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[QUOTE=Bruce Dickey] Ron, does the Arabica Folgers have a roast meter on the label? I don't really want to order online. I have looked into that in the past but didn't.

I do want some decent tasting coffee though.

Waddy, I like the thought of "a gentle cup of coffee".

Coffee shouldn't come with a roll of Tums if you asked me, ay?[/QUOTE]


No roast meter, Bruce, but it is gluten free! This Arabica isn't Folgers, it is Sam's store brand: "Maker's Mark".

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

I used to have an espresso machine but gave it to my son. I really like a cup every once in a while, but it makes me so jittery it's unreal. I actually don't drink a lot of coffee, just one oversized cup in the morning, then I drink decaf tea all day. I'm a tea lover.

Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

Bruce, when I was in Fayetteville I always bought Hills Bros coffee at Harps. Of course I was a poor student and usually shopped by price. You might give it a try.

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Don Atwood
Arlington, VA

Thanks guys. I just drank three huge cups of coffee with my dinner and am ready to go spray some Nitro. I may not sleep tonight but at least I'll get in some great shop time.

Don we have a Harp's here I'll wheel in next time I'm by there and check it out. I have see the Hill Bros. Brand before.

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Bruce, maybe you should throw away your trusty old Mr. Coffee and get a new one. It's possible it has become infected with fungoo of some kind, or has built up layers of bad-tasting mineral deposits. Cleaning it won't really cut the crud.

Good coffee taste good whether it's strong or weak. Bad coffee tastes bad no matter how much you dilute it with water or other things.

I prefer "cowboy" coffee just a lttle hotter and about the same viscosity as HHG, however, as an old married guy I've learned to compromise.

The cheapest Mr. Coffee from Walmart gives me great coffee using the following method:

1.) Fill Mr. Coffee's water tank to the 10-cup level using room-temperature distilled water. (If you want consistent flavor, use distilled, not "purified" or "spring" water, which are often the same thing with a different label affixed.)

2.) Measure four slightly rounded Mr. Coffee scoops of whole coffee beans into a real coffee mill. (The kind that crushes the beans between two wheels, as opposed to the kind with the two spinning blades. Believe me, it makes a huge difference.) I like a high extraction rate, so I set the wheels to a setting somewhere between regular grind and espresso. I'm currently using Millhouse 100% Columbian coffee beans from Sam's Club for my daily grind, but any good whole bean will do.

Keep your beans in the dark and tightly sealed. I found that freezing or refrigerating them stabilizes the flavor, but you lose quite a bit of flavor in the process.

3.) Once I've brewed the coffee I pour my first cup and transfer the rest of the coffee into a pre-heated thermal carafe. I originally started doing this to save electricity, but I soon discovered that it keeps the coffee much better. The problem with keeping it on the warming plate is that the aromatic oils that give coffee its great flavor quickly evaporate. Even worse, some other components in the coffee quickly break down into foul tasting acids.

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D..

Thanks Dennis,

My previous Mr. coffee lasted close to fifteen years. It was my first maker with a digital clock to fire it off in the mornings minutes before I got up.

When it died, we bought another but a different design. Had to take it back because it was so tall, you had to pull it out from under the upper cabinet to fill it with water.

So, we got a Mr. coffee knock-off by Black and Decker. The lid is short enough to open and still be under 16 and 1/4 inches. ONe of my pet peeves is my wife always leaving the lid up. I can just imagine a moth floating in the water all night..... so I continue to close it all the time, when I see it up.

Well, tomorrow morning I'm firing up my second pot of Louisiana coffee made in Baton Rouge by Community Coffee. This time I make 8 cups with two rounded scoops, to make it richer.

I was pleased to find this coffee this afternoon. I may even try their Medium Roast, seems they sell a ton more of it. 23 responses vs. 6 responses on their website feedback for the light/med. roast.

A pound of coffee costs more than a gallon of gas around here.

Okay, time for bed, see you all about 6 a.m. with a cup of Community Java Arabica Light Medium Roast. The label says delicate and refreshing, I have to agree.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Here's yet another alternative, roast your own!
You can get the green beans here,

http://www.sweetmarias.com

There's nothing quite as assaulting on your nose as roasting coffee in the shop, cutting spanish cedar and bending rosewood all at the same time!

Actually the coffee really does come out great. I make mine in a french press and that alone will make a big difference if you like a full flavored robust cup of joe.

It's kind of fun and even saves a buck or two. You actually can taste the difference.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

Jim this sounds delightful. I looked their site over. They really know their stuff it appears.

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French Schmench. 'Real' coffee is an espresso, clearly. All that watery filtered stuff isn't worth drinking.

(yes, I'm a touch biased. And I'll concede French Press is a close second to a proper espresso or ristretto, preferably using a proper machine, but a cafetiere type screw bottom thing is good fun too.)

For any Coffe and Science Fiction lovers, Charles Stross's short story 'Extracts from the Club Diary' is well worth a read. A moral tale about the dangers of coffee snobbery. Or possibly just a crazy scotsman having far too much fun. Free and legal link to the author's own website:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/coffee.html

Bruce when I said clean the coffee maker with white vinegar, I wasn't refering to the pot or the filter basket, Iwas refering to the unit. If you fill up the pot with vinegar and dump it into the unit, and cycle it through as if it were water, the vinegar will clean the inside of the coffee maker where the "crud" as Dennis calls it has built up. Most people only clean the pot and the basket, but don't realize that the inside of the machine gets gunked up from mineral deposits and such in the water. White vinegar cleans it all out. You may have to run it through a couple times, but it works.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Bruce, I like the coffee at Dunkin Doughnuts, if you don't have one in your town you can order it online.

