Opinions of Starbucks coffee - Page 2

[Matthew Brinski]

As for Starbucks, it is also too huge to draw definitive conclusions about ALL their coffee from visiting a couple of shops. There are quality variations between shops ...

I totally agree with that. There is a Starbucks in Frankfurt, Germany which I go to when I'm there. It's the one on the Fressgass (Grosse Bockeneimer Strasse) near Hauptwache, and I frequently get a short cappuccino from there that is consistently good ... not just drinkable, but good. A lot of it probably has to do with how well the milk is prepared. I can never get anything close from any of the Starbucks here in the US.

Matt

[Spironski]

What Europeans do not realize is that these "tourists" are actually paid actors, trained by our State Department to amuse Europeans and distract them from our foreign policy misadventures. If you are lucky, you'll meet some "New Yorkers" who have been hired to say "Pizza was invented in New York City."

LOL! Well, I think we "Europeans" can make fools of ourselves also. I am afraid you people must think of us as tightasses sometimes...

But, back to U.S. coffee matters, the U.S. is just too huge to conclude there is no good coffee just from visiting a couple of shops at random. You are, however, free to conclude that finding good coffee takes planning and effort.

True! That is why I said: "as far as I know..." But I have friends in Seattle, and it seems that this is a good place to start exploring

[Barnstormer's~Betty]

I was wondering how everyone felt about starbucks coffee?

I usually order a "Venti" six-shot Americano...The coffee characteristics come out very nicely that way. It's one of few menu item's remaining that barista's don't push whipping cream on to fix their mistakes.

[zin1953]

As with many others, I find (as I've often said in the past) that "*$ is the McDonald's of espresso." (Then again, I suppose McDonald's in now becoming the McDonald's of espresso -- it's all so confusing!)

Stale beans, roasted to the point of almost being charcoal (OK, to be fair, that's a slight exaggeration), the coffee one gets in their stores will do in a pinch, but I find their espresso to be simply an abomination.

To be fair, there is a *$ a couple of blocks from my office, and on those rare occasions when I've completely run out of coffee in my office, I have been know to go down and buy a 1/2 pound of something to carry me through the rest of the day. But I end up drinking lattes the rest of the day, and, in the morning, I'll bring in fresh beans and dump the *$ beans in the trash.

I started drinking coffee in the late-1960s. I grew up buying whole coffee beans from independent roasters -- some of which (Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf [est. 1963] and Peet's [est. 1966]) have since become relatively large -- and using my father's old, original KitchenAid A9 coffee mill (burr grinder) and a Chemex, both from the late-1940s/early-1950s. Since then I've moved on to home, and later "prosumer" espresso machines and grinders, but the quest has always been the same: great coffee.

I have never had great coffee from Starbucks.

C'est la vie!

Cheers,
Jason