coffee

A Coffee by any Other Name

· September 21, 2018 · Musings · , , , · No Comments

If my last post was about beer, then I this one needs to be about coffee, right?  That’s more or less my daily routine. Some coffee in the morning, a beer with lunch, iced coffee in the afternoon and beer all night long. At least that’s my routine during the summer. Obviously I don’t drink beer at lunch during the school year. At those lunches, it’s only  191-proof grain alcohol.

Maybe one of these days, I’ll bust out with a wine post. But for now, it’s coffee.

I’ve written before about my newfound appreciation for quality coffee and my newfound aversion to sub-par coffee. In my twenties, I could down any sort of swill, but now I’m willing to pay a little extra for product that wasn’t grown out of a toilet and roasted in a microwave. I’ve grown up from Miller Genuine Draft, too. See? The two always go hand-in-hand.

Recently, I was duped into buying a subpar coffee. In my defense, it wasn’t Lavazza this time. Fool me once, Lavazza, shame on you. But sometime around the eighth or ninth time, I might remember that an Italian name doesn’t mean good coffee.

No, this was a new product at my local grocery store. And from afar, it looked like quality:

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I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover. But with a new coffee, I don’t really know how else to judge it. I can’t see inside the bag, so I might as well look at the bag. And usually it works. Pictures of green mountains or rugged individualists or, I don’t know, blue bottles usually signify that the company takes the coffee seriously enough to put a picture of a green mountain or a rugged individualist or a blue bottle on it. And if they have the time to google an image, well, they MUST roast only the finest beans.

The name matters too. You need something robust. Like Starbucks’ Veranda. Nothing says “robust” like sipping with one’s pinkie up on the veranda. But Veranda works because it’s a light roast. Peet’s, which I greatly prefer to Starbucks, uses names like “Big Bang,” which I assume is endorsed by Jim Parsons. And “Major Dickason’s Blend,” whoever the hell that is. But at least he was promoted all the way to major. And “Sierra Dos Yosemites,” which if you live in multi-lingual California you will know means “Sierra Two Yosemites.” Although, as far as I know, there’s only one Yosemite. Weird.

So I kinda, sorta, thought this new coffee had promise. After all, it’s named 1850. I assume that relates to the year, and there were lots of rugged individuals back then. From a California perspective, 1850 was the age of the gold rush. Grisly old dudes brewing their coffee out on the banks of mighty, untamed rivers. There’s gold in them thar hills. And that gold is in the form of coffee! Right?

I mean, I guess they could’ve been going for some other events of 1850. There was an abysmal compromise on slavery that year, which led to Bloody Kansas where a whole bunch of abolitionists and slaveholders moved to Kansas and had clashes wherein they killed each other. That’s a pretty solid historical time period, but I don’t know how that plays into coffee.

I assume the Mormons were also doing something in 1850. Maybe they needed coffee for the road as they were being kicked out of somewhere. Oh, but they don’t drink caffeine, so I don’t think it’s named after them. Maybe the 1850 coffee was lamenting the failed promise of the Louis Napoleon reign in France. Or… let me check Wikipedia… The Taiping Rebellion? The Scarlet Letter? Oh hey, cool, there was something called the Danish Stag Holocaust! Wherein, I assume, we get the nomenclature for “Stag Party,” which is European for Bachelor Party.

But no, I’m going with my original belief. The makers of 1850 are going for the Gold Rush. Hence the prospector on the front of the package.

But in retrospect, I don’t know if it’s the best idea to go the Gold Rush route. Sure, those dudes were rugged. But I doubt they were drinking stellar coffee. I imagine that in 1850, they weren’t plugging in their fancy bean grinders and pouring properly-steeped water over a brown #2 Melitta filter. I mean, the dude on the front of the bag appears to be using a percolator over a fire. Hell, it’s 2018 and I can’t seem to use a campfire percolator without the coffee being half grounds.

I imagine gold miners threw some sludge into the bottom of a carafe of water, then burned the shit out of it. And they probably used that same sludge many, many days in a row, making the coffee more and more watery. After all, if they went into town to buy fresh coffee, they might lose their claim.

Oh, and the “fresh” coffee in town might only be delivered twice a year.

So 1850 shouldn’t exactly bring up images of quality coffee. But hell, I bought it. And only partially because it was on sale. I had noticed it before it went on sale, and who knows, I might’ve bought it anyway. Because I was so blown away by the gold miner and the rustic blue coloring and, I mean, just LOOK at that font! I mean, you can’t just MAKE that font on a computer or something. There are rules about marketing! You have to go through a proper apprenticeship at Ye Olde Tyme Fonte Guilde, right?

I was so dazzled by the packaging that I didn’t read the fine print until I got home.

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Did you read that little bit under the title? The Folger Coffee Co. Hmm…

Boy, somebody ought to tell these 1850 people that, long after they were dead, there came another Folger’s Coffee Company, and they probably don’t want to be associated with the latter. Sure, it’s not a precise correlation. One has an apostrophe, after all. It is showing possession. Folger and Folger’s. Two entirely different companies.

