Coffee

+1 on the Mr. Coffee machine. I make a pot and the rest goes in the fridge for ice coffee.

I always wonder why people who do the pods don't just go full instant coffee at that point. Seems way easier and cheaper and same outcome (maybe loads less waste?)

― Mrs. Ippei (Steve Shasta), Friday, October 4, 2024 9:44 AM bookmarkflaglink

I have a couple boxes of Copper Cow single serve drip Vietnamese coffee that makes surprisingly good pour over if I want to have a single serve of something hot.

if you are spending money on halfway decent beans a mr coffee will undo that by ruining your coffee as it sits on the burner in that glass carafe

if you want a mr cofeee more power to you but THERMAL CARAFE IS THE WAY

You know how sometimes coffee will say "Process: washed" or "Process: natural" or whatever

I just bought some coffee that says "Process: advanced"

nowadays it should be "with A.I."

Just bought a shit load of arabica beans in a coffee shop in Hanoi...can anyone attest to the quality?...also bought some Kopi Luwak allegedly...

laurel have you ever had https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/kaffeost?

xpost Kopi Luwak is 100% a gimmick, don't expect anything like good coffee

Hah, no!!! Although I very often do have a chunk of cheddar or havarti or an aged gouda cheese with my coffee! I think they go well together. I would totally try kaffeost.

I'm almost certain that I've had a cheese in coffee discussion with people on here before and someone said they put cheddar in their coffee . . . I want to say it was Carl A but not sure. Will see if I can find it. Anyway, I would also try it.

I have a couple boxes of Copper Cow single serve drip Vietnamese coffee that makes surprisingly good pour over if I want to have a single serve of something hot.

― felicity, Wednesday, October 16, 2024 2:36 PM (yesterday)

ooh, noted. thanks f.!

used to live near a bubble tea place in vancouver that had something called blowtorch caramel cheese tea

Wound up asking for/getting the fellow stagg kettle, a hario 02 dripper, and a little thermal carafe for my bday. It lets me at least make a few cups at a time but still works for my morning pourover. I figure for hosting bigger stuff (which is not often) I can just get a Mr. Coffee as suggested above.

Vancouver is the best city for coffee in North America.

could go in multiple threads, and i know it’s not accepted around these parts, but so many grocers no longer carry whole bean coffee. it boggles my mind that people are willing to settle for pre-ground or, even worse, the horror that are Keurig cups. i fucking hate that i have to go to specific store just for coffee that doesn’t taste like shit.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, December 26, 2024 5:34 AM (thirteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

technological/practical “backwards step”: supermarkets

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Thursday, December 26, 2024 7:08 AM (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

― budo jeru, Thursday, December 26, 2024 1:45 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lads i know christmas is a hard few days if theres nothing on telly but cmon now give the heads a wee shake

― tuah dé danann (darraghmac), Thursday, December 26, 2024 2:23 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

seems like whole bean is more common now than in the middle past - when I was a kid it was all giant cans of ground Folgers or the instant coffee that got mixed in hot water

― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, December 26, 2024 2:33 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i do miss the big grind it yrself machines at Kroger’s. slightly scary to 5 yo me yet also amazing smelling.

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Thursday, December 26, 2024 6:58 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the era of whole beans everywhere is probably over. we're back to beans at specialty shops except for a token brand at big chains, Nespresso, etc.

probably for the cof thread but I think we're past peak cof, we'll return again, but being a real "coffee person" at home is back to niche. probably for the best, if you're buying whole beans at the grocery you're buying into a mainstream temporary appropriation of a formerly niche culture that's returning

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Thursday, December 26, 2024 7:13 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

disagree, niche bourgie roasters appropriated an utterly quotidian grocery item - coffee beans - and turned them into something expensive and up its own ass. i’m telling you, people were buying whole beans in redneck supermarkets in the 70s!

