Hi Friends,
First, just a quick note that I will be doing a reading (my first since the pandemic!) for the Utah Book Festival tomorrow, Saturday September 10th at 6 PM (MST/ 5 PM PST), in good ole’ Salt Lake City (Weller Book Works specifically). Unfortunately, there will be no official live streaming but I’m going to try and stream it live on my Instagram @levijustinrogers
Now, onto the main event!
The Best (And Worst) Places to Consume Drip Coffee
Drip Coffee. It’s our default coffee brew method of choice here in the U.S., so American that anywhere else you go and ask for “drip” you’ll be met by odd stares and glances. If you want to order drip coffee anywhere else in the world you better learn the term “filter coffee,” real quick. The Australians have their flat whites and the Italians have their cappuccinos, the French their “press,” but here in the U.S. we like our brewed coffee of the drip variety. There’s a reason for this and it mostly has to due with the fact that until Starbucks, espresso culture was not as prolific as it was across the Atlantic in Europe. Other parts of the world also tended to use more “traditional” methods such as Moka Pots, percolators, Ibriks, or other brew methods that don’t require electricity and only hot water. The rise of home “Mr.” coffee makers in the U.S. sealed the deal. But not all drip coffee is the same. There are varying levels to the quality, consistency, and taste of the coffee from your home coffee maker to the drip you get at airlines, hotels, gas stations, chains, and specialty coffee shops. I thought a lot about this on a recent road trip we went on. A good cup of drip is hard to find on the road. So what is the best alternative? Which is the worst? And why?
I’ve worked in the coffee industry for over 12 years so while this piece is definitely subjective, it does come from a place of expertise. I started as a lowly barista and worked my way up to a roaster, owner, and eventually a green coffee quality control coordinator. Now while I have a discerning palate when it comes to my coffee, I’m also not so pretentious that I won’t try any and all coffee at my disposal (also, I’m addicted to caffeine!)
So, how did I compile this list beyond my general taste preferences. Well, there’s actually a “Gold Cup” standard for brewed coffee from the Specialty Coffee Association that includes the following standards I’ll include at the bottom.
Don’t worry about all that—unless you want to—but the main criteria I’m looking for in a good drip coffee are basically pretty simple:
1. A Consistent Brew Method/Machine (temperature and time mainly, not too hot or cold.)
2. Freshly roasted coffee (within a week or two up to a month).
3. Fresh Water
4. Beans are Freshly Ground Before Brewing (ideally on a burr grinder).
5. Equipment is Clean and Properly Maintained
6. Coffee is brewed fresh every couple hours.
The Absolute Worst
7. Airlines
By far, the worst place to consume coffee. I used to coffee on the airplane until very recently. I was not above drinking any type of coffee, especially when it was early in the morning and I was tired and just lusting over that black gold. Airplane coffee never tasted quite right though—acidic, stale—but I would drink it anyways mostly because it was free. Then I found out how truly disgusting everything about the airline coffee brewing process is. First, the water is truly filthy, one study even found that the tap water on 12% of commercial airplanes contains bacteria from feces. Plus the coffee makers are never cleaned. It doesn’t matter how good or fresh the coffee is going into the machines, you’re never going to get a good taste of coffee with dirty water and unclean machines.
6. Hotels
Not all of hotel coffee is bad. It depends on the hotel of course. But in general, the little pre-weighed bags of stale coffee in your room are anything but good. They’ll do the trick of course, but you know while drinking it that you’re definitely going to have to make another coffee stop before you go anywhere else. The coffee in the lobby/brunch can be slightly better (fresher in my opinion) but it’s hotter and stronger and tastes only marginally better. I’ve never seen a grinder in a hotel, in either your room or the breakfast lobby, and so you can also be sure that the coffee was ground long ago.
