“Make It Nuclear”: Boomer Demand for ‘Extra Hot’ Coffee Confirmed as Global Phenomenon

Sienna Rivers | Lifestyle & Trends Reporter | Sutherland Shire Gazette

23 April 2025

What began as a harmless café quirk has now brewed into a full-scale global incident: Boomers everywhere - from Burraneer to Berlin - are demanding their coffees be served “extra hot,” by which they mean industrial furnace hot.

The Sutherland Shire Gazette’s foreign correspondent has spent six months embedded in cafes across five continents, confirming what baristas feared: it’s not just local. It’s generational. And it’s escalating.

“It’s like they want it at magma,” sighed Rocko, veteran barista from Jannali. “One guy told me his cappuccino was ‘emotionally cold.’ He made me re-steam it twice while maintaining eye contact.”

Café staff report increasing verbal flare-ups over lukewarm lattes, with one heated incident involving the phrase, “In my day, milk had backbone.”

Experts are baffled. “Boomers grew up on drip-filtered Nescafé that could remove rust,” explained thermal anthropologist Dr Mel Cray. “This isn’t about flavour - it’s about asserting dominance over physics.”

Suspicion toward contemporary ‘barista culture’ is also high, with many citing latte art as “untrustworthy foam behaviour.” Others claim frothy hearts “undermine the seriousness of the beverage.”

In response, some cafés are trialling a new setting called Boomer Roast Mode - a bespoke blast of milk steamed to the brink of chemical breakdown, “just how they like it.”

As for Rocko, he’s resigned to the future.

“If they want to remove the roof of their mouths before 9am, that’s between them and their periodontist. I just froth it.”

TAFE is rumoured to be offering a short course in Boomer Roast Diplomacy next term.

More on this story as it cools - which is, frankly, the problem.