Best Specialty Coffee Experience

[coffeetaster]

Hello all eG coffee forum members. After a long hiatus I have renewed my membership.

I am interested and curious as to what your best specialty coffee experience may be? No restrictions, can be any experience......

Cheers!

Spence

[PaniniGuy]

Hello all eG coffee forum members.  After a long hiatus I have renewed my membership.

I am interested and curious as to what your best specialty coffee experience may be?  No restrictions, can be any experience......

Probably not what you're looking for, but it was judging DeFerio's presentation at the NERBCs and sipping that "Campfire" drink!

But in a non-competitive situation... would be the first time I drank a press pot of the Esmeralda Geisha last year. My word that was an amazing coffee.

[cdh]

What do you mean by "specialty coffee"? Are you using it like the SCAA does? ... or some other way? I'm not one to be impressed with latte art, or triple ristrettos poured from crotchless portafilters with specially enlarged baskets.

I'm usually quite happy with New Mexico Pinon coffee run through an espresso machine... but maybe that's just several years of habit talking.

[phaelon56]

For me the topic can pertain to pretty much any coffee or espresso experience outside of slamming down gas station swill on a road trip or choking down a cup of Folger's to be polite to Mom when I go to visit.

There are so many I hardly know where to start but two particular occasions come to mind.

1) Circa 1978 or 1979: My girlfriend went to Cali Colombia SA to teach English for a year. She came home at Christmas and brought me a one kilo bag of pre-ground Colombian Supremo coffee from an export store that sold only to tourists and others on their way out of the country (then as now - the best coffee was reserved for export).

Keep in mind that I was already buying a good locally roasted all Arabica blend at the time, grinding the whole beans for every pot and using a Mellitta manual drip to get the quality I wanted. And I had already tried Colombian coffee. But this batch was an epiphany - the first coffee I ever drank that tased far better black than it did with half 'n half. It truly opened my eyes to possibilities I had never before considered (although it was many years after that before I ever tasted truly excellent coffee again).

2) My first experience drinking Clover coffee on my recent visit to Cafe Grumpy in Manhattan.

[coffeetaster]

Great posts. Hopefully we can get more opinions and stories.....

Specialty Coffee - Coffee that tastes great! Can be drip, espresso, French pres, toddy, etc.. Can be straight, blended, served with steamed milk, or flavored.

A recent amazing specialty coffee experience that I had involved barista training. I was leading a class on basic barista skills, pulling shots and steaming milk for customers. I like to start by watching the barista prepare drinks first without any coaching or training. At the end of the class I was very happy that all the barista, managers and cafe owners has embraced my teachings and were pulling better shots of espresso and steaming sexy milk. However the amazing experience came later that evening when I visited a few local shops.

I decided to visit one shop in particular that I had stopped in at the night before the class for an espresso. The owner of the cafe was in my class, and I wanted to do a little secret shopper. I pretended that I was buying for a few people and purchased an espresso, cappuccino, and latte. Where I had experienced poor grind-dose-tamp the night before I now witnessed the Barista taking time to tamp evenly and clean off the portafilter - she even flushed the group head before inserting and began to extract immedialty. The previous evening she (the same Barista) had the skills and attention to detail that lacked training or understanding. Where she previously allowed the milk pitcher to steam unattended, she now took care to stretch the milk.

My drinks were very much improved from the previous evening. However the big smile on my face was from overhearing the other patrons in the cafe commenting about the amazing drinks that they were enjoying. Stating that the quality had improved since their last visit and they were enjoying their lattes even more than before.

The experience was not the training or the increased quality in the beverages that I consumed as a result of my training. The best specialty coffee experiences was being able to do my job and positively effect the experiences of anonymous customers at various cafe whose baristas embrace contemporary specialty coffee techniques for quality and consistency.

I have many more “Best Specialty Coffee Experiences” and I am curious to read what others have to say…

All the best,

Spencer

[phaelon56]

In keeping with Spencer's comment abotu enjoying the reactions of others to noticeably improved drinks... I was in Seattle last year on non-coffee related business and dragged my colleague to David Schomer's "espresso palace" - the new Espresso Vivace location at 227 Yale across from the big REI store. My co-worker was one of those guys who thought he didn't like cappuccino's until he had a proper Italian style 6 oz cappa with perfectly stretched milk and a triple ristretto shot of espresso.. It was truly rewarding to watch his satisfaction and amazement as he sipped the drink.