Stephanie P.

Pat:

Try Folgers French Vanilla, whole bean, and use a grinder (you can get it grinded already). It's in a little red bag. It really is tasty and under $4 or $5.

rebecca

Owen; Where do you get coffee mail ordered vacuum packed? Café Vivace in Seatte? Does your local roaster ship?

I also agree about Illy coffee, it is excellent. I get coffee shipped to me from Peets, Vivace, and another place that was not mentioned: D'Amico Foods in New York. Call them for a catalogue. Their espresso roasts are quite good.
718-875-5403 ask for Frank Jr. (seriously--- it's Brooklyn!)

gail

I hate starbucks, too. The quality of the coffee is at least as much related to the way it is made. The best coffee I can make at home is in a manual Mellita drip thing, one cup at a time. At 6 AM this is too much for me to handle, so I use the standard electric drip pot. This is not nearly as good. Also, the post needs to be cleaned at least once a month with vinegar (directions usually come with coffee pot). That said, in answer to your question (and this is travel related!), the psychology of cofffee is amazing - I can think of some really great cups of coffee because the setting was great when if I had really thought about it, the coffee itself probably was not all that magnificent. I second the vote for Green Mountain coffee by mail.

Pat

Ladies & gents: This is telepathic! As I was trudging to the office this dreary Monday morning, clutching my bitter cup of Starbucks, I thought about my original coffee post.
Kal, I did order from kauaicoffee.com & was not impressed. Maybe it's my coffee-making skills...I don't know...so, I gave up.
Well, after reading the old posts and the new, I am once again on a quest for good coffee.
I am going to check out the other web sites and start ordering this week.
Thanks again for all that contributed.

BTilke

Austin Chase makes some of the best coffee in the Pacific NW and has won numerous awards. There home base is Gig Harbor, where I've had it. However, you can order it from www.yaax.com (or so they say on their web site). Do a google search for "austin chase coffee" and read some reviews. Did you try www.bovanova.com for La Colombe's coffee?

Gretchen

I LOVE strong rich coffee but Starbuck's just absolutely makes the worst French roast that there is. For a wonderful smooth rich coffee try Cafe Britt from Costa Rico. You can order from cafebritt.com . For an off the shelf coffee Maxwell House French Roast is good. I have liked Gevalia (has to be FR, however--others are too weak). To get a "cheap" latte at the coffee shops, order an espresso in a tall cup and add the milk/cream from the bar. And lastly, around here the Circle K has excellent coffee because they grind fresh and make it every 20 minutes!

Owen O'Neill

So many good being raised here that I'm compelled to add a few more comments. Rebecca - www.povertybay.com is a roaster in WA that specializes in shade grown coffees and ships in vacuum pack bags. There is also another who ships vacuum packed that I found online - they use a very specialized control system for roasting - sounded like it had great potential but I can't find the link again. I haven't tried Poverty Bay but plan too do so. Thanks for the tip on D'Amico. I'm in NYC once or twice every week and will try to check them out this weekend if they have a retail location. I'm with the poster who finds great results to be had from a Melitta manual drip maker (I've had similar results from Chemex as well). The convenience is a factor for me so I use my trusty $12 Proctor-Silex bare bones drip maker. Clean and flush once monthly with white vinegara and water and it makes a great cuppa. For me the key is using a thermal carafe. I preheat the carafe by filling it with extremely hot tap water and letting it warm while coffee is brewing. I then pour coffee into carafe IMMEDIATELY when brew cycle is complete. My results are good and I consistently get compliments on my coffee. As for the tip on getting a "cheap" latte by gettign a tall espresso shot and adding milk from the condiments bar... if the cafe in question doesn't steam/froth their milk properly you probably haven't enjoyed the real benefit of a true and properly made cappucino or latte. Proper frothing/steaming of the milk does more than create foam. It increases the volume of the milk by heating and introducing air. The result should be velvety smooth and enhance the natural sweetness of the milk. Most important is that it allows the espresso to blend with it in a way that isn't possible with oridnary milk (even milk heated in the microwave or on the stovetop). Can you tell that I'm hooked on this topic...?

aNYCer

There's a great coffee bean store in NYC on Bleecker St., Porto Rico Coffee. They have a huge variety of very fresh beans. Their house blends are inexpensive and very good. You can order from them, see their website: www.portorico.com.

George

Little-known, but perhaps worth a try is freeze-dried instant from the Island Kona Coffee Co., in Kailua. Phone no. is (808) 261-5881. The handiest form is their 1.5oz jar, which sells for about $6. They have decaf as well, a vanilla macademia nut and some other variants And they're up front about "not less than 10% kona coffee."

I'm very fond of their coffee, and the jar-size is great for traveling. They don't have a web site, although I did find another site that carries it. I generally just call 'em, and I'm getting ready to do that now, actually.

