June 2007

This is your basic black tie coffee.

You can tell just from the packaging. I mean, look at it. Especially compared to all Café Britt‘s other wild jungle-themed artistic splash, this one looks like a tuxedo. A black dress. Formal wear.

Someone wealthy has either gotten married, or died.

The coffee lives up to the packaging. It’s your standard high quality delicious gourmet dark roast blend. Nice and strong, full bodied, and with a sharp tangy acidity. It means business.

It demands respect.

If the leader of a country is coming over for dinner, serve this coffee. If your future in-laws own three yachts and their own jet aircraft, serve this coffee. If the CEO of a multinational corporation is due in your office for a one-on-one strategy meeting, serve this coffee.

And…

If you want a good cappuccino with a lot of punch, use this coffee!

Sometimes I crave coffee at 11:51 PM. Or 1:07 AM. And most of these times I have to sleep afterwards.

Needless to say, I can’t afford to get buzzed at 11:51 PM.

There are aficionados out there who would rather go without coffee rather than drinking decaffeinated. To each his own, I say. I’ve developed a taste for decaf and I don’t mind it at all.

Starbucks and Gevalia both manage a drinkable decaf, and now, so I’ve found, does Jalima. In fact I would be so bold as to state I find Jalima superior.

Smooth, rich, refined, with low acidity and a quiet, dignified presence, Jalima H&A Decaffeinated edges past every other decaf I’ve tried. Yes, I can still taste the difference, but the flavor is so pleasantly immersive that I don’t really notice unless I’m looking for it. One could even say I only imagine tasting it because I’m expecting it.

Tasting it side by side with the caffeinated version, it’s so close I could be imaging it.

Really, it doesn’t matter. The only reason to drink decaf is so that you don’t get buzzed. So that’s either late at night, or when you have to because your doctor said so. The sad fact is some people just can’t handle caffeine.

Lucky for them, dedicated people like those at Jalima make gourmet decaf. Otherwise life would suck.

I mean it. Life without coffee? The horror.

So to anyone who has been told to switch, I recommend this coffee. That is, only after getting a second opinion from a doctor who is actually up on the current health research about coffee. Also, anyone who thinks they hate all decaf, I urge them to try this one.

Because drinking coffee at 12:23 AM when you have to go to work at 7 AM is not a good idea unless you cut that caffeine.

To everything, turn, turn, there is a season.

There are times for caffeine, and there are times when you don’t want it in your system. Just like there are times to be awake, and times when you really need to sleep.

Decaffeinated coffee holds an important place in society.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell by the taste that a coffee is decaffeinated. Sometimes it isn’t so hard.

Apologies to Café Britt, but this blend is easy to distinguish. Probably due to the fact that I’ve had some excellent decaf and was spoiled by it, it’s hard for others to impress me.

But you know, this makes me think it’s time for me to have a reality check. When some undoubtedly high quality coffees begin to fail on my palate, I need to adjust my scale.

Sometime within the next month I’m going to switch to regular pre-ground canned coffee and drink it for a week or so. Because when you compare this coffee to Folgers or maybe even some generic decaf, it will probably shine like highly polished silver.

But sadly, no, as much as I’ve enjoyed Café Britt‘s other coffees, this one did not make me dance and sing.

I’m too busy smacking my lips in pleasure to type.

I could sum up this coffee just by typing yum-yum-yummy-yum but I don’t think I’d get away with it.

This is one of those very rare coffees where its taste gets better and better as you drink it. My first sip was not that impressive. I was struck with its medium citric tones and some meandering coco notes, but after walking from the kitchen and back over to the laptop, and sitting here tasting and contemplating, the flavor began to truly blossom into something spectacular.

I’m glad no one can actually hear me as I drink this coffee. I’m being very vocal about the flavor. Lots of MMMM and such. A listener might compare my noises to one of those orgasmic shampoo commercials.

The body is somewhat heavy and the taste lingers, retro-actively sweet and spiced with a definite cinnamon flavor. Between my yummy lip-smacking noises I’m trying to figure out how to pronounce Huehuetanango. There’s little doubt I’m getting it wrong. It’s the name of a highland area in Guatemala, filled with isolated microclimates that give the coffees from the area distinctive flavors.

Inland Empire roasts their coffees in small batches and sends them out immediately, getting them to you practically still warm from the roaster. To get it any fresher, you’d have to be standing right next to them as they make it. Something which, actually, I’d love to do.

Here’s a big thanks out to them for sending me this Groovy Brew. It is, without a doubt, one of the most yum-yum-yummiest I’ve ever had. Someday I hope to learn to pronounce it correctly.

Make sure to check out Inland Empire’s website and especially their radio show.

I review both types here. Freshly roasted beans that I grind right before brewing, and coffee that is ground before packaging. The two are really like apples and oranges, so I have decided for the sake of the reviews, I will not compare one to the other directly.

Reason being, freshly roasted and ground coffee is a completely different experience than the alternative. It would be unfair to compare it against packaged ground coffee. Pre-ground coffee cannot compete.

