COFFEE...Finally something I can speak intelligently about!
For many years, I've been buying green beans from Sweet Marias, in Okland CA, a house that buys small lots of the best coffees from all over the world. I roast them myself...Used to do it in a simple popcorn popper, but now use a roaster very similar to that...It takes about 15 minutes.
Tastes vary of course, but there are a couple of absolutes when it comes to coffee:
1. Freshness of the roast counts more than absolutely anything else in coffee. I'm not talking the average 3-6 weeks it takes Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, or any blend you buy in the store. Until you've tasted coffee roasted within days to one week of drinking it, you simply don't know how good coffee can be.
2. Next to freshly roasting, and letting it sit for 24-48 hours to outgas the carbon dioxide, the next most important thing is grinding. Forget "whirly blade" grinders...They pound the coffee up into various sizes from chunks to powder (if you look at the grind under the microscope. A burr grinder is what to use...It shaves the coffee beans into flakes, presenting the greatest surface area to the infusion process.
3. Water temperature is the third most important parameter. There are varying opinions on this but most center on 201 to 205 degrees Fahrenheit. Much cooler than that, and you'll get a sour cup; much hotter will make it bitter.
Beyond that, it's important to note that companies that tend to roast dark (like Starbucks), do so for a very simple reason: The darker you roast, the more you can get away with in terms of purity and quality of the beans. You can buy cheaper beans if you roast the coffee darker, and no one will ever know the difference.
Roast lighter, and the delicate flavors associated with the origin come through. Just saying.
My current favorites are typically from Brasil, but I've been dabbling with a Sumatra Toba Batak Peaberry. The descriptions on Sweetmarias are fun to read, and tell of knowledge that only a few have. Take this description of the Toba Batak:
This PB lot is bodied, and carries a nice thick sweetness of brown rice syrup, dried tropical fruits, and dark berries. Its herbaceous with notes of horehound and a bit of fresh mint. Flavors shift toward rindy citrus (especially in Full City roasts), and black tea in the finish. City+ to Full City+. SO Espresso.
Other recent favorites have come from Costa Rica and Mexico--I even came across a pretty amazing coffee from CHINA!
Finally, buying green beans is economical. I generally pay $5 to $6/ lb...far less than what you get coffee for in the supermarket.
Another roaster checking in!
Sweet Maria's is my go to for beans too. Anybody that likes coffee should try roasting, it is great fun, you get awesome coffee, and it is cheap.
Beans:
Community French Roast available in bulk at neighborhood market $9.99/lb
Guatemala French Roast available from local roasters $10-12 lb
&
Winn & Lovett French Roast from Winn Dixie $6 for 12 oz bag.
Ground coffee:
Community coffee& chicory
New Orleans Roast** coffee & chicory
** N.O. Roast is made by PJ's coffee of New Orleans.
Phylis Jourdan started a little coffee and tea shop near Tulane and Loyon univ. In the 80s.
Now it is the favorite among Louisianians and the Gulf Coast.
More popular than Starbucks TG. She retired and sold out a few years back and it is now owned by a local guy.
His son is a team mate of our son on a soccer travel team.
They are on the way back from Fl. Now where he paid for the teams tourney expense.
PJs has also made a nice donation to our club.
Very good coffee and much better than the Starbucks crapola.
If you want to regress and chew dirt than have a cup of Sumatran swill with Kent.
Folgers is roasted about 20 miles from here. Pre Katrina it was roasted in New Orleans East. I surveyed in the plant grounds and they had very strict security clearances since they were part of Procter Gamble(remember the Tylenol tampering)
I made a small joke about the 'devil symbol ' on the head of security P&G business card. No one thought it was funny.
When I moved to New Orleans in the early 70s, all the major coffee roasters were downtown in the city. Some mornings the whole downtown smelled like a fresh pot of freshly roasted coffee. Very magical.
Best bang for the buck: 8 o'Clock Colombian peaks whole bean. (Consumer Reports for years and years rated 8 o'Clock coffee a best buy, but I don't know what their latest recommendation is.)
