In the seven plus years I have been running this website, I have never received as many emails about a specific post as I have in the past 24 hours regarding last night’s rambling coffee post. I have received at least 50 emails, varying in length from a link to a coffee store to 2-3 page long pieces from NASA engineers (not a joke) with detailed bean descriptions and brewing instructions.
At any rate, I just wanted a decent coffee I could use as an every day drink, so I think I am just going to go with Community Coffee, although I am going to try some of the other ones for special occasions. My local grocery has Peet’s, but it is already ground.
**** INCOMING BSG SPOILER STOP READING ***
In other news, I am finally working my way through season 2.5 of BSG, and I cheered loudly when Admiral Cain was shot. I don’t think there has been a character I viscerally disliked as much as her in a long, long time.
*** Update ***
Mary in the comments says I’m not being very gracious, and now that I re-read this post, it does seem kind of snide. I didn’t mean it that way. I just thought it was funny that coffee, of all the thousands of things we have talked about, provoked such a response. I am grateful for every email and read every one, and had no idea there were good coffee houses in Fiji and Oklahoma and all the other places. In fact, one of the emails mentioned an aeropress, which I am definitely going to get. I didn’t mean to sound like a jackass. It is just natural, I guess.
Andre
Wait till you get around to Razor (TV Movie between Seasons 3 and 4.) She’s a major charcter, fills in a lot of her backstory on the Pegasus.
freelancer
Modelled after Cheney, go figure.
But hey the Cylon attack changed EVERYTHING.
cleek
@Andre:
yeah… speaking of spoilers….
Calouste
There is now an advert for kanacubancoffee.com under Teh Great Gizoogle.
Maybe, mr. Cole, if you had written your post a little less rambling, you could have got all the information you wanted just by refreshing the page a few times and looking at the ads ;)
mellowjohn
i’m a tea drinker (NOT bagger) myself – trader joe’s irish breakfast tea, as a matter of fact, so when i saw the topic of that post i said "bfd" and skipped over it.
just went back and read it all.
again, what’s the bfd w/ coffee. a "good cup of coffee" is an oxymoron; a "bad cup of coffee" is redundant.
arguingwithsignposts
As a former gulf coast resident, I don’t think Community is the answer, but whatever. Just don’t go with the full-strength stuff. It’s lethal.
Andre
@cleek: I will not apologise for being up-to-date with my sci fi watching!
Well, OK, maybe. Sorry?
But it’s not a spoiler to know she’s in it, she’s on all the promo material.
Horse
I would again like to apologise in advance for the middle of Season 3. But stick with it, it gets better in S4.
Krista
What Andre said. Her character makes some loathsome decisions, but you get to see the context in which they’re made.
Yet another reason to love BSG: the female characters were really no different from the male ones except by virtue of gender. They could be heroes, assholes, protectors, screwups, devils and angels — sometimes all in one episode. I’m sure most actresses would give their eyeteeth for a meaty, complex role like that of Cain, Roslin or Starbuck.
The Dangerman
You’re a tease! Where is the link to the 2 to 3 pages from NASA Engineers on how to brew a cup? Don’t leave us hanging (not a teabagging reference) here.
Mary
You’re not being very gracious about this. You did ask for advice.
DB
Grounds for Change: http://www.groundsforchange.com/
AkaDad
Coffee and tea-bagging are both good to the last drop.
The Moar You Know
Hell, I wasn’t one of those people. You should be grateful – I worked for Starbucks and a smaller chain in the Bay Area (Spinelli, for those who may remember it). I can bore you to tears about coffee.
Best coffee ever is the famed Jamaica Blue Mountain. It is not cheap and you need a trustworthy supplier who will actually get the real deal instead of something else. Vaccuum-brewed, it is so good it is truly scary.
Second best – Kona.
Starbucks has the shittiest coffee on earth.
cleek
on the other hand, if you want tea: Golden Monkey and Gunpowder Green are where it’s at.
xj - not the auto
because you can’t get enough coffee advice… whole bean roasted in the dc area available mail order or at costco:
http://www.mayorgacoffee.com/
me and the missus like the mocha, but the others are also good.
AkaDad
Too much coffee.