I bought this 1850 amongst the Starbucks and the Peets and the Death Wish coffees. The part of the aisle that sports Kona blends with a whole TEN percent Kona beans. That company, the Folger’s, is NOT allowed at this end of the coffee aisle. They just throw coffee-dust shavings into a giant red plastic vat.

1850, you look like a good kid. You come in whole bean variety. You are conveniently placed in a bag that will probably be impossible to open without ripping, with a fancy little white cardboard strip for re-clasping yourself closed that will probably fall off after one use. You really gotta check yourself before you wreck yourself, associating with that shit down at the Yuban and Sanka end of the aisle.

Unless… Why, they wouldn’t, would they? They couldn’t, could they? Is Folger’s trying to move on up like the Jeffersons? Are they staking a claim a claim amongst the boutiques? Is this going to be another Killian’s or Molson, glorified Coors for double the price? Only one way to find out.

First, the beans. And yeah, Folger’s, it ain’t looking good for you. Take a look:

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What’s with the gristle? When I buy whole bean, I want whole beans. Not some whole beans mixed in with some specks and some grounds and whatever other schmeg is in there. And is it just me or are the beans roasted to different colors? Okay, maybe this is the real Folger’s, cause this is clearly just a big ol’ vat of beans that’s thrown together in a mish-mash faction.

Oh hey, as an aside, the plantation I went to in Hawaii had a “black and white” blend. Half the beans are light roasted, half are dark. So you get the flavor of the latter with the caffeine of the former, but way more complex than a medium roast. Yummy. Unfortunately, the “throw a bunch of whatever beans fell through the cistern” model employed by Folger’s ain’t being done for combination and nuance.

When I put these 1850… no, you know what? I’m going to call them by their proper name. They’re Folgers, through and through. So when I put these FOLGER’S beans through the automatic grinder in my coffee machine, the result was the exact kind of clusterfuck you’d expect. Most of the mist didn’t make it through the tunnel into the filter. To be fair, this happens over time with good coffee. A little bit more gets piled up each day until I come down one morning and get something the consistency of tea. The main difference between the Folger’s and even run-of-the-mill, replacement-level beans was the amount of time it took for the residue to accumulate. I usually have to clean the tube out once a week or so. The Folger’s clogged that shit up every other day. Even when the conduit had just been scraped clean, only about sixty percent of the grounds made it through.

If only I had known how fortunate I was to be sipping a twenty percent solution on that first day. Because when I finally put in enough beans to actually taste the flavor… blech. I asked my wife if she had a similar reaction, as she puts a fair amount of creamer in her coffee. She agreed she wasn’t a fan. It tasted simultaneously watered-down and sludgy. A bitter aftertaste followed the primary taste of bland. Creamer didn’t seem to do much good.

I tweaked it a little that night, only to find the tube had clogged. So even more watered down than usual. On day four, I went big. Clean out the conduit, put an extra scoop of beans and whatever that residual stuff is, and let’s see what we get.

“I think we need to put the 1850 aside until my mom visits,” I texted my wife from work.

“Agreed,” she responded.

Hopefully I’ve learned my lesson. A Folger’s by any other name is still a Folger’s.

Maybe I should try some of that Italian-named stuff, instead.

Cuckoo for Coconut

· July 3, 2018 · Musings · , , , , , · 3 Comments

I really like the latest food fad.

Which worries me. Because a fad is bound to fade. And I don’t want another bacon.

Remember bacon?

Bacon was once a breakfast staple. Then somebody decided to put it on a burger. And it was good. And the world said, “Wow, I hadn’t thought of that.”

But let’s face it: bacon is awesome. Fat, crunchy, and salty are the cornerstones of any healthy diet.

Sorry, did I say healthy? I meant American.

The real fad part of the bacon journey wasn’t when it took its natural spot atop hamburgers, though. That came in the early aughts, when we started bacon-wrapping everything. Some of it was great. For instance, if you cover your meatloaf with bacon, it protects the outside, and the fat renders down to keep the whole thing moist. Plus the salty and the crunchy still work.

Hell, Emeril Lagasse made an entire career out of it.

But then we went overboard. Some things aren’t meant to be wrapped or rendered in fat. Ever been able to actually eat a bacon-wrapped item on a stick? The bacon loses its structural integrity as soon as you bite into it. Unlike a corn dog, where the rest of the sheath remains intact as you eat it, once you bite into a bacon-wrapped hot dog on a stick, you’re stuck with half a slice of bacon hanging from your mouth (or falling to the ground) with the remaining “entree” being 100% hot dog.

I have yet to meet the french fry that can hold onto its bacon bit all the way to my mouth. And don’t get me started on cheesy fries.

Then we started infusing things with bacon. Of course, to “infuse” something is supposed to mean steeping it in liquid over time. But in practice, it usually just means you add a flavored syrup. With a bacon infusion, you’re losing most of what makes bacon good. The crunchy is gone. The wonderfully-marbled curve of fat, that mouthfeel of heaven, is replaced by a vague smokiness. And I don’t care how many times the Food Network repeats the lie, smokiness and fat aren’t the same taste.

