No votes yet for Kopi Luwak? You philistines.
That is precisely the problem. No crema, no espresso. Not enough pressure. I’m not saying the coffee’s undrinkable; heck, I’ll drink any kind of coffee as long as it’s not flavored or sweet. But to really enjoy an espresso, it needs to have a velvety layer of crema and should be drunk, preferably, within two minutes of serving. A good espresso is sublime; it has fruity overtones and none of the rancid bitterness many people associate with the stuff. It should never touch sugar, and maybe, just maybe, it could be served with a small sliver of lemon rind. If I go to a proper coffeehouse and I get an espresso that lacks crema, well, that just about writes off that coffeehouse for me.
Fair enough. I agree that it’s not strictly an espresso if it doesn’t have a nice thick unctuous crema. I was just pointing out that the coffee that comes out of stove-top espresso pots isn’t foul. If I could afford a top notch espresso machine, I’d get one. But unfortunately I can’t. Any coffeehouse should have a proper one, absolutely, there’s just no excuse for shoddy coffee from a coffeehouse.
I would very much like to try an espresso with a small sliver of lemon rind, just to see if it did amplify those fruity overtones. Hmmm.
Kopi Luwak doesn’t taste very good, for coffee, or so the peeps tell me.
Personally, I don’t drink any coffee-- way too bitter. The sole exception is 100% Kona from Hawai’i, which tastes exactly the way coffee smells!
I drink tea, and lots of different kinds. Chai (or chai latté, if you prefer) with honey. Oolong. Lung Chin Green Tea. Russian and Imperial Earl Grey (1 tsp brown sugar) from a place called ‘T’, but I’ll take Twinings if I have to. Tetley’s Orange pekoe if necessary (again, with 1 tsp sugar).
Most Canadians prefer drip coffee, but take their orange pekoe with 1 tsp sugar and some milk. Tetley is the preferred brand, followed by Salada, and there’s this crap called Red Rose that some people like and you seem to get in lower end restaurants. No excuse for it tho’.
Canadian coffee fan here. That is, a fan of coffee who is Canadian.
I was a Barista (a person who makes espresso drinks) all through the late 90s, so there was already plenty of that in Toronto. We had seven types of brewed coffee available at all times (mild, medium, strong, decaf, irish cream flavour, hazelnut vanilla flavour, and another flavour that changed daily), as well as cappuccino, cafe au lait, two kinds of latte, espresso (single or double, short or long; with whipped cream or frothed milk or extra hot water on top), moccacino, eight flavours of hot chocolate, all of which could be small, medium, large, X-large or medium or large dine-in - and six kinds of milk we could make it with. Needless to say ordering a coffee was an exercise in patience (especially since ‘coffee with milk’ means something different depending on the language you say it in). There’s no such thing as ‘regular’ any more. I think North Americans take for granted that they will have unlimited choices about their purchases - people were quite fussy that they got 1% milk in their latte instead of 2% !! The pretentiousness got to me after a while: it’s all just coffee, for goodness sake, and if it’s good enough on its own people shouldn’t care so much how it’s served.
I don’t think there’s a ‘canadian’ coffee that everyone would agree to.
I love espresso but don’t drink it much because they charge you way more for an espresso than for a regular coffee, and from my barista days I know that’s a rip-off; also I don’t trust the young hooligans who call themselves ‘baristas’ these days to make it right. (Longing for the day I can afford a big steam-powered espresso maker!) And I like to spend my morning drinking it which doesn’t really work with espresso.
In England I suffered because brewed coffee is hard to come by, and as I don’t drink milk I couldn’t partake in the sudden boom in Starbucks-type places that sell you a cappuccino for a quid. They will sell you ‘coffee’ and give you instant, or instant dissolved in milk, or espresso with hot water added. Here that would not happen - when they advertise coffee they have coffee (except sometimes Sanka). In England I stuck with espresso which was generally alright but not satisfying to take into work and nurse all morning, as is my habit.
In Brazil they serve coffee in small plastic cups, like the kind beside the water cooler, hot and very sweet (often artificially so). I was always worried the cup would melt.
cowgirl - when I was in Canada, that thing with people carrying insulated mugs of coffee with them all day struck me as strange - not being disparaging, but strange as in different. Like security blankets - so the way you descibe ‘nursing’ the coffee all morning resonates with that observation.
Maybe that is another reason drip is so popular there. You can’t carry a flat white (type of espresso) around with you.
You have to admit though that ‘drip and stew’ method does distil off the volatile aromas that make coffee coffee.
Hi, I’m Kyla, I’m an American and I don’t drink coffee.
