My nephew, who works for Cometeer (mentioned upstream, a fancy frozen coffee company), says that he classifies coffee as okay, good, or exceptional. I laughed, and said that i classify coffee as undrinkable, good enough to drink with milk, or worth drinking black.
But this morning, inspired by this thread, i decided to have coffee instead of tea. And i had an exceptional cup of coffee. It was one of the Cometeer “super duper good” series (they have some marketing name) and a capsule costs considerably more than picking up a cup of Joe at Starbucks or Dunkin. But it was really good. I could tell it would be interesting as soon as i opened the capsule. Even frozen, it smelled different. Fruity. It was very low acid, not very bitter, but rich and fruity on the tongue.
I can’t recommend the company to anyone who drinks coffee every day, because honestly, it’s pretty easy to make very good coffee at home, for a lot less than going to a coffee shop. And even though the aluminum pods are recyclable, it feels like an awful lot of waste to get this stuff delivered. But damn, that was a nice cup of coffee.
I tend to like my coffee dark as possible and I drink it black. I tend to stick to Peet’s.
I used to grind my own, do the French press thing, but I got lazy over the years and bought a Keurig. It’s nowhere near as good as a French press, but I got tired of cleaning the French press every day.
I generally can’t stand Starbuck, but I do like their containers of dark iced coffee, which is my go-to when the weather is hot. They recommend you mix it with ice, but I usually just drink it straight. It has far less bitterness than one would normally find in a hot cup of Starbuck’s coffee.
In an emergency, I’ll drink just about any coffee, but the above is what I prefer.
Like some others here, I had to give up coffee as I aged because it gave me acid reflux and nighttime headaches. I transitioned to black tea and grew to love it as much as coffee, but then I had to switch to decaf black tea for the same reasons. I drink my decaf tea triple-strength, and it’s as deeply colored as brewed coffee. I add lots of whole milk and a couple of heaping spoons of raw sugar. Yum!
I used to make and drink espresso at home on our Rancilio espresso machine. I still occasionally indulge in a half-caf espresso at Peet’s for a treat. When we’re on a vacation, I check around for a small artsy espresso joint and have a half-caf there as a vacation indulgence.
Mr. brown drinks a cup of very strong French press coffee every morning. He orders Lavazza Gran Reserva beans from Amazon and grinds them fresh in a burr grinder every other day or so. It’s topnotch.
Sounds a bit like the fictional “Ever-So-Much-More-So” from the “Homer Price” children’s books, according to the description I get online.
And I have already ordered some.
It’s mostly sold via online subscription. But they are working on getting it available retail. I know some of the brands they sell will have a freezer case in their shops.
So if there’s a:
Counter culture
Bird Rock
George Howell
Birch
Joe coffee
Houseplant coffee
Redbay coffee
gget
klash
Onyx
Square Mile
Black & White
Intelligentsia
Coffee shop near you, check out their freezer displays.
(And if i ever see a black and white coffee shop, i will stop in. They have some really good coffees.)
I think they are also trying to get into ordinary retail stores, but as far as i know, they haven’t done so, yet.
I like coffee ice cream (have since I was a kid), and I’ll always get a Thai iced coffee when I go to a Thai restaurant. But otherwise I always drink it black. I hate sugar in hot coffee and only add cream in iced coffee. I think it’s partly because the first time I had iced coffee was at the Farmer’s Market in L.A. on a hot day, and it tasted so good.
I like Starbucks and usually drink French Roast. When I had a cup of their coffee when they were new, it was the first time I’d tasted coffee that tasted anywhere close to how it smelled. About a month ago, there was no French Roast, so we tried Morning Joe. We really liked it! Too bad we don’t like the namesake.
People here seemed to rave about Dunkin Donuts coffee, so we tried it once. Once. I should have been warned by their awful donuts, but it was really really bad. Like it hadn’t been roasted at all and had a nasty aftertaste. Never again.
After I was diagnosed with afib, my doctor told me “no coffee.” But then my cardiologist said a cup (even sometimes two!) a day would be o.k. I usually stick to one.
When I lived in Miami, I got hooked on cafe cubano/cafecito served in demitasse cups—aka rocket fuel. One of these will have your heart doing salsa beats in no time. It was served everywhere in Miami. Cuban shop-owners would offer it free to customers, and Café Cubano vending machines were all over (don’t recommend those). It’s a ritual with the Cubans, a social glue—especially when brewed with a stovetop moka pot.
I drank it black for decades; strong, Melitta or French press. Preferably Sumatran, although that’s gotten harder to find over the years.
Then I started getting reflux, so I added milk and now I’ve come to prefer it that way. I’m definitely a snob and feel Starbucks is just barely acceptable in a pinch. Lately I’ve been delighted to discover Sputnik coffee roasters here in Chicago, who produce coffee at $9/12 oz that I can’t tell from the stuff that costs twice as much.
I also enjoy milk-oriented espresso drinks, including fancy ones, though I rarely treat myself to the latter.
It may or may not surprise you that Tom Petty’s coffee of choice was Maxwell House. His biographer Warren Zanes wrote about Tom’s “perfect cup” in this article (the actual coffee story starts about halfway down)
