Tea-Housing Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! Peace to you [gobble-gobbles galore].

It was a nice quiet holiday for me. In addition to being thankful for the precarious but fulfilled family situation, and the attendant hand-turkey etravaganza, I found myself taken in by a few new truths; both sides of the same coin.

Firstly, I was reminded how the original settlers of our country, indeed even the political founders themselves, were enamored with tea. Of course, the Boston Tea Party will be quoted unto me here; in response, I offer this: does not the Tea Party prove how important it was to people? Why in the world would you start a conflict by doing something about a substance completely inconsequential; and what kind of "conflict" would result, exactly? So, I enjoyed Assam with my turkey/stuffing/sweet potato/cranberry meal progressions. Like a real pilgrim.

What I've also found is that I have a desire to blend tea. With no knowledge of how to do so. Utterly trial-and-error. A good practice, sometimes off. Any tips would be welcome, naturally, but there's no reason to suppose I shouldn't attempt it on a case-by-case basis. Some people are actually quite good at it, as well, such as (surprisingly) big-enterprise Bigelow. Bigelow has just put out a few mixes that not only combine black and green (and delicate ambition), but also makes one feel festive: natural flavorings for gingerbread and eggnog. I did buy the "Eggnogg'n" style, against my usual purist style, but I found it worth it for the noveltly, especially at recession prices. And I like eggnog. And the box has penguins on it, animals that my son loves. No-brainer. If you wish to try something new, a holiday where you feel at-ease overall is no time to pass the opportunity up. Here's a chat about it. The post's title will give you product details.

In other news, I may be allergic to coffee. Oh well; tea is more peaceful, I no longer have the prospect of a stuffed nose in 90-degree weather, and my thoughts are more exacting. Much turkey, some meditation, and some jazz also help. Yay for dopamine, in whatever form it may come.

Full tummies and restful minds be upon you.

-MSH

Monrovia Coffee Co. and "The Test"

This is my first post in practically three months. That means this post will either by highly good for the subject of the title, or wildly poor. It is not the former.

Everytime a new coffee shop opens up around me, I have a series of tests for it. Most of the time, these tests are unvoiced and subliminal. But this one gave me cause to explain such a process, and now those qualities have been abdicated, if only for a short time.

The first line of testing is relatively simple, though there is reasoning to each step.

1) Show up in the middle of the day. This tells you how the company performs when "no one's watching". Anyone can be on point in the early morning or late afternoon, when the business is busy. And anyone can use that busy timing to excuse poor service, quality or behavior. So, for the Monrovia Coffee Co., I showed up around noon.

2) Order something simple. This will show you not only if they know the coffee basics, but if they know enough to get out of the mentality that pervades this industry, namely "sugared promotion" drinks. For the MCC, I ordered an Americano. It's a espresso and hot water. That's it.

3) Don't wait around by the counter; take a look at the place, make yourself noticeable but not unforgettable. This tells you (a) how they track their customers, and (b) if they remember you. I took a little walk around, waited for about five minutes, and then slowly walked towards the counter. Then I moved to the counter directly. And leaned on it.

4) Tell them it's your first time, and that you're gently "testing it out". This lets them know not only that you're interested directly, but it puts a little pressure on them without expecting too much.

Here are my conclusions:

The company is understaffed; one girl is not enough to handle even an amorphous, relaxed, five person "crowd". The girl took my order, and when I told her #4 above, she flustered immediately. Asked me what I meant by "small" or "tall"; I had to tell her I wanted the lowest-priced size of the Americano.

Then I waited. And I watched her take three more orders. Then I watched her make two sandwiches, get a cookie and a slice of pie. Ten minutes later, I leaned on the counter (breaking rule #3).

She looked at me funnily and then asked me if I had ordered anything! It was a _____ing Americano. She apologized, but the damage was far from fixable at that point. The Americano was already slightly cold, and it was nothing but run-of-the-mill institutional.

In other words, on all four tests: FAILED. Failed MISERABLY.


-msh

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

Apologies...

... for the break. :)

It's been a good vacation, and of course you can tell what I've been distracted by, given my Bay Area bias for baseball. I also haven't had the occasion to purchase more coffee, but I'm due up for a new acquisition.

I'll pick something of my own free volition if no outside input is available, but I'm open. Any suggestions for review are welcome!


All the best,
Michael

Happy 4th of July!

Enjoy your holiday; we'll be out a few more days. For your enjoyment:

Unfortunate 4th of July Cards

Thanks for reading! :)


All the best,
Michael

Fancy Pants

With all due humor, The Onion once decided to admit its dependence on mediocre caffeine (because the finest coffees can and should be tasted just the same as tea) and call tea a sissy in print:

Sunday Tea

Enjoy! ;)

Scottish Breakfast

Today it's tea; Scottish Breakfast tea. Frothy, malty, aromatic Scottish Breakfast; delicious without milk or sugar. Take that and like it, Lipton! ;)

Product here; review here.

