Posted on 12/15/2005 8:33:20 PM PST by Extremely Extreme Extremist
"That was the one good thing about moving back to Detroit."
AHH!..This explains everything. No doubt someone held a Starbucks to your head and forced you to go back.
Put just over a cup of water in the reservoir, put in filter and enough coffee grounds for one cup (tablespoon or so), and start the coffee maker - without the carafe in place, leave it out.
Without the carafe in place, the hot water collects in the basket cooking the coffee grinds like percolated coffee. After brewing has stopped, the all the water is in the basket (remember, there's no carafe in place), wait a few additional minutes for the beans to cook.
After the waiting a few minutes, like you would for a tea bag to steep, put in the carafe and presto, you have a rich single cup of coffee.
One note, before you try this, make sure a full cup or more of coffee can fit in your brewing basket.
Starbucks beans are stored in sealed containers as well.
Peets are stored in open bins.
Whether coffee should be frozen is debateable. I don't, but I use my beans quick enough to avoid the issue.
I will agree with you about Peets having character to their blends. A cup of #101 tastes damned good. I used to get ALL of my beans there until I discovered Orchard Valley Roasting Co., and subsequently Barefoot Roasting Co. I do believe that the closest thing to heaven on earth is brewing up a fresh pot of Ethiopia Yergacheffe after waking up in a campground in an old-growth forest (note: it doesn't actually have to be old growth).
Yeah, I believe that's true and usually stop my roast right as the oiliness begins.
But my target for roasting perfection is Peet's French Roast - it's the best bean I've ever had. Now, I haven't bought it from them in 3-4 years, but at least it used to be dark and pretty oily but definitely not burned and made the perfect cup of black coffee.
I still don't know exactly how they do/did that without it ending up as Charbucks.
Trivia: did you know Peet split off from the Charbucks gang back in the early days, when Charbucks was growing beyond a handful of stores? He hated their mass-roasting methods to keep up with the need to grow with cheap ingredients, and formed Peet's coffee, staying in the Bay Area until fairly recently and resisting the Charbucks decline in quality due to mass expansion.
Pretty much the same plan that In-n-Out used.
I think their dark-roasts taste better than *$$ because they are fresher when you get the beans. They seem to get a fresh supply daily, and don't leave the stuff sitting around for weeks.
My target roast is basically a City Roast. I've found that I tend to like the lighter roast more. But again, I'm using it for drip, not espresso.
I don't drink much coffee, but my Senseo machine at home is nice. It'll make the occasional 4-oz cup without much hassle that tastes pretty good to me.
Where does Starbucks store their beans at room temp? They roast them, bag them, ship them. FROZEN coffee beans? You mean frozen like in frozen orange juice, frozen steaks? Is frozen broccoli better than fresh broccoli? What nonsense.
You definitely need to meet passive Hank, the forum's Juan Valdez, and have a coffee klatsch..
We won't even open that can of worms. =)
Hank..Your characterization of Peet's history is, apparently, a figment of your imagination.
READ THIS IF YOU CAN
Known as the "grandfather of specialty coffee," Peet's Coffee & Tea has been a Berkeley institution since we started more than thirty-five years ago.
Alfred Peet opened the first Peet's store in 1966 - with a roasting machine on the premises - at the corner of Walnut and Vine in Berkeley, a few blocks from the University of California. Mr. Peet grew up in the family's coffee and tea business in Alkmaar, Holland. After World War II, Peet worked in the tea trade in Indonesia. At age thirty-five, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and later opened his shop, roasting coffee in the distinctive style he learned from his family.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Peet's Coffee & Tea was a pioneer among other food purveyors in Berkeley's "gourmet ghetto" - a collection of European style shops and restaurants that later included the Cheese Board and Chez Panisse - whose emphasis on artisan, fresh foods spawned an American revolution.
Today, we continue to maintain the traditional values of hard work and attention to detail that are essential to creating coffees of distinction. Our Vine Street store still attracts a large, loyal following, including many who remind us they have been customers since the store opened. Our roasting facility is in Emeryville, just a few miles from our original location.
"Oil is there because the internal temperature of the bean got too hot during roasting."
The amount of oil on the bean is determined by whether you want a light roast, medium, dark roast. The darker, the more oil on bean exterior. It is a matter of personal taste and preference. A dark roast without oil is a stale bean -supermarket kiosks mostly contain stale beans. (Safeway coffee, for example, is not really coffee beans .It is made from soybean and Mexican jumping beans. Only a coffee snob could tell the difference, though)
My preferred camp fare is a Folger's coffee bag. Boil the water, open the foil packet, dunk the bag...mmmmm...savor the flavor.
Thanks...funny.
Whatever floats your boat is OK with me:) However, use caution when expressing what you like on this thread, or Hank the poster will tell you that Folger's is a communist plot or some such nonsense. Be cautious - you have been warned.
Thanks..Pray that you do not have to enter into an intellectual coffee discussion with Hank the poster, though. He has coffee angst and could explode at any moment.
Yes it does. I was only putting the idea out there because hadn't seen it yet. I ground the beans and brew as necessary.
They do go stale quickly, I do the same.
Apparently there is no standard size yet of these packets. kind of like inkjet cartridges where you have to buy a specific product. Plus the incremental cost adds up for a pond of coffee.
Read post #82. He has a great idea for one cup on a full size coffeemaker.
Read. Learn.
The inspiration for the Starbucks enterprise was a Dutch immigrant, Alfred Peet, who had begun importing fine arabica coffees into the United States during the 1950s. Peet viewed coffee as a fine winemaker views grapes, appraising it in terms of country of origin, estates, and harvests. Peet had opened a small store, Peet's Coffee and Tea, in Berkeley, California, in 1966
. . . . . . .
In March 1987 Jerry Baldwin and Gordon Bowker decided to sell the whole Starbucks operation in Seattle—the stores, the roasting plant, and the Starbucks name. Bowker wanted to cash out his coffee-business investment to concentrate on his other enterprises; Baldwin, who was tired of commuting between Seattle and San Francisco and wrestling with the troubles created by the two parts of the company, elected to concentrate on the Peet's operation. As he recalls, "My wife and I had a 30-second conversation and decided to keep Peet's. It was the original and it was better."7
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