The one week coffee challenge
Recently, Tassimo sent me a huge box full of new coffee flavors to try out. I’m normally a latte drinker (grande toffee nut soy or 1% milk latte) and never really acquired the taste for straight, black coffee (with or without sugar & milk).
I know some of my readers are self-proclaimed coffee snobs…I get that. I’ve made many attempts at home with too many coffee makers, espresso machines, etc to count. I like the Tassimo since it’s single serve and easy to clean/maintain. I just wish the T-discs were more environmentally friendly or at least refillable.
Anyways, after a lively chat with a coworker and our local baristas, it was suggested that I give black coffee a try. They said it would take at least a few days to get used to it and then I wouldn’t look back. I could also use a little milk or creme to ‘take the edge off’ since I’m used to sweet & milky lattes.
So I decided since I had all this new coffee to sample, might as well give it a shot.
So, since Sunday I’ve been skipping the usual $5+ latte (I even have syrup at home to make it just like at Starbucks) and give ‘regular’ coffee the good ole college try.
I’ll let you know if I’ve been converted next week.
UPDATE: Success! I’ve been converted…well, at least not loathe to try a non-latte coffee on a regular basis. I may spoil myself occasionally with one though…perhaps like my friend, Lee LeFever who likes to earn his latte during the week and save it for Fridays.
I didn’t do it strictly via Tassimo though…with some Starbucks & mystery cafeteria coffee thrown in the mix over the past week. Thanks to everyone that commented here and on Facebook…machines like the Tassimo work for me since I don’t live beside a coffee shop with a Clover machine, nor am I interested in spending the time in the morning brewing my own the conventional way. Certainly on the weekends, I’m able to spend more time but during the week, with my commute, it’s a drive-by coffee experience or none at all. The environmental impacts of this approach aren’t lost on me either (as I noted in the post above). Maybe I’ll soon be able to recycle the t-discs in my 3d printer?
I’ve never taken to black coffee. I like mine with a bit of cream and sugar/sweetener in it. The only coffee I really go out of my way to make is freshly ground and in a french press – I’ve routinely had friends/family over that can’t believe how good it is when you grind the beans yourself and make coffee a cup or two at a time. Once I get my place set up I’m going to try and stop going to coffee shops as much as I do. When you spend four hours a day there it’s easy to wrack up $10 a day in coffee. Adds up over the course of a month.
send it back to them with a note about how you refuse single-use disposable plastic at every opportunity! :)
You can definitely count me among the ‘Coffee snobs’ – something I became when I moved to Vancouver tried the amazing high end coffee shops we have here. I used to think Starbucks was good until I tried places like JJ Bean, Elysian Room, Prado, Artigiano, Moja, etc. All these cafes get great beans, roast them in-house, and skilled baristas hand-craft you a drink while the beans are still FRESH. The difference is night and day. All the big mega-chains like Starbucks serve old, stale, burned coffee, on automatic machines. This matters a lot less if they serve the coffee drowned in a sea of sugar, milk, and syrup flavours, but if you are drinking just pure coffee it has to be fresh, and brewed properly.
The first thing I’d recommend is if you are coming from drinking lattes you will want to try a medium or light roast, not dark. Dark will taste more intense/smoky/heavy where lighter roasts tend to be sweeter and have a lot more subtle flavours. Of course neither will be any good if not fresh. On the North Shore you can pop in to Cafe Moja, JJ Bean, Crema, or Artigiano and try a light or medium roast drip coffee. The absolute best would be to find a cafe with a Clover machine – there are several, but the best cup of coffee I’ve had in Vancouver was at Elysian Room on Broadway. Any of these options should be quite good and be a whole new experience compared to the mega-chain’s stale burned stuff that you have to cut with cream and sugar to make drinkable.
What’s a Clover machine? http://www.coffeecrew.com/gear/363-when-is-a-clover-more-than-just-a-lucky-charm
Instant coffee is certainly not the same animal as fresh coffee, but the convenience factor is huge, and products like VIA and Tassimo are pretty impressive compared to the old-school crystallized instant coffee. I’ve been pleasantly surprised as my expectations were very low :) Let us know what you think! and do try to get out to a Cafe like Elysian for comparison, I’d be curious to know what you think.
Josh
Love the K-Cup?
Nope…
http://www.dearcoffeeiloveyou.com/love-keurig-nope/
Case meet point…