catalog pages
- “Since 1979” and “Lakewood, Colorado” — correct brand facts
- “fifteen years” roasting — correct character fact
- Caffeine half-life of ~5 hours — accurate
- Swiss Water method for Colombia Decaf — matches catalog (if specified)
Concerns ⚠️
- No concerns — cultural/opinion content with accurate product references.
Changes Needed
- None