Bigger Bag Please

About a year ago, I needed to cut down some expenses to help pay for a pricey car repair bill. One step I took was successfully converting from an 'eat-out' lunch guy, to a 'bring lunch from home' guy. I saved a ton of money that way, and continued to bring lunch from home after the repair was paid off.

Although I don't have a car repair bill staring me in the face today, it feels good to make a change and see the direct impact on the 'ol bank account. With that in mind, I recently looked at how much I spend on coffee and decided to do some research on ways to cut that down. I live a few hundred yards from an outstanding coffee joint that roasts their own beans - and they do an outstanding job. Most coffees I buy there are about $15 for a 12 oz. bag - which is the going rate for a bag of good coffee beans. I go through 4 or 5 bags a month, and at 15 bucks a pop that adds up quickly.

The first decision I made was to move from the very popular 12 oz. bags to a 2 lb. bag. I keep coffee inside a dark cupboard in ball jars - so keeping a larger amount of coffee fresh is not an issue. However, finding great coffee *I like* in a 2 lb. bag proved to be more of a challenge.
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SIDE NOTE: If you're thinking you don't have ball jars or cabinet space and you'll just keep your big bag in the freezer, please search for my blog on why this is a bad-for-your-coffee idea, and do not store your coffee in the freezer
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Costco has a variety of coffees in 2 lb. bags, but most of them tend to be very dark roast coffees. Lots of people love dark roast coffees, and I certainly appreciate it from time to time. However, generally I prefer lighter roasts. Dark coffee flavor offers predominantly roasty flavors, which overpowers the unique flavors of specific origins - and I love those flavors. So Costco wasn't the solution for me.

I then moved my focus to Amazon. Since Amazon bought Whole Foods, they now have more to offer than ever in the way of coffee. I decided to give a bag of one of their house labeled "Amazon Fresh" coffees a try. I chose the, "Just Bright" light roast blend, which the label tells me is roasted in Seattle. Overall - it's excellent. I don't taste any kind of specific flavor note that makes it stand out, it's more of a mainstream blend - but it makes a delicious cup of coffee. I will definitely order it again. I paid $15.49 on Prime, so there was no shipping charge, and that's getting 32 oz. for roughly what I pay for 12 oz. down the street.

Pleased with the success of my new coffee source, I decided to keep trudging the road to happy coffee destiny, and try out a single origin coffee. Amazon also carries coffees from Fresh Roasted Coffee, LLC. - which is an operation out of Pennsylvania. I ordered a 2 lb. bag of Ethiopian Sidamo, which was $21.95 on Prime. Ethiopian coffees are among my favorites, and naturally have fruit-like flavor notes. I have found this flavor profile is typically more pronounced in Yirgacheffe varieties than in Sidamo. This Sidamo is no different - it has great natural origin flavors in a nice, even light roast. I'm very pleased with it, and will order again. That said, another of my favorites is Tanzanian Peaberry, and I see that Amazon carries that variety from the same roaster. I have a feeling that's next.

I still intend to support my local roasters, and can't imagine traveling without hunting for a good bag of beans to bring home. However, I have successfully cut my regular daily coffee expenses in half...and that feels pretty damn good.

Tip Jar Gambling

Tip jars at the cash register are commonplace these days, and so are pre-calculated tip options when you pay with plastic. 

When this first became a thing, I felt like I was being coerced into tipping for services for which one doesn’t normally tip. However, I eventually relaxed that opinion, and began to tip a buck for coffee and such. 

Today - the reality of why all this bothered me reared it’s ugly head.

I ordered my lunch at a place where they give you one of those order numbers on a stick. You put it on your table, and then a food runner brings your order when it’s ready. It’s also a place where pre-calculated tip amounts pop up on the screen when you pay with plastic. I tipped the 15% option - which I felt is more than adequate for a food runner. 

When they hand you a fountain soda in this joint, they tell you to step back up to that spot at the counter is you want a refill. My favorite menu item in this particular joint is pretty spicy, so cold beverage is key. My cup ran dry, and I stepped back up to the counter for a refill. 

