Coffee Snobbery

I need to confess something. I am a coffee addict. Worse, I am a coffee snob. I will forget Folgers, ban Yuban and chuck Chock Full o'Nuts. Bags of Eight O'Clock Coffee and Dunkin' Donuts coffee are good if you're needing a paperweight but they are horrible for drinking. Whole bean coffee is sublime and I love the scent of freshly roasted beans still shiny with natural oils. It's a sight that makes me giddy with anticipation.

I am not alone in my love for coffee. My wife is also hooked. Our day cannot start without a 16 oz cup of strong, freshly brewed goodness, followed closely by a second cup. Half and half and natural sugar round out the flavor. It gives me something to warm my hands with and soothe my mouth, which is usually dry from the medications I'm taking. I keep track of what companies are pricing their beans at so I can get the best cup for the lowest cost. As a result, I avoid Starbucks and their Seattle's Best Coffee (purchased by Starbucks in 2003). The exception is a bag of Starbucks' Gold Coast blend or their Caffe Verona. It's the only two I will pick if I have a choice. Otherwise, and this is going to sound weird, I pick up a large bag of Marques de Paiva. I usually pick up their Fair Trade or Rainforest blend. I also use their espresso blend for my espresso machine.

Speaking of espresso, most folks don't know how to do it. The secret to a good espresso drink is as follows:

1. The Grind - a fine, powdery grind is best
2. The Tamp - espresso needs to be pressed firmly into the basket filter, using about 40 pounds of pressure, rotationally tamped with a quarter-turn a couple of times
3. The Temp - preheat the shot glass so that the espresso doesn't lose it's temperature. With espresso, time and temperature is your enemy. For this reason, most baristas steam the milk before or during the brew cycle, never afterward.

For regular joe coffee, a full, non-bitter taste is my favorite. Yet, there is the belief out there that the more expensive a coffee is, the better tasting the brew will be. It's partly correct. I've found that the lighter colored beans, called quakers, are responsible for bitter, sour or simply bad-tasting coffee. Every blend will have them because it's nearly impossible to weed them out, but the fewer quakers, the better the brew. Since no one to my knowledge has developed an automated quaker detector, removing the quakers must be done by hand, increasing the cost of the coffee for how long someone is paid to remove them. On the other hand, the Marques de Paiva blend somehow gets around this cost, delivering a great taste for a lower cost. I'm sure the rest of the coffee industry joins me in wondering how they are doing this.

There's other, local roasts and roasters that are hidden gems. Some of them actually make it to the big retailers too. But, like small guys taking on Starbucks retail, they are the exception not the rule. Never be afraid to plunk down a few bucks on a sample bag of coffee. You never know what you might be missing. If it's awful, throw it out and brew with another blend you trust and try another one next week, because apathy kills your taste buds. It's the one thing standing between you and your becoming a coffee snob.