750 Words is Not Enough

Okay, it's down to serious business guys. My first real evaluation of coffee.

Took long enough.

So before I start I have to set up a few things, make my criteria clear on what is good coffee, because some guy named Graff said it was a good idea.

Now, I've had coffee from a few (i.e. a lot) of different places but I'm only going to go into three: Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, and Gloria Jean's. Three of the big guns in coffee corporations today.

I will be grading them on:

1)      Variety in selection

2)      Quality of the coffee (meaning taste, texture, color, that sort of thing)

3)      The ambiance of the shop

4)      And the last, prices

Now, I’m taking the whole place into consideration, but these are the four main things that I can easily explain away.

First and foremost, is the review of the worst coffee shop.

#3 Dunkin’ Donuts

Now don’t get all mad at me, this should have been obvious. I chose this one purposefully as my base line. I mean, Dunkin’ isn’t even a real coffee shop; it’s more of a donut place.

But here we go:

1)     Dunkin’ has by far the smallest collection of caffeinated beverages; their mass popularity is more for convenience sake than anything else. Just as advertised its specifically designed for those on the go, so their selection is limited to the stuff they can quickly and easily make.

2)      Over all its pretty poor. I mean there’s plenty of caffeine, but no flavor to go along with it, unless you count the packages of sugar that is readily stacked in the Do-it –yourself corner. But isn’t that okay? I mean their coffee is more for the hard ol’ boys n’ girls who get up at five AM and can’t really taste the stuff anyway.

3)      I have to give them this though; they can design a pretty decent sit down area. Most of the shops I’ve went to have plenty of room to lounge and the whole ambiance of the place is more comfortable to me than an actual coffee shop because it seems way more laid back. There are no frills and fancy paint, and it doesn’t make me feel like I have to get all gussied up to drink my drug of choice. They lose points for not having cushions on all their chairs though.  Sitting on hard plastic for longer than a few minutes can get pretty uncomfortable.

4)      This last one is a very “get what you pay for” place. Stuffs pretty cheap, but the quality to go along with the price kinda takes away my excitement.

#2 Starbucks

The current coffee shop king. I suppose their popular for a reason.

1)     The variety is quite large, and any coffee specialist could find something that they enjoy from their extensive menu.

2)       I know that the coffee quality can vary from store to store, but over all there seems to be at the very least consistently decent coffee from any of the shops I’ve been to. With the notable exception of the new barista who burnt a large amount of coffee and was quickly admonished. But that sort of thing could happen anywhere.

3)      This area is the fall out of Starbucks for me; it’s ultimately why I have them in second place. The ambiance is terrible. Well, it might not be so bad if you’re full of yourself and have a tendency to try to look important by showing anyone who will look the screen play you happen to be working on right now.

4)      They’re pretty expensive. I mean it’s not too much that no one should go (or no one would), and if you just get plain, unadorned coffee it’s not bad.

#1 Gloria Jean’s

1)      These guys have just as much, if not more, different drinks than Starbucks. And on top of that their frozen coffee has way more options.

2)      I’ve seriously never had a bad cup of coffee from this place. I’ve had stuff that wasn’t exactly to my tastes, but even with that I still had to admit that it was a damn well made cup.

3)      Their décor is a mix between Dunkin’ and Starbucks, and is pretty good overall. I don’t feel the snobbery that you get from Starbucks and the seats have cushions on them.

4)      The price range is on the high side, but it’s in the same ballpark as Starbucks. And with the better coffee and atmosphere that brings Gloria Jean’s into the spotlight of my review.

Now I know that the winner’s description is shorter than the losers, and that’s because I feel worse badmouthing than I do good about praising, so I try to justify my losing scores than I do support the winner. ‘Cause I mean really, they’ve all ready won.

Ramblings. Be nice everyone, This is me at six AM, so I'm not all done up like one of your french maids.

My Home Fix

This is my shrine at home. Its a cheap coffee pot, but then again, I'm pretty broke. So it all works out.

As for the brand of bean, as of yet I don't have a preference, but I'm trying my hardest to find one.

Aaaannnd the creamer. I'll admit I have a tendency towards the sweet, but black works in a bind.

Hello boys and girls, and welcome to my very first blog! I hope that anyone who has the misfortune of reading my, usually inane, thoughts on coffee, life, the universe, and everything (but you know, mostly coffee) has a grand old time.

Because it seems the most relevant, I have decided to share with you all the beginning of my probably unhealthy love of that brown liquid. It starts off kind of odd, stays that way, and then leaves off on a very anticlimactic bang.

Cut back to about four years ago to my sister and my glorious self, talking to one another sometime around three in the morning. She was awake because she happened to be very pregnant, and the baby was giving her severe heart burn. I was awake because sleep is for the weak, and insomnia clings to me more tightly than a rabid bear clings to…well anything that a rabid bear would want to cling to. I’m pretty sure a rabid bear can and will take anything it wants. (For more information on the horrors of bears, here, and how not to confuse those with the finer sex, here).