All the best,
Michael

Pike's Pique?

Perhaps you may remember my ruminating on a certain billboard ad campaign for Starbucks, advertising their latest "daily brew" (16 April). While I still hold to the evaluation of the logic for those ads, I have a new curiosity. Hence the title.

Upon visiting a local installment of the coffee giant in Northridge, CA with some friends, I was treated to a cup (thanks, B). So I asked what they had up. Pike Place roast was mentioned. I asked if they had anything else. I was told that it was not so. I may have appeared a tad confused. Somehow, either Starbucks is really pushing just this blend (which is unfortunate, because people ought to have choices, and if that brew is off, there's nothing else to offer), or they are lacking a sense of identity and need to compensate (because this is their "we have a coffee lovers' coffee" blend). No matter what, I discovered that Pike Place was the ONLY ready-brew the store was offering.

How is this possible? I'm not sure. I only know that it signals, to my passion for coffee, that Starbucks might finally be acknowledging their business' direction, and have become resigned to phasing out of the "Coffee Purist" genre. Ironically.

Campy Coffee

Today's selection was made mostly because of rising costs. It's Safeway's "Espresso Roast". (As you can see, while we would like to think we know our stuff, and we know what stuff is right to do with our coffee, we're not too big on being "stuffy" here.) Sorry: no linkage this time. Talk to your local Vons/Pavilions/Safeway about that.

Now, the main reason why that title above has been chosen is not mainly out of derogation. No! It's actually just my trying to be catchy based on the initial smells from the bean before grinding: timber, baker's chocolate (and chocolate milk), toasted marshmallow, graham, charcoal, peanut, kettle corn, and even a shallow oak leaf. It seriously made me feel like I was camping in a place that didn't require me to rough it.




The only problem with the smell on this bean is that it's a tad weak; the smells are distinctive, but they're not immediate - with the exception of the baker's chocolate. In addition, the smells "hollowed out" halfway through and I had to keep moving around to different areas of the container, which suggests a little bit of unevenness in the processing, including roasting. Nevertheless, the bean might go especially well with chocolate syrup as a homemade "mocha", and in fact because of this I had once thought that [most of] the beans were probably from Arabia directly.

What a great segue that is (thanks me!): Did you know that "mocha" was a term first coined because of the coffee beans that came from the Mocha region of Arabia? Hence, why "mocha" has come to be moderately associated with "chocolate". You can find more about that here, with more historical anecdotes (including how coffee became "Christianized" - hilarious!) and a time-line to boot. Just can't resist needing a link anymore, now can we?!

Humor aside, the rest of the tasting procedure unfortunately left much to be desired. I no longer thought the beans were from Arabia after actually tasting them - they are probably Mexican imports. True, after grinding I had thoughts of marble ice cream, black licorice, and silk ribbon, but I also had images of sidewalk chalk and desert hills. During brewing, the color follows the initial smell in being a bit shallow in the middle, but overall it's darker than the edges of India Peaberry. The froth line is average, meaning the brew was at least successful, and there was a strong first waft of chocolate, but after that the nose completely disappeared. The magnesium is much too strong in this coffee, and it reminds me of concrete. Really. I was starting at a sidewalk the entire tasting time. And in fact, the mouthfeel actually seems no different from the press than it may have had it been put through a drip machine, which is probably the most disappointing point of all. There's not much of an aftertaste, which is nice, but this is because the brew is dry, not smooth. There's little if any oil to speak of.

You see, espresso roasting is supposed to have two goals in mind. (1) Maximizing sweetness and aroma, and (2) minimizing bitterness and acidity. Most who roast for "espresso" potential do #2 while forgetting #1. This is understandable, because of the demand. But this roast went all over the place and therefore only mildly maximized aroma while barely minimizing bitterness. In other words, it didn't do either part fully, and therefore ended up less than mediocre.

In any case, it's a good purchase at around $8/lb. You can tell that I am advising you to buy it if you want to save money, not if you want guaranteed enjoyment. It's certainly not something I would give as a gift, use to woo a beautiful lady, or serve at an important gathering, but I would recommend it for everyday sniffing. And of course, it looks great amongst my clear-plasticized, airtight row of containers on the kitchen counter, which means about 2 beans out of 5.