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Thursday, December 26, 2024 7:17 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

fair enough

I think they were already becoming niche when they tried to ~bring it back~ though? I think expensive beans really took off after everyone was buying Folgers/Sanka

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Thursday, December 26, 2024 7:19 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

like the mid-90s are what I think about when I think about coffee shops existing and obviously grinding beans performatively. We can probably agree the 80s were when coffee was fully wrecked

also I have doubts about you remembering whole beans in the 70s. sounds like received wisdom

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Thursday, December 26, 2024 7:21 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

nah it was totally a thing iirc, but also the beans sucked

― sleeve, Thursday, December 26, 2024 7:23 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

like, you were basically buying Maxwell House, but before grinding

― sleeve, Thursday, December 26, 2024 7:23 PM (fifty-eight seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

plz discuss your earliest memories of whole bean or otherwise fancy coffee espresso itt

I first encountered fancy roasted-on-site coffee circa 1986? I did not actually start drinking it until I was maybe 21. I remember the era of ridiculous Seattle-hipster latte variations as being in the early 90s.

first memory was of hulking grinding machine installed right in the coffee aisle of the chapman highway kroger’s in knoxville. there was a metal flap that hung over the output chute. you’d push a big black button and the whole thing would shudder alarmingly to life. your mom would position an empty paper coffee bag under the flap and then scoop the desired beans from a clear plastic bin into the top of the machine, producing an industrious grinding screeching noise. you’d close up the top of your bag as the machine continued to run “dry”, its maw hungry for more, and the timer would finally expire as you walked away. don’t look back, you can never look back

I think we had whatever wave the early/mid 90s one was. One small neighborhood coffee shop persists from that period and they roast on-site, have all these different sourced beans, etc.
idk it's fine but I don't need that much detail but appreciate it

we had the full-on, semi-gentrified downtown space coffee shop that had singer/songwriter guitar people performing, occasional semi-local bands playing, tons of flyers on the board with piles of zines in front place for that era. I was never aligned with it chronologically, it was one of those spaces high school kids would hang out late, one of the only small metropolis area places to hang out late other than Perkins. I don't think people cared about a great product other than being like, ooh that's a good cup of java

I do remember the grocery coffee grinders!
also, on a related spurious quality note, a friend in the early 2000s was annoyed we didn't have a grocery store that had a nut butter grinder. like, I need to go to the grocery like they have in Larger City where I can shove a bunch of almonds in a hopper and make almond butter. I always wondered if that was good and nodded, but it was one of those things like "we need a Chipotle location in this town" where I didn't know if the product was any good or just a local Veblen convenience

it's funny, though. a small Whole Foods location is better than a local grocery of the same size, in that the local chain doesn't know how to do small scale anymore. we either have bins of DEALS and poor produce, or the largest stores imaginable that still lack what I want, but have eight brands of macaroni and cheese.

I’m 95% sure I didn’t know about lattes/cappuccinos until So I Married An Axe Murderer. My mom drank three pots of Folgers a day, black, that was all I knew of coffee.

In the late ‘90s we had a couple of independent second wave coffee places here where college students would hang out late nights and some of us in high school would draft behind them. (Also one called Zombies was our only all ages venue that wasn’t Christian.) I don’t really remember the coffee much - I guess espresso drinks and big pots of regular brewed coffee.

our second wave coffee place was called Java - and it still exists! it made the transition to 3rd wave and otherwise is basically the same except with 100% less cigarette smoke.

it used to have a neon sign in the window that said “Java - A Coffee House” and i had a friend in town once who saw this and was like, that’s so pretentious, it’s like your italian place is “Pasta - A Spaghetti Restaurant”

xp that sounds about right

my the time that wave hit middle America in the mid 90s, it was definitely a third place culture where coffee shops were a hangout and teens weren't snobbing too hard about the actual coffee

imo "Java - A Coffee House" is like, the most basic branding. I think it could be pretentious but on its face it's like "McDonald's -- A Burger Restaurant"

“Haché - A Patty Bistro”

oh ho

after i finished uni in late 90s a few of my friends were renting in inner city Melbourne - Collingwood, Fitzroy, Richmond - and coffee culture was pretty huge so i was visiting a lot of coffee-centric cafes. Plus one of my best friends was a barista & was always telling me about roasted beans & stuff.

