Turkish Coffee

Ahhhh... For Christmas morning I was planning on a big plate of Jesus' birthday cake and ice cream but after my daughter tossed her cookies everything went a different direction. So while my whole family is sick or just plain not feeling well and camped out in front of the tele, I was allowed to make some Turkish coffee.

So I searched the internet to learn how to make it and then I spent 20 minutes searching the house for my Cezve. A no-go on the Cezve so I made it in my small sauce pot. While Turkish coffee snobs aschew the use of a sauce pot I did not figure that it would matter much but I think I was mistaken.

I ground the beans very finely and I added 1 heaping teaspoon of the grounds to 12oz. of cold water in the sauce pan then I set the brew to heat slowly until it boiled. I let it boil for a minute or so and then I poured some of the coffee into a cup - which I let sit for a minute or two allowing for the grounds to settle.

The reason that I suspect that I really did need a Cezve for the coffee is because my brew never developed the expected foam on top of the coffee. Would this have changed the flavor? I don't know but I suspect that the body and the mouth feel would have been different. I will have to find the Cezve and let you know.

The coffee that I did end up with was actually pretty good. It had no discernible attributes to speak of but it did have a full bodied mouth feel and a genuine standard coffee flavor. I used some Starbuck's Zambia Kasama for this and I was surprised that the Starbuck's flavoring seemed to vanish leaving just a plain coffee taste.

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.