Thanks guys. This is my third morning with Light/Medium Roast Community Coffee from Baton Rouge.

I haven't yet tried the vinegar thing on my pot innards. I'm relic-ing out a couple of Fender Bass necks and someone recommended vinegar on the tuners, so hey, maybe I can clean the pot and tarnish the tuners at the same time by placing them in the coffee pot! Simultaneous effort.

I'd love to try all the online coffees available, but the point was good coffee from a local store.

I think the biggest problem was that the majority of coffees now are produced with some dark roast as part of the blend and I'm picking up on that.

I detest the taste that comes from dark roast beans, why drink it if it's not enjoyable. Down the drain it goes, every time.

I may try the community brand medium roast and someone mentioned Hill Bros from Harps grocery, we have one of those in town. Community is $4.99 a pound here.

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Dark roast is designed for an espresso, IMO, and sort of calls for a tiny bit of sweetening. It's also only good if it's a really good dark roast; bitter, but rich and complex if flavour.

Start with a good earth-friendly bean (organic, shade-grown, and fair trade certified). Dump the mass market Folger's etc.
Grind your own beans just before you make a cup.
Use a french press and forget all the fancy, shmancy gear that you can buy.
Next to a Venezuelan corto (which I consider the ultimate in coffee) that you can buy for 30 cents almost anywhere in Venezuela, this is how I come close.

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A higher purpose for wood.
Rich Smith
Issaquah, WA

[QUOTE=Ricardo] Start with a good earth-friendly bean (organic, shade-grown, and fair trade certified). Dump the mass market Folger's etc. ...... <snip>
[/QUOTE]
Good to see fair trade recommended here. The land and indigenous people near Chiapas, Mexico and into Guatemala have suffered terribly at the hands of some of the large coffee growers.

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Bruce,
My wife and I have been using the Bold Roast coffee from Krispy Kream Doughnuts. It's not a strong harsh coffee but to me has a nice coffee flavor. I don't know if it is available in your area, but we get it at some of our local markets or the doughnut shop when we are in Chattanooga.

Y'know, I was just thinkin, and remembered that Bruegger's uses Green Mountain Coffee's stuff.  Most of their coffees are Organic Fair Market Blends of various coffees.  I drink a lot of it.  I have one of the "Bottomless Cups" and I buy a new one each year.  Free Refills for a year for about $100.00, but I digress.  Their decaf is as better than any I have ever had.  Point is, you can order Green Mountain Coffee Here.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

  I guess $100, sort of, rules out free refills, so unlimited refills for that price.  I go twice a day - every day I'm at work, so probably about 400 cups a year.  What's that $0.25 / cup?  Not too bad.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Not sure where you are in the country but if there is one local hit up The Daily Grind. The Grind has become a franchise throughout the country but started 15 minutes from my house in Winchester VA. I think there are now 5 locations in Winchester and 2 in Front Royal. I had no idea that they had expanded until I saw one at an airport in Chicago. They have a couple in Los Angeles and now are starting several across the country (Several in Texas). Awesome coffee. I buy from there daily (no pun intended) and also purchase beans from them for use at home (they grind em for me). Starbucks, no thanks.

PS I dig the Costa Rican!!

Kahle, Hey, I know that place. My GGGrandfather took a lead ball the first day of the Second Battle of Winchester Virginia. His name was George Washington Adams. He died three weeks later, the day Gettysburg began. His troops were wiped out there, a force of 9,000 men, half were lost or captured. They retreated to Harper's Ferry and regrouped. Oh, coffee, this is about coffee. Yeah, I bet they had some....   

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They did, but I bet it wasn't very good. My wife's GGGrandfather was killed at Sharpsburg, and from the letters he wrote home, there weren't many amenities.  The letters ( 9, I think) were discovered in Georgia, with a collector, and bought by the Old Darlington District Chapter of the SC Genealogical Society.  It was an interesting set of letters, including one written by his Brother in Law, who saw him fall, and got him to the field hospital at the end of the day. We don't know if he died from the wound or the treatment, which, I guess, was not unusual.  He also buried him, and left directions to his grave. We tried to find the location, but later found out that he had been relocated to the Confederate Cem in Hagerstown.  This was, apparently, a move by the Governor of a split state to smooth "ruffled feathers" at the end of the War.

Oh, this was about coffee, wasn't it?

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Bruce, was he buried up here? This place is loaded with Civil War soldiers. This place was a hotbed of activity during the Civil War. When I was a kid and my dad built the addition on the 175 year old house that he had purchased (rumored to have been a confederate hideout) we found a pile of old minnie balls while digging the foundation. Mosby and his men were executed downtown here in Front Royal.

Kahle, I never figured out where he was buried. I went through Winchester in 91. Never thought about Civil War burial grounds. Hmmmm. I bet libraries in the area would be chock full of names in cemeteries.

As I said, his name was George Washington Adams. His son Orlington is buried in Warsaw, Indiana and I've been there. He had a twin named Orlando. So, George went off to war and momma got to raise these Adams boys by herself.

I love history and couldn't get enough of Ken Burns documentary, probably watched all nine hours at least three or four times each. Brutal war. And back then, dying was hard.

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There is a book of the Civil War Dead.  I saw it at Sharpsburg.  The Park Ranger had it.  It was how we found where my wife's GGGF was buried after his body was moved from the Sharpsburg area.  It is indexed by name, and gives the cemetery if interment.  

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars