How to survive north America's awful coffee

[Yelta]

Open your mind (and tongue) to new things I say and you might find something mindblowingly brilliant!....(which probably would be owned by an Australian )

Michael

Brings to mind an experience I had on my last trip to the US.

I agree the espresso scene over there is pretty hit and miss, however there are unexpected surprises.

Was staying with friends near Cupertino and decided to go for a walk to the local shopping centre, got a bit bushed and finished up at another place quite a distance from my intended location, the first thing that caught my eye was a cafe with a sign proclaiming they served good espresso, went in and ordered a shot, what a surprise! very good brew, just to prove it wasn't a happy mistake I had a couple more which were in the same class.

As I was the only customer got chatting with Miss Barista and discovered that the cafe was was set up, owned and operated by an Aussie from Melbourne, the best coffee I've had in the US, however have had other good coffee over there, I don't obsess to the point of hunting em down, however if I pass an establishment advertising espresso and I have time I feel its my duty to check em out, you find a lot of duds, but, you also get some very pleasant surprises.

Espresso in the US has come a long way in the past 20 years and continues to improve.

[mwcalder05]

I'm sure there are some golden places in North America. Just don't go there with a crap attitude expecting to find nothing and rule everything out. The interwebs and apps are a great place to start by using websites/apps such as BeanHunter. Open your mind (and tongue) to new things I say and you might find something mindblowingly brilliant!....(which probably would be owned by an Australian )

Michael

[blend52]

LOL.

One time a pompous guy came up to the bar, talking like Niles Crane, and asked to see our "wine list". .

Is it coincidence that you bring in the 'Cranes" to this thread ?
They have probably done more to promote espresso / cafe culture in the USA than any one else.
..and be the USA's top "Coffee Snobs" too !

[Vinitasse]

Is Niles that bloke on the Nanny From From Hell?

He's Frasier Crane's (Kelsey Grammer) brother on "Frasier"



Niles and Frasier

[Barry O'Speedwagon]

Is Niles that bloke on the Nanny From From Hell?

[Vinitasse]

If he really had been Niles Crane he probably would have pointed out that Moselle is a Riesling

[herzog]

It's such a shame to see people in jobs to which they are totally indifferent.
I've had a few crap jobs in my life and the only way I could front up

LOL. reminds me of a part time job I had in my student days pulling beers at the local RSL.

One time a pompous guy came up to the bar, talking like Niles Crane, and asked to see our "wine list".

I pointed to two of the beer taps and said Riesling or Moselle on tap.

Should have seen his face.

I'm pretty sure they were both connected to the same keg too.

[blend52]

You do know our very own Toby's Estate has a roastery / cafe over the bridge in Brooklyn !
..With Aussie trained Barista's.

[TampIt]

Going out for coffee is tough. My wife loves a latte, and the above places all seemed OK. We are off to NY and she will make a straght line for Stumptown once there. We are staying nearby to save on daily transport costs (last time she blew the budget on cabs there)!
Most of the paces we have been that serve Stumptown coffee were OK. Thinking Cup in Boston comes to mind.

Hi beabeabeaner

I couldn't agree more... Starbucks style seems like a plague over there.

If you are in the neighborhood, the only decent West Coast (ish) coffee's and roasts I found were Victors @ Redmond WA and (forgot name) local one in Montrose CO.

Both times it was mid winter & snowing. Both had queues over a block long standing forlornly awaiting their fix. Both were worth queuing for. Oh, and both were Irish born roasters (probably a fluke).

If you can find a few more, feel free to post them on CS, as I am likely to do another trip there soon. Probably take a kilo with me... (legal drug called coffee, not the other stuff).

TampIt

[Rocky]

You can solve a lot of problems however, if, as a Barista, you love your coffee and just want to do the best possible with what you have.
It's such a shame to see people in jobs to which they are totally indifferent.
I've had a few crap jobs in my life and the only way I could front up each day was to try to do a really good job.
Just producing swill, cup after cup, that would be totally soul-destroying. Even I could get depressed doing that.

[TC]

I used to wonder how hard it was to produce decent coffee in a cafe, then I went to a barista class at one of the better Melbourne cafes.

On that half day class, after a little tuition they dialled out their grinders by a long way and left us on our own to dial them back in.

Now admittedly their Robur-E and Slayer combo is top drawer and they roast in house so the coffee was fresh, but I was stunned at how easy it was to dial in the grinders to produce great coffee.

I came away with even less respect for all those cafes who produce rubbish. To summarise Chris's points above, they simply don't care about how good their coffee tastes.

Agreed Jonathon...

The hard thing about producing decent coffee in any cafe is to be able to do it at 30, 40, 60/hour -day in, day out... When you're staring at 50 orders or a 100m queue (and believe me it happens), that's where many here would fail- and that's fine. We don't have to do huge volumes at home.

Be it North America or lowly Melbourne the good stuff can be found. You just need to know where to go...

[Barry O'Speedwagon]

I'd add one point.....despite Australia's solid coffee culture, there is still a sizeable proportion of the population who 'like what they've had before' / 'don't really care too much what it tastes like' / 'very used to blends with lots of cheap robusta' / 'want their milk boiled' / or are for whatever reason not particularly fussy. We see them as both customers and employees. Just an observation rather than a criticism of those people.

[Jonathon]

I used to wonder how hard it was to produce decent coffee in a cafe, then I went to a barista class at one of the better Melbourne cafes.

On that half day class, after a little tuition they dialled out their grinders by a long way and left us on our own to dial them back in.

Now admittedly their Robur-E and Slayer combo is top drawer and they roast in house so the coffee was fresh, but I was stunned at how easy it was to dial in the grinders to produce great coffee.

I came away with even less respect for all those cafes who produce rubbish. To summarise Chris's points above, they simply don't care about how good their coffee tastes.

[TC]

It's really hard to get your head around how so many cafes can bugger it up so badly.
You'd think a half-decent bean + a reasonable commercial machine + some vague adherence to some sort of technique would result in something drinkable.
I tend to think a lot of the bean used commercially must be pretty ordinary which prejudices the coffee right from the start.
Poor servicing/maintenance on machines? Poor temp. control?
and I guess the "Barista" who doesn't care about coffee is the last nail in the coffin.
(on my Barista course there were several students who happily confessed they didn't like coffee)(I was sure to find out where they worked)

All of the above Rocky...In my experience, the bad cafes:

• choose beans based solely on price and what they can get for "free"
• rarely if ever backflush
• rarely if ever clean grinders
• have no idea how to set a grinder
• are not prepared to pay for service or maintenance on their machines and are hugely inconvenienced when it's required
• don't do any training and don't train their staff either
• employ button pushers who don't drink coffee

Realistically, they have no hope of making good coffee- nor profits for that matter.

These people and the companies who sell them coffee but allow them to produce rubbish give the industry a bad name...

[Rocky]

It's really hard to get your head around how so many cafes can bugger it up so badly.
You'd think a half-decent bean + a reasonable commercial machine + some vague adherence to some sort of technique would result in something drinkable.
I tend to think a lot of the bean used commercially must be pretty ordinary which prejudices the coffee right from the start.
Poor servicing/maintenance on machines? Poor temp. control?
and I guess the "Barista" who doesn't care about coffee is the last nail in the coffin.
(on my Barista course there were several students who happily confessed they didn't like coffee)(I was sure to find out where they worked)