Edit: Or maybe John had an unwelcomed tea-bag incident.
AhabTRuler
@The Moar You Know: I can say exactly the same thing about myself, only in the DC Metro area. Down to this detail.
stickler
Yeah, what AkaDad said. Who the hell comes to this website expecting Kum Bay Ya hand-holding? Fer fuck’s sake, half the posts are insulting to somebody. As they say in Redmond, that’s not a bug, that’s a feature!
Keep up the caffeine mainlining, and don’t ever change, John.
valdivia
I did not email but I am still going to plug again as i did yesterday in the thread for gimme Coffee, they ship the very day they roast. Best coffee ever.
I second the request for the 3 page instructions from NASA engineers!
Anoniminous
@The Moar You Know:
As a dark, DIY, roast kinda guy I was disappointed by Blue Mountain. It tasted old, stale, and flat. If I ever get a chance to grab some green beans I’ll run ’em through the process just to see how it compares to my beloved Ethiopian Yirgacheffe (yum yum.)
eastriver
I have a sort-of dayoff tomorrow. I need to find a teabaggery display in Manhattan to heckle and jeckle. And a good cup of joe to sip whilst hurling taunts and teasers.
What a great country we live in.
valdivia
also where is Tunch? how can we have a pseudo-open thread without a glimpse of him?
Keith
@The Moar You Know:
Another JBM fan! Excellent. It’s my favorite regularly-available brand, but the absolute best I’ve had is something called St. Helena Bourbon out of a French press. But the stuff also ran $60/lb.
I will say on Starbucks, their bold flavors are over-roasted, but their mild ones are OK.
JK
I highly recommend coffee flavored coffee. It really hits the spot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQxgv4QtKM8
Ejoiner
Right there with you about Cain. My wife and I just plowed through all of season 2 and 2.5 last week over Spring Break. Loved every single episode immensely – and especially "Downloaded". On the other hand I think the season finale was way too much. They pack enough plot and story development into the last 30 minutes for several seasons of development. Left me a little overwhelmed and not in the good way. Can’t wait to get to season 3!
dmsilev
@The Moar You Know:
Kona is very tasty, though sadly it seems to be most commonly found as a blend of 10 or 20% Kona and the rest being more normal varieties. I went to Hawaii on vacation some years back, and brought back a pound of pure Kona as a gift to my coworkers (and a pound for myself, of course). I was very popular for a couple of weeks, until it was all gone.
Sadly, I can’t exactly justify spending $20/lb or so on beans on a regular basis, so it has to be a once in a while treat.
-dms
Carnacki
I thought it was very bold after so many dark episodes that in the 3rd season, the writers transformed the Battlestar Galactica into an episodic comedy/drama and recycled old scripts from the Love Boat. Oops. I said too much.
Bubba
Ah yes, community is a great choice. Spent many a cold mornng off shore in the gulf of mexico enjoying a basic cup of coffee more than I ever had at a coffee shop. but if you ever get down to south Louisiana, community does have coffee shops now.
mgordon
Coffee gives me diarrhea.
Mary
That’s why we love you John. Well done.
Betsy
For the tea snobs among us:
I’m so spoiled – I live a block away from the most wonderful tea shop in New England. It’s owned and run entirely by one really nice and knowledgeable guy from (I think) southern China, and he sells extremely high-quality, fresh, loose-leaf teas for really really cheap. There’s no seating; just 1- or 2-oz bags of tea. Though he’ll brew you a cup (hot or iced) of any tea in the shop. The most expensive are less than $7/oz, and most are $2/oz. Don’t know how he stays in business, honestly. If you’re interested, he also does an online business. http://www.teazonline.com
I will be sad when I move.
Screamin' Demon
Nescafé Clasico. Hecho en México.
As Frank Zappa said about coffee: it’s just black water.
Krista
All righty, then….
(Although I have heard that coffee can be good to get things…moving…as it were.)
On a side note, I’m glad to hear all of these coffee recommendations. My Ob-Gyn has given me the green light for one cup of coffee a day (bless his heart), so I might as well have the best freaking coffee I can find, right?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Betsy: Don’t give in Betsy. Hold out for a tea thread.
