Tim Hortons on Espresso

I saw the following on the plasma screen at Timmys tonight:

What is espresso?

Dark roasted coffee brewed through steam and hot water.

Sigh. Timmys has no clue what espresso is, and yet they help to widely disseminate this (mis)information. I can understand their dilemma — that the average double-double-ing Canadian doesn't know or care what "expresso" (sic) is — and thus they need to educate them. But at least they could do it properly.

Here's my attempt at public espresso education:

What is espresso?

A small, intensely-flavoured coffee brewed with high pressure hot water.

It avoids the pitfalls of assuming that espresso is a particular roast or type of bean (it's not, despite what's being served at Tims or Starbucks), and that steam is used to brew (only high pressure hot water should touch the coffee). Further, three of the most important characteristics of espresso are touched upon: the small volume, intense flavor, and unique extraction method that are only found in espresso. It's not perfect, especially to orthodox espresso-ists, but I implore a purist to try and do better in 11 words of common language.

Here ends the first YWG Coffee "rant". I'll try and keep these to a minimum, but I must stand against misinformation while on my quest for good coffee.

Best espresso so far?

I went down to De Luca's today for some of their Alba Espresso blend (more on this in another post), and unexpectedly enjoyed what might just be the best espresso I've had in Winnipeg so far. While I was waiting for my order, the staff there offered me a shot made from the Alba Espresso blend on the innocuous Saeco Vienna automatic machine in the corner of their showroom.

The double shot had a thick crema and had no bitter or sour notes in it. Just smooth, slightly sweet, coffee flavored espresso. If you want one, just go and buy some beans or other gear — I'm sure they'd be happy to make one for you.

After this shot, I'm looking forward to getting my new batch of Alba Espresso dialed in at home to see what kind of shots I can pull.

PS. If you are interested in local roasters (and why wouldn't you be? — fresh is best!), check out De Luca's, or The Black Pearl. I've heard of (but yet to try) Green Bean Coffee Importers. Also, does anyone know if Sunstone is still roasting? Their website is up, but a little old...

The Canister on Osborne

While not really a review, I wanted to make a quick post about The Canister, a coffee, tea, and associated paraphernalia store located in Osborne Village.

I've walked by The Canister many times, but made a point to stop in a couple of weeks ago. They have a large selection of coffee and tea cups and associated gear, and what seemed to be a great deal of tea as well. I didn't look at their coffee too closely, but they seemed to have a reasonably large selection of coffee, though it was hard to tell where it was from (and thus how fresh it was). I didn't ask. Interestingly, there were a couple of varieties of green beans for those who might want to roast at home (again there might be better/fresher sources depending on what you're looking for — do your research).

What caught my eye was The Canister's selection of manual coffee grinders. I've been thinking about getting a manual conical burr mill for my press pot, and had heard that Zassenhaus mills were amongst the best on the market. However, I never expected to find one in Winnipeg. Lo and behold — there they were on the shelf, box mills and Turkish mills of various kinds. The (presumably) owner and I got to talking about how he managed to obtain these mills given the lack of a Zassenhaus distributor in North America.

So, if you're looking for a high quality manual coffee mill, The Canister is worth a look. They might be worth a look for coffee as well — just ask where the coffee comes from and how fresh it is.

There are few things more Canadian...

...than drinking Tim Hortons coffee at the Tim Hortons Brier.

What better opportunity to try out some Tim Hortons than at the afternoon draw at the 2008 Brier yesterday?

Before I get started on my impressions of said coffee, I should mention that some people would immediately dismiss Tim Hortons as "not good coffee." However, a lot of people drink it, and while it may not have all the flavors and aromas of fine coffee (which don't matter anymore when you make it a "double-double"), it is ubiquitous, and relatively fresh — especially compared to a lot of the other options out there (7-11 anyone?).

I ordered a large black coffee (see above) for this hack of a review. Typically I have Tim's with milk, but wanted to be able to taste only the coffee today.

First impressions? It's served very hot — too hot to taste right away without destroying your tastebuds, and probably too hot for the good of the flavor and aroma compounds in their coffee. There's an aroma of burnt/toasted with a slight hint of burnt caramel.

