Coming Soon!

After what I think I will call my "Blog Summer Break" (which is really just a positive term to cover my laziness and lack of tasting varieties), I have a nice moderate lineup of review ideas. They run the gamut from cheap to pricey, tea to coffee, rare to "grocery-shelf".

-Bigelow's "Green Tea w/ Pomogranate"
-Arabian Mocha-Sanani
-A "Gold Coast" Blend
-Starbucks' "Sumatra"
-Any of the coffee blends from Trader Joe's that I haven't already tried

If you have any ideas or requests yourself, please let me know; I'm always in the mood to try something different!

In the meantime, please enjoy the title-link, and this completely random (though delicious) picture of my "fish 'n' (literal) chips" meal:

The caption in my mind is, "OMG, FISH 'N' CHIPS ARE SO HOTT!"


All the best,
Michael

What makes a peaberry so special

I thought I might enlighten our readers on the creation of peaberry coffees and why they're normally richer and more expensive.

Normally, a coffee cherry contains two beans which develop face to face. According to my ultra-secret coffee sources, about 5% of cherries don't develop two beans, but only one, which looks closed in on itself (a coffee mutation! Egads!).

What's great about this mutation or defect, is that the peaberry bean receives more nutrients and flavor from its cherry. This results in a fantastically rich and powerful individual bean (just like me after I ate my twin brother in the womb!).

These peaberry beans are painstakingly separated from the rest and roasted together to form some of the tastiest coffees imaginable! Next time you have a regular bag of beans, sift through and I guarantee you'll find a few peaberries lumped in with the rest.

Starbucks' Latest

Good morning, all!

Since coffee is the beverage for me today in the wee hours, and I randomly added something irrational last night, it seemed good to add something rational about coffee. :)

Perhaps you have noticed Starbucks putting out new advertisements recently; if one is even a minor coffee aficionado, the ads' target is obvious: get those Peet's lovers over here and disperse the mass commercial exodus. Why? The ads proclaim a "coffee for coffee lovers" called "Pike Place Roast". The name is based off of the first location of Starbucks, at Pike's Place in Washington. The problem: The alliteration and words sound awfully familiar to the name of their nearest competitor, and those who go to Peet's often say that they find the coffee there existing in purer form.

Now, I don't blame Starbucks for competing. Competition is what drives the economy. But I do have a few issues with this new "campaigning":

a) I don't much like people or companies who negate competition; it seems much more prudent and secure a notion to offer something in which you are especially different and proficient. By acknowledging competition it implies that the competition is worth your attention, which wouldn't be true if you believed you had a better, or more authentic, product. The ads therefore implicitly acknowledge that the competition (namely, Peet's) is already far better.

b) The ad also implies that Starbucks has not previously had "coffee for coffee lovers". In other words, the ad acknowledges not just that Peet's is better, but that they have become better because Starbucks has failed to offer a good product. If I were a previous Starbucks regular, boy would I feel ripped off. This is not to mention how invalidated or humiliated I might be if I thought their bean juice was better bean juice, or even a better product, prior to these ads showing up.

In my opinion, Starbucks just accelerated their fall from stardom's graces. Expect a stock share plummet, if it hasn't already finished.


-Michael