I’ve realized that I’ve almost never written about one of my great obsessions - coffee. Some 6 years ago I decided that I was going to passionate about good coffee (even though at that time I didn’t love it all too much) and so I went on to learn everything I could about how to make and enjoy a good cup. Perhaps what got me into it was that coffee is both technical and artistic. What I mean by this is that the making of a good cup is determined by a degree of technical perfection, as well as a measure of personal taste. These too, are shared with cooking and photography, other great pleasures of mine.

The coffee lover today can enjoy much better coffee than they could have five years ago. I witnessed a remarkable renaissance in both Montreal, Calgary, and Vancouver in the coming of the new-age boutique cafe, slowly winning away from the chains bit by bit. The trend seems to be driven by the West Coast and slowly permeating towards the east (like it did in the US, with Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco as coffee pioneering cities). In Vancouver, cafes like Artegiano, 49th Parallel, and JJ Bean were the first to start this renaissance, using high end machines, medium roasted beans, and appropriately sized cups. This was in contrast to the gigantic milky lattes with bitter, over-roasted beans at your local Starbucks. This was followed in Calgary by Cafe Beano, Phil and Sebastian, and Kawa. Today the biggest change is probably happening in Montreal, where pioneer Cafe Myriade has shown the way for Picolo, Caffe in Gamba, and Cafe St Henri.

The Beans….

One of the most important things about coffee is the quality of the beans that you are using. There’s a whole other level of coffee bean obsession that I wont go into - but you’ve got things like altitude, origin, processing, and roasting that ultimately affects the taste. The beans that I like best are from 49th Parallel (Vancouver), Intelligentsia (Chicago), Blue Bottle (SF and NYC), or Stumptown (Portland). Generally the beans not to buy are the ones in the grocery store (Illy, Starbucks, etc) and anything pre-ground. Starbucks roasts their coffee way to the extreme, which burns the sugars and makes for really bitter coffee. Coffee degrades rather quickly, so even good beans that I buy fresh only last me at most 2 weeks. Check the date at the bottom of the bag before buying - hopefully it was roasted within that week. Store the coffee in the fridge (some say never the freezer) in a sealable bag/box to make it last longer.