Once it cools off enough to start tasting, a bit of bitterness and a fair amount of acidity is noticeable in the cup. There is essentially no body/mouthfeel — it's like drinking black water. There don't appear to be any oils on the surface of the liquid either.

As the coffee starts cooling down, things only get worse. The coffee becomes noticeably acidic/sour, bitter, and "carbony" — more or less lacking any smell or taste resemblance to what I would consider coffee. And the aftertaste: the best way I would describe it is like the smell of extracted espresso just knocked out of a portafilter. Yuck.

Finally, a note about everyone's favorite (legal) alkaloid: caffiene! Other bloggers have commented on it, and I will certainly agree that there seems to be a lot of caffeine in Tim Hortons coffee. There's a definite and noticeable rush that follows the consumption of a cup. The only problem with that is the inevitable crash that comes after that rush. But that just means its time for another cup of Timmys. Perhaps I've cracked their (addictive) marketing technique?

The Bottom Line:
Reflecting upon the popularity of Tim Hortons coffee, I can only conclude that people enjoy it so much because they can't actually taste the coffee. Given the popularity of the double-double (Which I must note is a 230 Cal for 16oz. of coffee — more than a similarly sized caffe latté at Starbucks), the coffee really just becomes a faint source of flavor and bitterness to offset the cream and sugar, as well as a nice source of caffeine to jolt you awake in the morning. If you actually want to taste good coffee, you'd best look elsewhere.

That being said, if you are going to drink Tim Hortons coffee (and there are reasons to do so, such as the caffeine kick), here's my advice:

1. Drink it as hot as you can stand, or don't drink it at all. The hotter it is, the less you will be able to taste the not-so-good flavors.


2. Don't drink it black. While I don't recommend the double-double, you should consider adding a little milk or sugar to take the edge off — you really don't want to taste the coffee on its own.


3. Don't order a double-double. (Or a triple-triple — I kid you not I've heard this one before at university.) I'm not a big calorie counter, but I'm sure you can think of more enjoyable ways to consume 230 Calories than by quaffing a large (16oz.) Tim Hortons double-double.

Continued after the break...

The List

Okay, time for the list of places I plan to check out. In no particular order:

• Tim Hortons
  (despite what some may like to say about Timmy's, nearly everyone drinks it and they do have espressos/lattés too)
  
• Starbucks
• The Second Cup
• The Fyxx
• X-Cues
• The Black Pearl
• Mountain Bean
• Espresso Junction
• Nucci’s Gelati
• Eva’s Gelato
• Roca Jack’s
• Mondragon
• Pastry Castle
• Grace Café

In searching through phonebooks, etc., these also might be options:

• Crazy Water
  (in St. Malo)
• The Edge Cafe
  (in Selkirk)

As always, suggestions for new locations are welcome.

Welcome to YWG Coffee

At the suggestion of Michael Tyas, I've fired up a new blog to document my search for good coffee in Winnipeg.

The goal right now is to evaluate the coffee establishments in Winnipeg to find where good coffee can be sipped in our fair city. I'm no expert (though I am working on getting there), but I do have an idea of what good coffee is supposed to be like, and want to share my findings with my fellow Winnipeggers with the hope that we all might enjoy a bit more good coffee.

My next post will have a list of establishments I intent to check out. There will be photos and taste and overall experience reports. I hope to have some fellow coffee lovers join me, so perhaps there will be some guest blogging as well.

Looking beyond this initial goal, I want to look at some other aspects of coffee in our city as well:

• the types of places you can go for coffee (i.e. italian/portuguese clubs, mainstream chains, locally-owned shops, etc.)
• local coffee roasters (there are at least 4 I can think of)
• coffee gear
• non-traditional coffee preparation (often ethnic: Turkish, South Indian, Vietnamese, "Icelandic", etc.)

That's the plan for now anyway. Suggestions are always welcome if you care to offer them.

Why YWG?

If you haven't flown to/from Winnipeg in a while, it's the IATA code used to refer to Winnipeg (technically James A. Richardson International Airport).