Win Delicious Coffee!
I like coffee. I like to drink it at least once a day, although sometimes I will skip, but not usually. And I don't care if you think it's a drug and I'm addicted to it because I think that's a fine amount of coffee to drink every day and I'm tired of pleasing you anyway.
Living in San Francisco has really introduced me to some fine, fine coffee. Long behind me are the days of waiting in the cold New York winter to purchase a cup of lukewarm battery acid from one of those silver cart things, along with fifteen other people dressed almost exactly like me in black and gray. Gone!
Now coffee has flavors! And I don't mean Dunkin' Donuts French Vanilla, I mean flavors like 'vibrant' and 'sultry.' Just like me. Does it work if I say this around mixed company: 'I like my coffee like I like myself, vibrant and sultry?' I will attempt this/embarrass myself in a very public situation soon and get back to you.
My favorite coffee of the moment comes from Barefoot Coffee Works in San Jose, CA (but I can get it a Birite, near my house). I am in love with the Reserva Del Diablo. One day I was poking around the market, taking my sweet time picking out a coffee because I love shopping no matter what it's for, and I read every single description on all the coffee they had for sale. I knew I wanted a light roast, and I wanted to stray from the typical SF faves (Ritual and Four Barrel) to try something new. When I read this description, I was in love:
Vibrant and sultry. Surprisingly crisp and sweet acidity with tangerine and clover honey highlights. Fresh red currants and lemony floral zestiness.
It is SO GOOD. I am currently drinking a cup, black, which isn't necessarily how I like my men, but it could be because I think Jose Reyes is a babe. I love this coffee so much that I want to give some away...to you!
If you love coffee as much as I do, leave a comment telling me a story revolving around coffee. It could be about your favorite barista, counting quarters to pay for your machiattto, or just sipping a cup on the couch with your new puppy. Or old puppy. I'm not picky when it comes to puppies.
I will pick my favorite story on Monday, and I will send the winner a 12 oz. bag of Barefoot Coffee's Reserva Del Diablo. The winner will be posted on this here site on Monday evening. See what I did there? Not only do you have to read this, but then you have to think about something meaningful and write it down. And THEN you have to come back to my blog on Monday. Boo yah. I'm smart. Or maybe I've just had too much coffee.
Can't wait to read your comments!
Living in San Francisco has really introduced me to some fine, fine coffee. Long behind me are the days of waiting in the cold New York winter to purchase a cup of lukewarm battery acid from one of those silver cart things, along with fifteen other people dressed almost exactly like me in black and gray. Gone!
Now coffee has flavors! And I don't mean Dunkin' Donuts French Vanilla, I mean flavors like 'vibrant' and 'sultry.' Just like me. Does it work if I say this around mixed company: 'I like my coffee like I like myself, vibrant and sultry?' I will attempt this/embarrass myself in a very public situation soon and get back to you.
My favorite coffee of the moment comes from Barefoot Coffee Works in San Jose, CA (but I can get it a Birite, near my house). I am in love with the Reserva Del Diablo. One day I was poking around the market, taking my sweet time picking out a coffee because I love shopping no matter what it's for, and I read every single description on all the coffee they had for sale. I knew I wanted a light roast, and I wanted to stray from the typical SF faves (Ritual and Four Barrel) to try something new. When I read this description, I was in love:
Vibrant and sultry. Surprisingly crisp and sweet acidity with tangerine and clover honey highlights. Fresh red currants and lemony floral zestiness.
It is SO GOOD. I am currently drinking a cup, black, which isn't necessarily how I like my men, but it could be because I think Jose Reyes is a babe. I love this coffee so much that I want to give some away...to you!
If you love coffee as much as I do, leave a comment telling me a story revolving around coffee. It could be about your favorite barista, counting quarters to pay for your machiattto, or just sipping a cup on the couch with your new puppy. Or old puppy. I'm not picky when it comes to puppies.
I will pick my favorite story on Monday, and I will send the winner a 12 oz. bag of Barefoot Coffee's Reserva Del Diablo. The winner will be posted on this here site on Monday evening. See what I did there? Not only do you have to read this, but then you have to think about something meaningful and write it down. And THEN you have to come back to my blog on Monday. Boo yah. I'm smart. Or maybe I've just had too much coffee.
Can't wait to read your comments!
Labels: coffee, contest, San Francisco
posted by Melanie Kameko at
10:17 AM
9 Comments:
Not really a coffee aficionado story but here goes:
Freshmen year at college I had a 6PM math course. Late in the semester, maybe Novemberish, I was heading out from my dorm and it began to get dark. I was already tired from a long day and didn't want to fall asleep in calculus (it takes so much longer when you're tired), so I stopped in Hillel. Someone told me they had a coffee machine and I was looking for a reason to walk in there anyway. For whatever reason, no one was immediately around the entryway, and before I thought to look to find someone I saw the little picture of a coffee next to a big machine and a stack of baby cups. The directions, as archaic as they were, were printed on the front, and since I didn't want to be late I figured I would just help myself and come back later to meet people.
