I don’t want farmers squeezed, but don’t tell me that I need to care about traveling with my own hand-crank coffee grinder and annoying erlenmeyer flask looking carafes and other coffee snob bullshit to support ethical coffee production.

I will gladly pay extra for ethically produced coffee. I have no need for all the other crap, and it is in fact off-putting.

Consider it done.

Check it out. Order a couple pounds. Hot rod a popcorn popper and prepare to get your socks knocked off. I’m not affiliated. I’m just a fan.

Go coffee!

Worker’s rights should be protected, fair trade policies are a good thing, these ideas stand on their own.

Coffee workers and farmers will benefit if your coffee snobbishness goes mainstream? That might be true, that’s no longer advocacy, its trickle down economics. “Rising tide lifts all boats,” indeed.

People don’t need to know more about how fancy schmancy coffee is made to support the social issues around coffee production. Same way you don’t need to know what a continuously variable transmission is to drive a hybrid vehicle.

Me, I roast it myself. I get the green beans from Just Us! Coffee Cooperative, out of Wolfville in Nova Scotia, just a few kms from the much-storied Grand Pré. I rotate through a variety of, um, varieties, so my palate doesn’t get jaded.

My very favourite are beans from their Mexican supplier/grower. (Who knew!) Hints of chocolate, cinammon, and other notes. A wonderful, satisfying shot of espresso.

Yeah, you obsess over it initially. Once you’ve figured out the brewing/roasting/cups, you can leave the obsessive/compulsive behaviour by the wayside and concentrate on the wonderful pleasure that a good coffee is.

As is, you have supreme branding fetish by something that claims to be beyond brands, beyond product promotion … I am sorry I just don’t buy it. We have seen this one before; we know how it ends.

I have introduced many people to high end coffee. Most of them have had their eyes opened that coffee is not just a vehicle for milk, sugar and caffeine. It can actually be god in a cup. Watching someone who has only ever drank coffee on the level of Starblechs or Mickey D’s sit down at Intelligensia and drink her first ever cup of black coffee and say it is the best she has ever had brings a smile to my face.

There will always be those of you who do not care how you get your caffeine, be it in a frappuccino or a can of Monster. But allow those of us who want to savor excellence that right and the right to share it with others.

I am continually frustrated by coffee shops who in the main serve hot, sickly milk with weak amounts of coffee. I have to do battle and ask for another shot every time, excepting Nero’, where they automatically give two shots. Why should I have to pay for an extra shot just to get it as the Italians would serve it?
I am always told most people prefer it with one shot (those Starbucks fans who like hot milk with a slight coffee flavour) but they could always ask for it weak rather than coffee lovers having to pay more.
It is not just the bean and the country of origin, or the roasting of same but the training of the Barista and make of the machine which counts for much. Gaggia has my vote.

Their costs haven’t gone up too dramatically for a few reasons – Folgers has their own crew of market speculators placing bets on coffee futures – they hedge massive futures contracts that keep them relatively safe from these surges for an extended period.

Also, Folgers is simply absorbing some of the change in hopes of a market correction.

BUT, Folgers buys, treats and labels coffee in a commoditized capacity – Intelligentsia does not. We expect a lot from the folks we work with and reward them based on quality in the cup. The prices we pay are much, much higher. How much higher depends on the producer and the quality.

the bars would be *staffed* by some of the best baristas in the business from all around the world

fixed it for ya

/pedant mode

Quiche: When your Mr. Coffee breaks, consider replacing it with a Chemex. Coupled with a good hot water kettle it is overall faster than the Mr. Coffee, especially if you include clean-up time.

Fernwood: The main reason Folgers is so much cheaper than Intelligentsia is the market placement and economics of scale in processing costs, not the cost of the cherry (though because of their size they do have a big incentive to minimize their raw cherry cost). The ICO composite price for beans is up around 60% over the last 12 months, but the price of supermarket coffee has hardly budged in comparison.

That cup of black heaven you wake up with connects you to companies and families around the world, just like the oil that enables your power/mobility and the cotton you wear. It’s the world in your hand. I’m rabidly in favor of any project that has the potential to improve the lives of those growers, processors, transporters, roasters, etc., and I hope you’ll give them a chance to show you why you should be, too.

I’m a little disillusioned with the certificates handed out for “ethical” coffee when it doesn’t translate into sustainable improvement and a better product. I feel a lot better when i see that, because of the demand for quality, auction prices rise above $20 a pound. When it comes to speciality coffee i think conflating quality and welfare is ok. They are causative.

But I will say this:

There will always be plastic bags of cheap ass coffee in office break rooms that are brewed in Bunn drip machines with tap water. And then it often sits there on the burner for an hour before it is consumed – sometimes with sugar and dry creamer. (I like to think I can see you cringe when you read that.) AND THERE IS NO REASON WHY THAT COFFEE CANNOT BE ETHICALLY PRODUCED.

In fact it should be. You should not have to do it if crappy coffee is so repellent to you. Coffee Common is a good thing for what it is. But don’t pretend that coffee advocacy is restricted to your kind of coffee snobbery. Ethically produced coffee needs to happen with the cheap stuff too, if it’s going to help most of the farmers and workers. We coffee barbarians will probably always outnumber you elites.

Again I am sorry for my earlier attacks, and I wish coffee common well in its efforts to help coffee growers. I will buy a pound of fancy schmancy coffee from Intelligenstia to make up for it.

Maybe that means that I don’t *really* know what great coffee is. In that case, I apologize. I don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun :-)

Jeffrey

Yes, these roaster produce wonderful coffee, and letting people drink wonderful coffee will create a larger market for it. I am a particular fan of Intelligentsia and Terroir, and drink their products regularly. I believe food is a quality of life issue, and connecting people with “better” food can be a valuable service. This won’t, in any sense, be “open sourcing” or “Creative Commonsing” coffee, though, especially if the outreach will be at venues like TED.

Serving well-made, expensive coffee at TED, and educating TED attendees about good coffee, is just an example of a luxury industry targeting a market for expansion. Nothing more.

For instance:

1) Think globally, act locally
2) Slow food, not instant
3) fair trade
4) Knowing where you food comes from

And good coffee is decadent, sure. But it is an affordable decadence.

(posted from Italy, where a coffee is a coffee is a coffee – but if it’s underage is probably our PM’s)

Some people in the coffee world do take themselves and their (a)vocation a bit too seriously, and this can be off-putting. Sean doesn’t have to answer for the attitudes of others here, he only has to take responsibility for what he himself posts. I don’t see anything over the top in this post, though there are a couple of factual assertions that need qualification: some coffee cherries contain a single bean (a peaberry) instead of two, and most trees on even the best farms will produce beans with defects.

I see nothing wrong with this. I love my coffee like I love myself.