Mary
Rush Limbaugh has gone and recorded a few PSAs for the Humane Society urging people to get shelter dogs. Noble. Except that he leaked that he did it to hurt Obama.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0409/Rushs_real_cause.html
JL
@Krista: Allegro French Roast is really good; I buy it at Whole Foods.
The Moar You Know
@Anoniminous: You may have had old beans – they can and do go stale.
Blue Mountain is not a coffee for those who like big, bold, dark flavors. It’s one of the most flavor-neutral coffees I’ve ever had, which I guess could be considered a weakness (nothing really stands out). For me, it’s the archetype of coffee flavor.
JL
@Mary: Good! If Rush can encourage folks to adopt pets, I’m all for it.
The Moar You Know
@Keith: I will be on the lookout for that. I am willing to occasionally spend a ton of money on coffee if it is profoundly good.
@dmsilev: Kona blend is a fucking waste of time. You gotta go big or go home!
The Moar You Know
@AhabTRuler: Ahab – how are you heating that beautiful contraption?
demkat620
My favorite cookie is my favorite coffee!
Krista
Good to know. For years now, I’ve been trying to recreate the taste of the coffee that we drank every morning in Apeldoorn. It was very rich, but very mellow, and I wanted to bathe in it, it was so good. I bought some coffee at the airport in Amsterdam, thinking that it would be the same, but it just wasn’t. Sigh.
Kirk Spencer
@Anoniminous: I used to agree. And in fact JBM still isn’t my favorite.
Jamaican, like Sumatran, doesn’t taste as good at darker roasts. I finally found it to be VERY good when I had the opportunity to have it at a medium roast.
I can’t say I have a favorite, however. I like beans that can take dark roasts (like Konas) on "curl up by the fire with a book" days. When I’m having light conversation, Jamaicans and Sumatrans work very well. If I’m coffee just for the pleasure of a good coffee, more often than not I find myself grabbing a Tanzanian (if I’m flush, a peaberry) at (depending on my whim at the time) either medium or espresso roasts. If I’m in the mood for a ‘different’ bean, one of the Peruvians at a light roast tends to fit the bill.
Don’t get me wrong – I like JBM. I just don’t think it’s anywhere near as good as the difference in price would indicate – and in fact, have some that I like better even if they were the same price.
JL
Personally, I was disappointed with the RNC site that allows you to select the shape of your tea bags. When it comes to tea, I enjoy tea from The Republic of Tea and their tea bags are round. The RNC needs to rethink their marketing analysis because they are disenfranchising those that like round bags. No teabagging for me!
asiangrrlMN
deansbeans.com, deansbeans.com, deansbeans.com! Yeah, I’m still plugging them
I only have one cup a day (ok, so it’s a twenty-four ounce mug), so I like mine really strong. They have light roasts, too, though.
As for tea, well you can’t beat the real thing, and I have my connection. My parents live in Taiwan for the most part, and they bring back some amazing teas.
Tea, coffee, filtered water. They’re pretty much my three drinks of choice.
Litlebritdifrnt
Olbermann on Fox "not promoting" teabagging. Instant classic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLEzkwdcp04
Betsy
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I thought I’d just blatantly disregard the intended topic of this one.
JerryN
I’m late to the party, but Ahrre’s Coffee does really really good, Full-city Roast coffee. I’m partial to the Mocha Java.
Litlebritdifrnt
@JL:
Actually they included a PG Tips pyramid tea bag, which is my fav, so you know I would really like all of those repubs to send me copious amounts of PG Tips pyramid tea bags cause I am out of them right now and that makes me really cranky and it is going to be ages until I can get to World Market to get more.
AhabTRuler
@The Moar You Know: When I use it (and it is unfortunately rare), I heat it on my gas stove with a cast-iron diffusion plate, although it is a shitty rental stove, so it is easy boil the water.
At one point in Europe, I saw a Bodum Santos on sale with an alcohol burner and stand, but they weren’t sold separately. One day i will build something similar.
GSD
I going to see what happens when I steep my tea-bags in Kool-Aid.
Wondering if it will hasten the singularity or cause some sort of event horizon.
