Coffee Tasting

I don't know how many people start drinking coffee when they're 28, but you can count me among that number. I've been making up for lost time ever since. I just love a good cup of coffee... or a cheap cup of instant cappuccino from the corner gas station mixed with whatever they have in the pot sitting on the Bunn coffee-warmer. I wasn't very discriminating when it came to coffee.

Recently, though, I've been able to tell the difference between roasts and even brands of coffee, to a certain extent. I always considered Starbucks to be really good coffee, I guess mostly because it was what got me started on coffee (the first coffee I actually enjoyed). The natural next step was to start buying whole beans and grinding them fresh for the best and freshest coffee. After a few months of that, I could definitely taste a difference between our fresh stuff and, say, the huge can of ground Folgers that's been in the freezer at work for 2 or 3 years.

Well, a friend of a friend started his own roaster down in Austin, TX. Great beans. So fresh that the oils are coating the beans and even after the bag's been opened for a few weeks, the beans still look like the bag was just opened! Man, that is good coffee. Well, here, all along there's a roaster here in OKC that I didn't even know about. PrimaCafe is the name of the joint and it's putting out the best coffee I've had to date. They have a website, but it's pretty basic looking (http://www.primacafe.com/). A pound of their best is actually cheaper than Starbucks and much fresher in my experience and opinion.

Anyway, after a long day of work today, I joined a small group for a coffee-tasting at Hearthstone Assisted Living down the road a couple of miles. It was put on by two of Starbucks' coffee-masters. They brought a huge container of their "extra-bold" Arabian Mocha Sanani. It's their "most exotic and unpredictable coffee," according to their website. Not sure exactly what that means, but it doesn't necessarily sound like something you'd want to deal with first thing in the morning before you'd had your big French press of coffee.

It was actually very good. Strong as I'll get out, but good. I was glad they brought hundreds of their chocolate covered cherries to go with the tiny shot-cups of coffee. I had 2 of the tiny cups and must have put down 5 or 6 cherries with each one to help sweeten it. =)

Okay, enough on coffee. Have you seen my little brother's trail journal? He's hiking the AT (Appalachian Trail) with a 10 lb. backpack and that's it. No computer, no cell phone. He even cut the handle off of his toothbrush to make it lighter! I don't think he even considered my suggestion that he take a car battery to use for recharging a computer, GPS and cell phone. He earned his trail name a few weeks back: "Jumpstart" since he's usually up, packed and hiked down the trail a few miles before anyone else is awake. That, in stark contrast to his normal habit at home to sleep through the alarm clock from hell.

Okay, enough rambling. Time for a movie or for bed or something.