Insomniac With Coffee Addiction

Wow! Here's quite a piece written by an insomniac with an addiction to coffee. Is it the caffeine that makes him such a good writer! He speaks of giving up coffee to see if that was the cause of his insomnia, but he doesn't actually say if he made a link to it or not. All we do know is that without coffee, he suffers heart palpitations. But nonetheless, it's sort of horrifyiing to hear he describe his insomnia. Knock on wood, but I have trouble staying awake. My problem is not insomnia, but sleep deprivation from working a regular job, coming home and reading, reading, reading before dinner, then a quick dinner before I hit the computer. Tonight's a perfect example: at 9pm I was falling asleep at my computer and thinking I would go to bed, but the compulsion to do some stuff on my online art gallery website has me still slugging it out at 11:05pm. I'll be up as usual at 5:45am with not nearly enough sleep. So far, so good for me: an espresso right before going to bed acts as a good nightcap. But tonight, I dare not tempt fate having said that. I'm tired and need some sleep!

Does coffee keep you awake? Add a post and let us know.

Coffee Lore for mountain Bikers

The latest edition of Dirt Rag {Print Rag} (an online mountain biking forum) contains homespun wisdom and down-to-earth tips for the mountain-biking caffeine addict! From making chocolate espresso beans to how to brew a gritty cup of coffee over the camp fire, this edition has all the dirt, including the following:

"The coffee is finished. The voices are distanced again. This time there is no innocent ecstasy, no blissful slumber. But the caffeine high serves as an effective substitute. Previous urges return. Ah yes, today's difference, today's special purpose. A brief conversation with the other voices would surely shed some light on this troublesome conundrum, but I suspect that it will not be required. There is an ancient legend that Mohammed was given coffee by the angel Gabriel. The coffee supposedly gave Mohammed the strength to unseat forty horsemen and make love to forty women".

The above quote reminds me of a segment I heard on NPR this morning about Iraqis being killed by "religious assassins" for things such as failing to diaper their goats so that their genitals are not visible, and for arranging fruit in a sexually suggestive fashion. While it has nothing to do with coffee, the quote above about Mohammed making love to 40 women makes me wonder how it got from celebrating the sexual prosess of Mohammed to religious police and Taliban imposing a version of Sharia law that kills goat farmers and vegetable sellers going about their ordinary business. Listen here to the NPR segment: Iraq Still Manages to Shock - Windows Media Player (Real Player link)

Starbucks = Quantity over Quality

Or so says Sarah Gilbert in this piece at bloggingstocks.com. Writing on Starbucks sales figures for June 2006, Gilbert writes: "It's a long-subscribed-to axiom that you can't have both quality and quantity. And in my opinion, Starbucks' quantity has finally increased to the point that its quality is problematic" and also tells of one Starbucks barista who quit to open their own store when Starbucks moved from mechanical espresso machines to fully-automatic machines. So I'm not the only one who thinks that Starbucks just ain't that great as I wrote in my post about the "Coffee Industrial Complex".

The Coffee Industrial Complex

Time for a rant. I was driving down 7th St. in Long Beach last night and noticed that two independent coffee shops are now Starbucks stores. The area is not my local neighborhood, so I don’t know when ownership changed. Congratulations to Starbucks on two more stores, and congratulations to the previous owners who I presumed got a good price to give up their leases. My sympathies to the locals because in my opinion Starbucks just ain’t that great! If you feel ready to rise up and defend Starbucks, I can understand it. My guess is that most Americans just don’t know any better coffee than Starbucks. Starbucks is the best in their experience simply because most Americans just haven’t had the experience of the superior espresso coffee that you can find in some other countries, or the excellent espresso made at a few independent coffee shops within the U.S.

Of my almost 50 years, I have lived the most-recent 10 of them in the United States, before that I had 4 years in Japan, and the rest in my country of birth, New Zealand. When I was growing up in New Zealand, there wasn’t the sophisticated “café” culture that exists there now. At home it was instant coffee; going out it was filtered coffee. The first coffee shops in New Zealand had been started by the many Dutch immigrants who moved to New Zealand after the Second World War. It was drip filter coffee; a long way to go yet. But the propensity of young New Zealanders to get off the rock and travel and work internationally, a phenomenon known affectionately as “OE” for “overseas experience”, introduced New Zealanders to European coffee standards which they brought back to New Zealand and so the café scene got going. Today thousands upon thousands of cafes in New Zealand serve superbly made espresso coffee drinks as a complement to food and wine not just in the urban centers, but right out to the cow towns as well, not least of them MacFarlane’s Caffe where I once worked. Many cafes have food menus offering light meals made on the premises, wine and beer lists, and waiters/waitresses to serve you.