But I didnt really take it on board seriously as a practice til Mr Veg and I got an espresso maker & we started fucking w a local roastery. Then it was game over

you missed "Australian-style coffee cafe" culture which was apparently a thing for a couple years in the US in the mid 2010s, for better or worse

we had some places with decent brunch but an actual Australian import proprietor who mostly imported his own brand of sexual harassment unfortunately

we all used to haunt this one place in Collingwood called Doctor Java (long gone now) - man they had good coffee

i still am homesick for little lattes in a glass - lots of places made fkn terrible ones they were like herpes for a while but the actual good ones? heaven

the one that lasted longest was Coffee Haus

I was going to stop by this Montreal place, all the real mtl ilxors know it, Cafe Olimpico, before leaving from my trip earlier this year but I fell ill, etc.

I ended up ordering some of their beans and a nice little insulated cup delivered to my home. The beans were probably folly, beans are beans. But it's a great place, Italian immigrant coffee house there since the 70s. You can sit around and watch soccer, the grinder is constantly going, and they have your drink ready between ordering and paying

old italian grandads in nondescript diners could make my coffee exclusively for the rest of my life & i’d be so happy

i've finally started to enjoy those hip millennial coffee beans that i was never fond of. those bright acidic sweet complex beans that almost look blonde in a cup. i bought some good ones online during the pandemic. the only time i ever bought coffee online. my friend ray sells tandem coffee roasters beans at his bookstore next to my house and i bought some funky unwashed beans a week or two ago and the smell when you grind those beans....oh man. heavenly. i mean i do wish that the coffee actually tasted like that smell but i appreciate their depth now. not in that way that coffee or whisky or wine or whatever fans appreciate them. but i appreciate them. pretty intense.

i got this one:

https://www.tandemcoffee.com/products/shoondhisa-natural-ethiopia

Boy oh boy, fresh Ethiopia naturals are really where it's at! This lot is from the Dambi Uddo washing station in Guji. The coffee is a selection from 72 small producers who grow coffee in the nearby hamlet of Shoondhisa. The producers grow coffee of the 74110 and 74112 varieties, also referred to Gibirinna and Serto, respectively, on farms of about 2.5 ha each. We are jazzed about this coffee. It is super complex, clean, and mind-blowingly delicious, with notes of juicy blueberry, mouth-watering citrus, and delicate florals.

Varietals
Gibirinna, Serto (74110, 74112)

Elevation
2173 MASL

Processing
Natural

We hear
Blueberry, Lime Custard, Shortbread, Better Than Allrite

Importer
Osito

dunkin midnight is dark af (even with 4 servings of milk) and quite good

I guess my first introduction to "fancy" coffee was Starbucks, when they started expanding in NYC in the mid to late 90s. I remember it was a novel and exciting thing to go there with coworkers in the afternoon to get "cappuccinos" and other such exotic beverages. At least that's how I remember it. But even into the mid-2000s I was perfectly happy with Wawa convenience store coffee (think 7-11 if you're not from Jersey) and that was what I usually drank. It was only after my brother started working at an uber-fancy Seattle coffee shop that I started getting indoctrinated into the ways of the coffee snob.

i worked a couple of doors down from La Colombe's first store in Philly after they opened and that was some of the first good coffee i'd had but the store i worked at next door got even better beans! it was such good stuff. i ground every pot for the store but we didn't do fancy coffees. just coffee. this was what they call: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-wave_coffee

I thought Starbucks was a hippie coffee shop before it really blew up

I definitely remember noticing how different coffees tasted and caring a lot about it even well before I knew about fancy whole bean coffees. For example Chock Full of Nuts always seemed way better to me than Folgers or Maxwell House, and I would notice which diners served fresh coffee and which didn't.

I swear that there was a time when Starbucks coffee, like its regular drip coffee, was actually pretty good. At least some of it. When I was in college, the Starbucks used to always have one lighter roast drip coffee (they called it "mild roast" or something) and that one was usually pretty tasty. My college town just had Starbucks and a smoky cafe run by a Lebanese family with speed chess tables in the basement. Each was enjoyable in its own way. The latter place had very decent, fresh, drinkable coffee but nothing super memorable.

My urban public middle school Spanish class weirdly took a trip to Costa Rica, and that was the first time I remember tasting coffee and thinking "wow this is fucking delicious." I think my parents drank instant for a lot of my childhood, and as a "treat" they'd drink those horrid International Flavors powder coffee drinks, which seemed fancy to me as a kid, but tasted weird when I actually tried them.

