Interview with the founder of an espresso tasting society
Posted by TheShot on 24 Feb 2007 | Tagged as: Café Society, Local Brew, Quality Issues
Today The Oregonian published an interview with David Rittenhouse, who over the past summer started the Portland Oregon Espresso Tasting Society (or P.O.E.T.S.): Opinions flow.
And you guessed it, his top tip for people ordering espresso…?:
If someone pours you a bad shot, don’t be afraid to ask for another one. Everyone has a flat shot sometimes; it just works out that way. If they’re starting a new bag of beans, for example, you may get what’s called a “sink shot.” It just doesn’t taste right.
Yep, you hear that? Send it back. (”Send it back”? — can I get that as my beverage order on a custom Starbucks T-shirt?!) And for the home espresso brewer, he also recommends spending the money on a really good grinder and using beans as fresh as possible. All of which probably sounds familiar to readers here.
What’s probably not so familiar to S.F. coffee lovers is the concept of the Coffee Meetup, which is how P.O.E.T.S. organizes themselves. Surprisingly, S.F. has not yet organized a Coffee Meetup. Yes, if you follow that link, that’s me with the Robert Goulet avatar as #58 on the notification queue — should someone in town be ambitious enough to finally organize one. (Look, don’t ask me — I’m just a dufus with a Web site!)
The closest Coffee Meetup to S.F. is The South Bay Coffee Meetup Group, based in Santa Clara. It will come as no surprise that it was founded by noneother than Andy Newbom of Barefoot Coffee Roasters. Their next meeting is March 5.
1 Comment »
on 20 Mar 2007 at 5:49 pm -04:00T 1.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Consumer Delusion: ConsumerReports.org’s buyer’s guide to espresso makers said …
[...] It gets dicier, with the article emphasizing the the ever-popular-and-delusional cost savings benefits of these home espresso machines. And when it comes to the taste test, they treat espresso machines as if they were self-contained, standalone appliances that pump out uniform cups of espresso, regardless of the grinder and the beans used. [...]