The cups were tiny, and I really didn't want to fall asleep in glass, so I took one of the plastic water cups by the water cooler and pressed the right buttons and levers etc to pour a cup (it made a huge mess and smelled awful). I quickly darted outside without talking to anybody, partially to not be late and partially because I was embarrassed I made a huge mess.
Long story short, it turns out the coffee machine was a cheap type of espresso machine (which I had never seen before) and I drank ~8oz of espresso on my way to class. Limits of integration never seemed so fun! I don't think I fell asleep that night, and I never went back to Hillel that year.
They say coffee stunts your growth.
Well lemme tell you, I've been drinking coffee since I turned 13, and I'm just about 5 feet tall, and to this day, I make someone drie me 3 hours to Connecticut to get my coffee.
It's all hooey.
Hooey!
I'm sitting in Starbucks right now reading your post, how appropriate! Although I'm feeling quite conventional, comparing my standard Starbucks mocha to your vibrant sultry coffee.
My story is coffee related. About a month or two ago, I started having insomnia, and trouble sleeping, and I was exhausted all day long. That went on for about a week, during which time I tried to stretch my medical mind and figure out what was wrong with me. Chronic fatigue? Hypothyroidism? On that Sunday I recall being in such a stupor, it reminded me of medical school trying to break my 6 cup per day coffee habit. (Damn that coffee cart with the enticing flavors.. hazelnut.... irish cream...)
Coffee withdrawal? With no coffee? Then I thought about the fancy atrisan chocolate I had been treating myself to each night. I did some research, and it turns out artisan dark chocolate is just a vibrant sultry (ha!) form of coffee. Chock full of caffeine. I had been having a cup of coffee right before bed without even knowing it! No wonder I couldn't sleep!
Moral of the story: eat your chocolate for breakfast!
I'm more of an espresso fan (small, concentrated, and easy to drink quickly) but occasionally I just need a cup of coffee (larger, more caffeine, more room to spill). And please note - I drink both espresso and coffee black, sometimes with an ice cube to help with temperature control. No cream, no sweetener, just coffee. Also, I am a huge fan of Cafe Trieste. They are local, close to my work (for work coffee) and Jess loves their espresso roast.
One morning I found myself at work after a rather sleepless night and in dire need of a cup of coffee. We had clients coming in, I had tons of end of the month reporting to do, etc. I actually took the time to make the office coffee (which I never do), and stood there waiting for it to brew (6 minutes).
Here's the catch, whenever you find me drinking coffee, you will find spillage. For some reason I cannot drink even a small cup of coffee without it landing everywhere other than in my mouth. And this day at work was no exception. It started when I was pouring the coffee into my mug - spilled all over the counter. Then as I was walking from the kitchen to my desk, spilled a good portion down the hallway. I had to put the coffee on my desk and then go back and spot clean the carpet (all 50 spots). So I sit down, ready to dive into my workload and waiting for our clients to arrive. I get about halfway through my coffee before the next spillage incident. Of course this incident just happened to land in my lap. Just as this happens, the phone rings and guess who? The client has arrived. I buzz them in, grab a tissue to blot at my very toasty and wet lap, and run to set up the conference room. Eek.
Ok, so I was lucky. I was wearing a pale pink sweater that would not have looked so nice with coffee drips down the boobs. However, the spill was contained to my legs and I was wearing forgiving black pants.
I still haven't had a cup of coffee at work since.
I don't have a very loving relationship with coffee. If anything, I prefer a cuppa Joe at a diner, black. But even this can get to be too much, due to my extreme sensitivity to caffeine (symptoms include inventing things and hearing voices). So often times I'll just order a decaf (taken black, of course. Publicly I drink my coffee black because the bitterness reminds me of the bitter tears shed during the exodus, but privately it's because I hate trying to maintain the proper proportion of cream and sugar as the mug is refilled throughout the meal).
Anyway. I only have a couple of incidents that could remotely qualify as any kind of coffee story. There was the time I tried making coffee at the office and things went so badly I ended up having to run away. Or the time in college, after having studied the strange power of the placebo effect, that I secretly substituted my girlfriend's sister's coffee with decaf on the night before her final, but then didn't say anything when she kept frowning at the coffee and saying, "I think they accidentally put in decaf".
But I think the one I'll go with isn't so much a story, as it is a visual. Basically, one day on my bike commute to work, I got the idea in my head that it would be great to grab a cup of coffee from Philz on the way to the office. I figured: hey, I'm a good biker, I can hold a cup of coffee steady. It went pretty well, until I got to my shortcut behind the Best Buy.
The path that runs behind the Best Buy is, like, beyond bumpy. I think it was paved when asphalt was first invented and pretty much left untouched since. Through internet magic, you can actually see precisely what I'm talking about.
