I love a good cup of coffee…and I’ve tried just about every variety there is to be had. I’ve tried some of the expensive, exotic varieties, and I’ve usually been disappointed.The exotics seem hardly as good as a good brazilian brand. My favorite is a branccnd called “cafe Itamaraty”,which is a standard Brazilian grocery store brand. If you make it fresh, it is delicious, and not at all bitter(unlike the swill from Starbucks). Anyway, some of the exotics I’ve tried:
-Moca Java (Yemen): $11.00/pound…ok, but nothing special!
-Jamaican “Blue Mountain”: OBSCENELY expensive (>$20.00/lb), and rather weak and watery!
-KONA (Hawaii): actually very good, but no better than my favorie brand
-Celebes(Indonisia): pretty good, about as good as mine
So, what do you think? Are your experiences similar?
By the way, the very WORST coffe I’ve ever had was from Starbucks! And, I had an excellent cup in a deli once–the owner made it from “Victor” (an institutional brand)-but it was great! :eek:
I personally think Kona does stand out, but it needs to be 100% Kona, not a blend. I’ve had good and bad experiences with the blends, but the pure stuff is very nice, and you lose the bitter aftertaste that I don’t like.
Blue Mountain is weak if you use a standard proportion of grounds to water. It’s pretty good if you make it stronger, but I still prefer Kona. Besides, Blue Mountain sells for about twice as much as Kona around here.
I haven’t tried the store brand you mentioned, but will give it a shot.
Finally, I think grinding the beans right before you make the coffee is one of the more important steps. The aroma seems to have a greater effect on how the coffee tastes than anything else. By the same token, I like my pepper freshly cracked.
I guess that makes my answer to your question “Sometimes.”
By the way, what you call OBSCENELY expensive is actually quite a bit cheaper than Blue Mountain around here (I’ve seen it go for as much as $40), and is even cheaper than Kona ($20-30) in most places I’ve found it.
Do you have a really cheap coffee shop, or is there a chance they are blends?
Not sure if this is a GD, but a couple points. Firstly, only about 10% of people are supertasters (have a greatly enhanced sense of taste), so the subtleties of the flavour will be lost on a lot of people. I’m pretty certain I’m not a supertaster, if it doesn’t have 3 chillis in it I’m not that interested. Secondly, personal preference, only you can decide if you like the more expensive brands enough to think they are worth paying for.
Generally, no, exotic coffees are not worth the expense, because they are mishandled or adulterated with inferior beans, not fully roasted, harvested in bad years, etc. That’s my experience.
Starbucks revolutionized coffee appreciation in America in days when most Americans got their coffee from a can, but they have not improved their product, so is now, IMO, not a good value.
There is a place I get my coffee from by UPS - they roast coffee to order, and it’s superior quality. I’ve ordered several different varieties, but I always find myself coming back to reliably good (and cheap) Colombian or Italian Roast, neither of which are in any way rarefied.
Coffee from the deli can be wholly satisfactory as long as it hasn’t been sitting on a warmer too long, turning it into mud.
Not to stop the perfectly valid Starbucks related hate from percolating down. But I rather like the beans in their Mocha Java. You’ve gotta take them home and make them yourself, but a good coffee for the price.
OT: how does one tell if one is a supertaster?
Coffeecam
There may be a million reasons to hate Starbucks, but the quality of their coffee is not one of them. It is really quite good. Have you never had coffee from a chain restaurant or a highway gas station?
I agree. McDonalds, now, has probably been responsible for more bad coffee than any other single entity in the world.
As other people have pointed out famous varietals are often the victim of adulteration and intentional mislabelling. I have heard that Jamaican Blue Mountain is particularly vulnerable, the stuff that is sold under that name is almost never purely the real thing. Also just because a particular type of coffee has been good one year is no guarantee it will be good the next year.