-GSD
Left Coast Tom
@The Moar You Know: Mmmm, Jamaican Blue Mountain…
Among more reasonably priced options I like La Minita Tarrazu. More reasonably priced yet, I like Ethiopian Yrgacheffe.
John, isn’t Peet’s available in whole bean in your store? That’s surprising if it’s not.
eemom
@Mary:
ok, so now the cause nearest and dearest to my heart is the latest wingnut manifesto? They’re just not gonna stop till my head explodes, are they?
Speaking of, I once heard that Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum has a sterling record on animal welfare issues.
Left Coast Tom
@Anoniminous:
My only experience with Blue Mountain tasting "old, stale, and flat" was upon being given some by someone who had just returned from Jamaica, remarking about how cheaply he had bought it there. He was ripped off, it wasn’t blue mountain. Moar is right to warn regarding Blue Mountain:
AhabTRuler
In Amsterdam actually, along the Prinsengracht opposite the Westerkerk.
In a little shop-that-sold-coffee-and-coffee-related-instruments-but-nothing-to-ahem-drink, not a Coffeeshop (although I recommend checking out those for ahem-coffee).
Bad Horse's Filly
@JL: For many years I lived 2 miles from Allegro’s roasting facilities. Bought my coffee there. Excellent coffee. The unfortunate thing? Roasting coffee smells like burnt popcorn. The days the wind blew in my direction, it was unpleasant.
Ash Can
@JL: That’s not all the RNC needs to rethink. In the Open Thread, poster "Cat hair everywhere" gifted us with a delightful link to Wonkette, which links in turn to that RNC site. It seems that, in its zeal to get that e-postcard form up, the RNC constructed a form that requires nothing but a signature (and I use the word "signature" loosely, believe me) — no return e-mail address, no real name, no nothing. As you can imagine, hilarity has ensued. The comments on Wonkette say it all.
Hawes
Coffee is best after you’ve dipped your testicles in it.
asiangrrlMN
@Ash Can: Yeah, I sent one to the President saying how much I love him. I sent one to the VP saying he’s doing a great job, etc. It was fun to waste the RNC money–which I used as my name for one of the other ones.
Anoniminous
The JBM beans I had were City Roast and were sold purported to be "fresh roast." shrug I’ll give my share to them who wot like it. ;-)
I used to buy Kona, occasionally, to do a lighter roast. I still like it but will go with Sumatran Mandheling as I really can’t tell the difference and Kona is, for me, absurdly over-priced.
AhabTRuler
I generally use one-cup (3-cup, my ass) press, with heated water from a water-cooler, and store-brand "kona".
One day (soon if I can actually find a job for after graduation, whee!) I will have more money to spend on good coffee. As it is I spend too much money at the Great Green Satan.
However, two excellent coffee things have happened lately. One is that I have gotten a pint (glass bottle, no less) of organic heavy cream from my local MOM’s, and the other is that I got coffee at a local Ethiopian restaurant that was so incredibly good. It was so thick you could have floated a nickel on it, and the flavor rich & creamy.
Oh, and a link to your own coolest atmospheric coffee pot in the world. They used to have an electric model, but they appear to have discontinued it.
Brick Oven Bill
Re: “You People Really Enjoy Your Coffee”
This is because this audience consists of, in many instances, what other corners of the Internet consider, SWPLs, not like there is anything wrong with that. Coffee is considered important to SWPLs (#1). My family has this too. A sibling graduated from BIGLAW, has a coffee roaster, and thinks Ethiopian coffee roasted just the right way is something special.
I have had this coffee and it tasted like shit to me. Thus my recommendation to John about government coffee, which really is pretty good.
Other SWPL favorites:
#5 Farmer’s Markets;
#7: Diversity (but only as it relates to restaurants);
#9: Making you feel bad about not going outside;
This level of insight is why Chandler made a pile of money selling out to Target.
Dennis-SGMM
The rule in the Navy was that whoever bitched about the coffee took over making it. Needless to say, you learned to drink some serious swill without cavil. Drank that stuff for years so now I just drink coffee for effect. Anything better than Costco house brand is wasted on me.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Bad Horse’s Filly:
Actually we used to have a coffee shop on China Street in my home town of Lancaster, you would walk in and they had jars upon jars of beans lined up against the walls on mahogany shelves, one of the most solid memories of my life in my home town was walking past that shop and smelling the coffee being roasted, I will never forget it. There was also a candy (sweet) shop in a back alley off a street, and every time walking down that alley, the smell of fresh cooked candy would fill the nostrils. Both, sadly are now gone, but I will never forget those smells.
