In the middle of the Coffee in China Thread SiBurning linked an article which in turn linked to this CoffeeGeek posting about the crisis in Coffee and collapse of the market after Vietnam came into production in a big way around 10 years ago.
But that is just back ground info. The part I wanted to highlight was this:
Last year I went on a quest to find a good instant coffee for the office, something cheaper than Starbuck's Via. I did not succeed in my mission but I did find a couple of coffees that tasted like the above description. I most distinctly remember opening a bottle of Maxwell House with the big "grip" lid in bright colors, a lid that reminded me I was not yet in their main demographic. The initial taste and smell reminded me of an 18-wheeler which had just locked up its brakes on the interstate. The burnt rubber smell was quite strong. After the coffee got older (more stale) the burnt rubber taste went away but I could not finish the jar. I thought it was my imagination or something specific to how the coffee was packaged. I did not understand it was a by product of the poor quality robusta beans?!
Do other folks notice the burnt rubber taste in other coffees? To make this thread more productive and not just a rant, are there coffees you consider to have the burnt rubber flavor? Maybe that is why some people don't like coffee.
But that is just back ground info. The part I wanted to highlight was this:
....Quality of product was not a concern - maximum profits and yields were. By 2000, Vietnam was producing almost a million tons of coffee - an eleven fold increase in 10 years. And most of it was the same quality of crap produced 10 years before - non-drinkable robusta.
Yet we have quotes like this one in the December 8, 2002 Fortune Magazine from Frank Meysman, the main coffee buyer for Sara Lee:
"Vietnam offer(s) excellent coffee at very reasonable prices."
It is funny that Meysman would say this, given that Sara Lee has to do some extraordinary things to the massive amounts of robusta they buy from Vietnam to make it drinkable. What do they do, exactly?
They steam the green coffee. I'm not kidding. The Big Four have developed a steaming process and technology to remove the "burnt rubber" taste, for the most part, from the robusta. In the process, they remove just about every other flavour as well.
So what do they do about it? Let me ask you, have you noticed a lot more "Hazelnut Mocha Instant" and "French Vanilla Instant" coffees on the shelf in the supermarket over the last few years? Guess what - that's the steamed robusta, which is then brewed in 5,000 gallon kegs, then flash evaporated, then coated with artificial flavours and colours with a lot of sugar tossed in. They have to flavour it because the steaming techniques leave something that, to be frank, isn't coffee any longer. But hey, marketers came to the rescue: spin this marketing pony around, and call it "French Vanilla Superior Moments Coffee".
And people call that crap "specialty coffee".....
Last year I went on a quest to find a good instant coffee for the office, something cheaper than Starbuck's Via. I did not succeed in my mission but I did find a couple of coffees that tasted like the above description. I most distinctly remember opening a bottle of Maxwell House with the big "grip" lid in bright colors, a lid that reminded me I was not yet in their main demographic. The initial taste and smell reminded me of an 18-wheeler which had just locked up its brakes on the interstate. The burnt rubber smell was quite strong. After the coffee got older (more stale) the burnt rubber taste went away but I could not finish the jar. I thought it was my imagination or something specific to how the coffee was packaged. I did not understand it was a by product of the poor quality robusta beans?!
Do other folks notice the burnt rubber taste in other coffees? To make this thread more productive and not just a rant, are there coffees you consider to have the burnt rubber flavor? Maybe that is why some people don't like coffee.