Way down among Brazilians / Coffee beans grow by the billions / So they’ve got to find those extra cups to fill. / They’ve got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil! /
You can’t get cherry soda / Cause they’ve got to sell that quota / And the way things are I guess they never will. / They’ve got a zillion tons of coffee in Brazil! /
No tea or tomato juice / You’ll see no potato juice / The planters down in Santos all say no no no… /
The politician’s daughter / Was accused of drinking water / And was fined a great big fifty dollar bill. / They’ve got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil! /
You date a girl and find out later / She smells just like a percolator / Her perfume was made right on the grill. / Why, they could percolate the ocean in Brazil! /
And when their ham and eggs need savor / Coffee ketchup gives ’em flavor / Coffee pickles way outsell the Dill. / Why, they put coffee in the coffee in Brazil! /
So you’ll add to the local color / Serving coffee with a cruller / Dunking doesn’t take a lot of skill. / They’ve got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil!
—Frank Sinatra, “The Coffee Song”
I really like coffee. I usually have one cup in the morning, no more than two a day, and I think both the taste and smell are wonderful. That being said, I would hardly classify myself as a coffee “snob.” Although, my experience today might be moving me in that direction! Here’s my story:
This morning I was in Seattle. I spent the last two weeks in the Pacific Northwest (Vancouver, Seattle, and the beautiful woods in between Washington state and British Columbia) on a writing retreat to finish my forthcoming book. I’ve traveled to every continent in the world (except Antarctica!) but I think that the Pacific NW is still one of my favorite places to be. Certainly one of the most beautiful.
I was hanging out with my friend Terri who is a native Vancouverite but she is a recent transplant to Seattle. Since it was my last day in Seattle (I just flew back to L.A. in the afternoon) she said I had to try her favorite coffee house before I left town. Seattle, as you probably know, is king of café culture. Coffee runs through everyone’s veins (you could replace the word “Brazil” in the song above with “Seattle” if only it rhymed). I thought, “Sure—but I have already experienced some good coffee in Seattle.” After all, Starbucks is from Seattle (the original store is in Pike Place, you can visit it even today), and they opened a new one right around the corner from it at 1st & Pike—the first attempt of their new line of stores to go “green” (eco-friendly) and de-brand their name (if you go inside, it doesn’t really look like a Starbucks, nor is the logo featured prominently anywhere). I sat inside this new Starbucks a few days ago and had a great coffee made from one of their new Clover coffee machines (a unique system; only 300 of these machines exist in the world, and four of them are in Seattle). My “Clover-crafted” coffee (made from Costa Rican Tarrazu beans) was quite good, and I sat looking out the window, across the street at a cheesy neon sign of a man drinking coffee, which was the façade of a café called Seattle Coffeeworks. And, lest you think me plebeian, while in Seattle I didn’t only go to Starbucks. Terri recommended the best local coffeehouses in Seattle (which may make them the best in the world!) such as Stumptown, Caffe Vita, Espresso Vivace, and Caffe d’Arte. In the past few days, I had tried the last two (and will have to save the other two for a future trip)!
Clover coffee machine
So where does Terri take me on my last day in Seattle? Ironically, none other than Seattle Coffeeworks, with the cheesy sign that I had mocked while I was sitting in the trendy new eco-friendly de-branded Starbucks across the street. But I was game—don’t judge a book by its cover, right? We walk in there and Terri leads me to the “Slow Bar,” so named because the baristas take their time making the coffee there. She asks our barista, Brooke, for two coffees made with a Vacuum Pot. I had never heard of such a thing, and I still felt superior after having my Clover-crafted coffee a couple of days ago (I’m not being sarcastic about Clover, it actually is a pretty cool contraption and does make a good coffee!). So our barista tells us that they happen to have two, and only two, Vacuum Pots in the store. We order Ethiopian Yergacheffe beans (after all, Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee) and Brooke takes out two round glass flasks that look similar to laboratory test tubes. She fills them with water at exactly 208 degrees Fahrenheit (the best temperature at which to extract the flavor from the beans—not too hot so as to shock the grinds, but enough to get maximum flavor). Above each flask was another glass compartment which she filled with the coffee grinds. She took what looked like mini Bunsen burners and heated up the water. The water evaporated and went up to the upper flask, mixing with the grinds. Then when the fire was removed and the lower flask cooled down, the coolness of the lower flask sucked the coffee back down (hence the name Vacuum Pot). The advantage to this is that it keeps all the high notes of the coffee, it doesn’t have gritty residue, it doesn’t overcook the beans, it doesn’t make it too acidic, and it doesn’t involve paper filters which changes the taste of the coffee. Basically, you get the coffee flavor as pure as can be.
A Vacuum Pot
Meanwhile, while all this is going on, a gentleman walks in and sits right next to us. He wanted his coffee made with a Vacuum Pot too, but since there were only two in the whole store, he had to grudgingly accept a French Press. But he started explaining to us why the Vacuum Pot is the best way to make coffee. He clearly knew what he was talking about; in fact, he knew more than the baristas and a few baristas came over to talk to him! They asked him if he’s some kind of coffee expert, and it turns out he was—his name is Kevin Knox, he wrote the book Coffee Basics which is a seminal textbook on the subject, and all the baristas at Seattle Coffeeworks had been required to read his book! So he was a bit of a celebrity to them. In fact, Kevin started working for Starbucks waayyyy back when they only had twelve stores, and left them when they went public. He then took a job as the Master Roaster at Allegro Coffee (which has since been bought out by Whole Foods). He told us how much better Seattle Coffeeworks was as compared to the “green monster” across the street (aka Starbucks) which “incinerates” their beans. Well, this was quite something—here I am, sitting in one of the best coffeehouses in Seattle (the coffee capital of America), with one of the world’s coffee experts right next to me, and drinking awesome coffee made in a Vacuum Pot (according to Kevin, the best way to make coffee in the world). And all the baristas in the café were gathered around Kevin asking him questions.
What a surreal coincidence of events! Talk about getting an authentic coffee experience. Well, I can hardly call myself a coffee expert, nor do I think I deserve the title of coffee snob (although I got a “taste” of what it might feel like to be one, pun intended haha), but that was certainly a coffee “conversion experience,” if you will. I will never forget that—on my last day, indeed my last hour, in Seattle right before I headed to the airport! And to think, just a few days earlier, I had looked in derision upon that cheesy neon sign of a man drinking coffee. Little did I know that Kevin Knox and the Vacuum Pot were waiting for me to prove me wrong… 