So when you take a shot of bacon-infused vodka, you’re basically just gulping down some alcoholic seawater. I tried a bacon soda once, which I’m pretty sure was just a dirty dishrag strained through a sugar cube.

When Peak Bacon hit, you couldn’t swing a blood pressure monitor without hitting some bacon-flavored contraption. When someone, probably Guy Fieri, proposed bacon-wrapped, bacon-infused bacon, we should have known we’d gone too far.

Remember the chocolate-covered bacon? Yeah, nobody could admit this at the time, but it was never all that good. You never got the proper mixture of the different flavor profiles. It was usually a sweetness on the front, although not too sweet because it was usually dark chocolate, followed by a flood of salt. You never fully got the chocolate flavor, and even the bacon was just lost in the salt. Some brands have forayed back into that realm recently, when you can do it with neither fanfare nor eye-rolls, and I think some of the modern candy bars are getting closer to a proper blend of bacon and chocolate, but it usually needs to be done with bacon bits, not giant strips in the middle.

Of course, I never would have admitted to that opinion back during peak bacon. Saying anything with bacon wasn’t wonderful in 2002 was kind of like admitting to being a communist in 1952. You only did it behind closed doors with people who had sworn a blood oath. Nothing said “Unamerican Activities” more than “it’s a little too much bacon.”

And then, poof, before you knew it, bacon became blase. That bacon-wrapped everything booth at the state fair went from an hour-long line to a walk-up-and-get-it booth. I think the last time I was at the state fair, the deep-fried catfish had a longer wait than the chocolate-covered bacon. Cause deep fried never goes out of style!

All of a sudden, a restaurant that carried more than one bacon item seemed like it was trying too hard. Saying a new bacon idea sounded intriguing became the equivalent of shouting out ‘Murica. If you’re not doing it ironically, you might need an intervention.

That’s the way fads go. Put bacon on your ice cream now, and you might as well be wearing a mullet.

Over the past decade, we’ve had a few smaller food fads, but none of them have approached the bacon craze. They tend to pop up for a season or two then fizzle out. For a little while there, I thought bleu cheese/gorgonzola was poising itself for a breakout. It started popping up in more foods, starting, much like its bacon forebear, in burgers and pastas. Salads started to come with bleu cheese dressing AND bleu cheese crumbles.

But bleu cheese is too intense, too pungent, a flavor for a lot of people. It has a tendency to overpower whatever it is paired with. So does bacon, but maybe we’re learning. Whatever the reason, it never went mainstream. I don’t envision any gorgonzola cookies in the near future. We never bleu-cheese Torani coffee flavoring. No bleu-cheese margaritas, although I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it in martinis. Bleu cheese seems to have settled into an accoutrement, slowly expanding its foothold over the past twenty years.

And I’m good with that, because I like bleu cheese and I don’t want it to go away.

A few years ago, New York Magazine predicted that the “next bacon” would be pumpkin. There are certainly some parallels. Pumpkin’s grown from its dessert roots. It went the coffee route instead of the burger route, because tying yourself to an addictive chemical seems a pretty sure bet. I’ve started seeing dinner pumpkin casserole recipes pop up in my social media feed. Last autumn, there were at least three cereals that came out with pumpkin-spice flavors.

But while I can see pumpkin extending its autumn empire more, I can’t imagine it expanding its borders to become a year-round flavor. It’s a hundred degrees where I live right now. When my armpits and crotch are setting new world records in the World Cup of Moisture,  a nutmeg and clover-flavored squash sounds about as appealing as an adult diaper. For dinner.

Which leads us to the current trend. I wrote about it a little bit in my Hawaii posts, but I love me some coconut, and the month of June seems to be prime-coconut time.

Like some of the previous fads, the flavor can come from multiple sources. Unlike bacon, the extra sources are usually still legitimately coconut. The shredded coconut has a texture that’s rare in other foods, almost crunchy and chewy at the same time. As a milk or water, it has a sweeter element to it.

And, of course, there’s the Torani flavor.

Over the past few summers, coconut seems to be venturing beyond its home base of desserts. It’s made some pretty serious inroads into the coffee and health food fiefdoms next door.

You didn’t know the dessert and health food fiefdoms are next to each other? You must not have the same culinary map as I.

So far, I’ve been loving this coconut expansion. As I mentioned when I was in Hawaii, my wife is no fan of the flavor. She was hoping to give me so much coconut in Hawaii that I would be done with it when I got home. No such luck. All she succeeded in was making me aware that these wonderful Coconut Clusters are available in Costco on the mainland, too!

And hey, I just saw them at Starbucks:

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Then there’s the whole coconut oil, coconut water thing. Coconut oil was briefly being sold as a healthier alternative to vegetable oil. Then there was backlash because it has more fat. Somehow it’s the second decade of the twenty-first century and we can’t figure out that healthy and non-fat aren’t always the same thing. As for the coconut water, I’m not particularly a fan. It doesn’t really taste like coconut, nor like water. It’s just a sweet water. Maybe it “hydrates,” but it doesn’t quench my thirst. But unlike the oil, coconut water doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Every time I’m at the grocery store, there seems to be some new flavor.