There are some who just don’t want to grind their own coffee. I can respect that. It’s personal choice. I not so long ago was one of those coffee drinkers, mainly because of convenience. I also used to use a standard coffee machine, etc.

So when someone sends me pre-ground coffee I review it in that spirit, for those who enjoy gourmet coffee but don’t enjoy grinding … and so I put it on an entirely different scale.

But, my coffee loving friends, one of these days you’re going to be spoiled by something amazingly fresh and flavorful, and you’ll find it hard to go back.

I was prepared not to like this coffee. That made me sad, too, because just by thumbing through Stone Creek‘s catalog I fell in love with the company. Seriously, it looks like one of the coolest places to work — everyone there seems to be part of a big friendly family.

The problem I anticipated is one of the ingredients in this blend is clove. Readers of the other side of GroovyBrew.com will know I don’t believe clove has any business being in beer. Now here it is in coffee.

The other ingredients are cracked Cassia cinnamon, dark roast coffee, and sugar. I have no problem with those ingredients — they sound yummy. But clove?

So I brewed some up and tasted it cautiously. Several sips into it I didn’t know what to think. On one hand I loved it — it’s exotic to say the least. It almost tastes like a chai tea concoction. But then the clove aftertaste kicked in, and that’s something I just don’t like.

With the first cup done, I was still sad, because all in all I didn’t care for it. Then I realized something … I bet it would taste incredible as a cappuccino! So I loaded up my espresso maker and gave it a try.

My friends — oh my friends! I was right! This Natural Spiced blend makes the most incredible, most exotic cappuccino I have ever had. The toasty sweet cinnamon, the frothy milk, the delicious hard-edged undercurrent of coffee, it all came together. Either the clove blended in well or was masked, though I think it was the former. It worked.

Boy did it. I had to have another. And then another.

Man am I wired right now!

For those of you who like the taste of clove, then this makes a wonderfully exotic cup of coffee. For those of you like myself who don’t care for the clove, it makes an awesome cappuccino. Either way this is a unique coffee I recommend you try, especially if you’re looking for something earthy and different.

I saved this coffee for Sunday morning, knowing it would be a treat.

My kids are gone to California to be with their mother for a few months. I have the place to myself. It’s just me and Huni Bunny, my older daughter’s rabbit (which I got stuck with).

It’s quiet. Peaceful. Relaxed. The only sound I hear is the whir of the ceiling fan… oh, and also the distant hum of the air conditioner. And someone’s car. And a helicopter passing overhead.

I’ve been looking forward to brewing this coffee since I received it.

I made a 16 oz. mug, as usual, using my little cup-top drip maker. The coffee smells sharp, fruity.

I take that first sip… It’s different. Tangy. Fruity. I’m told to expect blueberry-like notes, but I’m not getting that. I’m getting a hint of dates, maybe, just a ghost of it. The coffee flavor itself is kind of inside-out, light on what is usually heavy, heavy on what is usually light. There’s a soft acidity that gives it a pleasant bite. The aftertaste definitely weighs in on the chocolate side.

It’s very smooth. This is a coffee to sip and savor. You definitely want to pay attention to it.

Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, and the only place where you’ll find coffee trees growing naturally in the wild. This coffee is processed the old, traditional way … the way it’s been done for millennia. The fruit is allowed to dry on the bean. So, if you think about it, this is what coffee is originally supposed to taste like. This is the original coffee taste.

And this taste is the reason people fell in love with coffee all those years ago.

Inland Empire roasts this coffee (actually, all their coffees) in small batches and sends them out immediately. They do this to make sure you get it as fresh as possible. With coffee, the fresher it is, the better. They built their business on this and they do a fantastic job of it.

My hats off to them. Thank you guys for this coffee. It is most definitely a Groovy Brew.

Make sure to check out Inland Empire’s website and especially their radio show.

I’m off to make another cup.

Marques de Paiva Fair Trade Certified Whole Bean coffee is made from “rigorously selected 100% Arabica beans that are grown on small family farms.”

Then, apparently, it’s stored in huge warehouses to be properly aged to a fine, robust staleness, then put on millions of pallets to be stacked at Sam’s Clubs all over the nation.

My coffee loving friends, this before you is a perfect example of a poser. It’s all dressed up in “Fair Trade” and given an impressively European sounding name, stuffed into overlarge but very pretty bags, and presented as something it is definitely NOT.

What it isn’t, is gourmet coffee. To me it tastes like over-roasted, stale coffee.

What it is, though, is dirt cheap. At least it is at Sam’s Club. You get this huge two and a half pound bag of beans for under $10. What a deal, I thought.

But the deal is that you end up with a whole lot of stale coffee that’s going to sit around forever because you hesitate to drink it, but you’re also hesitant to throw it out because:

• You just bought it
• You got a good “deal”
• It’s not quite as bad as pre-ground canned coffee
• It doesn’t make a bad mocha cappuccino as long as you use plenty of chocolate and sugar.

Okay, so you don’t want to toss it. If you still have your receipt, you can take it back — Sam’s Club will take anything back. Or, you could simply grind it all up and mix it with potting soil.

Flowers will love it.