Best coffee beans?
9 years ago
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Another idea on the best pole bean(s)
Comments (3)Well, it's a hard mentality for some of us to comprehend. Essentially it boils down to "One cent benefit for me is worth more to me than one thousand dollars of benefit for you." The little boy yanked the whole plant because he didn't want to be caught and was in a hurry to get out of there with "the loot." He probably never grew any of those beans either. Probably 7 years earlier I had an old "campesino" yank and run with the last of my Barksdale Wax Pole beans, when I was gardening in another town. If it wasn't for other members of the Seed Savers Exchange, that would have been the end of our family heirloom. But the main point I wanted to make, in that thread, which did do a bit of detouring, is that I like a bean with the following characteristics: 1) Dependability. I want a bean which will dependably produce under a wide range of conditions. 2) Tender pods, even when old: Most modern beans become tough when the pods begin to mature. Most dry beans do this. Some dry beans' pods are simply tough from the get go. But there are some varieties out there which produce pods which are tender right down to when they start to yellow and dry. Many of those varieties also have strings. It seems almost to be indication that one has a tender pod variety, if it has strings. Anyway, my favorites have strings and stay tender for a LONG TIME. My absolute favorite green beans are these old timers when they have filled out shell beans on the inside. I string and snap them and cook them up. ItÂs like getting snaps and shell beans at the same time. Plus, with our busy life style, it's sometime difficult to process our beans soon after picking. These tender hull varieties last a lot longer "on the shelf," before processing, than the tough hulled varieties. 3) Prodigious seed production. The best beans I know produce lots of nice, well developed seed. This is nice, not only because we like to eat the seeds, but we also like the ease of maintaining seed stocks, in order to share with others. George...See MoreWhere do you order your coffee beans?
Comments (45)Don't get me wrong - we adore Peet's, but their specialty has always been dark-roasted coffees. We get the French or Italian in a just-up-from-powdered-Turkish grind, brewed through Chemex filters. I long ago broke the Chemex glass pot and realized it's the filters and the cone shape that make the difference. A cheap plastic cone works just as well, but the Chemex bonded filters are a must. Compare side-by-side with a paper filter and you can tell the difference immediately. We filter into a vaccuum pot if we're not going to drink it right away; it holds it very well for about 4-5 hours. On the Left Coast we are passionate about coffee and Starbucks fans are regarded with smirks. As you enjoy medium roasts with a lower acidity than dark roasted coffees - and many people do, I do myself on occasion - I'm wondering if you have tried the national brands of Chock Full o'Nuts (which ranked quite high in a Fine Cooking taste test a few years ago) and....Dunkin' Donuts. DD is making big ripples in the San Francisco Bay Area with a report by a Millennial blogsite that was just published yesterday. They included DD for a joke in a taste test against three of the highest-regarded new artisanal coffee roasters (so new they are post-Blue Bottle, who has gone from coffee cart to Establishment specialty in less than 3 yrs). DD came in second - no small feat! I've had all three artisanal coffees, and they're very good indeed. The short column from Eater SF is linked below. (btw, PS to johnliu - we loved Stumptown on our 2010 swing through the PNW. Have heard good things about Catahoula in Richmond. Do you have access to Highwire in Oakland? They're doing some good blends over there) Here is a link that might be useful: DD embarrasses Bay Area foodies...See MoreGrinding coffee beans
Comments (19)Correction: I use HALF a cup of beans to grind coffee for 3 cups of coffee, not a whole cup of beans. I would prefer a glass container for the ground coffee, but don't find the plastic on in the Cuisinart a big problem so far. The plastic container for the whole beans is of no consequence to me. It's grinding evenly, and a setting just south of "Medium" grinds fine enough for me. The roar is a waker-upper. Think of an old cartoon where a character has upset a hive -- only *louder*. The most important feature of any drip coffee maker is its' ability to heat the water to the right temperature and keep it there to the finish. You also need good water. Our tap water is great, but I still draw from the filtered water dispenser in our refridgerator door. I only want coffee brewed NOW, not an hour later, and not 'kept hot' on a hot plate. My old Krups drips into a pre-heated thermos carafe that I can then seal tight. I don't find that feature on any 'grind and brew' makers. (Some have thermos carafes, but they don't seal.) We would probably be good candidates for the single cup capsules, but I'm too cheap to pay more for the maker or the capsules!...See MoreAbout the coffee
Comments (5)Interesting that you tried so many. Many of these coffees are blends and are very different types and have differing flavor profiles from others. If comparing ice cream brands, it would be more telling to try chocolate from five different companies, rather than sampling five different flavors from one. You have various flavors from various companies. In many parts of the US, the coffee flavor that has historically served as the "common standard" (and what was most frequently used in restaurants and canned and instant coffee brands and what most people prefer because of that) is the Western Hemisphere, Colombia-Brazil-Costa Rica types. These all taste rather comparable to one another. This flavor is most typical in the chain coffees like Tim Horton, Dunkin Donuts, etc, Your ratings show a bias in the Central-South American direction. The ones you like less well (that I know) have a less pronounced Western Hemisphere flavor. If there is a local coffee roaster in your area, I wonder which beans you would prefer after sampling a small variety. Perhaps a Western Hemisphere type is what you like best....See More- 9 years ago
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