Atlas Coffee Club Review

  

Coffee will kill dogs due to their liver not being able to process it.  This is actually a broth "coffee" made for dogs as a gimmick.  Do not feed your dogs coffee (except Pitbulls.. you can kill those off, as they eat toddler skulls as a trick-or-treat snack.)

 

Starbucks brand

A lot of people are finally escaping the hot-corn-syrup excuse of Starbucks.  I suspect eventually that company will simply serve the syrup in hot cups alone, Pumpkin Spice Latte be-damned (it is that season for filthy Uggs and blonde imbibers of synthetic hot corn syrup to descend on the green, naked mermaid's lair once again, quaffing away at the synth-calorie plastic, liquefied corn-poison they call coffee while listening to streaming, multi-compressed low-fi streaming audio by the likes of Spotify and Pandora for "convenience" watching CGI junk in awe, dismissing anything quality).  Worse still, the convenience of home in 1000x marked-up Keurig Cups synth-plastic, pre-ground jokes with coffee companies laughing their way to the bank.  Both business models use the cheapest coffee possible.  "But I like the taste!".. you're dead to me.

No one likes you.

A few important points about coffee quality for those who are not in-the-know:

Starbucks "secret ingredient".

Coffee should be:

• Light / Medium Roasted beans (Dark Roast hides mistakes and is a trick companies play)
• Roasted that week or it goes stale and is junk (should have a roasting date on the package)
• Stored darkly, sealed, and coolly but not frozen or refrigerated (looses moisture)
• Not ground until ready to brew
• Should be ground in even pieces (like a burr grinder)
• Brewed within 30 seconds of grinding
• Should be brewed at 195-200 deg. using filtered water (it's 2 ingredients, make 'em count)
• Allowed to "soak" and "bloom" (Bonavita-BV1900TS does this nicely) as it out-gasses CO2.
• You need to brew a minimum of 4 cups at a time but no more than 10.
• Drink immediately (or within 5 minutes) of brewing (not stored on a heating element).

I just love me some Starbucks.  Does this scarf make me look fat?

  Still, a few free-thinkers, a few intelligent folks are realizing that Starbucks, Keurig Cups taste like synth-syrup or plastic (or both) and moving on to new coffees and brewing techniques such as the Chemex (or similar brand) pour-over technique with a temperature-controlled goose-neck water pot which is even cheaper and easier than a drip-pot and using their own bean-grinder such as a Breville or even a Cuisinart burr-grinder (instead of that hyper-cheap blade-grinder for $9 [the reason the blade one is bad is because it indiscriminately cuts all the pieces of coffee unevenly, so some pieces will be powder and some chunks, the mill/burr grinder does best in keeping the coffee micro-pieces uniform for a better taste when brewing])  

Breville brand burr-style coffee bean grinder.

French female bench-press champion 2018.  Get it?  French-Press?  Sigh.

Some go for the French Press style which is a plunger-action type requiring you to force the coffee through a pressurized self-help means but I find that messy and temperature is lost during the process with percolator-sized pieces; but whatever floats your boat.  I just didn't care for the taste or sludge that came out of that in the end. Very '90s trend. Just stay away from Starbucks and Keurig at all costs.

Oh no!  You have to use Keurig brand expensive throw-away plastic-flavored cups!  Oops!  This pack wasn't designed for your health, palette, or wallet in-mind!

  Okay, so I got my grinder and my brewing device..  What kind of coffee to get?

Eat your over-priced, fat-inducing, cory-syrup synth-coffee treat, bitch! -- Starbucks 2018.

Well.. first make sure the roasting-date is labeled and it's whole-bean.. 