5. Gas Stations/Fast Food/Diners
Honestly, gas station coffee is not bad. it could be Folgers, it could be something else, but it’s generally brewed fairly fresh and uses batch brewers that are hard to screw up. Who knows how old the coffee is though…Diner coffee can be better (depending on the diner) but the coffee is still generally not the freshest. Fast food coffee is what it is—fast food coffee. The main tick on all these is the lack of freshly roasted beans, lack of fresh grinding, and sometimes subpar equipment.
4. Chains- Starbucks, Peets, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Dunkin, etc.
The chains have two things going for them: They roast frequently and still grind fresh. It’s also going to be consistent. So there’s that. And if you’re getting your daily coffee from one of these chains, you’re also probably putting sugar and cream in it and so it’s going to be pretty much perfect for what you’re looking for. My only downvote on these chains is that the coffee itself is almost always dark and oily and has a particular burnt taste (especially at Starbucks) that millions of people have been convinced/hoodwinked is the true “strong” taste of coffee.
3. Your Local Coffee Shop/Bakery
Not the best necessarily (unless you live next to a top-tier specialty shop) but it’s not the worst either. Brewed fresh and with more care than the average fast food/chain coffee shop (unless of course your local coffee shop is run by stoned teenagers who never got good training in which case your local shop reverts to position 5), your local shop is most likely getting beans from a localish roaster that is fresher than the grocery store, they’re grinding before brewing (even if it’s not a super cool burr grinder), brewing fresh batches, and using semi-decent batch brew equipment. They might not be doing all of this but they’re doing most of it and they care more about your business than the chains so go support them! Consistency is often one thing local shops lack compared to the chains.
2. Home Coffee Makers
Home coffee makers straddle line between specialty coffee shop quality brew consistency and marginally better diner coffee. This is for the simple reason that there are a large range of home coffee brewers! From the old Mr. Coffee makers you can find at Goodwill, to a single pod coffee maker, to a $300 Technivorm or Bonavita that will outmatch almost any pour-over. So your home coffee could be as excellent as something from a top-tier specialty coffee shop, something as bland as a disposable pod, or as mediocre as gas station/diner coffee. Probably somewhere in between. Also, the coffee you’re putting into the brewer and whether or not you’re grinding fresh and using a burr grinder is going to make a big difference. This is one reason why single use pods don’t do it for me. The coffee is old and already ground and, in case you didn’t know, costs a whole hell of a lot more. But that convenience is nice, huh baby?
1. Specialty Coffee Shop
The gold standard if you will. Any specialty shop will use a high-end batch brewer (Curtis, Fetco, Bunn, etc.) the quality of which can pretty much mimic any pour over these days. If the shop does pour overs, even better (although with pour over there is more room for human error, the main advantage is to brew high end coffees in small amounts). In some ways, batch brew is even more forgiving as you’re brewing more of it and any inconsistencies are balanced out in the final product. These specialty shops are also cleaning and purocafing the machine daily—maybe even twice a day—and using beans that are ground fresh or within a week or two of roasting. They’re using highly filtered water and they’re also using burr grinder that cost as much as the coffee brewers themselves! Doesn’t get much better than that!
Anyways, that’s my comprehensive list. Anything I miss? What’s your favorite method of drip? Or are you an espresso or moka pot person?
P.S.
Now, that I am around coffee less, i.e., don’t do it for a living and have it on demand at a moment’s notice, I’ve found I now enjoy some caffeinated kombuchas and teas and clean energy drinks like yerba matte more in the afternoon.
Gold Cup Standard:
Measurable Elements:
· Water: valid when brewing water meets SCAA water quality standard
• Ratio of Coffee-to-Water (55 g/L ± 10%)
• Grind/particle size distribution: matches the time of coffee-to water contact
Equipment/brewing device:
• Time of Coffee-to-water Contact: 1-4 minutes Fine, 4-6 minutes Drip, 6-8 minutes Coarse • Temperature: 200°F ± 5° (93.0°C ± 3°)
• Turbulence (mixing action of water flowing through & around the coffee particles to achieve a uniform extraction of soluble material)
• Filter media (least affect to brew flavor, body, time of contact & sediment less than 75 milligrams per 100 milliliters).