Flogging, is in order for that blasphemy!!!!

Ten Lashings!!! :mad:

I recommend it. I bought mine in Naples, but you can buy the same thing here. I went with a friend of mine in Naples (you guys think you're coffee nuts, you should meet this guy, he gave me a 30 minute lesson on how to detect a good cup of espresso and drink it correctly) to a coffee/kitchen store, and that's the only brand of espresso maker he would let me buy. That and KIMBO brand (which is a coffee from Naples), where his two sticking points as far as a cup of espresso goes. I can't say he has been wrong either. After making the switch and drinking other Italian brands, such as illy and Lavazza, there's no going back. KIMBO is so smooth and rich is crazy.

Funny you should mention that. I recently experienced heart palpitations (what I can only describe as a fluttering sensation at center chest) and blame it on too much caffeine so I've cut back and am (mostly) switching to decaf.
I'm the only coffee drinker in the house so I use a Keurig single-cup system which is pretty good for what it is and there are plenty of choices from Horton's, Gloria Jean, etc for variety.

Good move. We have two guys in our club who have been fitted with pacemakers, one doesn't race any more and one does. Both have been heavy coffee drinkers. One still indulges, the one who doesn't race.

French presses are great.

If you're into espresso, give Coffee Emergency's Code Brown a try. It's buttah! Very light roast, and a boatload of crema. I pick up a lb. every month or two. Fast delivery. His other roasts are good too. Expensive, but the Yemen Mohka Ismaili is like no coffee you'll find. Sweet and smooth. Truly an incredible coffee.

I used to do the Starbucks latte 3-4 days a week. Unfortunately, it got too crowded at my local stop. Hey, I'll fork over $3.50 for a latte but not if I have to wait 15-20 minutes to get it.

In order to save money and time and up the quality and choice in my coffee, I got a Rancilio Silvia and a Rocky grinder. Espressos, americanos, lattes. You name it. I can make it as good or better than Starbucks.

Now if I can clear some space in my parking lot and plant a sugar cane field, it'd be all over. I'd be the Pinky of the coffee world.

Am I the only one here that absolutely hates Starbuck's espresso? To me it tastes like bitter, burnt crap. Manybe that's just me.

vNo doubt, the navy's coffee is not the best. However, I can't stand the smell of any coffee. I don't even like to walk into a coffee shop because it makes me sick to my stomach.


Thanks for the offer Koffee, but no thanks :)

Now beer, beer is a different story.

No, you aren't alone. It's roasted to 1) taste the same no matter where you buy it, 2) have a long shelf life, and 3) taste great with milk as that's where SB makes their $. In order to accomplish this, they roast the absolute hell out of it. Dark, oily, carbonized. This means a coffee whose flavor comes from its roast instead of its origin. Much easier to do consistently. As it's heavily roasted, killed if you will, it'll keep on a shelf much longer than a light roast. And dark roasts cut through milk better than lighter coffees. A light roast coffee will be dominated by milk and will taste bland.

Pick up a lb. of that Code Brown to see what a real espresso should be like, straight or with milk.

Well, that explains it, I'm glad to hear I'm not alone. I'm sure their "coffee" (American style) is probably okay, but I don't like coffee. When I drink it just tastes like watered-down espresso.

I've already got my "brand" (KIMBO), but I'll give Code Brown a shot. Man, that's a weird name. "Code Brown" is what we say in the hospital when a patient craps themself.

I think you gotta separate correlation from causation.

First, look at the reason for their massive consumption. Although most on this thread enjoy it, other heavy coffee drinkers might be high-stress people who are constantly sleep deprived either from long hours working or long hours worrying, and the fact they drink that much coffee might indicate some OTHER factor which led to the heart problems, etc.

And to those people who experience heart palpatations -- it could be you are stressed out and have a touch of anxiety. You lose sleep from the anxiety and drink coffee to stay awake. It's the stress, not the coffee doing it.

In other words, just because people with health probs drank lots of coffee does not mean the coffee caused it.

I was addicted to coffee. But I broke the habit by switching to crystal meth. Not only did I stop spending money on over roasted Starbucks coffee, my 40k TT time dropped by 6 minutes! :D

Now if only i could get these bugs to stop crawling all over my body. :eek:

The problem is that if you buy the European coffee here, it's still treated like American coffee- roasted. So it ends up tasting slightly better than the coffee we have, but still has that acidic taste that I don't like. If I can't bring it back myself, I just don't drink it at all. That's why I bring back so much after all my trips, no matter what country I'm travelling from.

Koffee

There's an Italian store here that imports their coffee from Italy and it's the same that you buy over there. You definitely pay a pretty penny for it, but man is it worth it.

