Bloggle

There are millions who wouldn’t think of coffee without abundant cream and sugar. (Hello, New England!) And there are a precious, precocious few who would consider condiments of *any* sort anathema to the coffee experience. For them, the NYTimes offers this point of view:

Coffee purists would never, ever add dairy to their coffee, and they would sooner drink General Foods International’s instant Hazelnut Belgian Café than add soy milk. After all, we’re now in the age of microlot coffee, when beans are harvested and handled with the same care that goes into making wine, and the flavors of an exceptional cup of coffee can be as layered and complex as a glass of pinot noir. Cream would just ruin it.

If it sounds snobby, consider this: would you dab a Peter Luger porterhouse with ketchup? A slab of well-aged beef needs nothing more than salt, pepper and a good char. There’s nothing arrogant about leaving the Heinz out of it.

Firstly, never is a very  long time. To say that one might never add cream — or any dairy — is to rule out the little slice of heaven that is the espresso macchiato, or the more bountiful coffee and dairy expression that is the cappuccino. And that would be wrong.

Secondly, Peter who? Oh… yeah. I guess it’s a New York thing. Sorry, if you want to make a purist’s analogy between coffee and aged beef, maybe you should refer to a purist’s steakhouse, and those are in Kansas City. Yes, both of them.

Thirdly, hey… check out that photo! That’s an old-school alt.coffee regular in the picture! Neat. ;)

And fourthly, if you think this isn’t an issue near and dear to the hearts of many, note that the original Times piece has more than 100 comments on it, which is to say, this may be a greater issue than Global Climate Change and FISA, combined.

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On weekends like this, it’s a good opportunity to take stock, and enjoy life’s simpler pleasures: good company, glorious weather, and a little bit of Kansas City style barbecue. Yeah… in Vermont.

As the old saw goes, if you want something done right, do it yourself. Thus, the Weber shrine… a paean to DIY, high on the hog, good ol’ fashioned pit cookery. Oh, and flowers.

Click the pic for more…

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For me, one of the signs of coffee obsession is that on most any trip to the grocery store I’m compelled to take a stroll down the coffee aisle… just keeping tabs, I guess. This trip I noticed the following:

• Dunkin Donuts has moved in. Big time. This wasn’t a surprise… in my neck of the woods (New England) they’re saturating the airwaves with a whole new line of commercials. And when I say saturating, I mean there are currently significantly more DD ads on the television than political ads. Yeah… that many.
• Emeril Lagasse has his new line-up of bright blue coffees out there, too, so thoroughly private-labeled it’s impossible to discern who actually roasts it. (Timothy’s makes Emeril’s K-Cups… I don’t know if they do the whole bean, too.)

But what really struck me is this: even though every single one of the coffees that I looked at — Dunkin Donuts, Emerils, Peet’s, Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, Melitta, Folger’s, Equal Exchange and many, many more — was packaged in what appeared to be laminated, heat-sealed bags with one-way valves, virtually all of them were offered in pre-ground coffee, only.

That’s a damn shame.

There’s a whole host of complex chemical reactions that happen when coffee is roasted. The clock starts ticking… some volatile aromas waft away within hours, flavors fade in days. The coffee is for all intents and purposes rusting. Those fancy laminated bags do a pretty darn good job of slowing this process by taking oxygen out of the mix… but grinding those coffee beans exposes vastly more — several orders of magnitude more — of the coffee’s surface area to the ravages of this process of oxidation. Ground coffee immediately begins to stale.

Supermarkets, of course, have limited shelf-space. There’s a tremendous bit of calculus (and often as not, some exchange of legal tender) to determine what brands get put where, in what varieties, and quantities. Multiple styles of the same product — say, whole bean and ground — are frowned on. Discouraged, even.

If a roaster is given four slots on the grocery shelf, and if that roaster offers more than four varieties of coffee, well then… he’s in a fix. He can offer two coffee varieties in both whole-bean and ground, or he can offer four varieties, all of them pre-ground. Which do you s’pose he’ll choose? Mmmhmm. Why? Because 99% of folks buying that coffee — even the premium brands — just don’t realize what they’re missing.

Just say no to stale, pre-ground coffee.

There’s a world of difference between coffee you buy pre-ground, and coffee you grind yourself. Grinding your own coffee — fresh, just before brewing — is the single, most dramatic thing you can do to improve your coffee. Honestly. It’s like the difference between corn-on-the-cob that was picked fresh just a few minutes ago, and stewed, creamed corn; a dry-aged Kansas City rib-eye and a freezer-burned hamburger patty, or filet of sole and a fish stick. The thing is, pound for pound, whole bean coffee doesn’t cost you any more than the stuff that’s already ground, so why would you buy your coffee any other way?

Just say no. Don’t buy it. Find your grocery manager, and insist they carry whole bean coffee. Or find a local roaster who treats their coffee with the respect it deserves.

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• Rating:

40 Sardines. The American Restaurant. Blue Bird Bistro. The Classic Cup, Le Fou Frog, Yaya’s EuroBistro… great Kansas City restaurants, all. Each offers a wonderful dining experience. And each serves coffee from The Roasterie. Not the same coffee, mind you… each restaurant has its own custom blend. (more…)

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I’m hugely appreciative of Grist and their take on issues relevant to the environment and sustainable living, but I have to draw the line somewhere. That line is here: Grist’s Guide to Meat-free Grilling.

I come from a cow-town. For me the very definition of a summer’s day involves a grill and many pounds of beef. (Better still, it involves a barbecue pit, and a large supply of beef brisket and pork ribs.) I’m happy to grill veggies — even fruit — so long as it’s understood by all in attendance that these are accompaniments to the main dish, which will be meat.

As an antidote to Grist’s misguided efforts, allow me to present you with an alternative menu:

• The Kansas City Barbecue Society
• The Smoke Ring
• Weber Grills
• Paul Kirk’s Championship Barbecue (The Bible of BBQ)

Now get grillin’.

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