Sunday, March 27, 2005


weeping, weeping, weeping, part iii

"a big, hot, fresh cup comes across the counter ready to last you for hours."

long-time readers might think that this cranky article makes me cry because it attacks what the author -- who despite supposedly having a ph.d. and employment as a professor apparently doesn't know that venti actually does mean 20 in italian -- denounces as pretense in the specialty coffee sphere. but no.

because articles that adopt this "i'm too stupid to order coffee" stance are so common nowadays they're really a faux-humble cliché. nope, what makes the blue nile fall from the corners of my eyes is the above statement: "ready to last you for hours."

aaarrrrggh! as charlie brown would say. because as all coffee lovers can tell you, coffee must be made fresh, with freshly ground, freshly roasted beans, and consumed fresh.

fresh, fresh, fresh. at every stage, fresh.

30 min. old coffee is, as scaa chief ted lingle so politely puts it in his brewing handbook, unpalatable. what makes author p. biedler a self-proclaimed barbarian isn't that he can't tell a grande from a short, or a flavored from a decaf, but that he drinks a cold, aged, insipid brew, from which all the beautiful, subtle notes of the coffee have evaporated.

phil, do yourself a favor: nurse that hours-old cup, and then go fetch a fresh one. taste 'em side-by-side.

the difference will be apparent to anyone who's not an "ex-parrot." fresh coffee -- it's a simple concept. . . .

(and despite what ted himself once told the washington com-post, the handbook's a fascinating read that i highly recommend. if you love good coffee, it's a life-changing little volume, even if you get it only in the condensed version, which is probably adequate for most coffee drinkers.

oh, and for those of you who complain that i always agree with whatever ted says: ted's also wrong about pods. they're not "neat for the consumer." they are another insult to coffee freshness. . .)

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