Seems to me that Amtrak Coffee is a little rough.I like Green Mountain where its available but no matter what I get I always add a bit of fortitude to it but those little airline miniatures are getting expensive
Also trying tp get coffee @ 2am takes a lot of persuasion from the crew.
‘Railroad’ coffee is traditionally strong to keep night shift workers awake! Now, at 2 AM you are looking for coffee? Most passengers are trying to sleep…
Jim
Well I am either getting on or off the train at those wee hours and sometimes both
I bet with that “fortitude” you add, you probably don’t know whether you are coming or going.
You might want to try Parnell’s coffee…straight outa the coffee machine at the hospital here…bad stuff it was. Tasted like someone mixed in woodchips with a dose of dinosaur poop…gads it was awful!!![banghead]
Mr. Parnell must have a stranglehold on the powers that be at the hospital. Or, do the people who drink it regularly have a strange taste for coffee?
Undoubtedly another of your questionable and/or illegal activities.
Obviously you guys have never had Army coffee. so strong it it used to protect Abrahms tanks from incoming shell fire. Talk about strong and bad tasting coffee, but I lived on it for years.
Actually, I think the worst coffee is weak coffee. The bad reputation of strong coffee is mostly due to bad quality coffee made strong enough to tell that it is bad. Maybe that is why people make weak coffee.
Coffee these days has all dropped in quality. Most name brand grocery store coffee is pathetic. Coffee shop coffee is burned in the roasting to give an illusion of richness that many people fall for. McDonalds shifted over to that coffee hoax. I doubt many people have ever tasted really good coffee. It is almost unrecognizable as what we call coffee.
Coffee from the highest quality Arabica beans has a very complex flavor that can seem almost chocolaty at times. It can be made very strong, and still be silky smooth. It can sort of take your breath away as if it contained alcohol. I have no idea of where to buy this type of coffee.
Or maybe not. Amtrak trains aren’t noted for always having the best arrival and departure times. An example is the eastbound California Zephyr, stopping at Lincoln, Nebraska, at 3:26 AM.
Many, many years ago I occasionally travelled between Chicago and the Cleveland/Akron area. I preferred riding the train, but sometimes the schedule dictated that I had to ride “the Dog”. One regular stop for the bus was a rest stop near Toledo on the Ohio Turnpike. It was run by an outfit called (I’ll probably misspell this) “Gladieau”. The very first time I ever tried their coffee, I realized I had finally found the worst coffee on the planet. Or, if it wasn’t the worst on the planet, it was certainly the worst in the Western Hemisphere. After that experience, I ALWAYS bought a cup of coffee when I chanced to visit that rest stop, simply because I wanted to see whether they were maintaining the tradition. Gladieau never disappointed me. Of course, I could never stomach more than about 1/4 cup of the stuff. The rest always went into the washroom sink. But it always gave me a warm, glowy feeling (is glowy a word?) to know that some traditions endured. Can anybody tell me if Gladieau is still in business, or if the rest stop still serves that stuff?
There’s a reason they’ve nicknamed Starbucks “char bucks.”
FWIW, I’ve found the best coffees at Whole Foods.
John Timm
Gladieux, wasn’t it, out of Toledo, Ohio? IIRC Marriott bought 'em in the mid-'80s.
Was that “Warm Glowing Feeling” that you had from the plutonium that was mixed in to Gladeau coffee to give it a a little flavor ??
I worked in an office headed by a real “old school” guy - always the first to arrive in the morning, and making the coffee in one of those 20 cup or so “drip” coffee makers. I don’t drink coffee, so I can only go by the reports that he made at a tad strong so he could get a drinkable cup off the pot sooner than when it was actually done brewing.
“Tad” may be too mild of a word, from what I understand.
I wasn’t able to attend his retirement, but I did contribute a gag gift (I hope someone played it up well) consisting of one of his old coffee cups in which was a glob of coffee colored with a spoon handle sticking out - the inference being that his coffee was so strong that it stuck to the spoon.
Sometimes I refer to coffee like that as needing to be cut off with a pair of scissors…
I read sometime back that they still haven’t been able to determine all the chemicals in coffee…
My son’s former father-in-law visited them once and his daughter took him for coffee at Starbucks (well, the drive-thru). Apparently getting a “plain” cup o’ joe there is a challenge, but they finally managed. He took one sip, said “burned,” and dumped it out the window…
That is why they offer such a variety of “flavours” and adulterants… so you cannot detect that the “COFFEE” is lousy.
Personally, I HATE even the SMELL of coffee. Can’t hardly stand to walk down the coffee aisle at the grocery, it stinks so bad.
My great uncle Bernie had a couple of sayings about coffee. One was that the coffee wasn’t any good unless you could float a horseshoe in it. If you use a spoon to stir the coffee and nothing is left of the spoon afterwards, you’ve got a good cup.
A former co-worker told about an NMR lab he was working in that ran some analyses of a pot of coffee as it sat on a burner for a few hours. After seeing the results, he’d never drink from a pot that had been sitting on the burner for more than an hour.
My experience with Amtrak coffee is that it isn’t much worse than most K-cup coffee.
That sounds about right. They have always had a schedule pretty close to that for EB and around 1am for WB. That way you get to see the Rockies or Chicago in the morning. It is also very quiet here, so we don’t disturb your sleep. Unless you live here.
I’m partial to Rogers Family Coffee, myself. Especially their San Fransisco Rainforest Blend. I’m not a huge coffee drinker, but that stuff is pretty good, IMO.
Pause and serve function is intended to allow people to get coffee before the brew is finished because they can’t wait that long. But actually, it can also be used to get much higher quality coffee. I have a recipe and method for making what I call, “Baby Coffee.” You make a 6 cup pot of coffee on the strong side, using Folgers “Black Silk” in a garden variety drip maker.
You heat the basket with hot water before putting in the coffee. Then after filling with water, you heat the carafe with hot water before starting the brew. After it makes 1½ cups, pour it all into a big cup. That is the best cup of coffee possible without going to South America.
The pre-heating part is critical because the hot plate does not have much time to add heat when you take out coffee so early in the brew. I am not sure of the exact science, but coffee is especially good in the early part of the extraction phase. The ratio is very finicky, and hard to hit the perfect “sweet spot.”
Also, the remaining 4½ cups in the brew will be just fine, so nothing is lost in the process of making Baby Coffee if you can use the whole 6 cups. And it is the first cup that matters most anyway.