As I stood at the counter waiting for a refill, no less than 5 employees made eye contact with me over the course of several minutes. Not one offered to help me. 

So - herein lies the problem. When you tip up front, you tip before you know whether or not the service warrants a good tip. It’s a total gamble, and today I lost.

#firstworldproblem 

Later, Starbucks

Ahhhh….Starbucks.

You sold me my first cup of Starbucks coffee at your Willow Lawn Mall store in Richmond, VA…around 1996 or 97 when there were only about 1,000 stores.  Before that day, my coffee purchases were not unlike the way I buy sugar: whatever’s cheap, in bulk, and on sale.  But my first cup of the bucks transformed my relationship with coffee from one purely of utilitarian purpose into that of coffee enthusiast. The Willow Lawn store wasn’t in the path of my daily travels - but it was the only Starbucks in town back then, and soon I went out of my way to go there to get a cup of the hallowed Starbucks joe.

If you have a description of your model loyal customer, it’s likely close to describing the way I was (until recently).  You’ve sold me swag like coasters and tumblers.  You’ve sold me beans.  You’ve sold me coffee, espresso, latte, iced tea, and snacks. A number of your baristas got to know me by name, and I’ve taught many of them how to make a proper cortado. For years I’ve been “checking in” at your stores via different social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook – which, of course, is great for your brand awareness.

When I first heard about the Gold Card rewards program, I joined immediately.  My card is dated 2011.  It made me feel like Starbucks really appreciated my business. I felt like I spent a fair amount of my money in your stores, and the program felt like SBX saying, “thanks”.  I loved earning a free drink, and getting a freebie on my birthday.  I was initially nervous about putting the Starbucks app on my phone and using it to pay – but I eventually did, and found it to be quite convenient.

Your first major offense was the Single Origin Ethiopian.  Coffees from that part of the world, and specifically from that country, are some of my favorites.  Ethiopian coffees often have natural flavor notes of citrus and berries. However, all of that can be overwritten if you over-roast…which you did.

Then you changed the rewards program, and I became soured.  It became more complicated – with some drinks worth more points than others, and stars that expire.  I don’t want my rewards program to be complicated – I’ve got too much other complicated stuff in life occupying my limited bandwidth.  

Consequently, the frequency of my visits to your stores tapered off.  Then there was that day you sent me an email stating I’ve been demoted to Green level from Gold…which for some reason soured me even more.

The majority of people probably didn’t react like me when you changed the program, and successful sales organizations know – you have to play the percentages. Now with over 25,000 stores - the numbers certainly are in your favor, making my business insignificant.  I get that. However, while you’re playing to the percentages – if I’m irked by the changes, there’s a solid chance I’m not alone.

I used to go out of my way to get coffee from you.  Now I go out of my way to get coffee from local independent roasters instead. The metro Atlanta area has some great ones…Rev, Octane, Dancing Goats, and the mighty Cool Beans.

So I’m going to say thanks – it’s been a good run.  I’m not going to need my Gold card anymore.  I know being demoted in rewards program status doesn’t require I send my gold card back, but I’m not interested in giving you real estate in my wallet any longer.  

Ciao.

Single Origin Ethiopia: Charbucks Strikes Again

When roasting coffee, stopping the roasting process at a lower temperature produces a lighter colored bean. It allows the flavors of the bean's origins to come through after the beans are ground and brewed. There's more to it than this - but I'm keeping this blog simple.

Allowing the beans to roast to a higher temperature produces (you guessed it) a darker colored bean. This produces toasty carbony flavors, and often a complex sweetness from the caramelizing of the natural sugars in the coffee. 

Coffees from some regions of the world seem to lend themselves better than others to a lighter roast.  This roast is often referred to as a "City Roast", or a little darker is a "Full City Roast". Ethiopia produces some of my favorite coffees, and when lightly roasted the resulting brew has amazing floral and fruity flavors. So when I heard Starbucks was releasing a single origin Ethiopian coffee - I was anxious to try it out.