I started drinking coffee regularly in high school and the options were Starbucks or a local place. When I got to college there was also Au Bon Pain or a so-so second wave place in the student center.

My first memory of third-wave coffee isn't until around 2008 when I lived in Brooklyn near a cafe that used Stumptown (I forget the name now, something German-sounding, in Cobble Hill). That really wowed me and I used to walk many blocks out of my way to get coffee there - a cup of Stumptown and a couple of Spinach pies from Damascus Bakery was pure happiness. Within a few years after that it seemed like there was a huge proliferation of third-wave coffee places around that area.

Lol, I just realized I had a huge brain fart and contradicted myself in the same post. My college town had the Starbucks and the lebanese cafe and also the au bon pain and the place in the student center - actually technically multiple such places since there was more than one student center bc there was more than one campus.

I remember a roommate showing me how to "bloom" coffee in filters, again prob 1987, he liked that dark Bustelo pre-ground kind speaking of pre-Starbucks coffee

"... those horrid International Flavors powder coffee drinks ..."

My gateway drug, when I was in high school. I started drinking the better coffee (non-Folgers, Maxwell House, Yuban) after college, and even went whole bean, grinding at the store (Trader Joe's and maybe some supermarkets). My sister went to Hawaii in the early 80s and brought back a bag of whole bean, so I bought a grinder then. I remember the first non-TJ brand was Sark's which is long gone now.

work coffee machine culture has been a trip the last mumble mumble years that I have worked in an office

the drip coffee machines went from some random blend, to some ready-filter thing that is like a coffee filter but the grounds are inside the filter. that got downgraded to some version that was in a gold foil wrapper that was absolutely dire... and then they upgraded to Folgers in the filter/coffee ready-brew thing! but they were just sitting in a drawer under the machine, these filters with integrated coffee

now they're at some semi-local coffee pouches of pre-ground coffee, but it's one that supports minority communities, etc. and I think it's fine? but some coworkers aren't into it

this doesn't take into account "double" culture. with the filter packs, someone labeled one pot "normal" and the other "double" and people would put two filter packs into the machine to make a double. I don't think coffee brewing works like that, necessarily, but it extended into the current era and people will put double the ground beans into a filter and make it. I don't think this is right or good

the other wild card is that people have brought their own hardware in, either grinders or aeropresses or what have you and it's chaos. we also absorbed a startup company that had fancy stuff, so multiple break rooms have legit automatic espresso machines that are $1k each. but they grind beans at the time you are brewing, meaning unless you magically measure it out, your brew includes the remaining beans from the last brew. so people who want to just use their own or feel like they're somehow stealing beans will spoon whatever is left in the hopper into a little paper bowl so they're only brewing their beans. this is folly, as the hopper has some beans below the threshold

I'm so old I remember when Starbucks was founded as a retail-only shop (no coffee service!) selling Peet's beans (Bay Area) to the Seattle market.

Seems to me that some of the first modern American coffee shops as such in lower Manhattan evolved out of emulating and recreating the Euro style cafe.

Interesting! The Peet’s on Solano has some awesome old ads from the 80s and early 90s, basically advertising their office delivery service I think.

That factoid kinda blows me away, Steve Shasta

I remember a roommate showing me how to "bloom" coffee in filters, again prob 1987, he liked that dark Bustelo pre-ground kind speaking of pre-Starbucks coffee

― sleeve, Saturday, 28 December 2024 01:00 (fifteen hours ago) link

My mom told me that she had a job demoing chemexes in like the late 70s or early 80s and that they did the bloom thing. Also, the more I think about it, I do remember them having a mill grinder at some point in my childhood. Maybe not until later, like middle school or so. I weirdly cannot picture a drip coffee maker in my parents' house, but there must have been one.

Lol, I just realized I had a huge brain fart and contradicted myself in the same post. My college town had the Starbucks and the lebanese cafe and also the au bon pain and the place in the student center - actually technically multiple such places since there was more than one student center bc there was more than one campus.

A lot of talk about potential double-digit coffee price inflation in the coming year, so if it's filtered down to me it's already a pretty pervasive concern. Let the panic buying begin.

My sister got me some fancy coffee but it's all DARK ROASTED. Guess we need to have a difficult conversation ...