Cafe Negro, Por Favor
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007I didn’t start drinking coffee until I decided to do this trip. So, at 42 years of age, I had my first cup of coffee. Why wait until 42? Ask me later. I quickly found that adding milk and sugar made a dessert and I don’t understand dessert for breakfast so I stuck with black. I also quickly discovered the wretched dark roast which usually tastes burnt to me Coffee for smokers and other hard-of-tasting folks. I also have not tried a flavored coffee that I like. I find that I like light, bright and acidic coffee – the morning brew from Taylor Maid (Bryan – is this right?) is just right. Kind of like how I like white wines. Luckily, I wasn’t interested in becoming a coffee snob because it’s just the caffeine I am interested in. Now on the road for 7-8 months being a coffee snob would be torturous because there is a lot of bad coffee out here. Most of the coffee I had in Africa was instant Nescafe. Instant in Africa seems to be a better product than I am seeing in Peru. I will have a cup of it tomorrow because I want that caffeine AND PERUVIAN COFFEE IS THE WORST LIQUID I HAVE EVER INGESTED. I mix it half with hot water and it is still the goopiest gunk I can imagine and it tastes bad. It usually tastes like it has been sitting around for a few days yet I know it was just made. I do not understand why they make their coffee much stronger than espresso and then dilute it with hot water at time of adding to the cup.
Now I have been quite fortunate so far to be able to drink some of the world’s best coffees or so people tell me. In Africa, every cup of coffee I had in Kenya, Uganda (farm family excluded – all instant), Rwanda and Tanzania was superb. The other countries either served good coffees from these countries (Ethiopia, too) or they served instant. And they made each cup correctly. Or I at least made the instant right – two large spoonfuls. The coffee from Central America is good, too. The coffee from Oaxaca was great and dirt cheap! My favorites were from Guatemala where the acids have the stuff jumping out of your cup screaming GOOD MORNING! I’d drink coffee from Guatemala any day. By the way, Guatemalans warned me that their coffee in foreign countries has usually been toned down by blending with Colombian. If it does not have the high acidic content, it isn’t real Guatemalan. Costa Rica – good coffee, nothing to write home about. Panamanian – good coffee as well. Each of the Central American countries makes coffee correctly… almost religiously. And they all (Africa and South America countries as well) think they produce the best coffee… I am learning that every country says it has the best, most, highest, blah blah of everything so no surprise that they all claim to have the best coffee.
Then I get to the grandaddy of all – Colombia. Actually, Brazil produces multiple times more coffee than Colombia, but Juan Valdez’s Brazilian cousin never became famous. Colombians love coffee and they definitely make it right. Colombia basically has one flavor of coffee. They mix it for consistency. So I never saw “coffee from such and such growing region”. Guatemalans would say that they basically dumb it down by blending. It might be that Colombia is so large that they have learned that they can get the best product for all the farmers by doing it this way. I don’t know. Their coffee is not the best, but it certainly is good. Ecuadorian coffee was OK when it was made right and that isn’t always what I found happening. And just kilometers further, into Peru, it all goes to hell. What I should do is get a coffee maker and buy some raw product and see if they just make it really weird all the time or if the base product is the start of the problem. I really hope Bolivia turns this thing around or I might switch to tea. I look forward to the next morning when I cheerfully say “cafe negro, por favor”. For now, it is a resigned request or I just make instant.
vagabondrick