Anyway, my sister was about half a week from her due day. But, you know, babies are little jerks and decided to punch through my sisters amniotic sack and make her think she peed herself. That conversation went a little like this:


Very Pregnant Sister: “I…I think I’m peeing.”

Me: “What? Only cool kids pee their pants”

Very Pregnant Sister: “OH MY GOD THAT’S NOT PEE”

Me: “Please tell me you didn’t poo your pants”


I’d like to note at this point that my only experience with the nitty gritty details of pregnancy came first from my own birth and then from a half hour horror fest in a ninth grade health class designed less to educate me on the wonders of pregnancy and the creation of life and more to scare me into never having any sort of sexual contact ever again. On top of that it’s really hard to remember far enough back to get a good picture of what happened at my own birth.


Very Pregnant Sister: “GREG, SHUT UP the Baby is coming!”


It was at that point that my brain went into shock and all I could think was that my sister would have to give birth on the kitchen table, and that we’d need a new table cloth.

Thankfully my sister had been through the whole giving birth thing before and didn’t panic because at that point I was a useless mess only capable of performing the simplest tasks.

To be honest I don’t remember much, I only remember feeling like I had to help my sister in some way, and I refused to leave her side. She later told me that I went and got her a few changes of clothes and called her boyfriend to tell him the baby was on the way, and then we were off. She had tried to warn me that if I went with her there wouldn’t be much for me to do, and I wouldn’t be able to leave until someone came and got me. I probably should have listened.

To this day I’m not sure why I let my sister drive on the way to the hospital, but we picked up boyfriend and we all went to the hospital together. Really, she seemed calmer about it than either of us and we weren’t going into labor.

In any case we got there just fine and she was promptly given a room and a doctor came in a bit after that and said that he was going to do some tests and see how she was dilating.

Right about there I was kicked out of the room.

Now I was in the middle of a hospital, with nothing to do. My brotherly worry lasted about two hours before boredom took over and I decided to explore more than the desolate hallway with Pascal paintings that were really in bad taste for the sterile white walls and floor.

Like these. Don't match much, do they?

My exploration took me through the amazingly large building, numerous hallways, some painted in peachy colors that reminded me of my grandmother, and some that had smells that reminded me of my grandmother.


It was around then that I realized I was pretty hungry, no surprise because at that point I had been in the hospital for around four hours. I also noticed that I was getting tired, which would be unusual except the only place I seem to be unable to sleep in is my own house.

I retraced my steps till I got to the cafeteria that didn’t smell like food only cleaning products, but it was closed.

That was when I saw the coffee shop.

It had all its lights on and looked oddly warmer than the rest of even the cafeteria, that still felt more like the rest of how you would expect a hospital to: cold, chemical, and dehumanized. But that coffee shop was different. All you could smell was coffee beans and vanilla, and it seemed like a place to welcome people instead of trying to push them out as soon as the rest of the hospital could. Just being in there made me feel better.

The nice barista greeted me with a happy face and she asked for my order. I’d never really had coffee before and told her so. It didn’t really matter. I told her that my sister was having her baby and that I wanted to stay awake for her, so I asked for something strong.

I ended up with a French vanilla 16 oz with a double shot of espresso. Now anyone who regularly drinks coffee should know that probably wasn’t a good idea. There was enough caffeine in there to give an elephant the shakes. The barista was used to that sort of order from nurses and doctors who had to stay awake for twelve hour nightshifts and probably didn’t think anything of it.

Miss barista was very good at her job and it tasted fantastic, but about ten minutes in I started feeling warm.

Warm and very, very awake.

I had so much energy. Seriously. If I could properly use the amount of energy I had the first few times I drank coffee I could run three marathons fight off any number of rabid bears and still have time to do my homework.

I left the quaint little shop and the barista waved goodbye with a concerned look on her face. Or maybe it was the look of a mad scientist who had finally realized what they had truly unleashed upon the world.

I went everywhere that night/morning. I even found the morgue and had a nice conversation with an intern who looked like the last time he slept was sometime around the French revolution. By the time I made my way back to my sister’s room, after about 8 hours gone in total, she had had the baby and our mom was there.

I couldn’t shut up. I was talking more and faster than an auctioneer. After about ten minutes they made me leave.

I went back to the cafeteria to see if the coffee shop was still open, but it wasn’t. Weird hours, man.

I’d already been everywhere else so I went back to the room. Oddly enough I remember thinking my feet were getting heavy. My pace slowed to a crawl and it took three times longer to get back than it did to get to the coffee shop.

Apparently I walked into the room, saw all the chairs were taken and laid on the floor.

I woke up a few hours later and went home, where I slept more.

After that I’ve had a near constant craving for coffee. All kinds of it, bitter, sweet, warm, cold, as long as it was made well it was my lifeblood.

That’s all. I said it was a bit anticlimactic.