All the best, of course,
Michael

----------------
Now playing: Jason Mraz - The Dynamo of Volition
via FoxyTunes

Logo Excitement

This morning upon waking up, a nice idea for a logo came. After discussing it with Joe, we have some pre-formed ideas that are pretty exciting, including an anchor dropping into a sea of roasted beans. Something has been sketched, but we want to open it up to you!

If you have ideas, suggestions, or anything of the kind, please feel free to let us know:

captainscaffeine@gmail.com

Here's the initial sketch [all rights reserved, of course. ;)]:




Until next time, sail on.

-Michael

Hybridizing

On my way home from dropping my son off this last afternoon, I had in the car a makeshift brew of the last two bean types we've reviewed here. Halfway through the trip, while sipping it slowly, a certain atmosphere hit me, one that reminded me much of the American "spirit": strong, brash, young, and rough, but invigorating. The fact that both crops are helping the environment, local subsistence economies, or both makes it pretty ethical as well.

I'll taste the two together more officially and evenly soon, perhaps. Certainly seems promising so far...

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.

India Peaberry!

The day has arrived, and I am excited to bring you this. It's been a day in the making just for the post itself. Joseph also plans on telling us more about peaberries specifically, after this!

As you might see from the Peet's description, India Peaberry was a special online exclusive for the company, because apparently it is the company's favorite from the Indic region. The roast was done on three specific days in this month of June, and was shipped out after roasting immediately thereafter (per the company's extant online-purchasing approach). The shipment came with the roasting date "stamped" on the bag, as well.

According to Peet's the bean comes exclusively from a small, usually tropic portion of India, where the coffee plant is grown independently on the " Elkhill Estate" in the southern portion of the country; so the bean is most likely the product of a lush co-habiting botanical environment, and monsoon precipitation.

The bean itself has a nomenclature that is quite appropriate: the size is much smaller than average, and the bean looks as if it has rounded and cleaved while growing naturally, rather than being halved before roasting. In other words, the bean itself seems to have been roasted whole, to preserve both flavor in the bean and product quality overall because of its natural size. It measures about 1/8" long. I've included pictures at the end of this post in order to compare it to a more "regular" roasted/purchased bean, the previously reviewed "Organic Sumatra-Peru" from Starbucks.

Now, as one might be able to tell, the roast suggests a mostly different texture in the mouth, and perhaps more concentrated flavors. The mouthfeel was a bit less complex than the smell, but the expectations did not lead to disappointment. For the sake of condensing my ridiculous verbiage:

Before Grinding:
dark chocolate, cranberry, bird of paradise, sawdust, licorice, rose leaf, molasses; definitely complex

After Grinding:
strong and peppery tingle; pure, but unclear; dark chocolate enhanced, cherry, redwood, lily, slight carmel; thoughts of Mendocino coast

After Immersion:
much initial froth & bean reaction; 2x as long to rise to the top; looks like mixed beach sand on bottom of grinds; dark, malty brew; deep Siena color; chocolate syrup color toward the edges

After Pressing:
clear redwood, eclair, iron, light tobacco, maltball, incense; some correspondence in smell to Assam teas; smell dissipates after two minutes

Tastes:
burnt brick, chocolate, slight tang, buttermilk biscuit, cod, carrot; smooth taste, absolutely no acid or unnecessary bitterness, grainy feel


All in all, I would recommend this with confidence. 4 out of 5, perhaps even 4.5, seems good. If I were to give it a mental "color association": reddish-brown, perhaps maroon. Not too dark or earthy, but nowhere close to light. I kept picturing this red flower leaf: red at the tips, dotting out to white towards the blossom against a lush green jungle in the background.

But I don't have a name for that.

Joe says I'm "describing an acid trip... no, just a little".


Until next time, keep sipping,
Michael

P.S.-> The "Peaberry" bean is on the left in the second picture, below.

Vindication

I got an e-mail from Peet's today, and although I do enjoy more "independent" companies, they supply my daily cup (coffee or tea) most of the time. The notes were on making "your best cup". So it was a pleasant sight to see that in this e-mail, my storage (airtight, dry, moderate-temperature containers) and brewing preferences were theirs as well:

"Peet's preferred brewing method is the Press Pot. This method gives you the most control and allows 100% of the coffee's flavor to come through. A fine layer of caramel colored froth is the hallmark of a successful brew."

Amen to that. Huzzah. ;)

Humbly,
Michael

Co-Oping

The Indian Peaberry has arrived, thanks to Joseph! I'll be sure to give a review of it later in the week, but for now I wanted to discuss what came in the packaging in addition to the peaberry roast:

"Meet Las Hermanas" it reads; the name of a co-operative group in Nicaragua. It's all women, which is fantastic, and the story seems empowering enough to support. So why bring it up? There is one good thing and two possible worries with a story like this.

