As co-owner of Lake City Coffee Roasters, I often talk “coffee” with people. Many times they tell me, “When I was in Timbuktoo, I had the best smooth coffee ever. I don’t know why but, I just can’t find smooth coffee in the United States that’s near as good as I had on vacation.” Here’s the funny thing, it doesn’t matter where they went on vacation. It could be Ethiopia, Antartica, Hawaii, Italy, Costa Rica, or Timbuktoo. The story’s the same. Everyone has better smooth coffee on vacation than here at home. Let’s find out why and how you can duplicate that wonderful vacation coffee.
Why is Smooth Coffee Abroad Better?
So, what’s going on? Here in the states, we import coffee from all over the world. Yet, when we go on vacation, the coffee is always seems to be better smooth coffee than at home. Way better. Why?
Here I am a coffee roaster by trade and when I went to Costa Rica on my honeymoon, the coffee was awesome. It really ticked me off. So, I started looking around. Were they roasting some super special bean? Nope. Where they roasting the beans a special way? Nope. Were they brewing the coffee a special way? Nope.
Then I went to Hawaii, for the second half of our honeymoon. Guess what? Again, the coffee was better there than at home. So, I asked what was so special about this coffee? BTW, nearly all the really good coffee in any country, including Hawaii, is exported. The locals get the bottom of the barrel.
The Secret to Better Smooth Coffee
When I returned from our honeymoon, I did a little sleuthing and learned an interesting fact. A vast majority of coffee sold in the U.S. has been sitting in warehouses or on store shelves for months if not years. No wonder our coffee is so bad.
So, why is coffee, while on vacation, so superior than here in the U.S.? Here’s the one common denominator of served coffee while on vacation. Most of the time your vacation coffee was roasted yesterday, or at a maximum a week or two ago. Yep, fresh roasted coffee is better coffee. No doubt about it.
Gently Roasted Coffee Beans
Here in the U.S., large industrial coffee companies, flash roast their beans in order to save production costs and increase their profit margins. What flash roasting means is Hot-n-Fast. Here’s the rub, you vacation coffee roasters roast their beans low-n-slow, just like we do here at Lake City Coffee Roasters.
What Low-n-Slow does for you is preserve the coffee bean’s oils. Those oils are the magic of coffee. There are over 1,000 molecules in those oils. That’s where you’ll find most of the bioflavonoids, antioxidants, caffeine, flavor, and aroma. Additonally, Low-n-Slow makes better smooth coffee.
Single Origin Beans
Once again, the industrial coffee companies here in the U.S. typically blend their beans. Even “100% Columbian” isn’t necessarily “100% Arabica”. In order to same money, the industrial coffee companies will “blend” robusta beans (cheap and nasty) with some good beans. In a great cup of coffee the last thing you want is several varieties of beans.
When you where on vacation, guess what kind of beans you were served? You were always served beans that were picked from the same fields. This is what we in the industry call Single Origin Beans. No blend will ever beat the taste of Single Origin Beans.
Russell & Alisha in Costa Rica
How is Vacation Coffee Brewed
When you’re sitting in your vacation beach side cabana drinking the most amazing coffee you’ve ever had, one think you’re not drinking is coffee made in an industrial drip machine. Drip machines are made for speed and making cheap coffee, not for making better coffee. Our experience at seaside B&Bs, their coffee has almost always been hand made, made one cup at a time.
The most common way to make fantastic coffee is via slow pour over or using a French Press. When speed and expense is not a concern, for the best smooth coffee, you can’t beat hand made / hand pressed coffee.
Lake City Coffee Roasters
Alisha and I (Russell) started Lake City Coffee Roasters mostly so we could get world-class coffee and not spend an arm and a leg for it. As wine connoisseur, we set a goal to take coffee just as seriously as we do our wine. Therefore, we select one bean a year. That one bean is always from the Tarrazu Region of Costa Rica. Why? Because we like smooth, non-bitter, coffee with prominent notes of chocolate and cherry.
Not just any bean from this region cuts the mustard. We taste test over two dozen beans every year, all from this region, just to select the best of the best. This plan seems to be working, since 95% of our sales are from repeat customers. If you’re looking for better coffee, then you need look no farther. Not only do we have the best smooth coffee that you’re likely to find, we’re also a lot of fun to work with. Just take a quick look at our reviews.
God Bless,
Russell & Alisha Volz
