Starbucks coffee is an affront to all things good about coffee
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Let's not go there. Thinking about a decent cup of tea over here makes me sad and lonely.
cheers Chris Maunder
As far as I know, there are two kinds of coffee beans - the original, and best, is Arabica and the other, Robusta - a sturdier species of coffee bean with higher acidity and high bitterness. I don't know what Starbucks uses, but I believe Arabica and hard water make the best coffee.
73
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I'm giving you a flat look for sending me research published in a British newspaper about coffee. Britian and coffee is like Australia and drizzly days: we just can't quite get it right. I would put to the jury that the secret of a good cup of coffee is to start with good coffee
cheers Chris Maunder
Now, now, now. I am an absolutely qualified authority on matters of coffee because I am Italian and, specifically, from Naples. Many things go into the "perfect cup of coffee", so to say. Here, we say it must have the three "C": Cumm Cazz Coce (=Jesus this is hot). So, that's the very first thing: if it doesn't burn your lips, you're doing it wrong. After that, coffee quality is obviously essential, and here come the first pitfalls: normally, you will go for industrial coffee because it's cheaper, but some of us DO buy custom coffee, meaning bags of coffee that cost A LOT more but also have completely different organoleptic properties. These bags are only sold by specialised dealers. Because of the difficulty of packaging them properly (these are not industries...), however, it is uncommon to see someone being shipped them from outside where he/she lives. It does happen if you find a good one, but they're rare. Surprisingly, water is important in more ways than one: water's molecular composition is important, but so is the temperature at which it boils (I don't have to remind you that different altitudes have different boiling points, right?) because if it's too low the coffee is ruined and if it's too high you end up having it rise too early. Another really important factor is what brewer you use: normally, you would use what we call a "Moka", but some of us do use the ancient neapolitan brewer (which is far more difficult to handle, but the results can taste markedly different). A
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Starbucks = Apple Overpriced and driven by fanboys
cheers,
Super
------------------------------------------ Too much of good is bad,mix some evil in it
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
Not to defend the indefensible Star Bucks, but where are you guys getting better coffee? (Home doesn't count, we're talking about Coffee shops here). A lot of Starbucks have "Clover Leaf" Machines where you can have a cup brewed from some very select items not used on the front line. I find this coffee very good, but you have to pay for it, for sure. Having said all this, I am not a fan of cornered markets, and I miss the Caribou Coffee Chain - giving Starbucks at least SOME Competition. One more comment - if you put anything in your coffee besides coffee, well, you don't get a say. Anything else you put in makes it "not coffee". Where there's smoke, there's a Blue Screen of death.
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Not to defend the indefensible Star Bucks, but where are you guys getting better coffee? (Home doesn't count, we're talking about Coffee shops here). A lot of Starbucks have "Clover Leaf" Machines where you can have a cup brewed from some very select items not used on the front line. I find this coffee very good, but you have to pay for it, for sure. Having said all this, I am not a fan of cornered markets, and I miss the Caribou Coffee Chain - giving Starbucks at least SOME Competition. One more comment - if you put anything in your coffee besides coffee, well, you don't get a say. Anything else you put in makes it "not coffee". Where there's smoke, there's a Blue Screen of death.
Jet Fuel Coffee - A Toronto landmark[^] The only place I know in Toronto that does it really, really well. And consistently. And they never change. The fact that they are into cycling doesn't hurt, either. I grabbed one of their pro's bikes from last season for a steal. Dark Horse[^] is a middling second. No bad, not fantastic, but solid. My all-time, never yet been beaten place in the entire world (though a tiny place in the south of France came damn close) is The Brown Cow cafe[^]. Go there and go to heaven.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
I'm a coffee purest, I don't like flavorings, sugar, or creamer in my coffee. so if the coffee tastes like burnt S**t without the extras added, it's not good coffee in my book. I'm not slamming anyone who likes the additives; feel free to enjoy them. I just like coffee for the taste of coffee. Starbucks is definitely on my ban list.
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
Concur. Starbucks coffee tastes like engine oil. A friend of my ex-wife who used to buy coffee for Dunkin' Donuts would run into the Starbucks buyers fairly regularly: according to her, they'd go out of their way to find the cheapest, shittiest beans they could. In the same way that Lady Gaga has nothing to do with music and everything to do with Lady Gaga, Starbucks has nothing to do with coffee and everything to do with Starbucks. The mystery is why it isn't all over yet. But (as evidenced by Lady Gaga) people do have dreadful taste...
