Michellepedia

The discussion is still brewing

Are we all getting a little too caffeinated? In the wake of my column last week about buying a coffee grinder, readers' comments and suggestions continue to pour in. To summarize, a number of readers have suggested online sources for buying high-quality beans, among them Blair Estate Coffee for organic coffee from Kauai,  the Red Line blend from Metropolis Coffee in Chicago and Blue Bottle Coffee in San Francisco.

I got an earful about  brewing and roasting techniques from Michael, who wrote, "It's amusing to see what people say about what makes 'good' coffee. Pouring boiling water over coffee grounds (and tea) is the surest way to extract bitterness. The extraction temperature of espresso machines is mid-180s to 202 F. Tea steeps at 205 F. The vast majority of coffee I've tasted, including that from Starbucks and tons of anti-Starbucks local places, is over-roasted."

And then there was Marshall, who wrote to say there's more to life than coffee: "Me? I'll stick with my Melitta Cone (about $4), my Braun grinder, my 8 o'clock Columbia Supreme supermarket coffee, pour the boiling water over the cone with paper filter and ground coffee, and waste my money on the Patagonia and other high price outdoor stuff. Don't they make beautiful catalogs? Jacque Ellul, the French philosopher, in his book, Propaganda,  claimed the the more educated you are, the more  susceptible
you are to propaganda."

As for me? I'm off to Peet's for a dry half-and-half smarge.

Roast Your Own Beans

A number of readers responding to my column today have tipped me off to another coffee bean source. One reader (thanks, Nan) wrote:

I wanted to share with you an amazing site to learn about and purchase coffee beans.  Sweet Maria’s is located in Oakland, California and does all their business on-line.  They sell “green” beans which you can roast at home, and also select roasted beans each week.  They roast each Monday and you get the beans in the mail by Thursday—and certain varieties are the best I’ve ever tasted.

The site you're really looking for is Coffeegeek.com

After reading about coffee grinders in my column, a reader wrote:

The information on grinders was fascinating--I hadn't
added that piece of data into my efforts to brew the
perfect cup of Kona (over and over). I'm all over the
best beans, fresh ground, and good water.

By the way, which way does the coffee guy you talked
to swing on the "freeze your beans/don't freeze your
beans" issue? Do you have an opinion?

Thanks for asking, Duncan. I have an opinion, but it's an uneducated one. So I forwarded the question -- along with some others that readers sent -- to Mark Prince (the "coffee guy") and am hoping for enlightenment.

Here's a coffee roaster in Tampa

A reader just wrote to tell me about Caracolillo Coffee Mill in Florida. The third-generation family-owned shop's motto is "Offering the Finest Quality  Coffee Since 1936." The reader writes:

Try their espresso roast at $4.50 per pound....
It'll knock your socks off. I've been ordering their coffee for 2 years. Every month I go through 5 lbs of their espresso roast in my Saeco grinder/espresso maker.

Thanks, Tom.

Charlie writes:

Dear Ms. Slatalla,
Great article on grinding coffee beans, thank you.  But I'm surprised
you didn't include any hand crank non-electric grinders - are there any
of those that you would recommend?
Thank you in advance!
Charlie

Please send me suggestions to forward to this reader. But let's hope my husband doesn't get wind of them. We have no more counterspace to donate to yet another kind of coffee contraption.

To porn or not to porn?

I  just received  an email that said simply:

MICHELLE, YOU ALSO MIGHT ENJOY THIS SITE....    http://espressoporn.com/

THANKS FOR THE GRINDER TIPS...!

Would you have clicked? I did.

A reader's roaster in the Rocket City.

Coffee is a very personal choice. Here's a bean source I just heard about from a reader (thanks, Jennie):

I wanted to share with you a local roaster here in my hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, that roasts great coffee beans daily, and sells online at low prices. I did not realize how low until one day when they were closed and I had to go to another shop in town. I paid about half-again as much for inferior quality beans!

More tips for brewing a perfect cup

A reader sent these suggestions in response to my  coffee column today:

...you might want to look into Torrefazione espresso.  A
friend of ours gave us some of it as a present and it is outstanding.  You
can visit the Web site.  We have tried the Perugia blend and the Palermo blend, and we like the Palermo especially.

The influence of the coffee grinder is not, in our experience, limited to
espresso.  We tasted an immediate difference in making drip coffee with our
Melitta 4-cup maker.  Actually, CoffeeGeek had stated that the discontinued
KitchenAid 4-cup maker was possibly the best 4-cupper ever made.  So, I went
into eBay and looked around.  Lots of people were selling these machines,
and at inflated prices (it cost $30 new).  I managed to find it at QVC for
$25 and at http://goldaskitchen.com/ for a tad more.  We bought one and
found that it produced a really superior cup.  So, we did some Web surfing
and bought five more, just in case!

Since you write for the New York Times, I assume that you live in or around
New York.  Please check out Oren's Daily Roast.  We prefer Oren's coffee
to all the others that we have tried.  Their espresso (called Beowulf blend)
is OK, but not up to Torrefazione in our opinion.  However, if you want a
great cup of drip coffee, Oren's can't be beat.  The company has several
locations in Manhattan (including Grand Central Station).

Thanks for the suggestions, Jonathan.

Try these brands of coffee

I wrote about my love affair with coffee today in my column, which has prompted many kind readers to send me tips that will get me even more obsessed and addicted. Here's some advice I got about buying coffee:

I have made the best coffee in one of the old fashioned "mangas" which is no more that a piece of cloth placed over a wire frame and the boiling hot water filtered over it.

The best coffee in the world is from Panama, hands down, no contest.  The country has a very small production but it is top rate quality most of the best goes to Germany and Italy.  Try the different brands, Café Ruiz, Café Eleta, Café Duran de Altura, all available in supermarkets here. Better yet come to Panama, drink it here and take some home.

Thanks for writing, Rita. And tell me more about mangas.