coffeenut Senior Member Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 13 Location: montreal Expertise: I love coffee
Grinder: Braun Drip: Cuisinart Brew Central
Posted Mon Oct 27, 2003, 9:49pm Subject: I need help in choosing the best coffee beans.....
I am a new poster. I live in Montreal, Canada and LOVE coffee. I want to be educated on the best beans to buy. For my personal taste, I like a full-bodied taste, but cannot handle a "hanging-from-the-ceiling" hi with too much cafeine. On my recent trip to COSTCO, I bought Starbucks French Roast (smoky and intense (Bold), and I really like the taste. I also bought a bag of LavAzza Crema e Aroma, which a work colleague of mine had recommended. Any suggestions? I know virtually nothing about beans, except that I know that if the beans are darker, the caffeine is less. Please, can someone educate me? This is my little piece of heaven to have a great cup of coffee....... thank you.
jim_schulman Senior Member Joined: 19 Dec 2001 Posts: 3,772 Location: Chicago Expertise: I live coffee
Posted Tue Oct 28, 2003, 12:09am Subject: Re: I need help in choosing the best coffee beans.....
There's really no substitute to buying different coffees and trying them out. It will take time to learn, but you will enjoy doing it. Nevertheless, I can give a couple of pointers:
Avoid brandname coffees, you're just paying for the marketing. Find a good local roaster and try single origin coffees. Also, most inexpensive branded coffees, as well as most Italian brands, now contain a cheap form of coffee called Robusta. This bears about the same relation to normal Arabica coffee as rye does to wheat. If you are caffeine sensitive, avoid robusta, since it contains twice the amount.
Roasting makes a difference. Lighter roasts tend towards acidic flavors, darker roasts tend towards bitter ones. Roasts called "Full City" or "Medium" tend to have a balance of acidic and bitter flavors. Contrary to popular belief, the caffeine difference between light and dark roasts is negligible.
High quality coffee is naturally sweet and contains interesting flavors both at lighter-acidic and darker-bitter roasts. So a good coffee roasted light will be sweet and acidic like fruit or wine, while a good dark roast will be sweet and bitter like a desert with nuts, chocolate, caramel and spice.
Although there are many exceptions, coffees from each continent tend to be somewhat alike. The best coffees from each tend to be more suited to light or dark roasts. Going from the lightest to the darkest: Central America, South America and Caribean, Africa, and finally Indonesia & India.
Most of this information is completely useless unless you use coffee that has been roasted less than ten days before and grind it just before brewing. Bean coffee older than about three weeks, and ground coffee older than about 1 1/2 hours is so degraded that it tastes like a poor unsweetened cocoa and not much else. Freezing preserves bean coffee if carefully done, but the fancy packaging does not, despite the claims of mass market roasters.
Posted Tue Oct 28, 2003, 5:09am Subject: Re: I need help in choosing the best coffee beans.....
Take the advice of another_jim. Does McDonalds make the best & the freshest or juiciest (or even descent hamburgers)? No, of course, not. It is barely edibale. If @ all...
Same goes for Sh-tbucks. They are no better than a McDonalds & such.
another_jim gives good advices. You will never go back to Sh-tbucks again. Trust me...
The first time I saw your reference to "Sh-tbucks" it was mildly entertaining. The 15th time in about three days...it just reminds me of a small child who discovered a word they think is cool so that's all they say for the next week or two.
We got it. You don't like Starbucks. That's ok, but reading "Sh-tbucks" so often makes me not want to read your posts anymore. If you have any other knowledge to share, that would be much more appreciated.
"Do everything right. You will gratify some people and astonish the rest." (Mark Twain)
Tut, tut. Surely you can think of hundreds of other ways to defame them and do it far more deftly. I'll offer "Corporate Purveyors of Caffeinated Swill". Actually, I don't hold a view quite that extreme but offer it only to introject some levity. :-)
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