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
I don't know about Starsucks in the US or Canada or Australia... My experience with it, in Mexico City and surrounding cities, has been very positive. When I go, I usually ask for either black coffee (or "Today's coffee or Daily coffee" or whatever they call it now) or black tea (English breakfast blend, usually). They charge me MXN$35 (pesos), which at today's exchange rate is a few cents under USD$2, and I get more than half litre of coffee or tea (100ml for 33 USD cents). While it might not be the cheapest, it has very good quality. The brews usually come from local states Veracruz and Chiapas, each producing very good quality of coffee, or Colombia, which is the greates brew I have tasted so far. Ocasionally they have coffee from Guatemala (which is Chiapas-like) or African countries, which IMO is good, yet not great. Being in a coffee exporter country, it is very easy to find places with very good quality brews. You can get SB-quality coffee for as low as 25 USD cents per 100 ml. However, SB provides additional services, such as free WiFi and nice, cozy desks where to work. Given that, those extra 8 USD cents are well worth it. Now, if you go for Italian-like coffee brews (cappuccino, latte, machiatto or mochaccino) then the prices escalate to MXN$55 and if you add extras (vanilla syrup, chocochips, mousse and such) your account can increase up to MXN$70. That is expensive, compared to what you can get elsewhere (cappuccinos for MXN$40 for example), and the beverage quality decreases (IMO) because the coffee taste gets diluted with all the additional sugar and milk. So, all in all, I'd say I have had a good experience with Starbucks. Good quality, good prices for black coffee (which is what I usually drink anyway, coffee with steamming water and nothing more) or black tea, and a nice place to work or just hang out.
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Someone may have already said this (I couldn't be bothered to read through 6 screens full of comments) but you really can't beat a freshly brewed cup of tea, or two.
xiecsuk wrote:
you really can't beat a freshly brewed cup of tea
Blue tea, red tea, white tea, especially. :) :thumbsup:
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I don't know about Starsucks in the US or Canada or Australia... My experience with it, in Mexico City and surrounding cities, has been very positive. When I go, I usually ask for either black coffee (or "Today's coffee or Daily coffee" or whatever they call it now) or black tea (English breakfast blend, usually). They charge me MXN$35 (pesos), which at today's exchange rate is a few cents under USD$2, and I get more than half litre of coffee or tea (100ml for 33 USD cents). While it might not be the cheapest, it has very good quality. The brews usually come from local states Veracruz and Chiapas, each producing very good quality of coffee, or Colombia, which is the greates brew I have tasted so far. Ocasionally they have coffee from Guatemala (which is Chiapas-like) or African countries, which IMO is good, yet not great. Being in a coffee exporter country, it is very easy to find places with very good quality brews. You can get SB-quality coffee for as low as 25 USD cents per 100 ml. However, SB provides additional services, such as free WiFi and nice, cozy desks where to work. Given that, those extra 8 USD cents are well worth it. Now, if you go for Italian-like coffee brews (cappuccino, latte, machiatto or mochaccino) then the prices escalate to MXN$55 and if you add extras (vanilla syrup, chocochips, mousse and such) your account can increase up to MXN$70. That is expensive, compared to what you can get elsewhere (cappuccinos for MXN$40 for example), and the beverage quality decreases (IMO) because the coffee taste gets diluted with all the additional sugar and milk. So, all in all, I'd say I have had a good experience with Starbucks. Good quality, good prices for black coffee (which is what I usually drink anyway, coffee with steamming water and nothing more) or black tea, and a nice place to work or just hang out.
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I once made the mistake? of bringing a 4lb sack of ground coffee back from Columbia. It took me an age to get it through British Customs. They had sniffer dogs inspecting it before they finally let me through.
Bad experience indeed, I hear you. I once made the mistake to land in Paris with unlabeled sodium bicarbonate and cajeta (some sort of toasted milk candy) that I had brought as a gift to a friend. It took me like two hours to convince them that the white powder was not cocaine (of course, they didn't take my word for it, they had it tested), that the cajeta was a candy (they did try it and tested it also, therefore ruining my gift), and that I was not a drug dealer. :rolleyes:
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Discuss.
cheers Chris Maunder
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I'm pretty sure Tim Hortons put crack in their coffee because it's disgusting but once I've had a cup I need another one. It's very wrong.
