stevestory
Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005
|
| Quote (k.e @ Sep. 13 2007,12:57) | | I think Bill probably lets Dave eat all he wants at his grease shop and afterwards they get together and enjoy one of Bill finest single malts. It wouldn't surprise me if BillAD pours Mekong into an old Laphroaig bottle and has a quiet giggle at D.T.s expense. |
When I was in college I worked in several coffeeshops. If you do anything day in, day out, you get remarkably sensitive. When I worked at Caribou in 2001, I had a girlfriend who would stop by there on the way to my apartment, pick up two cups, and my task was to identify them by smell/taste, which I could do about 80% of the time. Mocha Java was downright easy, Sumatra child's play, and Jamaican Blue Mountain a gimme. Blends like Daybreak were harder. I don't have an especially good palate, but like I said, you get sensitive over time to subtle differences. You get to where you can smell the volcanic ash taste of Sumatran coffees, the lemony scent from Kenya, the green taste of light roasts, the thick oiliness of French Roasts, etc. Telling decaf from caf was easy, though the new Swiss Water Method makes it slightly harder. I know a guy in chapel hill who can guess the timing of an espresso shot to within about 1 second, whereas I can only guess within about 3-4. I've had so much fresh gourmet coffee that's if it's been sitting in the pot for even 30 minutes and it'll taste oxidized, burnt, and gross to me. Anyway, all this background is for the following comment: Of all the chains, Caribou serves the best coffee. The stuff in the pot was selected from the top 5 or so percent of coffee beans in the world. It was roasted probably about two weeks ago by experts, and came off the trees within the last 2-3 months. Whereas supermarket coffee comes from crap beans, was roasted 6 months ago in a factory by someone who responds to a preset alarm, and on the tree last year sometime. And I have to confess, once or twice we snuck Folgers into the pot, gave it to customers, and not a single customer said anything.
|