I'm sad to report that the SBX Ethiopian is roasted too dark. Mind you - it's a delicious cup of coffee, but to roast Ethiopian coffee into dark roast territory destroys all the lovely happiness that occurs in a light roast.  

Starbucks makes plenty of dark roast coffees....so many, in fact, they earned themselves the nickname "Charbucks" from many of the coffee aficionado crowd. Not only do they not need another dark roast coffee in their lineup, but roasting Ethiopian this dark is senseless. 

I suppose after nearly falling in love with the Kati Kati blend SBX released a few months ago - my expectations for the single origin Ethiopian were unrealistically high. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble distinguishing a difference between this and their French Roast (although admittedly I'm finding it more interesting, and will surely try it again).  

SBX Ethiopian synopsis? Good coffee - yes. Better than the celebration of mediocrity that is Pike Place - yes. Good  Ethiopian - no.

Freezer Error

I babble about coffee incessantly.  Although some may find it annoying or monotonous, sorry; I have no intention of changing.  One of the side effects of all my drivel has been that people have come to think I am somewhat knowledgeable on the subject of coffee.  To that end - I'd say I know a few things, but have far more to learn than I keep between my ears.

Experience has taught me there are a fair number of misconceptions about coffee.  One that I see most often is storing coffee in the freezer.  There's a right way and wrong way to use your freezer for coffee storage, and most folks are doing it wrong.

The error occurs when you take coffee in and out of the freezer repeatedly - like for daily use.  This is a problem because coffee is porous...which is fine and dandy if you like flavored coffee.  Although I don't care for flavored coffee - the porous nature of the bean means it easily absorbs the flavored syrups and oils.  However, it also means it'll absorb other things...like the flavor of seafood or the moisture that your freezer produces. This moisture will steadily deteriorate the oils in coffee and make it taste freezer burned. Wrecking the oils wrecks the flavor.

So what's the right way to use the freezer?  If you buy a quantity of beans that's more than you will consume in a month or two, you are at risk of the flavor profiles in the coffee beginning to change from the coffee getting old and stale...this is the oils deteriorating.  To avoid this, seal the coffee in an airtight bag - getting as much air as possible out of the bag.  Then put it in the freezer and leave it alone (I double bag mine using the thick freezer bags).  When you're ready to use it - remove it and store it at room temperature.

Once out of the freezer, keep the beans in a dark place and sealed in an airtight container or bag.  I like containers with crock style lids - which I find regularly in thrift stores for a buck or two. I store containers inside a kitchen cabinet.  Furthermore, keep the beans whole until you're ready to brew.  The flavor profiles of coffee can begin to change within an hour of grinding, so avoid grinding in advance.  And for the love of all that is good - avoid the shared big commercial grinder at the stores...who knows what was ground in there before you put your coffee in?  Even a cheap $15 blade grinder used right before you brew is far superior to using the in-store grinder.

So keep it sealed, use it as close to the roast date as is possible, and never, never, ever keep it the refrigerator.  That's the worst.  Life's too short to drink cheap coffee...but good coffee is too expensive to not treat it right and get the most out of it.

Brewing the Funky Chicken

Sometimes I find myself purchasing a product purely because the packaging is cool.  That said, I make my living as a graphic artist - so you can understand why I might scrutinize package design a bit more than the average joe....and a package of joe is the subject at hand.

As a self-proclaimed coffee snob, I like to buy locally roasted coffees.  There's an organic food market not far from my home called Mom's (My Organic Market), and they have a nice variety of coffees roasted in Maryland and Virginia.  I frequently buy Equal Exchange coffee by the pound there - which is a fair trade coffee they sell by the pound.  It's a small batch roast coffee, and at 10 or 11 bucks a pound - it's hard to beat.

