Starbucks Goes Blonde, a tasting event

Peet’s isn’t the only coffee company to introduce a new light roast in an effort to appeal to an even broader customer base. Starbucks has also jumped on the light roast bandwagon with a new category of light roast coffees: Blonde roasts. There are two coffee blends in this lineup – Veranda and Willow (also available in decaf) – and both are blends of South American beans. They have slightly different flavor profiles, but both are very lightly roasted and aim to produce a bright, mild coffee with a very clean finish.

I was able to attend a coffee tasting at a local LA Starbucks to compare the new Veranda Blonde roast to the medium (formerly known as mild) Pike Place and dark Fair Trade Italian roasts. No surprise: the Blonde roast was much, much milder than the other two, but it was great to have them side by side. Pike Place is a pretty mild coffee, and it seemed much more full-bodied compared to the Blonde Veranda. I personally prefer bolder coffees, though several of the other tasters at the event loved the lighter Blonde coffee.

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Darker Roast = Higher Quality?

I love a good single-origin coffee, whether from a specific region or a specific plantation, that has been roasted to bring out the very best qualities of that coffee. I’m not going to base my coffee choice on how dark or light the roast is as long as I know that the flavor of the beans has been taken into account and allowed to shine. I have noticed, over the past couple of years, that there has been a real trend for people to think that a darker roast = higher quality when it comes to coffee. I’ve had plenty of seriously over-roasted “gourmet” coffees that just about burned all the real flavor out of their beans.

On the flip side of this coin, I’ve also met many people who won’t touch any dark roast with a 10 foot pole because they believe that they will always been far to strong to taste good (hence why Peet’s and Starbucks are marketing new lighter roasts).

The reality is that a dark roast alone isn’t the mark of a high quality coffee, and it also isn’t the mark of a coffee that is going to make your spoon stand up in it. You can generalize that Indonesian coffees often work best with a dark roast and many Central American coffees work beautifully with a light roast. In the end, coffee should be roasted to bring out the best flavor profile of the beans, whether they’re a unique single-origin coffee or a blend of a variety of beans. As more coffee roasters take the time to promote this fact, more people are going to open up and try new coffees outside of their comfort zone – dark or light – and learn that the color of the coffee bean matters, but only if the color is the best fit for that particular bean.

Peet’s Heads East

Like most businesses, coffee shops are always looking to expand their market. For smaller shops, this often means bringing in specialty desserts or coffee beans. For larger chains, this means looking for new markets. Peet’s Coffee & Tea has long been a West Coast favorite – particularly for those in and around the San Francisco Bay Area – and they are setting their sights on the East coast markets where they’ll compete with favorites like Dunkin’ Donuts for consumers’ morning cup o’ joe.

The biggest obstacle that Peet’s has to face, according to the Wall Street Journal, is not the popularity of Dunkin’s Donuts, but the popularity of a medium roast coffee with East coast consumers. Roughly 30% of nationwide consumers prefer medium roast coffees, while about 40% of East coast consumers due. Peet’s is known for their dark roasts and has even introduced two brand new medium roasts especially to appeal to that East coast market. The new roasts are blends called Café Solano and Café Domingo and they’ll hit grocery stores before they hit the coffee shops soon.

Clearly, not all Dunkin’ fans are going to switch to Peet’s, even as more Peet’s stores open, but it will be interesting to hear if those medium roasts do manage to pull in a few new fans as Peet’s moves east. Only time – and whether the company continues to launch medium roasts – will tell.

Bustelo Cool, reviewed

Did you know that Cafe Bustelo is the best selling espresso brand in the US? I had no idea until recently, primarily because this is a brand that is really only distributed in New York and Florida markets and I never see it in stores out in California. It is hugely popular for making Cuban coffees, so since the company is moving into the refrigerated beverage market with the new Bustelo Cool.

Bustelo Cool is a cuban-style cafe con leche made with intensely flavored coffee (Cafe Bustelo espresso) that is sweetened with sugar and given a splash of milk. I’m already a fan of cuban style coffee, and this drink delivered. I really appreciated that you could taste that dark, smoky espresso note clearly even with sugar and milk added. It was well balanced, not too sweet (my pet peeve with packaged coffee drinks) and really stood out from similar coffee drinks already on the market. Of course, if you want your drink to be super sweet, than Bustelo Cool probably isn’t going to be your favorite.  Chill the can as much as you can, because the drink isn’t quite as good when ice has melted into it and thrown off the ratio of coffee to milk. There is also a mocha version out there, which I’ll be keeping an eye out for.

Coffee fueled car sets speed record

Coffee gets us going in the morning, but it also gets The Coffee Car going in the morning. The coffee car is a heavily modified Rover SD1 redesigned by a team of British engineers that is powered by organic waste – specifically, coffee grounds. Coffee grounds are a waste product in thousands of coffee shops and there is plenty of it to go around. Many shops will even pack up leftovers as “grounds for your garden” for people looking for fertilizer or compost. This coffee fueled car is sort of an extension of that. The coffee grounds are dried and turned into pellets, which are used to power a machine built into the car that turns them into fuel.

The record that the car set was a land speed record for a car powered by coffee. You can bet that there weren’t too many competitors, but the fact that they got that car up to more than 70 mph (average speed of more than 65 mph) says a lot for the success of the project. That said, I don’t think we’ll see a wave of coffee powered vehicles in the future – but I am hoping to see this one appear on an episode of Top Gear someday.