Walt's Corner

Never one to come up short in the mini-story department, Jeff Strand delivers in spades in his latest collection of short stories, Snuggling the Grotesque. Anyone who subscribes to his newsletter will be familiar with his ability to write a short story based on anything, but I’d call those shortER stories, or maybe micro-stories. This collection contains 26 of what you and I would refer to as short stories as only Strand can do with his unholy alliance of horror, thriller, and slapstick comedy.

I’m not a big fan of short stories, hence my 4-star rating. It has to be at least a novella to get 5 stars out of me. The fact I’m even reading a collection of short stories from someone shows you how much in high regard I hold this author.

Ranging from body swapping to chocolate gone evil; trying to get a vampire to bite you to being bit by a mummy; ghetto blasters to fearing the Y2Kbug. Just the grand finale of Mac and Millie, a collaboration between Strand and Bridgett Nelson, is worth the price of admission. There’s something here for everyone. Available from the usual stores and even signed copies from his website.

This is the third installment of four articles for what I refer to as the 4 Bs for a great cup of coffee. You can catch up on Bean and Burn if you’re interested.

A huge contributing factor to a great cup of joe is the burr – or how it’s ground. Burr type grinders are typically higher end coffee grinders. They work by grinding, or crushing your beans down to the proper coarseness. An almost powder for espresso or up to large chunks for French press. Cheaper grinders will use blades, like a blender. These types chop your beans instead of grinding them. They cost less to produce at the cost of uneven grind yield.

Different types of coffee brewing require different size grounds in order to properly extract the coffee taste from the bean to the water. You don’t want to over or under extract the coffee flavors from your grind. But more of that in my final installment of these four Bs – the Brew.

I’d say Starbucks (or any coffee house) exceeds at this particular B. They’ll have the money to purchase multiple quality burr grinders for different types of brewing.

For my Bunn commercial coffee brewer, I use the Bunn LPG-2E that provides an even medium grind and dumps your coffee grounds directly into the brew basket – the perfect amount every time. This particular model has two hoppers and could hold two different types of beans. You select which side you want to grind from. You can control the courseness and the amount of time you want it to grind when you hit the go button. You can also end it early if you don’t want to grind for the entire period of time you have it pre-set to.

I also use the Rancilio Rocky grinder for my daily espresso needs. The portafilter of my espresso machine sits in the holder directly under the chute and provides a powdery-like grind for use in espresso machines. This grinder is intended for espresso however it can handle a wild variety of grinds from espresso to French Press.

This is the second installment of four articles for what I refer to as the 4 Bs for a great cup of coffee. The first B is fresh Beans. Here, I’ll cover what I refer to as the Burn – or roasting the coffee.

Roasting the coffee beans is what transforms them from the green beans to the chocolate colored beans we see in the stores. How long they roast determines the level of the roast as defined in laymen terms we see on most coffee containers in grocery stores – light, medium, or dark.

Roasters have a different language to describe how long we roast them for. In order of progression from light to dark we have City -(minus), City, City + (plus), Full City, Vienna, and Full French Roast. Any roast from Vienna to Full French is just burned coffee. This is where the beans have this oily sheen all over them. Congratulations, you’ve just cooked all the origin flavor out of them and have turned that bean into a bean of charcoal.

There are many ways to roast your beans. Cowboys roasted them in an iron skillet over a flame. Probably the most common way in the Wild West and there are still those today who roast that way.

Some use air popcorn poppers that can roast up to a quarter pound at a time. There are several other roasting machines built on this same principle of using a hot air-bed to roast your beans. My first roaster was called iRoast that was based on this. If memory serves, I could roast a half pound of beans at a time. The closest roaster I see sold today that resembles my iRoast is the Fresh Roast SR800. I can easily go through over a pound a week so I quickly outgrew this.

The roaster I’ve used for the last 15 years is a Behmor drum allowing me to roast up to a pound at a time (and more). With this I’ll roast a pound or two a week.

Enough about the roasting machines though. We’re here to talk about the actual roast. Not what we use to roast. It’s like cooking a burger. You can use a skillet on a stove, a Weber grill, or a large pit smoker mounted on a double axle trailer. That burger will cook and burn on any of those.

That’s where Starbucks fucks up on the roast. This is their biggest pit-fall. They burn their beans. Good, fresh roasted coffee beans should not have that oily sheen on them. At all. If they do, you’ve cooked the ever living shit out of them. You’ve cooked out all the origin flavor and what you have left is the flavor of ash and charcoal – which is the signature flavor of Starbucks. If that’s what you like your coffee to taste like then Starbucks is your go-to bean.

This is where all big-brand coffee’s go wrong. And here is the kicker – they do it on purpose! Why? Because consumers want consistency. That’s why we buy the brands we buy – we like it for whatever reason and want a repeat experience. Coffee is in no way consistent. Coffee is like wine. Every season is different due to climate and environmental conditions. So how can you get the consistency your customers crave? Buy your beans in bulk from the same origin (pick a spot – Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, etc.) and burn the fuck out of them. Every time. They will taste the same. And it works! Starbucks obviously has its following. People like that flavor and there is nothing wrong with that.

