Starbucks Rant #1

I LOVE coffee. I mean I REALLY love coffee. Which is pretty odd because until the birth of my second child, I avoided this great elixir from the heavenly realms completely. The only reason why I sampled this beverage in the first place was out of pure desperation to be able to function as a father and husband to a growing family. I needed caffeine. My first experience: Starbucks Christmas Blend (Circa 2005) at a friends Christmas gathering. And it was at that point that I was truly introduced to Starbucks beyond getting an iced mocha.

From the get go, I never actually liked the taste of coffee unless it was laced with large amounts of Coffeemate Vanilla or Hazelnut creamer. I would drink anything that said it was coffee as long as it was not decaf. Then, one fine day, those same heavenly realms opened and a choir of angels sang as I sipped my first "real" cup of coffee, a Kenya AA roasted from Intelligentsia and brewed in a french press. Oh...now THAT'S coffee. I immediately realized that coffee was not meant to taste like metal, mud, charcoal, paper grocery bags..DEATH! It was supposed to taste good, like a nice wine.

So this leads me to Starbucks Rant #1: Starbucks, in all it's corporate glory, purports itself to be some sort of authority on coffee. At one time, this may have been so. But somewhere along the way, Starbucks has seemed to forgotten how to make coffee or any other coffee related beverage. It seems like every person I talk to, coffee aficionado or not, agrees that coffee from Starbucks is over roasted. But my problem only begins there. They now try to come off as authentic by posting in front of you the date of their new, immensely bland and tasteless Pike Place Roast. It will generally give a date that is three weeks or more prior to when they are actually serving the coffee. The reality is, there is nothing fresh about coffee that was roasted many weeks, even months before it is actually brewed. All of those potential flavors and notes are lost.

Starbucks has been in the coffee business for decades. It is a brand that is recognized by anyone who does not live in a remote mountain cabin (even the Unibomber must know about Starbucks). They should know better than to try to pass off what they serve in their stores as coffee. I recognize that when a business becomes a huge corporation like Starbucks, quality control and attention to detail becomes increasingly more difficult. But just be honest about it. Don't try to use smoke and mirrors to make it seem like the customer is getting a high quality, authentic product. Purchasing an espresso machine manufacturer (this was done so that customers would think that they are getting the very best espresso known to man...nice try!!!), posting irrelevant roast dates or creating this signature roast (Pike Place Roast) doesn't cut it. At the end of the day, unless you milk and sugar your coffee to death or order a heavily sugared latte drink, you do not get anything that is close to palatable.

I accept Starbucks for what they are. Corporate coffee that is very convenient and helpful for getting a decent caffeine fix. I have to also give Starbucks credit for even putting coffee in the forefront in terms of beverage consumption in this country. They have elevated all of our expectations as to what we demand in the cup. This, however, may also be the demise of the Starbucks reputation. Will Starbucks ever get back to the basics that established them in the first place? Let's hope.

It is what it is!