Well, it's a matter of taste. (To some degree.. I'm not saying you should drink swill like an uncivilized animal Starbucks-zombie) Some can start cheaply with simply Dunkin' Donuts brand but I warn you those beans have been roasted over a month ago, sitting in your supermarket for weeks after a long shipping on a massive truck, and it's a blend from various sources.  Vacuum sealed, sure but.. preservatives are added and.. not so good.  Still, something like that for the bean-uninitiated is okay to start with for practice and cost.  You want to initially dial-in your settings on your grinder and brewer.  Waste a few pots, it's cheap.  Once that's down-pat with your brewing technique, you'll find it's actually LESS difficult to work with than Keurig's cup-system.  If you're too lazy and just want to "hit a button and go" then you're dead to me and, quite honestly, you're probably dead as well if you can't make a basic cup of coffee you lazy zombie-consumer.  It's not too late though; wake up!  Be awoke!  Coffee is the best start back to humanity!  

Open.. your.. miiiind....

Good examples are Jamaican Blue Mountain, Kona, Colombian, and Ethiopian (arguably).  Trick here is getting them roasted freshly, not some gray-market Canadian re-export version that's been sitting already roasted months ago in vats, rotting away and YOU being over-charged.  Some JBM coffees can run $60-$80 a pound such as Mavis Bank or Jablum but is usually so mass-produced it's not good as it used to be in the early 1990's, and honestly, I feel they've lost their way.  The best way to get that brand is to go there yourself and get the roaster to make you a fresh batch.

Jamaican coffee roasters.  This is how it's done there.  Yeah, it's on the ground.  yeah, they ain't wearin' gloves.  yeah, there's some dirt in it (but not a lot of dirt).  Enjoy.  This is how all coffee is made and processed.  Actually, this is far cleaner than most.  You should see the Starbucks plant.  They have bugs in the coffee too, and there's an FDA acceptable amount.  At least you don't see those here.

No one from this region actually looks like this.  I've been there.  She's a model from LA.

For JBM, I find bluemountaincoffee.com is pretty okay, even the hybrids from Papa New Guiana are okay.  I've tried some of the Micro Estates and found them to be exceptional enough.  I'm not certain of the Peaberry versions (beans that are uniform in size and round-ish) to be worth the extra bucks.  Some say yes but the burr-grinder tends to sort a lot of that out anyway.  One argument is the density, moisture, and uniformity of the actual bean (seed) itself is the same texture, flavor-distribution, etc.  Maybe.  Maybe so.  My palette stops there; I would consider my taste palette "advanced".  I've tried both back-to-back in a controlled environment and don't notice a difference.  I don't think it's worth a 50% to 75% markup, really.  I found the website's rumcake offerings lately on that site to be pretty okay but synthetic-ish and over-priced like a Kum & Go gas-station rumcake (if that's a thing?)  Worth a try.

You wanna get some coffee?  This is Rusty Nail.  I'm lookin' for my Candy Cane.  (forlorn.. Caaaandy Caaaaane?)  Apologize..

Been here.  Beautiful place.  Very clean.  Tastes like rust.

For Kona, stay away from Kawaii (it has a rooster on the front) as I've been to their plantation (used to be a sugar cane plantation until corn-syrup took over for a primary sweeter in the US so there's more money in coffee now and easier to grow, hence the fatness of the US now, as it's "even in the green beans" - Lewis Black).  I strongly recommend visiting the plantations and trying "their best".  Hawaii is fairly easy to do this as you need no passport and you can go on a coffee tour.  Problem with the Kauai-brand plantation is that the soil is heavy in iron.  I personally can taste the bloody-taste of the iron in the coffee (I said my palette was advanced.)  Some can't, but I myself stay away from that rooster-logo (the island has got a TON of roosters).  I'd recommend main-island coffee for Hawaiian, such as Greenwell Farms' Private Reserve. (been there too) though it didn't get more than an 87 on the Coffee Reviews website (though they have a crazy bias towards Ethiopian).   You can try these if you want.  I'd be curious to hear your reviews!

Ethiopians don't drink coffee.

Now if you want to experience NEW coffee... to try out new things from micro-farms..  Micro-farms are small-batch locations that often don't have the real-estate but take often better care of their plantations than mega-coffee locations.  Because they have small crops they can attend to the coffee trees better and with more attention than robots or machines.  Some admit it often tastes better, though a lot of the cost and overhead is a bit daunting to some, and might cost over $40 a pound or more.  For really good coffee, usually you're going to pay around there anyway.  Quit your whining.

