It surprises me that there aren't more people talking about coffee on this site. I came to appreciate this marvelous stuff rather late in life. For my first forty odd years I had nothing to do with the stuff other than the occasional dose diluted something like one to one with milk, but after an illness that left me tired in the afternoons I started drinking coffee. It has grown on me and continues to do so and is a silver ling to an otherwise nasty cloud.

   I live in an area of the country that has - as long as I have been aware of it - excellent as well as poisonous coffee. Chockfull o Nuts was once upon a time as ubiquitous as Starbucks and the coffee was reputed to be fresh and fine. This wasn't in my time. It was still ubiquitous when I moved to New York, but it was tired and thin. There were some small shops that sold good brewed coffee, but there were also the thousands of Greek Coffee Shops that sold burned coffee, coffee that managed to be burned when roasted and then reheated and burned some more on the hot plate.
    The most reliable way to get a good cup of coffee was to brew it yourself. Most of us had Chemex pots because Zabars sold them for cheap. Electric brewers were expensive, but a glass pot - well that was light on the wallet.

     Fifeteen years later and I am back to brewing in a Chemex having tried all sorts of electric gizmos that made okay coffee and did it to a timer, too. These things grind the beans and brew the coffee into a thermal bottle so that you come downstairs to a fresh pot made with freshly ground beans. The problem is that the machines don't reach the optimum brewing temperature of about 205 degrees and then the not really very hot coffee has to heat the cool bottle. The coffee can be fairly cool by the time the process is done. The low brewing temperature must be a liability issue. “You couldn’t have gotten burned with our machine, it doesn’t get hot enough to brew coffee, much less burn your silly self.”
    Zabars was the place to get freshly roasted beans back in the day. They roasted several times a week and had a nice variety. They still do, actually, but I have moved on to Fairway Markets and master roaster Richard who can be found most days working his big roaster on 125th street in the balcony over the coffee section. He keeps a large variety of coffee and does a superb job with his beans and clearly likes what he does. There is always an attentive and well informed person selling the coffee – sometimes it’s Richard himself if one of the staff has had to step away for a minute.
    Yes. I thought I was in coffee paradise until I started talking to Grillmybunz on this very foodsville site. Grill, or 'bunz as he is referred to by the mayor, told me that he roasted his own, good store bought coffee being available, but not up to the same standard as rolling his own. Pushaww, thought I. Good beans, freshly roasted by Fairway and ground at home as needed – how could it get any better, seriously better, than that? So, bunz came across with a baggie of his home roast and it has ruined me. I hung onto to store bought coffee as long as I could and I still buy it, but recently I broke down and bought a small air roasting machine. It came with about a dozen samples of green beans. This is the road ruin I am sure.
    Coffee roasting is not entirely new to me. I had done a little in both a frying pan (with chaff flying all over the kitchen and the smoke alarm loosing it from time to time) and again with a specially modified pop corn popper. Both methods worked pretty well and the pan gig felt real authentic. The corn popper was loud and despite my best efforts, chaff got all over the place and I really couldn’t see what was happening to the coffee. I figured that store bought was good enough. It was …. for awhile …. and then along came bunz.
    Coffee roasting can be like wine collecting or tasting. There are lots of beans in the world and they come from all over the place. Several on-line sites specialize in beans by mail. I use SweetMarias – as does gbbunz. Beans range in size and certainly tastes. Various roasting times are better for various beans. There is no one size fits all way to roast as witnessed by the proliferation of programmable roasters with as many as ten roast profiles.
    The three basic truths that I have learned from bunz are;
1. Drip Coffee is better if brewed at 205 degrees and most automatic machines can’t do this.
2. All Coffee is better if you roast it yourself and use it before it goes flat. Reasonable people disagree about this time frame. (grinding goes without saying.)
3. Drip Coffee needs to be brewed at 205 degrees.
    With all the interesting beans and growing regions we can keep trying differing coffee tastes. If you don’t like this one, roast another one or try it roasted differently.  Favorites are sure to emerge.
    I don’t know where in my life this is leading, this coffee roasting adventure, but the coffee has a different presence when you roast it yourself and use it within a few days (And this little roaster doesn’t roast a whole lot at one time. I make it to be two Chemex pots per batch – but I do drink a lot of coffee and make a full eight/ten cup pot.) I do know that there are many places in America where one CAN NOT get a good cup of coffee and this is a bit unsettling as I tend to go to those places from time to time. There’s coffee and someone probably does it pretty well at home, but you’re on your own once you get just a little off the well traveled road.

    Anyone have comments on Espresso machines? Can a good one be had for less than $1,000.00? I am using a Starbucks Barrista and it is okay. I can’t say more than that. Depending on the coffee beans I get a nice Crema or not. It does seem to have a great deal to do with the beans and not the machine. I feel that the machine does not get the water hot enough. I have an acquaintance who used to work for the Italian coffee and machine manufacturer and he wouldn’t drink any coffee that had been exposed to air after roasting. He said it was all over with the grounds as soon as the air got to them. He was devoted to those machines that puncture a foil package and brew you a quick shot. I have tried them, but don’t like them very much. I guess I think the process is too, too impersonal