When a customer goes into mom and pops cafe with some fresh coffee, they are going to be shocked at how it tastes. It won’t taste like the coffee they’ve been drinking their entire lives. Some are going to love that flavor, others may not or may not care. But those that love it? They won’t be going back to Starbucks anymore. And they will have paid less. Win win.

This is the first of four articles for what I refer to as the 4 Bs for a great cup of coffee. My first B is fresh Beans. We often refer to coffee as beans although they are more accurately described as the pits of coffee cherries. I’ll go ahead and give in and still refer to them as beans. You’ve got to have fresh beans. More so after roasting than before.

Beans can last a very long time after harvesting and processing. I’ve roasted green beans years after I bought them with no tell-tale taste in the cup. We refer to them as green coffee beans because, well, they’re green. Not the chocolate colored coffee beans you see in most grocery stores or in the bean hoppers at your local Starbucks or other mom and pop cafes; or even at McDonalds. Hey – don’t knock McDonald’s McCafe coffee. For an over-the-counter tub of pre-ground coffee, I hold it in high regards. But to say it’s gourmet or fresh coffee would not be accurate.

To properly enjoy a “fresh” cup of joe, those beans need to be within 3 months of the day they were roasted. That’s my opinion. Some would say sooner, but for me up to 3 months and in an air tight container and you can still taste the wonderful properties of fresh coffee. I can’t recall one time that my coffee ever made it past 3 weeks of being roasted. That just doesn’t happen in my house.

And this is where most coffees fail the fresh test. You’re lucky to find any pre-ground store bought coffee is within 6 months of being roasted. Most are going to be within a year. Pre-ground coffee is not even degassing anymore. Once you grind coffee beans there is no more fresh. You better brew that shit immediately.

What’s degassing you ask? After roasting coffee you still don’t want to use it yet. It’s too fresh. Coffee that is that fresh stinks. They smell more like burnt popcorn. Coffee beans need to rest for a few days after being roasted. After an overnight rest they begin to smell like the traditional coffee beans we’ve come to enjoy the aroma of. They release (mostly) CO2. That’s why you find check valves on coffee bags or tubs. They let the gas escape without letting air into the bag. Letting air in would cause the coffee to become stale. More about roasting in another article – that’s what I refer to as the Burn.

Starbucks beans are going to be more than 3 months after roasting by the time you see them. Closer to 5-6 months would be my guess if they are trying to be respectable. Before I was roasting my own beans the freshest I could find was within 5 months from the roasting date. You need to find someone that sources their beans from a local roaster to get something that fresh. Starbucks won’t tell you how long ago their beans were roasted. Most rumors/sources I’ve found through google put it between 7-8 months. Why? They have to buy a beans in bulk and roast them in bulk. Not ideal.

At one point I was offered the opportunity to be the coffee supplier for a local Mom and Pop store that offered higher end cooking equipment along with fresh coffee and tea leaves. Her current source was located in Albuquerque, NM, and within 4 months of roasting. I politely declined. But I did provider her with enough of a personal supply that ensured I received a healthy discount on purchases from her store.

Cafes that roast their own beans are going to be your best bet for the best cup of coffee you can get and their prices are going to be lower than Starbucks. They won’t have a board of directors to feed. Or you could do like me and roast your own. Guaranteed freshness. I’ve bought my beans exclusively from Sweet Maria’s since 2006. That’s another story I’ll save for a later date – what started my obsession with roasting my own coffee.

They’ve forgotten the face of their father. They’re too big for their britches. You can’t get to be that big without cutting corners when you are mass producing a product that can be easily reproducible while trying to maintain a profit margin big enough to keep your employees and keep that board of directors fat, rich, and happy. They’ve brought in a new CEO who is going to try to right their wayward ship.

Bottom line – they don’t adhere to my 4 Bs of Coffee. What Starbucks did accomplish, however, was to turn the public on to buying single servings of coffee that were vastly superior to the Maxwell House, Folgers, and Farmer Brothers coffee that brewed through the average Americans’ Mr. Coffees every morning. By popping up on nearly every corner, everyone had easy access to a cup of coffee, whether that was in the form of a Latte, espresso, or pour-over. That made people in the know of what a good cup of coffee should taste like, think to themselves, I can do better. And they did.

I know what you’re thinking. “The 4 Bs of coffee? I’ve never heard of them!” That’s because I just made that shit up, but they still hold true.

So what are my 4 Bs of coffee? Beans, Burn, Burr, and Brew. Starbucks has a handle on Burrs only, while some may argue they also got a handle on the Brew as well. I fall into that camp with a disclaimer. I’d say they have a partial handle on the Brew in some areas while others they do not. The coffee snob in me says they don’t while the more level-headed logical part of my brains gives them credit. More on that in a future article.

Over the next 4 articles in my Coffee category here on my Corner, I’ll dive into each of those Bs and we’ll see where Starbucks is fucking up.