(“Hi, Kyla!”)
I love the smell of coffee, but dislike the taste of most versions of the stuff. I rather like mochas and other froufrou coffee beverages, but they have odd effects on me. I tend to be really sensitive to foods (ie, sugar makes me really hyper, I’m a total lightweight when it comes to alcohol), and a lot of caffeine makes me INSANE. Those who have met me can attest that I really don’t need chemical help in this area. Coffee (and it’s not the caffeine, it’s the coffee) sometimes makes me rather ill, too.
OTOH, I lovelovelovelovelovelovelove tea. I buy my tea loose from teasource.com. I’m something of a snob about it, too. Milk always goes on the bottom. I understand that this is something of a subject of debate in Britain, but I don’t understand why, since it is wrong and evil to put milk in after the tea. I mostly like black teas and chai, but I find most chais too sweet for me. Especially that godawful Oregon chai stuff. If I wanted a cup of sugary milk, I would have made it myself and it would have been a lot cheaper.
Two weeks ago, Burt Wolf did a show from his series What We Eat on PBS and discussed coffees.
The Americans (according to him) really brought the cup of coffee to the “masses” as a drink, thereby shunning the English and their tea rituals. Then IIRC, it was pressed similar to the French style.
Anyhow, if he had more information on his web page I would post it.
Hi Kyla,
I think the purpose of putting the milk in first is to protect the fine crockery from heat shock. If you have a delicate china tea cup it could crack with the sudden temperature change. I use a mug so put the tea in last - more easy to judge proportions that way.
You will have others argue that the reason is that the hot water ‘scalds’ the milk. I doubt this.
Why do you think it is evil to put milk in last?
Heh, heh…
Just look at my location. The stuff I drank this morning contained beans grown a few miles from here(*). And I could drive past the place it was packed, if I chose to take the long way home.
(*We don’t produce nearly enough for 100% self-sufficiency, so the companies stretch it by blending with Mexican and Brazilian)
Back in the pre-Starbucks days, American “coffee” was a rank, watery concoction that bore as much relationship to actual coffee as American “Lite” “beer” bears to actual beers and ales. Had to drink it by the potful while weaning myself off of my regular dosage… Plus, of course, served at near the boiling point.
Of course, then y’all had to go and get simultaneously “X-treme” AND corporate about it, so now you have a proliferation of lookalike outfits that serve those 20-ounce triple-shot Bundi Granti with soy half-and-half and carob sprinkles or whatever the *&^%$ is in fashion. So it’s still hard to find just a straightforward honest cup of good, real coffee outside the “ethnic” neighborhoods 
All around the Caribbean, even regular non-espresso is brewed very strong and short. The hot water stays in contact with the grounds quite longer. One of those puny thimblefuls of “creamer” would do precious little to a cup of regular caribbean coffee. And when we want café con leche it involves a sunstantial amount of whole milk, which is first brought just close to boiling, and then mixed with the coffee to whatever degree of darkness we want.
The Cubans, BTW, are hardcore with the espresso. Yow. Then again that level of caffeine probably explains a lot of things.
This gets me a bit nostalgic because my doctor has recommended that for the sake of my nervous system and BP, I should water down my coffee or cut down consumption. Alas, the flesh is weak…
Here in south Louisiana, the most popular brand of coffee is called Community. It’s just regular arabica coffee, but there’s something about it . . . some of the best coffee I’ve ever drunk. And I agree, weak coffee down here is considered the 8th deadly sin. 
Chicory is also popular here (or a half-and-half coffee-chicory mix), but it tastes very bitter to me – kind of how I imagine ground-up acorns would taste.
The cafe au lait at the Cafe du Monde in New Orleans is to die for (or maybe it’s the ambiance).
By far the best coffee I’ve ever had is the Kona coffee in Maui.
Alas, the cappuccino culture has overwhelmed London to the extent that it’s getting increasingly difficult to find anywhere to get a really good cup of tea anymore (apart from Fortnum and Mason, of course). Starbucks and its bastard offspring are everywhere, but just try to get a drinkable cup of tea out of them. <pfui>
At my last place of work, all the British people used to drink coffee; I, the lone American, would only drink tea, keeping a desk drawer full of varieties of loose tea for my own delectation (to avoid drinking the office-supplied PG Tips – bleah. And don’t even get me started on the vile spew that is Lipton.)
Earl Grey, English Breakfast, Lapsang Souchong, Oolong, Traditional Afternoon… I loves me a good cup of tea. And I drink it black. If you have to add milk and sugar to a cup of tea, obviously you don’t like the taste of tea.