Anoniminous
@Left Coast Tom:
See above.
I’ve gotten so used to fresh roast, nothing like a cuppa Joe fresh off the skillet, everything tastes old.
Except for Starbucks. That tastes like horse piss.
plaindave
Quick and easy preparation? Count me in for the daily wake up and maintenance.
I enjoy the high-end coffee experiences as well, regardless of expense. And too often do.
But for everyday utility, I say you can’t beat a single cup brewer for balancing convenience with consistently fresh taste. I use a Senseo.
Bad Horse's Filly
@Litlebritdifrnt: That sounds wonderful. I hear tell, though I never experienced it, that the Jolly Rancher factory, south of Denver, made the whole area smell like candy. Sadly it’s gone now, too. A victim of the economy.
Grumpy Code Monkey
The truly scary thing about Adm. Cain is that she wasn’t crazy or a monster; her decisions were rational and justifiable, despite the increasingly horrific consequences (this is made abundantly clear in Razor). But for the grace of Madame Airlock (and the whining of Lee), Adama could easily have gone the same way.
AhabTRuler
Yes, nothing beats ahem-coffee.
michael
Royal Tenenbaum: "I’ve always been considered an asshole for about as long as I can remember. That’s just my style. But I’d really feel blue if I didn’t think you were going to forgive me."
Finding good whole bean coffee can be hard. Personally, it’s all about the DD. Down the street I can get a pound of unground Dunkin Donuts coffee for $5.00 a bag. I buy four at a time when I run out. I only drink it in the morning anymore, but it is, imho, really solid, well roasted, and light tasting that would probably hit the spot at any time of the day. Though I understand if there’s a DD embargo in the Cole Steeler House, it being a NE thing and all.
KRK
@Litlebritdifrnt:
PG Tips is good tea. I’m also fond of Big Mac’s Canadian Blend. But I’ll drink any black tea that isn’t contaminated with bergamot.
davebod
If you can afford it
In Europe Juro
In US Capresso
If that’s too expensive (understandable) a good old fashioned French press.
And though I love thee tanz p berry in todays economy the 8:00 French roast beans ain’t bad.
The Other Steve
This is a slap in the face to tea drinkers everywhere.
KRK
Is anybody still making egg coffee these days?
LD50
THANK YOU. Every Jamaican Blue Mountain I’ve tasted was a bore. Old, stale, flat, and way too light roasted. Any new ‘Blend of the Day’ at Peet’s, if brewed right, is way better.
I’m very relieved to hear that I’m not the only one who thinks JBM is grossly overrated.
LD50
I can’t really drink coffee these days due to my GERD, which means I’ve had to investigate gourmet teas. Ironically, Peet’s loose teas are also awesome. Their "Scottish Breakfast Tea", which is half Lapsang Souchong, is by far my favorite kickstart-my-brain tea for first thing in the morning. I hope to god they don’t discontinue it for some arcane reason.
LD50
Tell you what, Bill, I’ll send you a gallon of piss, so you can spoon a tablespoon of it into your GI coffee every morning. You know, just so you can reassure yourself that you’re not an elitist.
bago
@Brick Oven Bill: Single White Pre-natal Lawyers?
Litlebritdifrnt
@KRK:
LOL I think I posted this before, but Earl Grey was the favorite tea of the Princess Royal, therefore it was served at every function I ever had to attend with her as Commandant in Chief of the WRNS. I grew to hate it with a passion. Now I will actually take a Liptons tea bag over Earl Grey given the opportunity, and that is really bad :)
ronathan richardson
I’ll co-sign on the Aeropress-got one 2 weeks ago. It didn’t just change the way I drink coffee. It changed my life.
