Time now to get way from trivial concerns and write about something really important – coffee.
Some time in my younger years I had a really good cuppa joe. I think now it must have been on a trip to New York City in the 1976. Back in Montana after that, I was always on the lookout – I tried everything that came along, including the more expensive “premium” blends put out by Folgers and the others, and the flavored coffees that masked the bland product underneath. I sent away for Gevalia Kaffe from Sweden. It was all, as my brother liked to call it, “shit water,” or gas station blend.
I experimented with better ways to make coffee, including “French presses”, or “French toilets”, as I think of them. When the first Mr. Coffee came out, I ran out to buy one, thinking that the drip method was all that was missing from Montana coffee. It was still shit water. When backpacking, coffee was a always a necessity in the morning, and always a disappointment. (Folgers once offered coffee in tea bags. Horrible!)
Some time in the early 90’s, a coffee shop opened in downtown Billings called “Todd’s Plantation.” The entire downtown area would smell like roasted coffee, and the people would say that “Todd’s burning the beans again.” He roasted his own, and used “Arabica” beans, which meant nothing to me. (Folgers and Millstone and others are “robusta” beans – more caffeine, less flavor.) His coffee was dark and rich, but very bitter, something I find to be true of most gourmet coffee shops to this day. Todd’s closed eventually, but other shops began to open, and twenty years after that cup I had in Manhattan, premium coffee entered the Montana market.
But most of the new gourmet coffee sold at shops and kiosks was just hype, a new version of shit water at three or four times the price. My daughters worked for a coffee shop in west Billings that was eventually taken over by Esther and became “Esther’s Espresso.” I began to buy coffee by the pound from her, trying all the blends, and not liking them much except for the Italian roast. So I stuck on that.
We went on a trip to visit kids who didn’t drink coffee, and bought a bag of Starbucks Italian roast to make our own while we were there. Unlike Esther’s Italian, Starbucks was darker and more bitter, but not bad. We brought half a bag home with us from that trip, and then one morning I mixed Esther’s and Starbucks Italian, took a cup to my wife, and she came out and said “That is really good coffee.”
And it was. The search had ended. We live in Colorado now, and Esther ships us beans which we store frozen, a no-no. I make five cups in the morning using five tablespoons of Esther’s Italian and two of Starbucks. We’ve been doing this for years.
Esther’s Espresso is located at 1927 Grand Avenue in Billings. It’s just a little hole in the wall. Esther is a great gal, always fun to talk to. She has two walls of bins of various beans. Do some experimenting if you are a coffee lover – she will surely have something that fits your taste buds.
Piece of Mindful 
Yes, thanks to the Arabs, we have coffee.
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And an alphabet to spell the word.
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And a number system to keep track of them
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That’s what I think I meant. I don’t know where we got our alphabet.
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Mark,
The greeks, mostly.
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Mark, I embarked on my own coffee quest a few years back, and landed at Sweet MArias, a specialty home coffee roasting outfit. Bought a cheap air roaster, and tried a bunch of different green beans, and roast levels, and blends. Learned a bunch about where and how coffee is grown and processed, and the lifestyle of the farmers. Tom from Sweet Marias travels the world’s coffee regions, and purchases amazing, and vastly different small batches of beans from growers. He has a great take on the whole blog ful of photos of the local culture and growing operations.
Anyways, I discovered the #1 key to a good cup of coffee is that the beans be freshly roasted–after a few weeks, the flavor really tapers off, and the coffee gets more bitter. #2 is to not over-roast the coffee. French roast became popular on the specialty market because it hid the effects of staling behind the burnt flavor. But french roasting also drives off most of the light aromatics that flavor the perfect cup. #3 is to use the proper beans for the right roast, and right blends. And then there is the concept of melange–a single bean roasted to two different levels so as to have the best aspects from each roast combined.
I could go on for hours with more details of my new hobby. But suffice it to say that my new favorite roast level was a point just past second crack, where just a spec of oil appears on the surface of the bean. Technically, it would be called full city+, or just a tad lighter than a vienna roast (which is really a light french roast). My favorite beans were from Sumatra, Kenya and some upland central american varieties.
But the cool thing is to just experiment, and learn about the craft, and the industry. And green beans are cheap. SM has beans ranging from $4/lb, to an average in the $5-6 range, with lots of highly valued beans in the $7-20/lb range. But I found that it isn’t the expensive beans that necessarily produce the best cup of coffee. It’s the roast, the source, and the processing.
Anyways, off to make a cup. Got me droolin…
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Wowsers! You are a true aficionado! I step back and salute. We do share a love of the brew with its many subtle flavors.
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Mark, would you buy coffee roasted by monks?
http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/article_ee7a11f8-d0da-11df-aa87-001cc4c002e0.html
I supposed they could offer blessed or unblessed.
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Thanks for the laugh. I’ll stick with Esther’s unholy brew.
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Nice find, Big Ingy. And following that story, led me to the story of Br. Java, the master coffee roaster at Mystic Monk Coffee, and the Legend of the First Mystic Monk:
Who wudda thunk that Big Ingy’s neighbors would have discovered coffee???!!! And I thought that my Buddhist neighbors had something going with their Garden of 1,000 Buddhas, and the Dalai Lama coming and all…
Actually at the Ewam’s Peace Festival a few weeks ago, I had the unusual opportunity to watch a few of the monks, all decked out in their orange and brown robes, long haired tied back, with wrap around sunglasses… get on their Harley’s and zoom off into the sunset.
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I like the Wal-Mart house brand coffee, Café Molido de Primera Calidad, not so much for the taste, but rather because it has helped me become a millionaire.
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