Caffeine Connoisseur

I’m not a coffee snob. Just because I know good coffee doesn’t mean I turn my nose up at bad coffee. Unless I have a choice. I mean, I’m not going to take the bad coffee if the good coffee is right there.

I guess I’m a bit of a coffee snob. I can’t help it. Good coffee is just so good.

I’ve always preferred good coffee to bad, but lately I’ve gotten more picky about it. A few months ago I acquired a French press. I don’t remember why, I think I thought it was pretty and it would be just as easy as using my little one-cup drip brew since we have a water cooler that heats the water. And it was just as easy, and more of an experience. I even got an hourglass to time my brewing.

The thing with a French press, though, is you have to get the grind right. Coffee ground for drip coffeemakers is finer than what you’re supposed to put in a French press. And while it is possible to find coffee specifically ground for the French press, it’s not easy. Not in grocery stores, anyway.

So I decided to try grounding my own. I had a little handheld blade grinder for when I was feeling fancy. Surely that would work!

Good lork, those things are loud! And I had to really pay attention, or the grind would still be too fine, and I’d be drinking solid coffee at the bottom of my cup again.

So I bought a manual burr grinder. It wasn’t expensive, and it was an investment in my peaceful mornings!

This is my grinder, and it’s a great little grinder.

You know what’s next, right?

I’m still not a coffee snob (I may protest too much…) I’m not one of those people who spends a lot of money (that I don’t have) on something that doesn’t really matter. I mean, coffee matters, but only to a point. You know?

The search began at grocery stores. Seattle’s Best didn’t cut it. The bag of Starbucks whole beans that I bought wasn’t good enough to justify the cost either. I was getting Peet’s Coffee Major Dickinson blend and I liked that, but I can only get that at one store and it’s really inconvenient since we moved.

Eight O’clock Coffee–don’t get me started on the Eight O’Clock coffee.

So the grocery store thing isn’t really working out. I looked for options. The fresher the roast, experts say, the better the coffee. I looked around for roasters, but there seems to be a whole culture there I don’t get. Why, for instance, is the one closest to me only open from 7:30 to 2 on weekdays? I would have to fight the morning coffee crowd before work to get a pound of beans. I looked at coffee subscriptions, but they all seem to be a lot of money for not very much coffee. A pound is not going to last me a month! And why would I sign up for a surprise selection every month? I need a good cup of coffee. I’ll drink bad coffee if it’s handed to me, but I’m not going to manually grind and then French press bad coffee in the sanctity of my own home.

I like variety in tea. I will try most any tea, as my occasional over-indulgences at Teavana testify. But that’s tea. Coffee is different.

So anyway. The quest for good coffee goes on. In the meantime I am prepared to survive with a whole lot of caffeinated tea, dark-chocolate-covered espresso beans, and a Starbucks gift card or three.

One Comment:

  1. I am super late on this, but…we acquired a French press last year (after many years of only buying coffee on the go–it helped that we have brunch out most weekends) and we LOVE it. We picked one that came with a grinder attachment, so we were spared the hunt for a grinder. 😉 But I know what you mean about accidentally turning into a coffee snob…oops!

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