A melange is a mix of unlike things. A "Wiener melange" is apparently a mix of coffee and cream, although having lived near Diedrich's when it was a small family enterprise and Martin Diedrich was happy to chat about coffee, to me it means a blend of dark and light roasts. Here it will be a mix of things I do and think about: computer science, bicycling, cooking, and maybe some occasional politics.
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Coffeeneuring extra credit: #8 of 7
I've seen a couple suggestions to ride a coffee-cup shaped route. It's not as easy as it sounds, because street systems tend to be on a grid with few suitable lines to form the bowl of a cup or a handle. Coburg/Cal Young/Willagillespie/Country Club was the closest thing I could find to a cup shape in the Eugene area, with a somewhat clumsy handle looping around Monroe Middle School. That much I mapped out in advance, but I forgot to consider one-way streets, which caused me some problem where I tried to complete the bottom of the bowl.
On the way to the start of the cup, it occurred to me that I should be able to draw in a saucer with the river path. This I did not see on a map before I got there, and I should not be surprised that my mental picture of the geometry is way different from where the path actually goes. That stretch along the river was supposed to be the saucer ... obviously that part didn't work.
The only coffee along the cup itself was a Starbucks. I'm not too snobbish to acknowledge that Starbucks makes reliably pretty good coffee, and has had an overall very positive influence on coffee in the U.S. But this is Eugene, and we can do a lot better, so I stopped at Full City (Pearl Street) on the way back.
Full City is more-or-less the original really good coffee in Eugene. More-or-less because the proprietor was roaster at Coffee Corner when Coffee Corner was the best coffee in town, 30 years or so ago. I'm not 100% certain, but I believe I bought my first batches of green beans from him when I was living in Indiana. Fully City has a high standard for quality, from the roasting and freshness to the pulls. They make a few choices differently than I would ... some of their roasts are a bit darker than I prefer, and the practice of serving the shot separate from the steamed milk in a caffe latte seems to me an unnecessary exposure of the coffee to air. No latte art here; the focus is on flavor. I had a shot. It was good.
Coffeeneuring data: 3 November 2013, Full City Coffee Roasters on Pearl Street, "caffe normale" (straight espresso), about 15 miles total.
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