cheers Chris Maunder
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So - a subjective subject has an objective standard. I've heard the same sheit about who makes the best Pizza. But, let's look at this objectively - i.e., not about taste but about the wet-chemistry methodology used to produce coffee. You have the beans: Surface area will control the rate of various extractions, hence the grind is important to control the following: Soluble products: With few exceptions, hotter water extracts more quickly and in larger quantities than colder water. This is potentially both positive and negative, depending upon what you wish to extract from the medium. Conventional coffee wisdom is that boiling water is preferred - and except in pressurized espresso makers, that waters' at 100 C. Most minerals must be in an ionic form if one wishes to extract them with water. There's an effect (common ion effect) that could potentially inhibit the extraction of certain minerals if the extraction medium is already high in said mineral. Organically bound minerals, on the other hand, typically are non-ionic and not particularly soluble (e.g., iron in your blood, copper in lobster blood). There's also the possibility of chelation, further complicating the issue (and the effect of temperature), as it may increase the solubility of poorly soluble minerals (eg, most forms of Calcium). The (nauseating) Organic Product: These are basically extracted into the system because they're mobilized by the hot-water (not dissolved in it to any significant degree!). If you look up what is called a soxhlet extraction, you'll see the relationship (Wikipedia [^]has a neat animated image). Again, super-heated water will affect this rate. In the typical drip coffee maker, this is a one-pass event so the variation (based upon water temp and grind) will be much more pronounced. Bare in mind that none of the above even mentioned the degree of roasting (which would be a coffee specific modification to the processes). The roasting, however, causes a breakdown of many of the components (for the paranoid amongst us, like almost all thermal decomposition, it's free-radical chemistry). The partially oxidized oils may take on some partially ionic character, making them easier to extract (except they may bind more firmly to the substrate) - but they may also polymerize and become less soluble
I don't understand a word of that, but in a good way (I think), so have an upvote.
Er, I can't think of a funny signature right now. How about a good fart to break the silence?
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Chris certainly started a good discussion! A friend with Italian parents remarked that Starbucks has branches in almost every country in the world except Italy, where coffee was first introduced in Europe. They didn't want to open a café in a country where proper coffee is made. It's only very recently that Starbucks has dared to open a café in Milan Jerry
And I bet it's only used by tourists. Well, that and curious youngsters who will sneak in without their parents/grandparents seeing to try this american abomination.
Er, I can't think of a funny signature right now. How about a good fart to break the silence?
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I don't understand a word of that, but in a good way (I think), so have an upvote.
Er, I can't think of a funny signature right now. How about a good fart to break the silence?
In a nutshell, it's an elaboration on "oil and water don't mix", but you can still somehow manage to do laundry.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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And I bet it's only used by tourists. Well, that and curious youngsters who will sneak in without their parents/grandparents seeing to try this american abomination.
Er, I can't think of a funny signature right now. How about a good fart to break the silence?
Typical EuroSnobbery: the baton of cultural leadership has long ago been passed to the Western Side of the Atlantic. I've been across much of Europe and, particularly when speaking of food and drink, it's time you just get over yourselves.* And now, I think I'll go enjoy a Hershey Bar[^]!
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
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Typical EuroSnobbery: the baton of cultural leadership has long ago been passed to the Western Side of the Atlantic. I've been across much of Europe and, particularly when speaking of food and drink, it's time you just get over yourselves.* And now, I think I'll go enjoy a Hershey Bar[^]!
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert
"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010
Hershey is as bad as Dairy Milk, just in a different way. Mainland Europe seems to have a much better handle on chocolate. I'm not a fan of dark chocolate, but dairy milk is just too sweet. It needs to be chocolatey, creamy and just a bit sweet. Not sure about cultural leadership, America is such a different place to Europe. There are definitely american influences in europe, but not everything gains traction this side of the pond. Everything is so much bigger there, you have more room. Bigger houses, bigger cars etc. I remember one of the American open-top bus companies trying to start in Bath. They ignored all the local operators and tried to use the same huge open top buses they were using in the US and London. The first one got stuck within a week! My point is this, some things that work perfectly fine in America won't work here, or at least won't quite fit. Europe, having gotten much "smaller" the last couple of decades, is definitely developing a shared culture, but even there environment, cultural heritage and other influences dictate that there must be differences between each. We'll continue to pick and choose what we like, but I don't think Europe's culture will ever be "lead" by any influence outside of Europe. Wow. No idea where that came from. Must be time for a cup of tea! :java: (closest picture I could find, sorry)
Er, I can't think of a funny signature right now. How about a good fart to break the silence?
