I recently received a marketing email saying that whatever one drinks on St. Patrick’s Day, “you better be sipping on something green.” It then went on to describe a cocktail made with tequila and Midori. Because nothing says Ireland like tequila and melon liqueur…
Personally I could care less about drinking green and am perfectly happy with good stout and Irish whiskey. For the latter, I’ve been fortunate over the last week to sample more than 20 Irish whiskeys as part of Lance Mayhew’s informal “tasting panel.” Lance provides a primer on Irish whiskey here and fellow taster Geoff Kleinman makes some great recommendations on his new blog, Drink Spirits.
If you’re in a cocktail mood, my favorite mixed drink with Irish whiskey is the Tipperary, made with Irish whiskey, sweet vermouth, and Chartreuse. As a bonus Chartreuse does happen to be green, though the final drink won’t be.
Finally, there’s the elephant in the room, the extremely politically incorrect Irish Car Bomb. If you’re in a real Irish bar tonight you should not order one of these. Even so, I do have a soft spot for the drink, and judging by the number of search referrals this blog is getting for Irish Car Bombs today other people do too. Here’s photographic evidence that everybody loves an ICB. Or if you want to make this drink more sophisticated and stable, try the Defusion, a deconstructed version of the drink I served at Carlyle. Finally, if you really want to be adventurous, make it with Upright’s Oyster Stout. We tried it at Branch and it puts Guinness to shame.
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I would have posted about this sooner had I known tickets were close to selling out, but on Sunday, April 11, I’ll be among the presenters at CocktailCamp PDX, an inaugural event for cocktail lovers in and around Portland, OR. I’ll be drawing on my barista experience to talk about ways to use coffee and tea in cocktails without destroying these wonderful products. Steve McCarthy from Clear Creek Distillery will also be presenting, as will blog pals Matt Robold, Blair Reynolds, and Craig Hermann. Check here for the complete list of presenters.
Tickets are only $10, but as of tonight there were only 10 seats remaining. Head over now to purchase one if you’d like to be a part of this fun event.
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One of my favorite new bars in Portland, Spints Alehouse, has a couple fun events coming up. First is the St. Patrick’s Day celebration, during which chef Alyssa Gregg is offering a different sausage pairing for every beer on tap. That’s 13 sausages, people! There’s no prize for getting through all the pairings but it will be fun to try.
After that, I’m getting back behind the stick for a week-long run as guest bartender. In addition to Spints’ own craft cocktail menu I’ll be serving up a few drinks of my own. The plan as of now is for me to be there Friday-Sunday this week and Thursday-Saturday next week, working 4-9ish each day. I’d love to see some familiar faces there and if you haven’t been to Spints yet I highly recommend it: Great German-inspired food, a really good beer list, and a very cool atmosphere. For more information on the beer and photos of the winter dishes, check PDXplate.
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Wisconsin may become the next state to legalize raw milk sales to the general public:
Hundreds of raw milk advocates packed a legislative hearing Wednesday, demanding the right to buy and sell unpasteurized dairy products that some claim have powerful health benefits but that detractors call dangerous.
Bills in the state Legislature would allow consumers to buy raw milk and other dairy products directly from farms and exempt farmers from liability if someone becomes ill from pathogens in the milk.
As expected, health authorities are opposing the bill on the grounds that they know better than consumers what people should put in their bodies. The Farm Bureau is opposed as well, wanting to prevent reports of tainted milk of any kind from getting into the news. It will be a victory for individual liberty and food rights if this passes the legislature.
I’m less sure of the part of the bill freeing farmers from liability. There should probably be some assumption of risk for raw milk consumers, but removing liability could end up making raw milk less safe. Unfortunately the article is short on specifics about this aspect of the bill.
[Thanks to Ryan at Inertia Wins for the pointer.]
Previously:
Raw milk rebellion
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Ron weighs in on the effects of offal’s rise in popularity:
In regards to the mega meat processors, they’re going to be just fine as Grier mentions, since no one doubts the efficiency of the modern abattoir. But Sysco isn’t providing offal to Olive Garden, nor are the corporate restaurants leading the charge. The usage of offal (and the hipness that may result) is being driven by artisanal kitchens working with artisanal farmers and ranchers. These farms and ranches don’t possess the same economies of scale or distribution channels, and would much rather sell a whole hog to a restaurant or chef.