However - yesterday while picking up some beans I spotted a coffee I'd not noticed before.  The roaster was Red Rooster Coffee Roasters out of Floyd, VA - which is in far-out nowhere Southwest Virginia.  Aside from being a local small batch roaster, it was the packaging that roped me in. "Funky Chicken" is the name of the blend, under which it reads "For Medicinal Use Only"...which conjured up an involuntary chortle from me in the store.  Then I noticed they'd stamped a roast date on the bag and it was roasted just a few weeks ago...so I grabbed the bag and headed toward the register.

Upon opening the bag, I immediately noticed the beans showing a variety of different brown tones.  Small variations can sometimes just be the result of small batch roasting; it's hard to get a perfectly even roast with small batch.  However - this variation was more pronounced, indicating this was not the type of blend where a variety of beans are roasted together - but rather the type of blend where after the specific origin roasts are done, the roaster takes a scoop of this and a scoop of that, and mixes it all together.  Please note: I've never seen the inner workings of a small batch roaster - so this is purely a guess.  The smell was intoxicating - so into the grinder it went.  This was to be my morning coffee - which I normally do in a automatic drip coffee maker...and today was no different.

Back of the bag reads, "Intense flavor with plenty of body and a fruit finish."  I've had some intense coffees in my day, and I don't think that would be the word I use.  I did detect the fruity tones - Ethiopian or Tanzanian is possibly responsible for those.  Even though it's not intense, it's a really nice, mellow morning coffee with a sufficient caffeine punch.  I was not blown away, and am not rethinking the pecking order of my favorites...but it's surely nice enough to gift and I'll likely buy it again.  I'll give it a try in a pour over and pull a shot or two of espresso with it and report back if something miraculous happens.

Thank you, Keurig!

Those of you who know me might be saying, "Wow Jay.  Blogging about coffee again?  How....different."

Yeah, yeah - I know.  My life is pretty boring, and subsequently the things on my mind come from a limited number of topics.  That said, some of you now might be saying, "Ummm....dude?  That's a nice picture - but it's not a Keurig."  And you would be correct....but read on.

The Keurig coffee maker is a single cup coffee brew system, and if you've never heard of it - surely you're living under a rock or despise coffee.  You might think with a name like Keurig that it's from some exotic European country, but the 1990 start-up happened in Massachusetts.  Green Mountain Coffee Roasters bought the company in 2006...and that's when the popularity really started to take off.  They are now immensely popular, and the ready to brew "K-cups" that contain the coffee are available in just about every grocery and big box store you can think of.

Admittedly - a Keurig machine makes a decent cup of coffee...and it's damned convenient. Most machines have a reservoir tank that keeps water ready to use, so you just pop a K-cup in the machine, prop your cup under the spout and press the brew button.  Ta-da!  A minute or two later, you've got a delicious, fresh brewed cup of coffee.

The main reason I've never jumped on this bandwagon is because I love to buy coffee that's roasted locally, and roasted recently...preferably within the last few weeks.  Furthermore, I like to grind right before I brew, as the flavor profiles in coffee can change within an hour after after grinding. K-cups are mass-manufactured, and there's no way to know fresh it is.  There are cups you can load yourself...but that kinda shoots the convenience factor in the foot.

So I still use old-school, conventional methods to make coffee. I have a french press, a pour-over, an espresso machine, and most mornings I use a good 'ol drip coffee machine.  10 or 12 years ago I bought my first drip coffee machine with a thermal carafe.  I find these to be vastly superior to the old glass carafe versions because the coffee doesn't sit on a burner, and therefore doesn't cook down into a coffee reduction with flavors resembling asphalt.

A few days ago, my 8 year-old Mr. Coffee drip coffee maker kicked the bucket.  I've historically been lax about running a vinegar solution through the machine regularly to prevent mineral buildups, and it finally caught up with me on this one.  However, it was only 50 bucks, and 8 years ain't bad for a $50 kitchen appliance that gets used almost every day.

