Yet Another Coffee Post: Additives!

A meditation on coffee fixings:

I've visited a lot of coffee shops in Atlanta. Not every one of them. Not yet. But I have done it as much I could on my budget and with the time allotted to me, and keeping in mind that my life partner, Cynthia, and my step-daughter, Katie, don't really drink much in the way of coffee. OK, I take that back; Cyn loves herself a good ol' raspberry vanilla venti mocha when the mood sets. And Katie has been known to partake of The Chai, as they say. However, I don't think it really occurs to Cynthia to actually make a coffee shop as a destination; it's more of an add-on to any other activity. For me, though, going to a coffee shop is a treat.

It is a bit difficult to judge the coffee shop. I've written a few reviews on Yelp (and plan on writing more later), and I notice that other people write a lot about the coffee and the snacks they serve. To me, though, the snacks are secondary and the coffee and service are noteworthy but not the primary thing.

The thing that really gets me is how the establishment lays out fixings for the coffee. I can immediately tell a lot about a coffee shop from just that.
First question: do they have half and half? All health considerations aside, half and half is the stuff I put into my coffee. If they don't have it readily available, then I might as well not even order coffee.

Second is their sweetener assortment. In most of the indie coffee shops around Atlanta, I am used to seeing things like sugar syrup (which apparently is cane sugar boiled into water?), raw sugar (which is sugar with the molasses unextracted), stevia or its commercial equivalent, honey, and sometimes arcane and mystic sweeteners that may have been decanted in some unholy but satisfying process birthed in the lower depths of the abyss (like, say, sweet n' low).

Then there's the Stirring Mechanism. Stirring is a vital step in doctoring any drip coffee. One cannot just dump their sweetener and cream into the stuff and have done. So, I've noticed a range of means to address this problem. The spectrum goes from incredibly environmentally unfriendly to extremely environmentally friendly. On the unfriendly end of the spectrum we have ittle wooden stirrers that are undoubtedly rendered from Amazon rainforest trees. It is impossible to stir one's coffee with one of these things, so it requires three or four or more bundled in one's fingers just to get enough surface area to stir, which just exacerbates the fact that more precious Amazonian rainforest is needed per cup of coffee. Next to that are plastic coffee stirrers; once again, one stirrer is not enough to do anything with, and as an added benefit the billions of them will still be around 20 years from now, making a kind of plasticky thatch somewhere in a landfill. Still a bad solution, in my opinion.

As are plastic spoons, for roughly the same reason.

One very intriguing solution to this problem I found at Danneman's in Old Fourth Ward district. They make available to their patrons long sticks of dried plain fettucini as a means of stirring. The stuff biodegrades, it's cheap, it doesn't change the flavor of the coffee, and the blades of fettucini make for a better stirrer than the rainforest-wood kind or the plastic. I still needed three of them to get any motion going in my coffee, and I started having fantasies about coffee-flavored fettucini, perhaps served with a bit of sun-dried tomato and pesto. I suppose it is a bit of American arrogance to use what is effectively a food product to stir our coffee and throw it away, but at least it is better than plastic-thatch.

Getting close to the other end of the earth-friendly spectrum are spoons. The only downside to spoons is the disposal of the dirty spoons. Now, most places have clearly labeled bins that say "CLEAN" and "DIRTY", and at that point you need to just depend on the intelligence and / or literacy of your fellow coffee drinker that they understand the concept. I find spoons with clean and dirty bins to be the best of all stirring worlds; I use one spoon, I get my coffee stirred, and I put it in the dirty bin, and at some juncture a nice person with hot and soapy water cleans the spoons, and nobody has to put up with anything in the landfill. I would think that the cost of doing this alone would be a no-brainer for any coffee shop owner, but I'm still amazed to find rainforest sticks and plastic stirrers everywhere.

I realize that washing the dirty spoons must be a pain, and that, probably, not everybody gets the whole "clean/dirty" thing; a few times I've had to transfer a potential spoon from clean straight to dirty, without touching the coffee.

Still, I am certain that the cost of 40 metal spoons is not as much as the boxes and boxes of plastic and wood stirrers people use.

There are other coffee shop considerations. I like places that use fair trade coffee. I enjoy places that offer big ol' coffee mugs instead of paper cups as a first option. Drinking coffee out of a mug is infinitely preferable, if you can afford the time to wait, than drinking out of a paper or plastic cup.

The worst places I've been to really don't care about their fixings. They put out non-dairy creamer powder, or just 2% milk, or whatever. Or, like one coffee shop, they don't bother to refrigerate their dairy and the half-and-half is sitting out in a box on the countertop, getting warm. When I asked the barista about this, he admitted that he didn't think there was anything wrong with it, and that he rarely has to throw out any, but I like my half-and-half to be cold and reasonably free of bad bacteria.

As I mentioned in my Method Coffee post, if the coffee is good you really don't need any additives. But I love them - they help make the whole experience.

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  By Hope, June 23, 2009 @ 10:26 am

  This is actually a Square One podcast comment, but I don't have a log in to comment on the square one site.

  I just listened to episode 5 this morning while I walked - even as an experienced gamer I found it really useful. Your safety advice was good without being alarmist, and reminded me what a good dad you are.

  I'm looking forward to a proper headset for my antique Treo, so it'll be easier to listen to podcasts again!

  My on-topic comment - your posts about coffee are making me want to try coffee again. There's a local place that might be worth trying...

• 

  By Wakefield Tolbert, June 25, 2009 @ 3:35 pm

  With that kind of affection for the various nuances and pleasures of Coffee (blessed drink of the ancient gods) and indeed its very presentation, we have a few things in common it would seem.

  Good show.

  Congratulations are in order for your literary work as well.

  Of course, above is my given name, but you probably knew me mostly as the lugubrious jerk "AD" on that time-wasting TALK system at UGA.

  My how time flies....

  --Wake

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  By SambearPoet, June 25, 2009 @ 4:53 pm

  AHAH! AD! A blast from the past!

  I want you to know that it was because of your handle that I put "The American Dream" as a Totem Spirit in a Werewolf game book called "Bone Gnawers Tribebook." That might make you grin. Thanks for the comment.

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  By Wakefield Tolbert, June 25, 2009 @ 4:58 pm

  ..and I DO believe you have somthing complete witha logo regarding the Goblin network as well..

  That might have come in as handy commentary!

  (lol)

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  By Wakefield Tolbert, June 29, 2009 @ 9:18 pm

  PS--

  In the way the Universe sometimes deals things out, it might be of interest to you that my eldest son's name is---you guessed it by now--SAMUEL.

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