Micro-farmer.

Well, there's a few COFFEE CLUBS out there that for about $9-$29 will send you a half-pound (or more) per month to try new things you brave adventurers!  I've read reviews on several and I eventually joined the Atlas Coffee Club (whole-bean with light/medium roast) fairly recently to "poke around" the world for $9.  Nine bucks (or so).  A reasonably nice business model where they sample green (unroasted) beans from various sources around the world and then roast them there at their shop and mail it to you sealed ensuring a less-than 3-day roasted timeline.  

Oh, NO!  I've spilled my coffee all over my shirt!  What am I to do!  Soooo much cream!

So far I've had Nicaraguan and Indonesian.  If you like more you can buy more at a discount.  They send a nice postcard from the region (they make it themselves) and tasting notes and brewing suggestions (if you have more than a drip-pot).  It's pretty fun and different and definitely far cheaper than buying $80/lb JBM, honestly.  It's pretty decent and worth a try.  

Comes in a non-descript Atlas box with a postcard, the sealed coffee in a decorative, theme-based design, and a tasting-notes brew-suggestion card.  Pretty basic.  Beans are non-uniform in size but smell very rich.  I found delivery was timely and tidy.

What I received in the mail by Atlas.

Coffee?  Is this how you drink it?  Through the upper boob?  Feels warm and squishy, like Uncle Joe that night.

My first sampling was from a Nicaraguan microfarm and tasted like a caramel-dipped green apple.  (!?)  The caffeine it offered was so high I temporarily turned into a Gerry B. like character from Easy Rider, "Here's to the first of the day, gentlemen!"  It was fruity and light and sparkly (pretty much the opposite of JBM which tastes like chocolate custard). 

My unboxing.  Click to enlarge.

Do.. do I got any cream on my face?  What a busy night.

 I was then sent coffee beans next month from an Indonesian farm and it's an odd combination of wheatgrass and Mississippi-Mud Pie (but tasty). I 'm ordering more of that as Atlas offers a discount when you buy more than the club monthly subscription (and more bonus bucks for other swag in the way of mileage).  You get miles for your "travels" and it adds up to bonus points for free items you can pick on their website.

Note the non-uniformity of beans here on my received batch.  Smells rich though.  No bugs.  Starbucks?  They got bugs.

"Is this how you drink coffee?"

Anyway, so far so good.  Unusual, but that's the adventure of travel.  It's hard to pick a specific region and Starbucks burns everything to homogenize low-quality by calling it "French Roast" (aka burnt) for cost-effectiveness (and their water is tap so..[yes I know it's supposedly filtered. with a sock]) then hidden with corn-syrup.

Starbucks Pumpkin Spice synth-latte burns for over 30 hours, now with MORE CORN!

If you choose this link, I get my next month free and you get $10 off when you sign-up (so your next month is free too).  Go ahead and look into it first.  There's no obligation to buy (unlike Gold's Gym or Columbia House) and you can stop any time (no minimum number of months).  It's the only Coffee Club that allows this, which is nice.  So if you're bold and want to try new coffees, go this way!  I recommend it.  If you don't like it yourself, I'll refund you as well personally (just email me and I'll send the cash via PayPal.)  Now I'll buy THAT for a Dollar!  Usually the cost is $9 and you might ask, "..but Mike, you said good coffee was over $40?  Yes, but these micro-farms are not well-known and need a leg-up.  Atlas gives them some help getting their name out there beyond the JBMs, Colombians, Konas, etc.)  It's nice to support smaller crops instead of the Mega Corporations.

Thanks for reading.

Here's your Chippy:

I wish I had a little more .. cream.  Can you splash some here?

and, as always, one for the ladies..

Couple of DUDES.  Gettin' the job DONE.  I mean, yeah, there's DOIN' IT but that's not ALL of it.  Grab both bananas, buddy, we're going to have a busy morning!

OUT!

Mike Cronis is Arctic Music