But this is where I start to get worried. Because if coconut expands too fast, or if it starts to cross over into non-coconut friendly areas of the menu, there will be a backlash. The M&Ms were fine. The coated seafood? Okay. Potato chips? I’m starting to get worried. Sure, the chips “made with coconut oil” are one thing, because they don’t taste like coconut. Trust me. But I just recently saw a bona fide “red curry coconut” flavored chip. Naturally, I bought it.

Then saw a menu that put shredded coconut on steak. And to that, even I have to say: “Dammit, coconut, you’re going too far!”

I’m sorry. I take it back. Oh, coconut, I’m going to miss you when nobody will be caught dead trying a new fusion of you.

There might be one saving grace from the future backlash: if coconut becomes the summer flavor. The first time I noticed the new incarnations was at Peet’s Coffee two summers ago. They had a coconut latte. It was delicious. They had a coconut black tie, a mixture of cold brew coffee and condensed milk that they usually do with chicory. It was also delightful. I kept going back to order them. Then one day, probably in early September, I popped in to order a coconut latte, and the barista said, “Sorry, we just switched over to pumpkin spice.”

Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be. A little bit of forewarning would’ve been nice, but whatever. I guess I’ll just wait until May to get my fix again. Shit, how far away is May?

But maybe that will keep things fresh, like the McRib of good taste. Wow, did I just write McRib, fresh, and good taste in the same sentence?

But seasonal flavors have a way of lasting past their shelf life. Pumpkin spice isn’t going anywhere. We roll our eyes at it, but the phrases Autumn and pumpkin-spice are damn-near synonymous. Just like eggnog has its hold on December, although it seems to be ceding ground to whatever the hell “gingerbread spice” is.

So maybe coconut will become the summer flavor. I don’t know what’s so summery about it, because as I said, I don’t think sweetness quenches thirst. But I’m not going to question it as long as it stays relevant.

And I’ll just ignore the fact that Peet’s now keeps the coconut black tie year round. Dammit! Don’t ruin it, guys.

In the meantime, I’m going to go put my head in the sand.

Or maybe my feet.

With a pina colada.

Hawaii, Part V

· March 23, 2018 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , , , · 2 Comments

This should be the final installment in my Hawaiian vacation travelogue. Travel-blog-logue? Hell’s yeah. You can go back to the beginning or not. Today will be a little mish-mash of my final days on the Big Island, as well as some of the minor bits that have fallen through the cracks in the previous days.

Backyard: Okay, what the hell is this?

Hawaii Confined1

This was right next to the putt-putt golf course in our back yard. I assume it houses some underground equipment for the nearby pool or faux-river or, hell, the fitness center that has more dust than Betty Ford’s muffin. You find equipment stored underground like that all the time. But as I got closer, the wording struck me as odd.

I expected something along the lines of “Authorized Personnel Only.” Maybe even a nudge-nudge “No Admittance,” although we all know that every place admits somebody, of else there wouldn’t be a door. I would’ve even been fine with a “Danger” or a “High Voltage” warning. What I was unprepared for was this:

Hawaii Confined2

Confined Space? What the fuck does that even mean? Whatever’s underneath these doors is the same size as the cover, right? Is this like a reverse-Tardis, where it’s smaller on the inside. If that Doctor Who reference wasn’t obtuse enough, my first instinct was to write “A Pylon from Land of the Lost” – this rabbit hole can get a bit scary when I’m writing more than once per week.

What dumbass made the inside smaller than the door? Is it maybe concave? An upside-down pyramid? Ooo! Ooo! Like a Pylon!

But why does this particular warning exist at all? There was no keyhole anywhere on it, nor any conspicuous levers nearby, so whoever has access to it should already know the dimensions, correct? I doubt some random guest stumbled upon a secret panel in the nearby health spa, ran over to the exact metal panel it opened, then said, “Whoa! It’s confined! Better go back to my rum punch.”

Plus, wouldn’t even this random blue-hair SEE that the space beneath the door was confined once they had magically opened the door? Making the warning, again, pointless.

Unless… Doesn’t confine also mean to trap or imprison?

Uh oh. Didn’t they film “Jurassic Park” here?

More Signs: Here’s a slightly more entertaining sign:

Hawaii Dive

I know it doesn’t look like much. Just a standard “No Diving” sign next to a standard pool. A shadow-dude in a diving position with a red circle and slash.

Except for the little artistic embellishments. The accoutrements  that add a little sense of flair. Flair in the “Office Space” sense.

I love Dude’s head crashing into the bottom of the pool. Sure, it’s always implied that that’s why you don’t dive, but rarely is it drawn in such detail. You don’t see a picture of a syphilitic penis on a pack of penicillin, after all. But here, you see Dude clearly in a lot of pain, what with the lightning bolts at his neck and the, I don’t know, is that an explosion or a blood splotch where his head is hitting the cement?

Not to criticize a guy who’s clearly in a lot of pain, but the form on his dive was pretty weak. What the hell are your arms doing, Dude? Was that really a dive or were you trying a new, upside-down doggie paddle? Not blaming the victim here, but had you dove like a normal human being, you’d probably only be suffering from a couple of broken wrists, instead of the bad case of electricity neck and mild scalping you’ve got going on.