Being a little short on cash, I decided against buying a high end machine right now - and instead decided to go for the band-aid approach at the local Goodwill thrift store.  What I found is what you see in the picture; a stainless thermal Mr. Coffee complete with removable water tank and water filtration system.  I examined it pretty closely in the store, looking for the mineral build-ups that took the life of my last one.  Not only were there no mineral build-ups, but I couldn't even see any coffee residue...nothing! Everything including the water filter looked to be unused.  Brand new...just no box.  They had it marked $30....pricey for a thrift store, but I guessed there was no way I'd get one with a box for that price - so I nabbed it.  I brought it home, cleaned it well, and fired it up...and it works beautifully.

Why am I telling this story and what's the connection to the Keurig machines?  Well - I have Keurig to thank for this find, and I'll tell you why.

Because Keurig machines have become so incredibly popular, once people are hooked on them - they look at their old coffee equipment and say, "Now what the hell am I going to do with that?"  I'm sure a lot of borderline hoarders stash the old machines in the closet or pantry...but lots of them end up getting donated to a thrift store.  I'm a thrift store regular...you never know what you'll find in those places. Sometimes it's stuff I want for myself, and other times it's something I'll stick on eBay and sell for profit.  I started noticing really nice coffee equipment flooding into thrift stores several years ago and dubbed it, "The Keurig Effect".

Thanks to the Keurig effect, I now have a perfectly functioning burr grinder and a stainless thermal drip coffee maker. The retail value of those two machines is around $200, but the thrift store price was $40.

Thank you, Keurig.

Roast On Date

Remember when Budweiser had that ad campaign about the "born on date"?  Well...I kinda thought that was crap - but coffee is definitely best when it's consumed within a few weeks of when it's roasted (and brewed immediately after grinding).  After a month or so the intensity of flavors begins to fade, thus diminishing the overall experience.

The problem with most grocery store coffee (and SBX for that matter) is that you have no idea whatsoever as to when the coffee you're buying was roasted.  Rest assured - in most cases the stuff you buy in the grocery store was roasted months ago...maybe many months ago. The exception I've found is Whole Foods stores.  They seem to work relationships with local roasters who ship directly to the stores - thus eliminating the months of layover in distribution warehouses.  In addition, many of them stamp a roasting date on the bag.  Also, many Whole Foods stores roast their own in-house, and they keep it in bins with the roasting date marked on the top...very cool.

The bags of deliciousness in the picture are from one of my favorite roasters; Rival Bros in the Philadelphia area.  I buy from them online, and they ship UPS.  You can see by the date of this post and the date on the bag - my coffee was roasted 4 days ago.  That'll work!  That's a bag of their Palooka decaf and a dark high test called Whistle & Cuss.  I've had both before, and both are exceptional.

You can visit the Rival Bros website here: http://www.rivalbros.com/

Blonde Roast

Perhaps you've heard Starbucks Coffee recently came out with a new variety of coffee they're calling "Blonde Roast", and the first one is called Veranda.  What is it?  Is it weaker?  Is it like Dunkin Donuts coffee?

Fortunately, it's neither weak nor like Dunkin Donuts coffee.  Coffee beans are roasted to temperature.  Higher temperatures result in darker coffee beans.  French and Italian are examples of dark roast coffees.  At higher temperatures, the oils begin to seep from the bean - which is why dark roast coffee beans often look shiny.  The proper term for the new Starbucks Coffee is "city roast", or "full city roast".  These beans are a lighter brown, and even lighter where the bean cracks during roasting.  The result is a coffee that reveals the flavors of specific origins, and not so much the carbony taste from the roasting process.

My guess is that Starbucks decided to market this new coffee because of the popularity of city roast coffees at the micro-roasters.  I think they finally caught wind of the fact that people who like small roasters had nicknamed them "charbucks" because of that carbony treatment they previously gave the majority of their beans.

For those that have been afraid or at least hesitant to try it - I have wandered down the path of the new SBX "Blonde Roast" Veranda, and it's a very tasty cup of coffee.  Before now - most times the only brewed coffee they had on hand was that really mediocre Pike Place - of which I am not a fan.  Subsequently I usually ordered a latte or americano when visiting SBX.  However - my last two visits have resulted in my enjoying a cup of the new Veranda.  Not bad, Starbucks.  Not bad.