coffee snobbery

[anthonybaxter]

So apparently even in the US, businesses are noticing that supplying decent coffee to their workforce is a very cost effective thing to do. The WP covers it here. I just want to point out something that I found somewhat disturbing...

On-the-job coffee consumers often exhibit a convert's zeal for their favorite beverage. At the university, Cohen's 20-minute morning coffee ritual mixes engineering's precision with near religious devotion. Arriving at the break room at 7 a.m., he filters the water, preheats all the equipment, rewashes the coffeepots that were washed the night before -- "overnight, dust falls," he explains -- and puts the beans in the microwave for a few seconds to release their flavor, a coffee-brewing innovation to which he proudly lays claim. Then he grinds the beans very fine, brews the club's coffee in an electric pot and pours it into an airtight carafe.

So this guy goes to a huge amount of effort to get particular beans, then brews his coffee in a damn electric pot?!? What the hell?

The piece also has to explain what an espresso is.

This reminds me of a conversation I had in Washington DC back in 2002. A rather well known Italian pythonista and I were fairly unimpressed with the black coffee-coloured swill that we were offered, and asked some locals at the conference for the nearest place where we could go to get a decent espresso. The answer was "New York".

Kids - coffee from a pot is nasty. Getting one and a half litres of flavoured coffee bean soup in a giant Starbucks cup doesn't make you a connoisseur of coffee. It makes you an idiot.

Comments

[terryfish.livejournal.com]

Filter coffee in a pot can be perfectly good. The trick is not to re-heat it and to drink it fast.

So... don't make more coffee than you're prepared to drink within 20 minutes (is my rule anyway) :-)

[hasimir.livejournal.com]

You'd think that a country that went to all the effort of booting tea out of their realm and immortalised said event with tales from Boston, would go to the effort of taking their coffee brewing to an art form. Instead they have simply opted for quantity over quality and flooded the global market with Starbuckian Swill and similar exercises in mediocrity.

A few years ago a good friend of mine taught me how to make Turkish coffee, so my salvation is guaranteed.

there's only one colour, and it's black

[drwally.livejournal.com]

My espresso kettle is my best friend. I had to replace the first one when it fell off the fridge onto someone's head. I had to replace the second one when I boiled it dry, making a crusty landscape of charred 'once-coffee' stuck to the bottom of the kettle... I'm on my third. I may well get buried with an espresso kettle.

[jerub.livejournal.com]

say it brother!

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Mmm. The thing I miss the most about my last IT gig was the twin-group Gaggia. Oh sure, it was cantankerous, and broke down every month or so, and kinda hissed a bit, but damn, good, free coffee. Now that I'm unemployed, the home stove-top espresso doesn't quite cut it.

sol.
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