The other thing I liked about this graphic was that this was one of the few versions that was outside the pool. Most were inside the pool, right next to the depth marker, which seems a bit too late. A wonderful, upside-down vision of what you will look like a split second from now as you whizz past into the four-foot depths.

Coconut: I’m a big coconut fan. Wife is not. She was hoping to get it out of my system while in Hawaii. She failed.

Stateside, it’s not always easy to get coconut-flavored concoctions, although it’s becoming easier, especially in Summer. But in Hawaii, it is everywhere and in everything.

Grocery store, first day, wife says” “Look, honey, coconut cookies.” Got ’em. And are those coconut chips? Okay, if I must.

Second day, Costco. Coconut Clusters. Mother-in-law says she usually goes through a bag of those by herself if she’s in Hawaii for a week. Well then, I guess it’s two bags this week. (Editor’s note: We only made it through one bag, which means the other one’s going home with Daddy!)

Day Three Breakfast: Pancakes with coconut syrup. And to think I was about to go for the kalua poak benedict. Good thing wife pointed me in the other direction, because that coconut syrup was divine. When I wake up in a cold sweat two weeks from now, trying desperately to hang on to memories of once not being stuck in a classroom with hormonal teenagers every day, that syrup will be what is coming out of my pores.

Day Four. Coconut brittle with macadamia nuts.

Final Day: Coconut Mai Tai.

And have you heard of this libation called a pina colada? If only they had coconut-covered macadamia nuts, I’d be in- whoa-hoa, what’s that I see at the airport?

The only coconut-flavored product I didn’t partake in was coconut. Because those are a pain in the ass to husk.

So sorry, Wifey. While my coconut obsession was temporarily abated, it was not cured.

Coffee: Last day in Hawaii, let’s check the culinary checklist. Macadamia Nuts: check. Coconut: check. Coffee: Oops, not yet.

So while in-laws were getting their last round of golf in, nuclear family drove up into the hills to check out a plantation. Plantation? That seems racist. Can’t call it a vineyard, but farm seems so… yokelly. Whatever. Two of the plantations seemed to get the best reviews. One required reservations and weren’t open until 10:00. The other did not and was open at 9:30. Considering in-laws’ tee time was at 7:15, we opted for the earliest/least planning required.

Not sure how the 10:00 AM one could’ve been any better. This place was awesome. Thirty-two hundred feet elevation in the “cloud forest,” which totally sounds like a Star Wars location, complete with a nature trail attached to get the little one’s wiggles out after she had to sit through the “boring coffee talk.” Of course, during the walk, she had to listen to me sing “Nature Trail to Hell (in 3D),” and might have preferred boring coffee talk by the end.

Everyone we met there was nice. When we first got there, they said the first tour would start at 10:00 and ushered us into the gift shop for some free samples “in the meantime.” Okay, don’t mind if I do. At one point, a lady from the shipping department came and refilled her travel mug from one of the carafes.

“At least you never have to worry about running out of coffee around here,” I told her.

“We never run out, but it seems like I have to brew the next batch a lot,” she responded.

No pour-overs in the break room, here.

Did I mention they had four iced teas for tasting, as well?

The tour itself was very informative. I’ve been doing winery tours since I was 21, and have done beer tours at everything from brew-your-own to all of the big three. But this was my first coffee plant. They showed us ripe, unripe, and overripe cherries (the coffee beans are inside cherries). The tour guide squeezed a ripe cherry to get the bean out, put it in water, showed us the next step called “removing the silver lining.”

We went inside the plant, which was scarcely larger than a garage, with machines that could do all of the processes he just showed us in a more continuous process. Then another machine could sort by size, and they had a newfangled computer doohickey that could even sort the beans by color(there’s a sweet spot in the color range).

Then he asked if we wanted to see the roaster room. Of course we did. He said no one’s ever said no. Even people that don’t like coffee still like the smell of it, right? They had three roasters that they called papa bear, mama bear, and baby bear. The last one was mainly for a couple pounds at a time. They sold a different tour experience where, with guidance, you could pick your own cherries, sort your own beans, and roast your own coffee to take home. Sounded great till I saw it was over two hundred bucks. Nah, I’ll take the free tour, thanks. I’ll buy the good shit you’ve got in the gift shop. The last thing I want to do is pay five times as much for whatever crappy swill I would make.

All in all, I’m glad we fit this into our final day.

And now I can go out-snooty all the hipsters I see at Philz and Blue Bottle.

Hawaiian Language: I owe French an apology.

Sort of. For the apostrophes. Hawaiian has way more apostrophes than French. But French, you’re still on notice for having a whole bunch on non-pronounced letters in your words.

Hors d’ouevres. I rest my case.

Hawaiian has no unpronounced letters. It’s about as phonetic of a language as you’re going to find. If the word is spelled out as ha’la’poluki’i, then it’s pronounced like it looks. I assume this is because Latin letters were added to a spoken language after the fact.

The Hawaiian language seems primitive. I don’t mean primitive as in uncultured. I mean “in the early stages of development.” Italian is a primitive language, in that it was the earliest language to evolve from Latin. Thus it has fewer letters than French or Spanish or English.

