"meister" news and stories

Some proper-looking espresso. Photo: Erin Meister

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is the eighth in a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.

It can seem like the only thing harder than navigating the labyrinthine menu at a coffee shop is finding one that's worth the hassle. Decoding the signals of a great café isn't always as hard as it may seem: click through for five easy things to look for when trying to determine if unfamiliar territory is the caffeinated friend or foe.

Five signs of a great café -- from silent lattes to barista interrogation -- after the jump.

Coffee and friends in the freezer, where they should not be cohabitating. Photo: Erin Meister

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is the seventh in a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.

Let's face it: The world ain't ideal, and situations get hairy sometimes. I've been reduced to substituting paper towels for coffee filters before, so maybe you've had to keep your coffee beans in the freezer because your kitchen's the size of a walnut shell. You'll get no judgments from me, but I am here to help, and part of that means breaking (or reiterating) the news that coffee is best stored away from your icy asparagus tips.

Most high-quality retail coffee -- like the bag in the picture above, though it's living in the wrong place -- is packaged specifically to keep beans fresh, with the addition of a one-way valve that lets the coffee release necessary gases after being roasted but does not let air in to stale the java. Because it's bagged fresh and can be resealed properly, you should be able to simply keep whole-bean coffee in its bag or an air-tight container in a cool, dry place -- but definitely, definitely not the refrigerator.

Read more about coffee storage after the jump.

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is the sixth in a series of tips for the caffeine-addicted.

Early in our relationship, whenever I told my husband I was headed to a cupping, he (a coffee lover but not a fanatic like me) would imagine something, er, otherwise-related. Now that he knows cupping as a coffee-tasting ritual he might be disappointed -- or relieved -- but at least he understands why I'm a bit jittery when I come home from one.

The cupping process traces back to the 19th century, when beans were graded basically on a "yes" or "no" scale: Too many defects (like disease or mold) earned an ix-nay, while just about everything else was considered acceptable.

Today, cupping serves several different purposes: At the coffee's point of origin it allows farmers, importers, brokers and roasters to test the quality of a crop; after roasting, the roasters themselves will cup coffees for consistency, flavor profile and to detect the effects of aging; and at the consumer level, coffee cuppings are the rough (and fun!) equivalent of wine tastings, and are becoming widely available to the public.