This, then, returns the usage of offal to that magic word: necessity. Faced with a whole animal, a restaurant kitchen works to maximize every scrap. And so, the rise in popularity of offal has a higher effect on artisanal producers and the people that work with those producers.
Read the whole thing, complete with pictures that might entice even unadventurous readers to try some odd animal parts. This blog’s previous post on the topic here.
(Beeronomics is a regular category at the Oregon Economics blog. Will ball-o-nomics catch on here? Let’s hope not!)
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If I were to add a fourth item to my Guide for Good Blogging, it might go something like “Always link to stories about mountain oysters.” I’m not going to adopt that rule but I will link to Ian Knauer’s Atlantic piece in praise of partaking of the testicle and of offal meats in general:
But who really practices true nose-to-tail eating? How many among us delight in brain, or tendon, or testicles? These nasty bits, although they have a small following, often go ignored. But in the religion of head to tail, it’s the brains and balls that promote the eater from politically correct do-gooder to enlightened food guru. And, for the record, balls (when cooked the right way) are delicious. [...]
Here’s a video demonstrating the peeling, puncturing, roasting, and slicing of a pair of deer testicles. It features Trent, Steve, Greg, and Elvis.
If you’ve come as far as where the video begins, then the hard work is done. Bread and fry the slices of balls as you would prepare fried green tomatoes. Most importantly, you can feel good about yourself as an eater knowing that none of an animal has gone to waste. Welcome to true food enlightenment; feel free to bask in the salinity.
Be sure to read the whole thing for expert advice on how to avoid the unpleasantness of mountain oysters exploding in your oven, a terrible mess to have to explain to one’s life partner, roommate, or maid.
I agree with Knauer that eating offal is a fine thing. Seared fois and crispy sweetbreads are two of the most delicious foods on Earth; I wouldn’t put either of the testicle dishes I’ve had on the same level, but they can be tasty too. However, should one really feel virtuous about eating offal?
These odd parts of animals are not often eaten by humans in the US, but that doesn’t mean they go to waste. I’m not an expert on meat processing, but my guess is they’re sold off for secondary uses like dog food, industrial feed, and lots of other products. Modern farms are anything but inefficient.
So what happens when more people start eating mountain oysters and such? One effect is that demand for offal goes up, raising its price and therefore raising the value of the entire animal. And when demand goes up, so does production. We’re reducing waste in one sense of the word, but we’re also sending more animals to slaughter, using more resources to feed them, and putting more of their methane into the atmosphere.
However there could be an offsetting substitution effect too. If people are eating offal instead of more expensive cuts of meat, that could reduce the value of whole animals, resulting in fewer animals being killed and less resources used in their production. On the other hand, the substitution effect could work the opposite way if people are choosing an offal-based appetizer to their steak dinner instead of the salad they used to eat.
I don’t know which of these effects will outweigh the others (and if anyone has any hard data, please let me know, because I’m genuinely curious). If consumers substitute unwanted offal for more expensive meats that would almost certainly be a good thing, but is that what they’re doing? Or is our new love of offal going to make our society more carnivorous, not less? If the latter we can enjoy foods like mountain oysters because they’re tasty and different, but it would arguably be more virtuous to simply eat less meat in general.
Previous ball blogging:
Great balls of fryer
The Mystery of the Five-Inch Bull Balls
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My friend Ron from Lush Angeles was visiting Portland this weekend and crashed at my place. When Ron and I are in a kitchen together it’s a sure bet that things are going to get fried. After a dinner of delicious karaage, General Tso’s chicken, and fried mushrooms, we were looking at a big wok full of fry oil and wondering what to do next. The Girl Scout’s Tagalongs we’d bought that afternoon were about to meet an unexpected fate…
Inspired by the tastiness of our initial experiment, we decided to have a Girl Scout Cookie fry off the next day. Fueled only by bourbon and our love of crispy battered things, we put four different cookies to the test, frying them up and finishing them with a sprinkling of sea salt.
Consensus favorites of our tasting panel were the Do Si Do (below) and Dulce de Leche, both of which had the perfect texture for frying. Thin Mints are pretty much a waste and destroy the clarity of the oil. Tagalongs are also potentially messy, but the peanut butter inside is deliciously gooey when they’re fresh from the fryer. The ones photographed at the top of the post actually have pieces of bacon embedded in the batter, creating a dangerous combination of chocolate, bacon, and peanut butter.
