Middle-class problems: Filter coffee has edged its way back into our cups courtesy of a subtle rebrand

Just when your friendly local barista got to know yours was a tall, iced, sugar-free, soy vanilla latte with caramel drizzle, it turns out that everyone else is back on a drop of the filtered stuff.

What, no non-fat Americano with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and a dash of irony? No, none of that for you, my friend.

For just as we middle-class coffee-drinkers had got over the embarrassment of an order that takes longer to say than it does to put a pep in our step, filter has edged its way back into our cups courtesy of a subtle rebrand.

Where once it was evocative of a bitter concoction left to stew in a pot for hours at a ghastly conference in a suffocating hotel meeting-room – a poor, watery relation to the frothy mugs of wonder that we brewed at home with our high-tech chrome machines of joy – now it connotes artisanal hand-craftiness, that beacon of bliss for our people, the sort of thing that a beanie-hatted man in his twenties with a beautifully coiffed beard and tattoos down his arm might worry over in order to get that tangerine note just right.

Now it is the very low-fi nature of the filter that is its biggest draw, getting back to the ur-cup that gave our ancestors the zip to get out there and conquer the world.

So begone with your Terminator-made one-pump, no-whip mocha; bring forth a lightly roasted blend of single-origin arabicas from Kenya, that I may sip upon its citrussy nature – and, just as importantly, look down my nose at the idiot with the cinnamon latte with 2 per cent foam.