Food for Thought with Alex Bielak - A Coffee Drinker’s Dilemma

A Coffee Drinker’s Dilemma (Part 1)

Like many, I love a great cup of coffee in the morning. Most of my life my preference has been for espresso, and latterly decaf espresso. I love it so much, my graduation present to myself 30-years ago was a heavy-duty manual Gaggia machine to replace the little stove top espresso makers still in the basement.

Once the brewing head on the Gaggia succumbed to metal failure I quickly got another, a Saeco: after a decade of regular use it became terminally clogged with lime buildup and exploded in the kitchen one morning. A noble end to a good friend.

Lesson learnt, I now regularly de-scale my current Saeco semi-automatic. Not as finicky as the manuals, it
pulls up to 14 consistent shots of espresso before needing tending, very handy for dinner parties.

For when I want a full cup of Joe, I also have a slew of other gadgets including a Melitta cone drip filter, Bodum French Press and, the latest toy, the Aeropress which makes very good coffee indeed.

To get the obvious question out of the way, yes decaf beans can be easily as good as the caffeinated variety, which I will occasionally revert to if nothing else is available. Currently I use Kicking Horse Cliffhanger decaf espresso: It is made with the (chemical-free) Swiss Water Process and is both organic and fair trade. In the past I liked the Starbucks decaf, but switched when I found the process for that blend was not Swiss Water. I also occasionally used Illy decaf coffee: in its fancy tin, it is very aromatic and flavourful, but very pricey.

I also like my Timmies when I’m on the road, and will occasionally succumb to the lure of Starbucks. I’ve said it previously (Food for Thought #23), I think the $2 “Coffee and a Car” deal at Casteleyn Chocolates in Burlington is an amazing deal, and also like the great coffee shops in Dundas and Waterdown’s cozy JitterBug Java.

I think it is fair to say we have firmly established that I am willing to go to great lengths to get my decaf fix, if that’s not an oxymoron. So why is it, at the office, I’ve defaulted to drinking tea?

The reason is, for me, making coffee would involve grinding beans etc. and then cleaning up the resultant mess: I simply don’t have the time and energy for that.

The alternative usually involves some sort of complex “coffee club” arrangement that inevitably guarantees an awful experience, if indeed the last person has left anything in the machine! The coffee is sourced from giant tins of cheap, stale, pre-ground beans, stewed in a machine stained with calcium deposits, and left to marinate on a hot plate until someone takes the resultant tar out of everyone’s misery. (Ok I exagerrate, but you get the picture.) 

My last place of work had both the aforementioned communal system, as well as a wonderful Francis Francis Y1 machine, made specifically to take Illy capsules. The taste in the latter was everything a great espresso should be, but at almost a buck a shot – not to mention the cost of the machine - they were a serious indulgence.

During a recent trip I was happy to find a Nespresso machine and pods in my room. It had replaced the horrid little facsimile of the office system common in hotels around the world. It produced far better coffee than I’ve ever had in a hotel room, and the tea produced didn’t taste like coffee. A plus for my tea-drinking wife.

I’ve returned to another workplace now and found while I was away, they acquired a Keurig machine. Everyone was loading it up with their choice of beverage, from regular Colombian to Mars Bar flavoured coffees, to a variety of teas. It seemed quick, convenient and mess-free and a great way to change it up from my endless cups of tea.

Having scrounged the odd K-Cup (as they are officially called), and overcoming my distaste at the un-ecological nature of the process, I sprang for a six-pack of Van Houtte decaf pods from a supermarket.

They produced adequate coffee, but I thought there had to be something a lot better out there. A visit to the sparkling, new location of ECS Coffee on the North Service Road in Burlington yielded a myriad of options including for both the Keurig, and its competitor in the single cup brewing system market, Tassimo.

In my next column I’ll review a baker’s dozen of coffees from various companies and sources, and we’ll see how they stack up against my long time favourites.

In the interim I’d be interested to hear which caffeine delivery system Food for Thought Readers prefer.

For more pictures, click here

Alex (Alex can be reached at fft@thehamiltonian.info ) or on twitter @AlexBielak

Food for Thought logo, designed and kindly donated by Ninka Bielak. Ninka can be reached at ninka.bielak@gmail.com.