Dennis-SGMM
Ma’am! (Salutes)
Litlebritdifrnt
@Dennis-SGMM:
EEEEK I meant that the Princess Royal was Commandant in Chief of the WRNS, I didn’t mean me, I was a mere Petty Officer….. (although you know sometimes I had delusions of grandure and my photographer friend obliged
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v641/MsNick40/People/?action=view¤t=scan0001.jpg
Third Eye Open
Anyone else want to take a trip to the Tallahassee Teabaggin’ party tomorrow, I got the day off work and I can’t help myself?
btw…if Texas secedes, does that mean anyone born there is retroactively born in another country, or are they considered American since it was a state at the time they were born?
Inquiring mind want to know.
Brick Oven Bill
S tuff W hite P eople L ike, Bago.
Chandler made a lot of money on this site. He got a book deal too. Check out #53: Dogs. Note the insight:
‘They also believe that their dogs share similar tastes in food – “Little Ben Kweller likes the Organic food the best.” Forgetting the fact that dogs enjoy eating their own feces, and pretty much anything that falls onto the floor.’
Third Eye Open
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I always love a woman in uniform…this is prolly why I stuck it out for three years in NJROTC. There is nothing like flirting during PT drills to get the adolescent libido a pumpin’
Litlebritdifrnt
@Third Eye Open:
You and a gazillion guys in uniform since. While we women think there is something about a guy in uniform, guys feel exactly the same.
Indylib
Could whoever talked up roasting their own green beans in yesterday’s thread (too lazy to go back and find it) explain how the heck you roast them yourself in a cast iron skillet. The site you linked to had a crap load of roasters and if I’m going to try it, I’d like to try the simplest, least expensive way first. Plus I couldn’t find room for another kitchen appliance on my counters without the aid of a bulldozer.
And how the holy hell do you decide what kind of coffee to order. I’m pretty familiar with coffee, but their descriptions and names are like a whole new coffee language
Ty Lookwell
re: BSG:
OK, you should have stopped at the end of season 2.0, with the 1st part of the Pegasus cliffhanger.
Because: now it’s all downhill, into the suck-fest, my friend.
For your own sake, don’t buy or rent the Galactica DVD sets for seasons 3 or 4. You will regret it – I promise you. You will be angry and disgusted, you will see your dramatic hopes and dreams rot away; and their tatters will stink and mock your previous devotion.
Let it go – with mostly good memories of a daring and thoughtful TV sci-fi series.
mr. whipple
daily coffee at mr. whipple’s: 8 o’clock red bag, whole beans ground at home. 6 pots a day, never gets old.
Third Eye Open
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I don’t know about anyone else, but for me it was the smell of Brasso and Aquanet that drove me insane. I think I saw my first real woman-breast helping a shipmate get her ribbons pinned properly…oh those days
Indylib
@dmsilev:
Last time I went to Hawaii, I bought 100% Kona in the Commissary on the base at Pearl Harbor for $8.99 per 12 oz. bag, brought home 5 bags. I was a seriously happy camper for a couple of months.
Cain
For all you Oregonians living in Portland you guys need to give Insomnia Coffee a visit. Beans roasted at Cannon Beach and very fresh. One of the best cups of coffee I’ve ever had.
cain
Zuzu's Petals
Okay, I realize I’m a little late with my coffee recommendation. I’d assumed my favorite roaster didn’t sell their product online, but as it turns out, they are setting up an online store. So just in case ….
Old Soul.
Best coffee EVER.
different church-lady
I can’t remember if I’ve said it here or not, but coffee is the world’s most bizarre internet phenomenon.
Go to ANY BB, chat room, forum, blog, on ANY topic. Post a casual comment about your coffee preference. Sit back and watch the flame war unfold.
MNPundit
I hate coffee. I sometimes drank it in the past but at one point for a week I had to get up earlier and be somewhere with a large group of my peers.
And they craved coffee since it was early in the morning. They looked terrible until their cup of coffee and they could drain those giant coffee thermoses you see at events in 20 minutes. It was horrifying to see intelligent young people reduced to such a state of dependency.
Since that day I never have drank coffee.
To be fair it should be noted that I don’t slowly wake up or go to sleep. I am either Wide Awake in seconds after I open my eyes, or I crash and sleep instantly. There is no in between for me, so I don’t need coffee to rev up in the morning. I can function at full awake immediately after getting up without any trouble.
