Oh yes, cute guys is the decisive factor... For that I was willing to endure even the crappy coffee at the now defunct Mean Bean.

Hausbrandt has all three, IMHO.

HG knows some things.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xCiKCxfYqE

"If we can't learn from our mistakes, what's the point of making them!" ...my friend Richard.

"You are protected by the enormity of your stupidity." Mother to son Victor, in "Notorious"

Sounds pretty horrible.

But where does Maxwell House sell brewed coffee? The processes you're describing sounds to me like they have a liquid end product rather than coffee beans or ground coffee.

Or is this what ends up as instant?

__________________
Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia
“Basically I figure guns are like gays: They seem a lot more sinister and threatening until you get to know a few; and once you have one in the house, you can get downright defensive about them.” --Theresa Neilson Hayden

yep, you connected the dots correctly. sorry, i left that info out inadvertantly. After the "mother liquor" is all collected, it gets centrifuged and concentrated, and then it goes through freeze-drying to make it into a very fine powder, and since you don't package coffee powders, the powder gets sent to an agglomoration unit where basically the powder turns into those packed crumbs. The whole plant smells like coffee..which can be either good or bad, but I mostly liked it.

That plant also of course has roasters to just roast the beans to whatever flavors and the roasted beans are then ground, and then packaged and sent off.

The "extreme" part of the plant was the decaffeination unit. That's also a tall, slim tower with counter-current flow of beans and the stuff that removes caffeine from the beans. That stuff used to be a chemical that's now termed as a possible carcinogen and so it's not used anymore. Now they use super-saturated CO2... which can be a hazard if there's a leak, so that part of plant always had restricted access. The caffeine that gets recovered is also turned into a powder and the #1 purchaser was Coca Cola...

Half the time I was there, I worked on the instant coffee-- "soluble" side. And because it has the most engineering and gadgets and units involved, I guess I liked working there! hehe

But there's engineering involved in the roaster side too. The beans have to be pre-soaked so that they can swell-up and be ready to roast and give out the flavor and aroma; but they can never have more than a certain amount of moisture all through the process. I in fact installed an in-line moisture analyzer to keep it in check--otherwise the beans can start to rot in a matter of days and that means you just lost your product.

It was a food plant so hygiene was at good level. We all also got as much free coffee as we wanted! hehe And that plant was well-integrated and automated wherever possible, so it's not like the final product is bad or inedible. The packaging lines were the coolest things to see...how bottles get lined up, vaccuum-cleaned, filled, weighed, sealed, and capped, and then even packed into big boxes and palletized. The single-serve package line was the newest and coolest...that one plant pretty much makes all Maxwell House single serve packages for all the hotels in the u.s. that have maxwell house coffee in their rooms. And, afterall, it was Teddy Roosevelt who famously tasted the Maxwell House coffee and after one cup, proclaimed it "good to the last drop!"

But most people out there haven't a clue how any of the processed foods get to where they're "ready to eat".... I think the whey and gelatin and cheese factories would be awesome place to practice engineering but wouldn't want to see how your food gets made! haha Ever wonder how Valveeta "cheese" is made into that block?! lol

I've been to a Lay's potato chips plant also and that was really fun! It's all quite automated and the technology used is amazing. They have a scanner that scans each and every potato chip after its been through the fryer to look at its color and tell whether its over-fried and thus burnt, or not fried enough..those that don't meet the criteria get sorted out and junked on a real-time assembly-line basis. And hardly any human supervision is needed! That's why Lay's chips are all pretty consistent, bag after bag.

okay well, enough with all this. i got fond memories!

And thanks to his coffee experience, he typed that entire post in 2.8 seconds.

i just thought some coffee lovers might be interested. but i can see i went overboard with it.

I love Hausbrandt. I wouldn't be caught dead in a starbucks, that's for the programmed zombies of America who lack originality and feel doing what others is doing is cool. I thank companies like starbucks for pointing out the people for me that I should avoid.

That's what I think about many of the other coffee shops, the more independent ones. It just seems that everyone hates Starbucks, sometimes because of the coffee, but often because of the people who like Starbucks (or the perception of those people, anyway). But I find more uber-cool hipsters at those smaller owned, the crowd that's too cool for corporations. I guess I'd take the unoriginal soccer mom or the retired guy that reads the paper at Starbucks over the snotty hipster (that's not directed to you, by the way - I don't know you. just that I see more people at the independently owned stores that are so concerned with looking cool than I see at Starbucks, or at least it seems that way.)

That all being said, I'm all for supporting local businesses, keeping it within the community. Personally I love the breakfast blend at Starbucks, but not so much of many of their other types. I've tried La Colombe (sp?) several times, most recently at Bonte, and it tastes burnt every single time. Maybe it's the blend I don't like, or the people working haven't brewed one recently and I'm getting old coffee. I can't recall if I've tried Hausbrandt or not. The Bean is ok (no comfy chairs for reading in though).

What I'd really like to find is an all night shop that I can go to, to do homework at 3AM. So if anyone has suggestions, please share!

Rim Cafe, at 9th & Federal?

__________________


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xCiKCxfYqE

"If we can't learn from our mistakes, what's the point of making them!" ...my friend Richard.

"You are protected by the enormity of your stupidity." Mother to son Victor, in "Notorious"

Wow that was too easy. Hospitalitygirl, you're my new hero. I just looked it up online. The website's a bit difficult to navigate, but I found an earlier thread here. Late night coffee and free wifi - what more could a law student want?

(Funny I saw they'll have La Colombe coffee though - I guess I'll have to get used to it, of turn to lattes).