Hawaiian has, like, three letters. Okay, maybe a few more, but not many. As far as I can tell, the only consonants in Hawaiian are H, K, L, M, N, P, and W. And let’s be honest, H and W are bullshit letters. They could be replaced by all of those apostrophes.

So only five hard sounds are found anywhere in the language. It’s got to be hard to come up with deep concepts using only five hard sounds. Since they can’t come up with new combinations of sounds, they just add more of the same combinations to make longer words. Almost every word is a combination of smaller words. Aloha is a combination of “alo” (presence) and “ha” (breath of life). I assume mahalo (thank you) must combine two other words with “breath of life.”

But eventually, there have to be words that don’t include a breath of life, right? Or else every word does, making it pointless.

I’ve become a bit of an amateur linguist of late. What I mean by “amateur linguist” is that I listen to a podcast. Isn’t that the modern equivalent of junior college?

The podcast, Lexicon Valley, talks about how sounds are produced and how languages progress. “Mama” is the first word most babies produce because first they are just yelling “ahh,” then they close their lips and make an M sound. Hence: “Ahhh,maaaa,maaa.” The second place most babies find to stop the vowels is where the teeth will pop out. Hence “Dada” or “Tata” are variations of their second word/sound.

Except not in Hawaiian. Hawaiian has no equivalent of the T or D sound. The main sound they make with their tongue on the top of their mouth in N and, ironically, L. Think about how many languages have trouble with the letter L. Particularly a number of Asian languages, which one would think are the closest neighbors of a Polynesian language. And yet Hawaiian, with only five hard sounds, mastered L.

But at some point, the ability to communicate must be inhibited with this limited combination of sounds, right? If I have to wait till the end of the word to know what you’re saying, that would seem difficult. Wait, are you saying palalulu or palalula? And is there no mumbling in Hawaiian?

At the airport on the way out, I saw a Hawaiian word search magazine. At first I thought that must be really easy. There can’t be too many words. I mean, if three of the words you have to find are Hono, Lulu, and Honolulu, you only have to find it once, right?

But on second thought, holy crap, wouldn’t that be difficult? How do you start a word search? You find all the words with the obscure letters, right? Hey, these two letters have an x. Look for an x. And drizzle has two z’s next to each other. Should only be one place like that in the whole puzzle, right? (And the predictable bastards probably put them diagonal from each other, trying to be tricky, but that also means they’re toward the center.

What are you going to look for first in a Hawaiian word search? There are only ten letters, and I’m not sure if any of them appear more or less than any of the others. And yeah, look at the front cover of that bad boy:

Hawaii Word Search

You know what’s worse? No apostrophes.

Juan Valdez was a Hack

· December 13, 2017 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , , , · 2 Comments

I’ve been a wine snob for almost as long as I’ve been drinking alcohol.

I come by it naturally, living in Northern California. There are probably more than 200 wineries within a couple hours’ drive. In my early twenties, even most of the wineries in Napa were free or had a very small tasting fee that went toward the purchase of wine. Until five years ago, Sonoma County was almost entirely free, and even today, most of the wineries in Amador County are free. Amador is closer to my house and even if they’re ignored by the greater zeitgeist, I will put their wines in the Pepsi Challenge against Napa Valley any day of the week.

At these wineries, you can do side-by-side tastings of different varietals. Sometimes you can taste the same varietals from different years. You learn what you like and don’t like pretty quickly. Or, if not, you at least get a decent buzz.

If you pay a little extra (or join the club), you can taste the good shit. The reserves at some wineries aren’t much different than their standard swill, but at other places, there’s a marked difference. Sometimes a run-of-the-mill winery, or a mass producer that you wouldn’t expect to have anything special, like Gallo or Beringer, make some pretty decent $40 wines.

Who knows, maybe Charles Shaw even makes a Twenty Buck Chuck.

In addition to a geographical inclination toward wine snobbery, I spent a good portion of my twenties waiting tables in a nice restaurant. There I learned the difference between truly upper-end wines and the rest. Just as I will put Amador against Napa, there are a ton of excellent substitutes for the Opus Ones and Silver Oaks of the world. I can’t tell you how often I encouraged a customer who wanted something like Silver Oak to try Rodney Strong Symmetry. They loved the change and the $20 they saved was usually redirected to my tip.

But don’t ever suggest any replacement for somebody that wants Opus One. They’ll be none too happy, and it won’t help your tip. I’ve personally never tried Opus One. A lot of people will give their curious server a swig of their specialty wine. One time, when a customer brought in wine from 1974 and I told him that was the year I was born, he refused to let me leave until I had a drink. It was very smooth. Like, almost water smooth. If he had kept it in his cellar another year, it might’ve been water.

But nobody ever lets their server take a sip of Opus One. So I can only assume it tastes like shit. Bitter, sour-grapes, shit.

