Do I Sell Flavored Creamers?

I was asked this while talking with someone about doing a coffee demonstration for them.  While I was not offended nor insulted I just told the client honestly, "If you are going to add flavoring to my coffee, you might as well save yourself some money and buy something inexpensive at the grocery store."


When I say this, I am not trying to be catty or snobbish but the reality is that the coffee that I sell is not cheap and if someone is just going to put flavoring in it anyway they can save themselves a few bucks and add the flavor to cheaper coffee -   The result would be the same.


The point of Anchor Bay Roast is to help people to experience the coffee that they drink - not the flavors that they add.  Coffee, especially freshly-roasted unadulterated single-origin coffee, has a wonderful flavor and many wonderful characteristics to experience in it.  Tasting coffee (properly called cupping) is akin to wine tasting in my world.  Each cup is to be recognized as a unique experience but helping people to experience their coffee is impossible if they put additives in the coffee that I prepare and serve to them.


Lots of people do not really believe me when I tell them this but good coffee does not need creamer, sugar, and or other flavors to be added because God already put all the flavor necessary in the beans that He created.  All we need is good coffee - And good coffee is often most difficult to come by.

A Conspiracy Theory About Coffee

Today I dumped out the last of the Harar Horse (just too floral - needs to be in a blend) and I opened a pound of Starbucks' Zambia Kasama. The roast was slightly oiled, roasted Full-City, and it smelled good. I grounded it between fine and coarse and brewed a pot. What struck me was that it tasted like a Starbucks' coffee does.

Now I have been roasting my own beans for a few months now and I cannot seem to get this level of consistency in my own roasts. I fully understand that Starbucks' roasts with large industrial roasters (with all the computer aids they afford) but when the Kasama possesses the flavor of all the other Starbucks' coffees I automatically become suspicious. I cannot help but wonder if the large coffee companies, like Starbucks', Tim Horten's, Java General, and the many others, use a special flavoring to make the coffees that they serve all taste the same?

I used to think that the larger roasters just over roasted coffee beans in order to get consistency of flavor but the fact is that not all beans taste the same - no matter how they are roasted. I have often wondered if they just had a special blend that made their flavor consistent, but since my Starbucks' Kasama tastes the same as all the rest I cannot call say that it is the blending that makes it consistent. No, it has to be something else and my suspicion is that they add flavoring to their coffee to make it taste a certain way.

I know that this idea is a bit conspiratorial of me but what am I to think? Now that I know how to roast coffee and that each coffee bean actually possesses its own unique attributes, I wonder all the more about the consistent flavoring of the large roasting companies.

Converting The World To Coffee - One Doubter at a Time

So I had a meeting yesterday and I took my thermos filled with a freshly brewed pot of Mysore Nugget. Usually all that is in the office is a pot of some poorly made 8 O'Clock coffee brewed with regular tap water. My friends know that I am a bit of an enthusiast when it comes to coffee (that's a polite way of saying snob) and when I offered one guy a cup of my brew he asked if he was allowed to put flavored cream in it. My brain screamed "ARE YOU OUT OF YOU MIND?" but I graciously told him he could put anything that he wanted in it.

Well I poured him a cup and much to his credit he at least sampled it before putting anything in it. I was surprised when he stopped me in mid sentence with a "Wow, this is good coffee!" exclamation.

I don't think he added the flavoring.