Are you saying you drink coffee made from unroasted beans? Or are you roasting them yourself before drinking?

Tastes like absolute crap to me, too. Even the tea is awful, thanks to the wonderful north american practice of giving you a cup of hot water and a tea bag. You're never going to get good flavour out of the tea that way.

I usually just find good beans from a good shop and buy in small quantities to make coffee at home.

Awe, She loves Kirke. :love: I'm guessing you're worth waiting for. Nice.

Starbucks burnt roast must be made so that after you add a cup of whipped cream and god knows what other kind of syrup etc they put in to turn an espresso into a $5 designer drink, you can somehow taste some form of coffee through all the other crap that's in there.

Burnt sludge must have passed the focus group's taste test on that score.

I can honestly say that I have never had an espresso shot in any shop boutique or not that anywhere equals what I can pull at home with the right beans and roast.

Rancilio Sylvia/Rocky are the least expensive home maker/grinder that can achieve that over the long haul.

Now all they need is to come out with a carbon fibre line.

amateurs, rank amateurs.
been seriously addicted to coffee since the 60's.
For a real buzz get cuban coffee.
Starbucks is overroasted, bitter and overblown. Yah they started the
whole coffeebar thing here in the states and I thank them for that.
The secret is to get a good grinder, the coffee maker is less important.
You want a burr grinder, slow speed so it doesn't burn the coffeebean
as it grinds, and keeps the static down.
Buy fresh roasted beans, Whole Foods roasts daily and keeps
the beans for about a week.
For an espresso machine I'm thinking of a Gaggia,
although I have a Mochka pot (stovetop) that
makes excellent coffee, no crema tho.

the key is the grind, a good grinder will
get you closer to coffee nirvana than
an expensive machine (saeco).

Marty

While the choice of beans and method of preparation is important, so too is how the black gold is conveyed on your bike. See http://bicyclecoffeesystems.com/

I don't roast my beans. I get my beans when I travel and grind them as I drink, and I'm good to go. I just don't like those roasted beans.

Koffee

Yikes.

I tasted a drink made from unroasted green coffee beans a few years back, when I was talking with the master roaster at a small coffee supplier back home in Brisbane (Merlo). The drink was unpleasantly acidic and kinda grassy, more like tea than coffee. Don't know how anyone could drink that stuff and enjoy it. I think it's chlorogenic acid... robusta beans are higher in this, which is why some people get an upset stomach from drinking cheap coffee.

It's my understanding that the roasting process helps transform the unpleasant acids into more palatable acids. Keep the roast light and you'll get more of the origin flavour; roast it dark and the acidity breaks down further making it better for espresso use. Using too light a roast for espresso can give a very acidic drink which isn't all that pleasant. I tasted a heap of different roasts at this coffee place to find the one I liked (all short blacks... I was buzzing!!!), and for espresso the darker roasts were certainly more pleasant to drink.

Maybe roasted isn't the process then... maybe it's pressed? I was under the impression that the beans here are treated differently than the way they're treated in other parts of the world. I've seen the difference and I've tasted it. There is definitely more "oil"(???) in the overseas beans, and you don't even need to add cream most of the time. I also think they're a bit more acidic tasting in the US than other countries.

Maybe I should send you a coffee sample so you can taste the difference for yourself. Every person I've ever given coffee to tastes a difference and likes the smoother, more full bodied taste of the beans that come from other countries.

Koffee

A lot of American coffee tastes bad because they use bad beans. This is a very price sensitive market, where so many people or companies will buy what's cheaper rather than what's better - Starbucks is a great example! But where's their competition to force them to offer a better product? Many consumers also buy the pre-ground coffee, which is even more likely to contain cheap robusta beans or unaged beans that are highly acidic. This is also one of the few countries where flavoured coffees are popular. As I'm sure you've found in Europe, the menu usually just consists of short black, long black, late, cappuccino, macchiato, flat white, ristretto etc... no huge range of flavours, and quality over quantity. The largest coffees I used to get back home were smaller serves than than the smallest offering and Starbucks.

My experiences in Europe and Australia are that barristas are very proud of the coffee the serve, so they buy the coffee that tastes better even if it's more expensive. The consumers expect this, too. Being a barrista is often more of a career, rather than something you do for money while you're studying.

Ok, let's just say that even the columbian stuff and the stuff from Starbucks (for instance) is bad too. So either they're sending over the bottom of the barrel or the treatment process used here takes something away from the beans to change the taste.

Even when I get coffee from a supermarket in Europe, I still get better beans. It's not just the barristas and stuff. If it's coffee beans, it's a great tasting stuff, unless it's that instant crap. All instant coffee is terrible.

Koffee

As far as Starbacks goes, Espresso served in a paper cup is just wrong.