America's Test Kitchen recently rated Peet's Coffee as their winner; I'll try it the next time I see a package.
I use whole bean as much as possible because when I finish the package, it still smells the same way it did when I opened it. Ground coffee smells sour by the time I finish the package.
Anybody up for Black Ivory Coffee?! :pinch:
There's some things in this world that I just won't do, I gar-ron-tee !!
Five or six espresso cups for $70. It is the most expensive coffee in the world, and is specially "processed!"
Interesting replies on NFL Sunday. I'm not a big coffee guy either, maybe a cup or so in the morning and that's it. If later I'll have some Baily's, or even a splash of the vodka d'jour that's on the shelf that SWMBO got. Tried the whiskey brew, and ick. But if I drink coffee after noon or so, I'm up till midnight tossing and turning all night and that sucks.
I'd tend to stick with generic unknown. Order delivery from Dunkin' Donuts. I hear they are faster than Jimmy John's. Maybe they are next door to each other??
But I will say the day I go to de-caff, you all have permission to shoot me in the head. What is the friggin' point?
Okie goats
> Actually, I'm sure at some point in time I had some goat's milk in my coffee. We tried our hand at cheese, but the results were less than optimum. I never could quite get the solid consistency that cow's curds provide.
Well, if they ever get to Oklahoma, you might want to try some of Spanish cheeses made with goat milk and a mixture of goat and sheep milk. I'd recommend a glass of Garnacha to go with that, but that bit is up to you.
>Add a ... crystal, about .01' x .02' in size
Now that's a dyed in the wool surveyor.
Nothing better than Kauai Kona coffee. That stuff is awesome. I've tried purchasing the beans here on the mainland with mixed results, but I look forward to the island mornings with kona in the future.
I am a Starbucks addict. There I said it, got a problem with that?!!:-P
Hot.
Black.
Wet.
Community Coffee, whatever blend you prefer. I like the Dark Roast and the Breakfast Blend. They'll ship whole beans anywhere.
Come on, nobody will fess up to drinking instant coffee? It's like beer - your first cup tastes kind of bad, but you drink it anyway. After that you acquire a taste for it.
How about those fancy - sugar loaded latte's that they call coffee?
Does anybody drink a Chickory blend? I tried it and couldn't handle how dark it was.
For me - I just drink whatever my favorite coffee shack is serving - Black
I'll see your one and raise you two.
Man - I have a lot of pictures on my computer.
Wendell used to roast the beans at our office in Tucson. He made a fine cup of Joe. I now go through Old Bisbee Roasters. I stock up on the peaberrys when he has them in stock. Great dark roast. Straight, no chaser, and darker than an exe's heart...
My current favorite is Kirkland Signature (Costco) House Blend, it's pretty good in my opinion.
I still think the best cup of coffee I ever had was aboard AMTRAK back in 2000 on the Empire Builder, it was truly incredible. And I've drank many thousands of cups in my 54 years on this orb...
I like Folgers. It's just good. When I'm really sleepy, community coffee. Sunday mornings at the house with my wife on the porch, Dunkin Donuts is VERY good.
With the exception of the DD, my wife uses a Keurig and it just doesn't brew it as stout as I like, I use no creamer or sugar. For the DD, I use a french vanilla creamer and it's quite tasty.
Otherwise, black coffee is how GOD intended it to be drank. 🙂
I enjoy one of these every morning with the el cheapo ground espresso.
This week I have a treat. I splurged on a box of premade iced espresso drink. Today I added by pot of moka espresso to some mocha espresso drink. It was good.
I also like B12, red bull and ginseng extract, but not all at once. (That would either be silly or time would stop briefly.)
Best coffee I ever had was in Java, Indonesia. A high altitude Arabica dark roast. Guess that's why I'm partial to Sumatran beans. While traveling there I was trying to pick up the lingo and would order up 'Kopi Susu'. Coffee with milk. Being a bumbling idiot one day, I got some hard looks when I asked for 'Kopi Tutu'. Coffee with mother's breast milk. :-O