Das Internetkommissariat
@Krista:
Krista, if you drank coffee in the Netherlands it was probably a Douwe-Egberts. Truly great coffee, indeed. You should try the Belgian Cafe Liegeoise as well. If you liked Douwe-Egberts you are going to kill for Cafe Liegeoise.
IN the USA you can get it here:
http://www.enjoybettercoffee.com/Douwe-Egberts-s/70.htm
CharlesF
Indylib @ #88
You can’t really roast green coffee beans in a skillet, unless you either
(a) don’t mind your house smelling like the the inside of a chimney, or
(b) you build a campfire outside.
Roasting coffee beans puts off a lot of smoke, and unfortunately it doesn’t smell like coffee, it smells like burning husks. I always roast outside, on a bench next to an outside outlet. Buying a roaster is the way to go. I bought one for $150 8 years ago, and it’s still working fine.
As far as the selection of beans at sweetmarias, I think they still offer a sampler with a coffee roaster. One of my favorites is from Guatemala, Finca San Jose Ocana. But I like most of the Central Americans. There are accurate descriptions for each coffee and recommendations for the level of roast.
I wish everyone who recommended any coffee roasted more than a few weeks before drinking, and especially when ground more than a few days before drinking, could have a mug of freshly roasted, freshly ground, small estate coffee.
MelodyMaker
Good coffee is for pooping and/or scatterbrained self entertainment. I like the decent normal stuff they make where I work. Apparently, I’m more sensitive to caffeine than some people. I get acid flashbacks and palpitations. Blue Cat or Grumpy Steve’s is over the top for me. Black Dog.. Yes, fellow TC’ers. What’s that place called, where Oarfolkjokeopus was?
I just bought this portable player through the B-J link. Very Linux and FOSS friendly.
Dennis-SGMM
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Okay; no salute – just respect.
Gabo
Try the home-roasting. Really. You get better coffee and could save money. And if you’ve got good ventilation in your kitchen, it doesn’t smoke up too bad that you can’t get it back out again. Just fry up some bacon and you’ll never notice it. Some roasters have reasonably good smoke suppression as well, like the Behmor.
Seconding the San Jose Ocana recommendation. I also like most Central American Bourbons (yellow, orange, whatevah). I’m drinking an excellent CoE from Finca Malacara right now. Yum.
For the commenter who complained about where to start with the whole new language… well, that’s where the fun gets in. There’s a new language because there’s a new reality to talk about – beans taste different, roast different, and the language exists to talk about something you’ll never experience if you just drink commodity coffee blends.
If you’re getting started, a FreshRoast will work just fine, roasting one pot at a time. You can get a fine dark roast off that, where the beans get all shiny. Eventually you might get hooked like me and move up to a bigger roaster.
Sweet Maria’s is a good operation and a good place to start.
Woody
Can you GET Community Coffee?
Are you in Louisiana? Cuz I thought it was pretty much a local brand, Nawlins and environs.
Or do you order it by mail?
I grew very attached to Community Dark Roast during the 10 years I lived in Baton Rouge. But I cannot find it in stores here in New Mexico…
Krista
@Das Internetkommissariat: Thank you! I’ll have to order some and give it a try. If it’s even close to the stuff we had at the hotel in Apeldoorn, it’ll be freaking awesome.
kindness
Peets does have a web site you know. The local supermarkets do have the bean as well as ground. I’m with you there. I demand to grind my own ever day. As far as the Jamacian or Kona varietals go, their bud is fantastic but their coffee is weak. I prefer a fuller flavor (101 blend, Major Dickenson or Garuda).
As an addicted BSG fan, now in forced cold turkey mode, I’m holding out for the proverbial boxed set that includes the on line shows I never downloaded & watched on a computer. Give me the big screen with full surround sound or give me….
ET
Woody – what is nice is that they got with the program and lets you order it over the net. Saves me the trouble with packing it in my suitcase when I go home for holidays.
Scott
BSG? Maybe some of us outside the realm of the cognoscenti might enjoy teh BSG if we knew what it was….. There seems, of late, a drive to encrypt key words to keep the vast masses ignorant of the elitist tropes. But then, it does maintain the sanctity of the in crowd.