The United States, meanwhile, has fallen victim to the industrialization and “corporatization” of food and beverage delivery. It was Dwight D. Eisenhower who coined the phrase “Military-Industrial Complex” in a 1961 speech. I don’t know if there’s been a similar phrase coined yet for what has been happening in the food and beverage industry for many years now, but if there hasn’t, I’m about to do it. Call it any of the following: “Food Industrial Complex”, “Beverage Industrial Complex”, or “Coffee Industrial Complex”, but it’s all one and the same thing: large corporations have decided they can make the most money by taking out local independent providers, offering us branded food that is generic from coast to coast. To achieve the greatest economies of scale they need repeatable menus, repeatable training guides, and repeatable floor plans and layouts captured under the umbrella of a brand. Sure Americans must love it because you can see the success of it reflected in the profits of the industrial giants such as Starbucks, but it’s a Faustian bargain; we trade away our feelings of insecurity and the risk of a bad experience by going to a coffee shop or restaurant that’s branded, but in return end up with generic mediocrity.

Footnote: Here are a couple of links on the coffee wars in Japan. As I mentioned, I lived there for 4 years in the early 1990s. At the time I would have given anything for a Starbucks. The best coffee on offer at the time was the “Doutor” chain, whose stores were few and far between. Here’s an article on how Starbucks is being beaten off by Doutor in Japan. And this is a link to a paper written by a student at the prestigious Japanese Sophia University that studies the Starbucks vs Doutor marketing strategies.

I can teach you the one simple step you can take to move your espresso coffee drinks up from mediocre to great!

Coffee Shops Bring Community

I saw this article about a coffee shop called The Jidder Bean in a place called Connell in an area described as Tri-Cities Mid-Columbia. Keeping up with espresso coffee news is turning into a geography lesson too! Anyhow, it's yet another story I'm seeing played out again and again across the United States and the world: people look to coffee shops to build community. I guess that's why I hear about churches having "coffee socials" after their services. An interesting pattern so far, though, is that the coffee shops that appear in these kinds of articles are owner-operated, and in this case built with a lot of community involvement. I don't see stories like this about the opening of another Starbucks, or is it that Starbucks just hasn't reached these smaller communites yet and the locals are still waiting to be rescued by the big green logo? I know that you can get the "personal" treatment from Starbucks if you frequent the same store daily. One of my workmates picks up her caramel latte every morning at her local Starbucks in Ladera Ranch, CA, and she doesn't have to tell them her order or her name: they see her, and up comes her drink. It's the kind of thing that makes you feel a sense of community and belonging. She even gets her morning fix free of charge from time to time. I'm not sure if that's Starbucks policy or just something unique to this store, but it's the kind of treatment that's bound to buy loyalty and a sense of belonging. Anyhow, I personally am not looking to Starbucks for anything, mostly because every time I drink Starbucks coffee I see the drink being made in a way that just breaks all my rules for making great espresso coffee drinks, and literally leaves a bad aftertaste in my mouth. Apart from breaking my golden rule for making great espresso drinks, I think it's the excess of scalded milk that does that in my opinion. I just hope that the local coffee shops mentioned in stories like this don't just try to become replicas of Starbucks, trying to beat them at their own game, which they won't. Rather, I hope they set out to change the way espresso coffee drinks are made in the United States. They could do no worse than to start with my golden rule to making perfect espresso.

New business serves coffee in the hospital. How about that! Promise me if I ever end up in hospital that you'll put espresso in my IV drip, alright!

Recommended reading: How to make all sorts of espresso coffee based drinks for your IV drip.

Coffee: One of life’s simple pleasures

Here's a "sweet" story of one woman's passion for coffee and how it has not only lead her on a journey of discovery around the world, but has brought her many gifts which she has shared with her friends and colleagues. See how coffee makes the world a better place!


Recommended Reading: Get ready to work on your coffee passion and grow your circle of friends by getting an espresso machine for your home. Here's my recommendation for a great, resonably-priced espresso machine for your home.