As I turned onto the road, a little voice somewhere in my head coughed politely and mentioned something about maybe this not being a good idea. But this voice was drowned by another, stupider voice, who was all like, "Hey don't listen to him! Woo, pina coladas!" (Lesson: never heed the advice of the voices in your head who are lounging around drinking pina coladas all day and making rude remarks to the waitresses. Those are LOSER voices.)
Well. So. If you were a passerby that morning, you would have seen a nerdy white guy slowly riding a bike while spilling scolding hot coffee all over his arm, screaming. Curious as to why he didn't stop or anything, but continued to keep spilling the coffee on himself the whole length of the street, you might have asked him why he did that. To which he probably would have said something like, "For some reason, I felt I had to just push through it, you know?"
My family likes to recall how I ruined our Christmas vacation in Disney World.
What's that? How is that possible? Well, it's because of coffee, or lack thereof. Being the only Californian in the group with a love for a fine roast with a dash of soy, I was a bit out of luck in the heart of the South in Florida. In Disney World.
On Christmas day, in the Magic Kingdom, we FINALLY found a stand menu that said they had lattes! Yes, espresso, folks. So my family was very happy for me and so we all waited in line for about 30 minutes (it's xmas day in the magic kingdom in Dworld!) to get in on the latte action. When we get to the front I order a latte. Forget the soy, I'm not even going to bother asking. They tell me they can't make lattes, something about the machine. Ok, fine, I say, I'll take an Americano -"sorry the machine..." Ok, after rattling off about twenty drink possiblilites, I finally understand that the ESPRESSO MACHINE IS DOWN. The entire menu was BOGUS! NO ESPRESSO?! Oh. My. God. And that's how much I love my coffee, that I'm willing to ruin my family's Christmas in Disney World because they don't have soy anywhere and they don't do espresso much. They DO do roasted turkey legs, (veggie here) however, and stale, uber-lightly caffeinated coffee-imitation (coffee-lover here). Anyway, stay away or go prepared. That's my story.
In Japan I became obsessed with the coffee machines at internet cafes. First off, the coffee was free, and free coffee focuses me like little else. That is, it causes me to focus exclusively on acquiring said free coffee until the task is complete, regardless of whether it is good or I am in the mood.
Once I was beyond the free part of it, there was a fascinating machine to operate. It was one of those that ground up the beans on a per cup basis and went through the entire process from grind to pour in about 30 seconds. Before long I had mastered the timing so that I would start a cup, activate the computer and then get back in time to remove it before the last few seconds of pouring.
That last part was crucial, and took me a while to get. For all its high-techness, the machine had a tendency to spit out watery unpleasantness in those final few seconds. At first I thought it just made bad coffee. The truth was it made okay coffee and then ruined it at the end.
I can't honestly say if I had good coffee in my 14 months there. Actually, I can, but I'll get to that. What I would call good coffee does not seem to be a goal of most of Japan. The coffee there is mild and unassuming. It doesn't knock you on your ass or draw your entire focus with its high notes and undertones. It would come plastic-wrapped like much else there if it could.
My first "good" cup of coffee there came from- a don't really want to say it, but here it is- Starbucks. For the standard, go mom-and-pop, down with the man reasons, I avoided Starbucks for years. In the Bay Area, I tend to, but that's just because it is out-awesomed at every turn here. Then, one lunch break in Kawasaki, I couldn't deny it. I wanted Starbucks. I wanted it really bad.
My homesickness took a number of forms there, many of them food related. For a while I would always keep my fridge stocked with various jams and spreads. Every few months I would become ravenous for Mexican food. On this day, which I am oddly confident was a Wednesday, I had to have Starbucks.
I was shocked how good it was. I was telling people about the coffee I had for the next few days. It was a combination of a comfort from my continent with a really solid cup. They also had some serious chairs for me to sit in. Many of the Japanese cafes went for plastic over something soft.
That's my story. I went back semi-regularly after that. In my usual haunts in NYC-Chicago-Berkeley, I have no need for Starbucks but there it was a life saver.
Also, whenever I came across one in southern North Carolina I would praise almighty Jesus.
Hi Owen,
When I was visiting Japan a couple years back, I was struck by the price disparity in cups of coffee all over Tokyo. In some neighborhoods a cup would go for two dollars, and in other neighborhoods, like, eight. It didn't make any fucking sense.
Did you come across that when you lived there?
I read this much later than I should, and am assured I ain't winning no coffee.
So here's what I got.
I go to El Biet on Bedford and 8th. I order an iced latte, and I wait.
It's a small bit of a shop. I smile, they smile.
I get a few "are you in line?" questions.
Ho hum.
I get my drink. Go to the station. Put a lid on it, put a straw in it.
Walk outside.
Take a sip, and without fail, say to the tree in front of me,
"Holy fuck, that's fucking good."
I cuss, it's my style.
The tree is pleased, and the babies I sidestep learn a new word of the day.
And I finish that fuckin' coffee be North 11th because it's motherfucking good.
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