Worries:
* This is the only instance of such a group for such a big company, thus merely encouraging everyone to have their "token" disenfranchised story to tell instead of actually helping more of those kinds of people. (See the fact that it's a "Special Offering" on the website.)

* Trader Joe's had already been doing this (see entry "Exploratorio de Peru" on 23 May), and thus this is more about competition than the aforementioned concern for empowering the impoverished.


Positives:
* More co-operatives for the traditionally disenfranchised are being formed and helped through the processes of bigger caffeine distributors.

* People actually getting helped, regardless of the motive.


Time always tells, I guess. But at least there's some good to come of it no matter what.

All the best,
Michael

Regions Illustrated

Coffee growing regions & countries, with a spiffy map of "The Bean Belt", from NatGeo:

Coffee Growing Regions

Squirrelly

Click on the title. It's hilarious.

It's Joseph's Birthday!

Please replace "Johnny" with Joseph in the song lyrics, fully seen via the title-link. :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOE! Yo, one love.

***
It's [Joseph]'s Birthday

It's [Joseph]'s birthday
It's [Joseph]'s birthday
And we would like to wish him all the very best
It's [Joseph]'s birthday
It's [Joseph]'s birthday
And it's so nice to have you back to be our guest

At [Joseph]'s birthday
At [Joseph]'s birthday
We'd like to wish you all what you would wish yourself
On [Joseph]'s birthday
It's [Joseph]'s birthday
And it's so good to have you back from off the shelf
And it's so good to have...
You back from off the shelf...

The Fruit Rind

The last few days have been exhausting, but wonderful. I had a visit from my sister and her spouse, who is a very kind young woman. She works at Starbucks (in fact just had someone fired by her manager so that she could be promoted to such a position of authority), and was so kind that she used her own markup to buy me a pound of one of their latest coffee releases: Organic Sumatra-Peru(vian). And, given that this blend of Starbucks is about to come "off the shelves", I thought it rather pertinent to taste it for y'all.

I couldn't wait, really, to try it today.

Now, I will admit that the beans were in one of my vacuum-packed containers for about a day before trying it this morning, but I assure you it's a safe area for the vacuum-packing. And, I prepared it the same way as I always do.

I give this preface because although the nose and preparation of the beans is excellent, the actual brew is disappointing. Initially I had the smells of potting soil, macadamias, and palm oil; then a bit later, still before grinding, there existed hibiscus, magnolia, jicama, and what I can only describe as "first rain". After brewing but before tasting, this "first rain" concept was reaffirmed, with riverstones, just a hint of white fish, and finally, just at the tail end, came pine nuts. There was absolutely no tinge to the nose (in other words, nothing that gives the hair an overwhelming, crowding-out tingle or "buzz"), and the entire bean was crisp: something I applaud anywhere I can find it.

However, this may have only served to set the brew up to fail. I won't go quite that far, by saying it has failed, but I will say that the mouth is a huge let-down comparatively. I remember very clearly tasting it, appearing confused, tasting it again, and then simply staring into the cup with the kind of quizzical look on my face that is typical of English expectation, I'm sure. It's acidic and hollow. It feels like the outside of an oyster shell, and fruit rind. This last term I like quite a bit, and have decided that in a nut shell, such is the name for this brew. It's wildly expectant, but misses the mark to the point of almost suggesting the wrong approach entirely. It is like when buying an orange at the store, washing it, and then biting into it flush. One cannot enjoy the promise of the fruit because the rind is in the way, and no one bothered to peel it first.

I have no idea what Starbucks was thinking other than a good market strategy, but they missed the process with this batch, and they either know that smell determines most of the taste (when not tasting for separate senses) and "covered over" the low bean-quality with extra processing, or they want to deter people from organic altogether so that they might continue with a less-expensive means of production. This first option might be confirmed by noting the language of the "Food Pairing" and "Origin Notes" on the product website, which I didn't check until after my own review here was finished. It may make a good everyday brew, and you can still access the product by clickin' on the title. And I understand that sniffs can disappoint the palate, depending on the roasting procedure. But, disheartened, I would not recommend it unless at least mixing in a bit of milk and sugar.

All the best,
Michael

Father's Day Coffee

Father's Day brought many a good thing for me, including a gift from our co-author Joseph. :)

He's convinced me to use it for a rare roasting of Indian "Peaberry" coffee, from Peet's. Because this is such a rarity, certain other products I could have bought will "always" be there, and Joe was the one to provide for the chance, I took him up on it. I'll let you know how it tastes when I receive it in a few days. For now, you can follow the title-link to get a bit more about it. Apparently, they're only roasting for three (rather random) days this month. May want to hurry on it, if you're a gambler at heart. :)

All the best,
Michael