Unsurprisingly there’s at least one State Fair booth that beat us to this. They also favor the Do Si Do:
The gals at the Fried What! stand on Main Street seem to come up with a new deep-fried item each year. This year, they’re cooking Girl Scout cookies in oil. A Do-si-do, aka Peanut Butter Sandwich, is dipped in batter, fried till golden brown, sprinkled with powdered sugar (and chocolate syrup if desired) and served four to an order for $3.50. They’ll be available only until the stand’s cookie supply runs out.
I mentioned we had bacon. Of course we couldn’t resist battering and frying that too.
All photos by Ron, whose blog will soon be covering Los Angeles’ emerging cocktail culture.
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From the Telegraph:
Diageo has sought to take advantage of the continued march of the Chinese consumer by launching an offer worth up to £610m for a local white spirit venture in the Asian country.
The drinks giant said the full offer for the company, which is not expected until the second half of 2010, would give it a springboard to expand its share of one of the fastest-growing spirits markets in the world.
That’s a little over 900 million in US dollars. And yes, that’s the same Diageo that’s currently threatening to take its Captain Morgan production outside the US if taxpayers don’t pick up the tab for a new distillery in the Virgin Islands.
Additional reading: This paper [.pdf] from the Congressional Research Service provides the most thorough, balanced explanation and appraisal of the rum cover over that I’ve seen yet. This blog previously covered the Puerto Rico/Virgin Islands dispute here.
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Having recently banned smoking in its restaurants, North Carolina is now considering a rule change to allow pets on restaurant patios:
North Carolina health officials are proposing a rule change that would let pets come to the table at outdoor restaurants as long as they don’t go inside or do anything else that might contaminate people’s food. [...]
On the other hand, some people don’t think restaurants should open their al fresco seating to patrons who scratch, pant, lick themselves and eat indiscriminately off the ground.
Dyrl Wood of Smithfield, an empty nester now, wrote the state to support Wake’s dog ban, though he had a Brittany spaniel for years.
“But we didn’t take the Brittany spaniel out to eat,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “My view is that you can have them and love them and care for them, and when you go out to eat you can bring them some scraps to have when you come home.
“But don’t require other people to dine with them. It’s unappetizing.”
If the rule change is approved, restaurant owners will be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not to allow pets on their patios. What a concept! It’s amazing how foreign the idea of having diverse policies is to some people. If they don’t like pets, pets shouldn’t be allowed at a single restaurant in the entire state. If they don’t like smoking, smoking needs to be banned. That’s the problem with deciding these matters politically: The “right” decision is forced onto everyone, leaving people who have different preferences with no venues in which to act on them.
For the record, this blog is pro-pooches on patios.
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Upright Brewing, one of the best new breweries operating today, has an intriguing new beer coming out tonight: Oyster Stout. Made in collaboration with the soon-to-be-open Alchemy Brewing, the new beer is a traditional stout made with oyster liquor and fresh oysters cooked right in the brewing kettle. It sounds crazy, but this style of beer has been enjoying a small revival this year. Brewer Alex Ganum describes it as “a distinctly full-bodied and creamy stout with a touch of brine on the finish.”
The natural pairing with this beer is of course oysters. Oysters and stout go well together, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the brine in this beer matches them even better. If you’re in Portland you’ll have at least two chances to try it. Tonight is Upright’s release party from 4:30-9 in their tasting room at the Left Bank Project. Then on Thursday, March 4 at 7:00 pm, we’re bringing a keg to Branch Whiskey Bar on Alberta St. Branch will have fresh oysters, housemade sausages, and plenty of whiskey to go with the oyster stout. I’ll be working a guest shift behind the bar as well, serving up beer and cocktails for the first time since Carlyle’s closure. Both events should be a lot of fun, so I hope to see many of you there to try this unusual ale.
Previously: Upright’s Flora Rustica Saison made an appearance in a tasty drink at our NovemBEER for Charity cocktail event
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I get a lot of liquor press releases every day. Usually they’re about new products or horrible, horrible cocktails designed for marketing efforts. Today’s batch includes a release that’s all about trade and taxes:
MERCEDITA, Puerto Rico–Destilería Serrallés released the following statement from Roberto Serralles, Vice President, in response to a 13-page invective issued by Diageo yesterday claiming a conspiracy to “kill” the Captain Morgan Rum production deal between Diageo/U.S.V.I.
