Coffee Despondency

As you might have noticed, I took a break from this blog for a little while. It has been weeks since my last posting. Sorry I didn’t warn you. Travel was initially to blame, then laziness became the culprit. Eventually it resolved itself as a problem of subject matter.

My intent for this blog has been to entertain myself, and hopefully the few readers who encounter it. The focus from the beginning was on Luxembourg and food, and preferably where the two intersected. Luxembourg is where I live, and food is what I like to write about. Sounds easy. I have been pretty good about adhering to that framework. 

I would like to broaden that framework now. I found myself passing up story ideas that were very interesting to me, because they didn’t fit the food profile I had set for myself. Luxembourg is a fascinating place to live, and I would like to share what fascinates me about this place.

For instance, I have been watching a condo structure going up, just down our block, since we moved here. Construction has been going at a snail’s pace, compared to how a similar project in Seattle would have progressed. What became fascinating to me was watching the workers last week gluing rectangular blocks of polystyrene (yes, Styrofoam!) to the outside of the cinderblock walls that form the structure. Presumably, for insulation. Also presumably, they will stucco the outside and paint it to look like all the other houses on the block. We’ll see. Things like that aren’t food related, yet I’ve never seen them before and may never again. So brace yourself for the occasional Lake Wobegon angle on Luxembourg.

Which brings me to coffee, which I guess is still officially a food posting. Coffee is one of the main reasons I get up in the morning. (The other is the powerful forehand of my tennis-loving wife flailing me with a broom handle).  

After ten months of living here, I’ve been making more coffee at home and going out for it less. It was a tough decision, because I love going out for coffee. At home I have my beloved coffee press and my workaday electric drip machine. They do the job admirably. However, I regularly get a craving for a great cup of espresso. I love espresso, but I loathe bad espresso. And all I have found in town is pretty, bad espresso. (The exception was a decent cup from the Italian restaurant down the street, but I can’t hang out at the pizza joint at all hours of the day and night). 

The pretty part is the service. Every espresso comes in a cup and saucer, with a tiny espresso spoon on the side. On the saucer is a stylish serving of sugar and a complimentary chocolate square. Very civilized and cultured, no?

The bad part starts in watching them make it. For espresso afficionados, the default coffee is the “espresso longo”. You might say to yourself, “So what?” Well, an espresso longo brews the ideal ounce or two of thick, creamy espresso at first. When done well, that first part is creamy, roasty, caramelly sweet and deliciously bitter. It’s a grownup dessert. Unfortunately, another six ounces of hot water is pumped through the grounds until the espresso is the consistency of drip coffee and unpleasantly bitter. Dessert becomes insipid swill. And that is the state of coffee in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. At least so far, after ten months of searching and buying countless cups of pretty, bad coffee. You can find  regular espresso if you ask for it, but it also isn’t very good.

The other coffee problem is roasting. As a former roaster, I love coffee beans that are roasted to the perfect point of aroma and flavor, that glisten with a little bit of oil. I loved roasting, and I love experiencing it when somebody else does it well. The beans here are underdone. They’re light brown, wrinkled and dull in appearance. They are stuck in that awkward adolescent stage where voices crack and feet are clumsy, like Jessica Rabbit at the age of twelve, before her va-va-voom caught up with her and filled her out.   

The coffee I have found here generally comes from somewhere else, most commonly Germany or Holland. In theory, distance isn’t the problem. I could get to Holland in an hour of driving; Germany in half an hour. The problem is the preference in this part of Europe for very light roasted coffee. I finally found a small roaster in town, but they have low quality beans and a very light roast. And that’s the killer combination, because light roasting reveals more of the original green coffee’s flavor, for good or ill. If you have cheap coffee, all the defects in it are on display.

The best local alternative has been Illy Coffee from Italy. While not bad, Illy’s espresso beans are roasted too light for me, leaving a “green” taste in my mouth. I don’t know the origins of the actual beans they use in their blend, but they taste low-grown in their flavor profile, as opposed to the more elegant high-grown coffee used in most premium coffee blends. 

So what’s a boy to do? When I lived in Seattle, I could go to Starbucks, to Peets, to any of a number of great local roasters such as Zoka or Victrola. I could fret about blends and roast profiles to my heart’s content, and I wasn’t out of place doing so. Here, my choices are limited at best.

Surprisingly, I found the solution last Christmas. The week before, our family spent a week in Paris. We actually chose our hotel not only for its proximity to the Louvre Museum, but for its proximity to a Starbucks. That’s right: Louvre--three blocks away; Starbucks--two blocks away! There was a memorable moment for me when I went shopping for coffee beans. I walked into the Starbucks and picked out the freshest TWENTY bags of coffee.

What made this memorable was my tenure at Starbucks. At that time, one big concern the company had was the lack of bean sales in European stores. European customers were used to going in for an espresso or coffee, but seemed loathe to buy it and bring it home for brewing.

So when I walked up to the counter with my armload, the manager’s eyes got really big. I think he was trying not to go into his Happy Dance while he counted out the Euros I was laying in the palm of his hand. 

It is now summer and that coffee is gone. It was hard going back to the local choices. Starbucks was not only a taste of home, it was a taste of quality. Whatever people think of Starbucks and the many ways it intersects our lives, it has always turned out a superior bag of coffee beans.  

Right now, my closest Starbucks is either in Paris or Munich. Believe me, I would make the trip if I had to. Fortunately, we will be visiting California shortly for our annual trip home. No doubt I will stagger up the the counter with an armload of coffee bags. I’m not expecting a Happy Dance from a grateful store manager, but you never know. I know I’ll be doing my own Happy Dance after we get back here, that first morning when I tear open the bag of Sumatra. Yeah. It’ll have to be Sumatra, my favorite.