jbviau's Coffee Blog

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I know it’s been said many times, but it’s worth saying again: coffee tends to bring out the best in people. As with any blanket statement, there are exceptions—some to be found on coffee-related forums among those afflicted with lastworditis. Still, as a rule, coffee drinkers are people whose company I truly enjoy.

Last night I placed two gift orders here to repay kindnesses shown to me by vendors. Aside: I chose the same coffee for both since it’s my favorite all-around bean of 2012, at least so far; care to guess what it was, by the way?

When I blogged a month ago about pre-ordering the LIDO, I mentioned having high expectations. Now that this hand grinder extraordinaire has arrived (full disclosure: I’ve actually been playing with it since 3/9), I can safely say that those expectations have been met.

It’s hard not to notice that “pre-ground” is a bad word in certain coffee circles. Without a doubt, this is mostly for good reason. Grinding your own freshly roasted coffee right before brewing it up is the way to go, when possible, and it doesn’t take a Q grader’s palate to verify the difference that doing so makes in the cup.

However, pre-ground coffee doesn’t have to be bad. Here’s a little story about how I (re)discovered this counterintuitive little nugget of truth and why it matters to me lately.

Reading through your guesses about which roasted bean samples went with which coffee descriptions (in the comments section under my last blog post) was great fun. Frankly, without realizing it I inadvertently made the quiz harder than I’d intended to by including a blend, but then again one of the three samples seems to have been a “gimme.” More about that in a minute. First, I’ll refresh people’s memories about the matching task.

The last few batches of beans I’ve had were distinctive in the sense that you could pick them out based on appearance alone for various reasons. I say this as someone who’s curious and pays attention to coffee trivia but who has ZERO roasting experience and who has never been to a coffee farm. Anyway, I thought it might be fun to do a little quiz here and let you all show what you know. Given the crowd, I imagine this might be easy for some, but at the very least it should lead to interesting discussion.

I think we may have a contender here for most efficiently (and also somewhat strangely) fulfilled online coffee order ever. Here’s the story as it unfolded with time stamps (EST) for dramatic effect.

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There are plenty of weightier angles to take on the subject of coffee bags—whether or not they should be recyclable, have one-way valves, come with recommendations on brew parameters, etc.—but today I feel shallower. How about focusing on how they look for a second? I tend to keep my beans in the bags unless they’re destined for the freezer, so I can’t help but contemplate such things.

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I believe it’s cathartic to discuss the silly things you’ve done with your coffee. We all make mistakes! The key is to laugh them off, learn from them, and humbly but fearlessly move on. In that spirit, here are a few of my recent blunders.

1. When making a Clever brew, it’s key to not put the Clever dripper onto your mug until you’re ready for the plunge. Sounds obvious, right? If you’re sleep-deprived enough, not necessarily.

A trip to Target this morning left me with a “small world” coffee experience and simultaneously reminded me of something I’d written a while back, so I thought I’d take a moment to briefly describe what happened.