Coffee

Over the last three years or so, my taste for coffee has grown into a very postmodern, find-value-in-everything type of enjoyment. My friend Peter has very strong about opinions about superiority of certain brands of coffee over others, but he had very little objective information on which to base his value judgments.

Agreed: coffee can come in a variety of tastes as a result of its country of origin, intensity of roast, amount used per cup, and brewing method.

I have to say though, that I have come to enjoy pretty much any cup of coffee that is put in front of me, as long as there is any flavor at all. Growing up, my dad used to always get the econo-tub of econo-grade coffee: Yuban. I don't remember the specifics of his brewing method, but I do remember that what came out was little more than dark water. This is the only instance of coffee that I object to with any amount of conviction. Even that freeze-dried, crystalized stuff they call "instant" coffee can suffice if there's enough evidence of coffee flavor of any kind.

In the same way that the beer spectrum ranges from the "yellow-water" of Corona, to the chewable blackness of Guiness, coffee sports many different faces, and I think it's worth while to look carefully at each:

-Instant Coffee
This is usually what sits in the cupboard of non-coffee drinkers. Like I said earlier, this stuff has the potential to yield a little flavor if enough is used, but most likely, that jar has been sitting untouched in that non-drinker's cupboard for upwards of 83 years; only seeing the light of day once or twice a year when relatives are in for the holidays. Also, I'm not sure I want to know what's involved in the process of taking a cup of coffee and processing it so it comes out as the coffee equivalent of ovaltine crystals...


-Coffee "Tea" Bags
This is a relatively new invention as far as I know. The idea is that a pre-measured amount of ground coffee is stored in a semi-permeable bag, similar to a tea bag. You pour hot water over the bag and let it sit for one minute before proceeding to "dunk" the bag in and out of the water for an additional 15 seconds. As far as I've seen, only Folgers has tried this method of the "one-cup-at-a-time" genre. The pre-measured amount must be in the ballpark of half a tablespoon however, because the end result is only the slightest hint of coffee flavor, and as such, this coffee is best enjoyed black, so all you "I'd like some coffee with my creamer" folks should probably avoid this coffee, unless you really just want a cup of your "mocha-vanilla-peppermint-cinnamon bun" creamer.


-The "Old Fashioned" brands
Folgers, Yuban, Maxwell House, Juan Valdez's 100% Colombian Coffee. These are some of the coffees that have been around since...who knows when. They have survived the Great Depression, and were the front line of America's selection of coffee as the national beverage to further assert their independance from the tea-drinking British. These coffees all taste the same to my pallate, which is probably more due to ignorance on my part, than the fact that most people who make these coffees use just enough to turn their water brown more than give it any coffee flavor. These coffees are found in fine dining establishments all over the country such as Denny's, IHOP, and Norm's.





-The New School
Somewhere along the line, some revolutionary must have thought to themself: "These old-fashioned coffees are a bit on the weakside, but when I put in more grounds, the coffee comes out bitter...I'm gonna find a way to make a coffee so potent that if you set a match to it, it'd explode!" Back in the '70's a batch of these new school coffee brewers was born, and set up shop, most of them, in Seattle, to put alongside their other claims to fame: constant rain, and grunge music. They came up with coffee that was as thick as their flannel fashions, and unknowingly started a resurgence of coffee popularity and prominence. Starbucks, Peete's Dunkin' Donuts, and the arrogantly-named Seattle's Best, are some of the few that have changed the face of coffee forever, and we are indebted to them.



So which kind of coffee is best? As I said, I take the post-modern approach and have found enjoyment in each and every one of the above varieties of coffee. I enjoy coffee with cream and sugar, with those designer creamers, or black as the night. All of them. I enjoy coffee from the percolator, the drip maker, or the beloved French Press (although my cat broke mine so I don't enjoy this method quite as often as I'd like...).

So now you know what to get me for Christmas...