Hello, Friends . . .
We are roasting next on Monday, September 29, and any orders received through noon that day will be shipped or delivered on Tuesday the 30th. If you are local, email me, and away orders are easier if they go through the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).
Barack O’Java has now become our best-selling coffee, and we’ll continue to offer this through the November election. We donate $1 of each package sold to the campaign. For the very few of you who have asked, I am sorry but we don’t offer a McPalin coffee.
I write you this week from the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California, where I am running a conference. Imagine the strange bedfellows of very small children, frazzled parents and several thousand pharmaceutical scientists, and this is my world for five days. Because of a last minute construction project here at the hotel, we enter our conference through the main entrance of “Goofy’s Kitchen,” weaving our way through an armada of parked strollers and costumed Mickies, Goofies and Daffies (who enable the Disney Corporation to get $30 each for a breakfast buffet). In the morning, the gazillion kids are fired up for a day in the park; in the afternoon, they assume a slumped position as they sleep by the hundreds in their strollers.
Predictably, the coffee here sucks.
I knew before I came on this trip that there would be no hope for coffee at Disneyland, so I came equipped with a small electric teakettle, a hand grinder, a filter brewer and two coffees – a Guat and an El Salvador Peaberry – both roasted the day before I left. They have poured well on this trip. And yes, I am obsessed with good coffee. :)
So, I can’t invoke your pity by complaining that I have to drink the whitebread swill they serve here, but I will take the liberty of using Disneyland as a metaphor for the menace that is generic coffee.
I think now and then about coffee as a food, rather than a beverage unto itself. And when I think about coffee in this way, I consider coffee as it is served at places like Disneyland.
It comes from no place; it is only “coffee.”
It was roasted by no one; it is only “coffee.”
It has no brand; it is only “coffee.”
It was not ground in a grinder you know about, and it was prepared only in a “coffee maker.”
It is not special. In this setting, it is allowed no adjectives.
Would we allow this to happen with any of our other favorite foods?
Would we eat only “Cheese”? “Meat”? “Sauce”, “Juice”, “Sandwiches”, “Bread”?
“Food”?
I come to Disneyland harboring two addictions, caffeine and good coffee. It would be easy enough to bring some No Doz to satisfy the former, but the latter is harder, and it is often a need that is impossible to satisfy on the road. Airports, business hotels, gas stations and roadside diners insist on serving only “coffee.”
In the world of specialty coffee, roasters and cafes think a lot about coffee education. We know that most of the coffee drinkers in our country still drink this very generic brew – and that in many other countries, instant coffee (made largely from cheap, bitter Robusta beans) is still the market leader. Some simple rules about coffee buying and preparation can really change the experience of coffee for people, and even for those who won’t move all the way into the higher end coffees like those we sell, the daily cup will be better.
One of the great joys I have about supplying The Royal Bean cafe is that I get to spend a lot of time hanging out and watching the interactions between the staff and the customers. Quite often, someone who is new to the café will not have had the opportunity to choose from among multiple coffees when they order – and this gives Jim and his staff a great opening to talk about the flavors and textures and smells of different coffee origins in relation to each other. These talks are so cool, because the minute that customer tastes a new coffee, they learn something – and using this learning takes them to a greater appreciation of the value of taking more care in buying and brewing their own coffees.
And inch-by-inch, these folks will go out in the world to places like Disneyland, and ask for something more. And maybe, just maybe, someday, they will make a difference and those who would genericize this wonderful beverage will try a little harder to serve coffees labeled by origin country and roast level.
On our website, at the bottom of the coffee stories blog, there is a long article I wrote about finding good coffee on the road. This quest can be a lot of fun, and I hope you will read this someday and engage in your own explorations when you travel.
I look forward to being back in Maine this weekend. Enjoy the beautiful fall days you are having there . . . and as always, thanks for your ongoing support.
Cheers,
Kent