“Destilería Serrallés has consistently highlighted the dangers of permitting that unreasonable and excessive rum subsidies be given to any corporation. Our main focus has been, and continues to be, for Congress to hold hearings and to study the merits of HR 2122. This legislation seeks to responsibly regulate the rum cover-over program by placing an-across-the-board 10% cap on subsidies to the rum industry. This is exactly how Puerto Rico has self-regulated itself for over 40 years. All we are asking is that the playing field is kept level, that fair competition prevails, and quite simply, that everyone plays by the same rules,” said Roberto Serralles, on behalf of Destilería Serrallés. “Assertions to the contrary are just delusional conspiracy theories.”
This is the latest salvo in a long-running battle between industry giants Bacardi and Diageo and by extension Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Understanding the conflict requires delving into some bizarre aspects of the tax code, so let’s break it down. (And if you want to read Diageo’s lengthy statement, click here.)
For background, there are three main spirits industry players involved in this dispute. Destilería Serrallés is a Puerto Rican distillery owned by Bermuda-based Bacardi and best known for its DonQ rum line. Diageo is a British-based spirits company whose many brands include Captain Morgan spiced rum. Diageo contracts with Serrallés to distill the base spirit for Captain Morgan. The contract expires at the end of 2011 and Diageo announced three years in advance that it would not renew the contract. [Correction 2/25/10: Serrallés is independent, not owned by Bacardi. Bacardi's involvement is alleged by Diageo.]
Virgin Islands Governor John deJongh, Jr. successfully courted Diageo to open its own distillery on St. Croix. Among the incentives offered by the USVI are a brand new distillery funded by public bonds and marketing money to promote Captain Morgan; in exchange, Diageo promises to stay in the territory for 30 years and hire local workers. The Wall Street Journal places the value of these subsidies at $2.7 billion over the 30-year deal.
So far this sounds like fairly standard competition between jurisdictions to offer sweetheart deals to corporations, but it gets more complicated. At issue is a strange US tax provision called the rum cover over. This law requires that most of the rum excise taxes collected in the US be remitted to the governments of US rum-producing territories. They receive the funds in proportion to how much rum they produce. Importantly, it doesn’t matter what countries the taxed rum comes from. If you buy Puerto Rican rum, the revenue goes back to US territories. If you buy Jamaican rum, the tax money still goes to US territories. Territories benefit no matter where rum sold in the United States originates.
This is what has created such perverse competition between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Puerto Rico knows it’s not going to be distilling Captain Morgan much longer, but where Captain Morgan ends up is of huge importance to Puerto Rico. If Captain Morgan goes to a foreign country PR will still reap the benefits of the rum cover over. But if Captain Morgan goes to the Virgin Islands, USVI will become a proportionally larger distiller and get a correspondingly greater share of excise tax revenues; this is the money USVI is counting on to pay back the public bonds it issued for Diageo.
According to the Miami Herald, the loss to Puerto Rico could be as high as $6 billion over three decades. Thus the territory has enlisted legislators to block the Virgin Islands deal, resulting in a heated battle between the territories and the liquor giants.
It’s hard to put any of the parties involved on a pedestal. Serrallés itself receives significant subsidies from the rum cover over program, about 6% of Puerto Rico’s take (again according to the Herald). Nor is it really fair for Puerto Rico to begrudge the Virgin Islands greater allocation of excise tax revenues, given that the alternative is Puerto Rico taking lots of money for rum it doesn’t even produce if Diageo moves to a foreign country.
The real problem is our insane tax code that sends revenue to territories for rum they may not produce and with no strings attached. Thanks to the rum cover over provision, US taxpayers may soon be funneling their money through the Virgin Islands government directly to Diageo. If you’re Diageo you call that a “historic and innovative public-private initiative.” If you’re a libertarian you call it corporate welfare.
My inclination is to side with Bacardi/Serrallés on this one and support a 10% cap on rum subsidies. Or better yet, we could eliminate rum subsidies entirely, a proposition neither Bacardi nor Diageo is likely to support.
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Mixology Monday is back and this time it’s hosted by Sonja at Thinking of Drinking, who chooses absinthe as our theme:
The topic for February is Absinthe. That much maligned, misunderstood, mistreated spirit, suddenly plentiful again in the US and other parts of the world. Absinthe played a role, whether large or small, in a variety of great cocktails from the 1800’s and early 1900’s - the Sazerac, Absinthe Suissesse, Corpse Reviver No. 2… I’m getting thirsty.