The biggest secret weapon in my arsenal for anybody that was undecided was Treana Red, a tiny imprint of a small winery in the totally unknown wine region (unless you’ve seen “Sideways”) of Paso Robles. You wouldn’t expect Treana to be good. It calls itself a “red blend,” which brings to mind the horrors of Carlo Rossi jugs and Franzia boxes. But to say no customer complained after I suggested it doesn’t go far enough. Every customer I ever suggested it to thanked me and wondered how such an excellent wine could be so reasonably priced and unknown.

Seriously, go find a bottle of Treana Red. You can probably order one for less than $40 if your state doesn’t suck. Tell ’em The Wombat sent ya. They won’t know what the fuck that means, but it’ll be funny.

While my destiny as cork dork was determined by location, my evolution into a beer snob took an alternate route. For the latter part of my single years, I was a Happy Hour Hound. Needing to be sober and somewhat white-eyed, not to mention ready to teach, by 7:00 in the morning, if I decided to get blotto on a particular evening, or every particular evening, it had to be before 7:00 PM. And the best, cheapest way to get to that particular nirvana is to drink whatever swill is coming out of the middle tap. Did I know about microbrews and IBUs and ABV? Sure. If I drank a beer out at dinner, it would’ve been a Fat Tire or a Sierra Nevada or a Sam Adams. If I was grabbing a six-pack on the way home, it would follow a similar pattern.

But if I was sitting at a bar trying to get drunk, then it’s “Pass the Bud Light.”

There was a point in time I could distinguish between Bud Light, Miller Lite, and Coors Light. I was doing a “blind taste test” put on by the Miller Lite girls at a baseball game. I knew which was which right away, so I picked their brand to get better swag. She didn’t believe me. We tried it again. I was right again. She was still skeptical. Whatever, lady, just give me my light-up beads.

When I moved in with my wife, my commute extended to fifty miles. I need to be awake by 5:00 to be out of the house by 5:45. That doesn’t leave a lot of hangover time. I also have a child. The number of beers I drink on a typical day, week, or month seems infinitesimal compared to a decade ago. Drinking alcohol on a weeknight  is a rarity. As a result, on those Fridays and Saturdays where I feel like imbibing, my tolerance is virtually non-existent. Two beers, sixteen hours after I woke up, and I can’t even make it through my one half-hour of grown-up television.

Oh well, at least that episode of Dora the Explorer was especially scintillating.

A six-pack in the fridge will now last me a few weeks, not halfway through a Friday night. And if I’m only having one or two beers, I ain’t wasting them on shit.

It was a casual process, but I remember a moment last year when I met a friend for happy hour before going to a baseball game. I was three good beers in when I got to the game, which happened to be celebrating that most ubiquitous of all minor league promotions, Thirsty Thursday. I figured since I was already three beers in, I could probably switch to shit beer. After all, even Jesus said to drink the good wine before the crappy wine, then you won’t notice it as much.

Maybe wine, Jesus, but not beer. Holy crap, that was the most horrible thing I ever drank. Then I did the unthinkable: I paid for a $9 Sierra Nevada instead of the $1 Bud Light. The 30-year old inside me cringed.

But I make more money and drink less beer than the 30-year old me. So it’s quality over quantity now.

Then again, I’m not the best example of a beer snob, because I don’t like any of the hipster beer movements sweeping every microbrewery in town. Or the fact that every town has a microbrewery now. But that’s probably a story for another time.

What I’m here to talk about today is a third bit of liquid snobbery that I didn’t even know was possible, much less that it applied to me, until recently.

My name is the Wombat. And I am a coffee snob.

Did you know that there are still people in the world that drink Yuban?

Hoo-boy, there are some crappy coffees out there.  I guess I kind of knew they were out there. The coffee aisle at the grocery store is full of them. In fact, now that I mention it, the part of the coffee aisle that I actually shop from is a small portion at the very end. I assumed the rest of the aisle was taken up by, I don’t know, tea and powdered creamer. Maybe filters. But I’ve seen an awful lot of Sanka in my peripheral vision en route to the cereal.

The coffee snob started innocently enough. There’s a hipster in my department who brought in a tea kettle and a pour over kit. We have a fifteen-minute brunch between first and second period, during which we can heat enough water for two people to have a freshly-crafted brew. A couple others can brew theirs during their prep period right before or after, and the pour over spot became the modern-day equivalent of ye olde water cooler. Could we have gone standard coffee maker? Sure, but then we’d come in, pour our cup, and lose the sense of community that comes with the slow, agonizing second-half of the pour over process. Seriously, I bet an opium-molasses hybrid would strain faster than the last few drops going through the waterlogged grounds.

Hold on for a moment while I go patent Opium Molasses.

Unofficially, the “Pour Over Club” brings coffee whenever we’re running low, but it’s pure communism once the goods have been procured. Somebody might be milking the process, but as a general rule, we all need the caffeine enough that we’ll make sure there’s enough coffee. One day, nobody remembered that we ran out the day before and we had to go without. The next day, our prep area looked like this:

coffee

This is when I started to realize I was a bit of a snob. Somebody brought in Lavazza. Sounded interesting. Italian name, so it MUST be good. Turns out I wasn’t much of a fan. I figured it was just a taste thing, like an IPA, which I don’t care for but I know many beer enthusiasts love. Still, I struggled through it, because it was the only thing present and even the ugliest hooker in the whorehouse can service some needs.

