Ok, so maybe this isn’t your chance to change the world, but it’s your chance to tell the Massachusetts governer elect what you would do to improve this State. Believe it or not, he wants to know, so sit down and share your ideas at: http://www.patrickmurraytransition.org/index.cfm.
Speak up! Opportunities like this don’t come along very often!
A former roomate and I used to have recurring discussions about how coffee should be roasted. I know, it’s among the more stupid things to argue about, particularly since taste and preferences are entirely individual. She prefers dark roasted coffee, I prefer medium roasts, our other roommate only drank decaf - we made three different pots of coffee in the morning for 3 people. Come to think of it, I haven’t lived in a place where people shared my coffee preference since leaving my parents’ house. All of which totally proves the point about individual prefence. Anyway, the reason we argued at all is because she claimed I was drinking underroasted and thus inferior coffee. My comeback was that she was drinking overroasted burned coffee that was strong but had no flavor.
A conversation with the coffee roaster at my favorate coffee shop in CA (Dana Street Roasting Company), a visit to Murky Coffee in DC and a taste test in Cook’s Illustrated revealed that of course I wasn’t drinking underroasted coffee and that in fact, many people are drinking overroasted coffee these days - introduced by Starbucks to a country that before had miraculously managed to run on bland diner coffee thin enough to read the newspaper through. It was an improvement and tastes fine with lots of milk and sugar in some kind of mocha, latte or frappuccino form, but is not a flavorful cup of coffee on its own.
Very lightly roasted coffee tastes acidic and grassy, overroasted coffee tastes burned. Somewhere in the middle of the spectrum is my perfect roast: light enough to bring out the subtle flavors of the beans which vary by origin, dark enough to exhibit some chocolaty earthy notes. And, since a good roast doesn’t guarantee a good cup of coffee, it should be brewed strong enough to bring me to live in the morning, but not so strong that the spoon sticks up straight in the mug.
I could go on and on about coffee, but who has time for that?! The lesson is: darker roasts are not always equivalent with better quality or taste and while there is such a thing as underroasted coffee, you are far more likely to find overroasted coffee in this country. So, if you that’s your preference, you’re in luck! Regardless of the type of roast, I always look for fairly traded, organic, shade-grown coffee, which ensures that the coffee farmers are paid a fair wage and that the impact on the environment is as small as possible. Also tastes much better, if roasted properly … 