So let’s celebrate absinthe’s history, and it’s future, with all manner of cocktails using absinthe.
I tend to drink absinthe most often as an accent in cocktails rather than on its own and even then I don’t turn to it very often. So lacking inspiration this month I turned to Difford’s Guide #7, a massive book that includes recipes and photos for more than 2,250 cocktails conveniently indexed by ingredient. The drinks are of decidedly mixed quality but there are some gems in there, including the Atty cocktail:
2.25 oz Plymouth gin
.75 oz dry vermouth
.25 oz absinthe
.25 oz creme de violette
Stir (not shake!) over ice and optionally garnish with a lemon zest, though the aromatics of the absinthe and violette are strong enough that it’s not strictly necessary. The recipe is adapted from the Savoy Cocktail Book, which to my shame I don’t have in my library yet. Erik Ellestad posts the original recipe here.
The interplay of the absinthe and floral flavors is really nice here. It’s similar to the absinthe and lavender combination in Neil Kopplin’s Envy cocktail, though much more restrained. I like this drink a lot, and the color is fantastic (as you could see if I was a better photographer). Definitely recommended.
Incidentally, Difford’s Guide is available online as well, but the physical book is great to have on hand to browse through for ideas. The new edition #8 is available now.
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Eater San Francisco reports on how outdated California liquor laws are getting in the way of serving good cocktails:
Now, these spurts of [Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control] enforcement happen every once in a while and eventually things go back to normal after a quick flurry (i.e., bars make extra sure to have no drinks on the bar post 2AM, they watch out for stings with minors), but this time around, it was different. Maybe ABC workers are under pressure, maybe the state needs to generate cashflow, but whatever the conspiracy theory, it’s been more vicious than usual, especially among some of the city’s high-profile cocktail joints. [...]
… the one garnering the most outcry from the cocktail bars is the crackdown on elixirs, bitters, and similar infusions. Technically, it’s illegal to modify liquors, per a Prohibition-era law that was put in place to ensure the public that bars wouldn’t tamper with the alcohol, unbeknownst to the customer. Obviously, nowadays, pretty much all of the well-known “artisanal” cocktail places make their own house syrups and whatnot, and it’s unlikely that a yuzu bitter (or whatever is in that 10-ingredient drink) is misleading the public. It’s one thing to crack down on underage drinking, but it’s another to take aim at the outdated laws, which one bar owner described as the equivalent of issuing multiple jaywalking tickets all of a sudden. It’s salutary neglect, you see.
Details are scarce, but this looks like another example of archaic post-Prohibition laws failing to keep up with modern drinking culture. The law was probably written to prevent fraudulent practices such as refilling expensive liquor bottles with cheap hooch to fool customers, but applied literally it apparently also forbids the creative use of spirits as raw ingredients in infusions and such. Uses like these do not mislead or harm consumers in any way; only the government benefits from suddenly enforcing these old regulations by collecting the associated fines.
Previously:
The nanny state vs. egg drinks
Virginia’s Archaic Beverage Commission
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It’s a safe bet that I won’t like any article that begins by praising bans on smoking and transfats, and Ming Tsai’s piece for The Atlantic on Massachusetts’ new allergy regulations doesn’t disappoint. The law starts with yet another requirement for restaurant menus:
First, there has to be a blurb on every menu that asks customers, “Before placing your order, please inform your server if a person in your party has a food allergy.” In addition to promoting safety, this only makes it easier for restaurants to service customers. We’d much rather know about allergies in advance. It becomes a service nightmare when you have to redo a whole meal.
Well, pardon my language here, but no shit. If you’re dangerously allergic to a food item you should tell your server this when you order. This statement doesn’t need to be mandated. Between this, the calorie labels, the admonition to consume no more than 2,000 calories per day, and the warnings about raw meat, fish, and eggs, one wonders what page space will be left for food by the time every health lobby gets their way.
At least this is mostly harmless. The other aspects of the measure might even do some good, adding basic allergy and cross-contamination education to the safety course some restaurant staffers must already take. And Tsai’s optional binder system for tracking allergens in a restaurant’s dishes is a positive contribution. But does the fight for greater allergy awareness deserve inclusion in this paragraph? You be the judge!
Everybody should have the right to be able to eat safely in any restaurant. Going back in history, it used to be that if you had a certain color of skin, you couldn’t go into certain restaurants, then it was if you were a handicapped person you couldn’t go in, and now if you have allergies, you can’t.