Six months later, I accidentally brought some more Lavazza in. It was on sale, and I thought, “Italian name, so it MUST be good.” Maybe a little more caffeine would’ve helped me remember. The next day, two of my co-workers had brought in replacements. Turns out I wasn’t the only one that thought it was subpar. It’s not terrible, just not that great. So we kept it as a backup for the next time we ran out. It lasted most of the semester.

But one day I came in, to my horror, to discover a giant vat of Folgers waiting for me. I thought it was a joke. “Who the fuck brought Folgers?” I demanded of everybody in my department. A few of my fellow teachers don’t really drink coffee, and when they do, they sully it with flavored creamer. I started my accusations there. They all denied it. I went in backward order of who I assumed to be the most kindred coffee spirit. By the time I made it to the other snob, I thought for sure someone had lied. Except the final interogatee admitted that yes, he was the culprit. It was leftover from some function he had gone to over the weekend. One of those get-togethers where they have a huge urn full of drudge. His wife asked if we might use it at work and it was either that or throw it out. He figured, “why not?”

I thought my derision would indicate “why not,” but that wasn’t even the biggest factor. A few days later, he brewed it once to prove a point. Even the non-regulars, with their Irish Creme creamer, took a few sips and opted out. The entire thirty-ounce tub sat patiently at the back of the area until the end of the year before we dumped it. There had been a day or two with no coffee available, yet we still didn’t bust into the red vat of mediocrity. Better to go dry for the day. The headache I have on the way home will remind me to stop off and buy some more coffee.

Incidentally, after we mocked the creamer-user enough, he tried some of our coffee black. It wasn’t the bitter crap he had assumed it to be. A week or two later, he admitted that he was now drinking black coffee at home. And now that he was drinking it black, he couldn’t do the Maxwell House. But the good news was that the money being saved on creamer could go toward buying better coffee.

It’s amazing how, once you actually start tasting the coffee, you want coffee with taste. A good portion of the industry hopes you never discover that coffee can taste good.

Fortunately for me, my snobbery seems to be coming at a perfect time. There’s been a resurgence (or maybe just a surgence) of good coffee shops of late. I wouldn’t have believed it five years ago, when the common narrative was that Starbucks pushing everyone out of business. As much as I love me some gingerbread latte, Starbucks isn’t a coffee business. At best, it’s an espresso business, although with all of the specialty Frappuccinos coming out, even that moniker is faltering. Notice how few of the mermaids, dragons, and Christmas trees have coffee as their base flavor? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ordered the coffee frappuccino and had to send it back when they gave me a caramel one. “Oh sorry, we’re not used to people ordering coffee flavor.”

I’ve settled on ordering an espresso Frappuccino. They’ll give me an off look, but at least the order will be right. Or better yet, I’ll just get a Javiva at Peet’s.

But I feel like the “as sweet as possible” trend is reversing. Competitors are returning to what we now call “drip coffee,” aka coffee. The mom and pop shops have been replaced with hipster locales where they don’t crinkle their nose after I say “no cream or sugar.” Single origin, French press, Clover, and the pour over are becoming increasingly common. And don’t get me started on the wonderful things they are all doing with cold brew.

My favorite spot in this new trend is Philz Coffee in the Bay Area. Their motto is “One Cup at a Time,” and every single coffee they serve is a pour over. They have about fifteen varietals, each with tasting notes, and you can even blend more than one varietal into a single cup of coffee. After you order it, they grind the beans and “brew it” right there in front of you. When it is handed to you, there is a layer of bubbles on the top, and if you slap that lid on before you have slurped up some of those bubbles, the barista might have a nervous breakdown. How cool is that? They want you to sample the cup of coffee like it’s a bottle of wine. The entryway to snobbery is open and widening.

Unlike beer, where my preferences are very specific, I’m not particular about the coffee varietals. Dark roast, medium roast, light roast. All are fine, especially if the brewer knows that dark roast need not be the consistency of crude oil. Guatemalan? Honduran? Kona Blend and all of its attendant controversies? Sure.

Even decaf.

I’m just kidding. Decaf is a demon-spawn cocktail filtered through the devil’s own anus. Non-alcoholic beer is bad enough, but I can at least get my head around people who want to avoid alcohol. There is no reason on the planet that someone should opt to avoid the wonder that is caffeine.

And I’m not going to lie and say that I can actually taste all of those “notes of” that the descriptors say. Wine? Yeah, I can definitely sense the grapefruit in a sauvignon blanc. With zinfandel, I know I prefer a peppery one over a jammy one. But when the coffee says it tastes of hazelnut and cardamom, I’m just going to have to trust them. Even the very basic flavors or “fruity” or “nutty” doesn’t come through on my palate. I’m skeptical it’s on anybody’s. I wonder what temperature it needs to be at to get that flavor.

Whoever heard of “fruity coffee,” anyway?

But that’s okay. I’ve come to discover that there is only one flavor profile I need my coffee to have. It’s a flavor that might be a rarity in the coffee world but, thankfully, is becoming easier to find.

That flavor is: good.

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