One other oft-overlooked factor in god coffee is cleanliness. I'm a bit anal about washing--not rinsing--out my cup after each cup. Same way with the coffee-maker. I use the sniff test: If I can smell a coffee odor, I scrub some more. I'm sure there are a lot of vendors who are using good coffee, but brewing slop because they won't take the time to clean, at least, the pots.

Don't like

I'm a coffee drinker, I live in Seattle, and my father even owns a small coffee roasting company in CA, so I'm surrounded by coffee in many ways. I hate Starbucks coffee, their beans are not high quality so they overroast them to compensate, resulting in the "burned" flavor people have mentioned.
I only get espresso at one place in Seattle, Vivace coffee. Best latte I've ever had. That's only once a week; at home I brew a variety of drip coffees. No matter what the brand, the keys to good coffee are starting with good, cold water, and using a clean pot and machine. Skimping on either of those steps will make even good beans taste bad.

Susan

Cooffffeeee (think Homer Simpson) .... I am unabashedly hooked on Peets coffee and I also cannot drink that Starbuck's swill. I'm buying into the paranoid theory that they are adding extra caffeine to their beans in tobacco-industry-fashion in order to make more customers addicted to their product. But Peets .... ahh. You can order it from their website peets.com, but nothing beats walking into a Peets store, smelling the aroma and getting a free cup of heaven while they grind your beans for you. It's the start of the holiday season for me when Peets Holiday Blend becomes available and Anchor Steam Christmas Ale shows up in the beer aisle.

Me

I notice that the orginal post is several months old. Pat, Have you found good coffee yet??

kal

Pat, We've gone thru 3 coffee makers the past yr or so...
Once again...it just ain't the same unless you're there!
Kal

rj

George; on the subject of scrubbing: Do you use soap or vinegar? I've got almost every kind of coffee maker but lately I've been using one of those Italian stove top espresso makers. I think it's made of heavy aluminum. Not my favorite material for food, but those coffee makers are so popular in Europe that I thought, maybe they know something that I don't. It does make good coffee BUT the odor lingers after washing and the rubber gasket is almost impossible to clean properly. George, what do you suggest? More scrubbing? Vinegar?

Owen: D'Amico is at 309 Court Street in Brooklyn. I think it's in Carroll Gardens. Let me know what you think? I haven't actually been there.

There is much wisdom in the taste of the water in a particular area effecting the taste of the coffee and tea for that matter. I have bought beans in Philadelphia that made wonderful coffee, only to take them back to Santa Fe and the coffee doesn't taste the same.

Thanks to all the coffee people for the good tips. Rebecca

George

Rebecca: I'm a dishwashing-liquid kind of guy--can't stand the smell of vinegar.

I've noticed those Italian monsters. I'd think there's got to be some way to get them clean. However, even our American plstic things are similar--they stain over time--hence the sniff test. There seems to be nothing to do about it.

I know what you mean about the water. We had a trailer down in DE near the shore, and though the water was public water, the stuff from the faucet always seemed a bit iffy. We used water from store-bought gallon jugs, or even brought it from home.

topper

Topping for coffee lovers everywhere!

Ginny

RJ-Definitely try vineagar. The smell disipates. Vinegar IMO is a wonder cleaner. I used it 1/2 diluted with water on my ceramic tile and it looks like brand new.

r

Thanks Ginny and George! Much appreciated. Rebecca

Owen O'Neill

rj: Yes... I looked up D'Amico before heading into the city this weekend and decided to put it off due to the Brooklyn location. I have a cousin in Carroll Gardens and there are reputed to be many good restaurants in the area, particularly of the mid-eastern variety. If I get over there this spring I'll report back.

Water quality: this is crucial in good coffee. I grew tired of luggin 2.5 gallon containers of spring water to my 3rd floor walkup and bought a pitcher w/Britta filter. best investment I ever made - water has a clean, neutral taste and makes excellent coffee (I live in north jersey and trust me... the local water tastes wretched staright from the tap without filtering). The filters end up costign far less than buying spring water and are even cheaper at B.J.'s wholesale bought in quantity.

Vinegar: fabtastic for cleaning coffeemakers but two things 1) use white vinegar, cheaper the better 2) run at least 5 pots of fresh water through the coffeemaker before using it again after the vinegar has gone through.

Note to Seattlite - my favorite local roaster in my hometown of Syracuse NY actrually suggested Caffe Vivace when I was planning to visit Seattle. I was unable to get there but when I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the latte at a place I visited (I think it was called Urban Grounds or Uncommon Grounds)... I discovered that they use beans roasted by Vivace! It turns out that Vivace owner David Schomer is something of a guru in the movement to introduce the USA to proper techinques and concepts for roasting, espresso preparation etc.

kellser

PEETS !!!!!!
Best coffee ever. Go order some,I like major dickinson's blend.
http://www.peets.com/