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Yesterday I came across this story about why people drink tomato juice on planes but couldn’t read the German. Tyler Cowen summarizes:
During a flight, everything tastes quite a bit weaker, as if you had a cold. You might think die deutschen would turn to Sichuan Chili Chicken, but no…Tomatensaft!
Growing up I would always drink ginger ale on planes. I rarely drank it other times and to this day I associate ginger ale with flying. I assumed this was a random preference, but perhaps not.
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“Regulation of the Day” is actually Ryan’s bag, but alcohol is mine so I’m stealing his title just this once. This regulation is from Alabama, where brewpubs (restaurants that serve beer they make themselves) face many onerous requirements, including these:
Alabama law allows for this special class of breweries, but the legal restrictions on opening and operating these businesses are enormous. This is a large reason why Alabama has only two operating brewpubs while the states surrounding us have dozens.
Let’s take a look at the restrictions on brewpubs in Alabama:
1. Must be located in an historic building
2. Must be located in a wet county that had a brewery prior to 1919
3. You can ONLY sell the beer you brew in the brewpub. You can’t sell to wholesalers or stores
4. Must have a restaurant which seats at least 80
5. Must not brew more than 10,000 barrels of beer annually
There’s no sensible justification for limiting brewpubs to historic buildings in the counties that happened to have breweries operating in 1919. It’s just a very strange law in a state that has a decidedly mixed view of alcohol.
Fortunately Free the Hops, recently successful in bringing higher alcohol beers to Alabama, is on the case pushing the Brewery Modernization Act to improve the state’s beer culture. Read all about it here.
[Via Tom Pearson, aka the Pint Pundit, who will hopefully resume blogging more after getting an enormous flood of two or three new readers from this link back.]
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Greg Beato’s take on Starbucks in the new Reason is right on, acknowledging the company’s successes while recognizing that its attempts to reinvent itself with shops like the undercover 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea won’t restore its reputation as an innovator:
For all their ostensible authenticity, such adventures in interior design cannot match the truly radical act of installing espresso machines in bank lobbies. Like Seattle’s other great cultural export from the early 1990s, Nirvana, Starbucks has always been most vital, most interesting, most revolutionary when at its most commercial. [...]
At [15th Avenue Coffee and Tea], the quest to cultivate highbrow customers continues. There’s a wall covered with excerpts from Plato’s dialogues. Blended drinks are banned from the premises, and you can safely assume that Bearista Bears, the highly sought-after plush toys that Starbucks has been selling since 1997, won’t ever appear here either.
But if Starbucks really hopes to re-establish its authority as an innovative, forward-thinking trailblazer, it should perhaps use its next experimental venue to honor its heritage as the first chain to take gourmet coffee culture beyond the narrow boundaries of traditional coffeehouse values and aesthetics. Imagine a place with matching chairs, clean tables, beverages that look like ice cream sundaes, Norah Jones on the sound system, and absolutely no horrid paintings from local artists decorating the walls. A place, that is, exactly like Starbucks!
I walked by 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea on my most recent visit to Seattle. It looks like a nice shop, but it’s a tiny part of the Starbucks empire and the coffee, of course, is still Starbucks. In a city that’s full of great coffee shops I’m not sure why anyone would seek it out.
On a related note, it looks like Starbucks is about to launch pour over brewers in some of its stores. There’s probably no better example of the company becoming an imitator than this. Pour over bars have become one of the leading trends in quality-oriented coffee shops as they shift toward brewing individual cups on demand. Part of the reason they’ve become so popular is that the high-tech Clover machine was bought up by Starbucks and taken off the market, forcing those shops to turn to alternative brewing methods. So it’s funny to see Starbucks copying low-tech pour overs now too. It’s as if the company believes installing all the accoutrements of an indie cafe will bring in the coffee lovers when its real problem is that it doesn’t have the systems in place to match the quality of its smaller, nimble competitors.
Nonetheless I hope that Starbucks succeeds at generating interest in individually brewed coffee; that would be a great step forward, though I find it hard to imagine that there will be a mass consumer shift from drip to pour over. I hope too that the customers who are introduced to the method at Starbucks will also try it at a shops with greater passion for the product and lighter roast profiles.
(And if you can’t tell, I’m still bitter about losing the Clover, which I’ve always preferred to pour overs anyway.)
[Pour over link via Starbucks Gossip.]
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Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
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