<tmbg>When I was 39 years old I heard a story. I found out that there were people walking among us who have superpowers! These people are called supertasters. To a supertaster bitter foods taste far more bitter, and sweets taster far more sweet. Then just a few months ago I had the chance to meet a real live suptertaster named John Lee, and this is his true story…</tmbg>
There’s a nice general gourmet store near here that has completely ruined coffee shop coffee for me.
Hint: 60% French Roast Columbian, 40% Kenyan A.A – serve w/ half & half (it’s a bit too robust for regular whole milk, IMO).
Your welcome.
I don’t think it’s the exotic or expensiveness that improves coffee taste, rather it’s the quality and preparation.
The crap coffee is the stuff that is roasted poorly and ground way too soon. It’s stale. And brewing it wrong just makes it ten times worse. (think: any office or waiting room coffee)
The good coffee is just prepared properly (picked at the right time, roasted well, ground right before brewing, brewed with good water in glass pot (french press is the best way), and not allowed to burn on the warmer for too long.
So you could take fresh Kona beans and screw them up by letting them sit too long, poor roasting, premature grinding, bad brewing technique, etc.
BTW, I drank some fresh Kona coffee at a plantation tour in Kona, and it was heaven! Or maybe I was on a Hawaii vacation high and even drinking their toilet water would’ve tasted good.
Also, I enjoy Starbucks coffee. It’s not bad. Not the best, but better than most.
The best storebought is usually made by some privately-owned coffee shop who cares.
I’ve given up on coffee. It’s espresso only for me now. I buy the beans from a local roaster, grind them at home minutes before brewing, and have fiddled with my grind setting and espresso maker enough to make the almost ideal cup. It’s about as good as Starbucks, and lightyears better than that crap they call espresso at Gloria Jean’s.
The coffee kiosk at school makes some really good flavored coffee. A nice change from Folger’s or Maxwell House, and I can take it to class with me.
Robin
I prefer latte to coffee, but since the preperation takes more effort, I drink more coffee than espresso-based drinks. I generally drink Stewarts, which is a bit (just a few bucks or so) more expensive than Folgers and the like, but is much less acidic. Good stuff.All I can add, regarding Jamaican Blue Mountain (the only ‘exotic’ coffee that I semi-regularly) drink: Try it with brown sugar and goats milk. That is how it was served when I was in Jamaica, and that is how I prepare it on the odd occassion I buy it up here. Is it worth it? Sorta. Jamaican Blue is something I buy a half pound of a year. I don’t think the difference in taste is worth buying the stuff for daily drinking.
Starbucks is good for latte, but their houseblend coffee is crap, IMO. I’ll get 7-11 coffee before I get Starbucks coffee.
Since this is in GD instead of Cafe Society or MPSIMS I can be snide, though not as bad as if it were in the Pit. Huzzah!
I think it’s best for the children with their flavored coffees to stay out of this and leave the discussion of REAL coffee to the grownups. 
(I didn’t mean it, Robin, honest! Well, I meant it but the mean part was just feigned.)
My favorite is an institutional brand, too, Cory. Rich but mild and not sour and the caffeine hasn’t been burnt off like with dark roasts.
[Moderator Hat ON]
To (heh heh) Cafe Society.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
So I have to be NICE now? 
We buy Kona coffee directly from one of the growers. We are soooooo picky that when we go to Maui (for several months each summer) we bring our coffee with us. The other brands of Kona available locally don’t measure up. Don’t even get me started on Starbucks. :eek:
I love Torrefazione beans, myself. A local espresso shop carries them, and I order up a 1:1 blend of their Palermo dark roast and Montecatini (a decaf). This company’s beans taste smooth and rich, almost chocolatey, and a half-decaf blend means I can have TWO double shots of espresso in the morning rather than one.
Hey, Dr. QtM, I seem to remember an old thread of yours in which you discussed switching to espresso because it might be easier on the stomach. Have you found that to be true?
Torrefazione website. Highly recommended.