In the last month I found myself chatting with two coffee roasters while they worked, one at Mt. Hood Roasters in Rhododendron, Oregon, and one at Java Kai in Hanalei, Hawaii. I did not admit to either of them that the coffee we drink the most of at our house is Trung Nguyen, a mass produced Vietnamese coffee that we buy ground in big quantities from our local Asian supermarket.
We buy this stuff because, well, we like it. I acquired my first package out of desperation. I was in Seattle’s International District and I needed coffee, stat. When I opened the can — it was still in cans then, it smelled of chocolate. Brewed up it tasted very smooth, not bitter at all, and it held that nice deep aroma. It’s cheap, too, really cheap, compared to anything else I like.
I have a friend who’s a roaster and when she stayed with us, it pained her to watch us slurp down the Trung Nguyen. I can relate; I’d probably have a fit if you told me your cake of choice was Twinkies. I get it. But I also think you should eat and drink what tastes best to you, of course, and if you’re truly satisfied with Twinkies after exploring the options, then there’s little I can say to change your mind, nor should I.
I tasted coffee at each of the roasters, the Barlow Trail at Mt. Hood, the Kauai Peaberry at Java Kai. I rather liked the Barlow Trail, I was neutral on the Kauai Peaberry. I did get yummy coffee at the on-site cafe the NaPali Gallery and Cafe (at the resort where we stayed in Kauai) but I couldn’t tell you what beans they used.
When I asked the roaster at Java Kai why it was so hard to get good coffee in Hawaii, where they are supposed to have some of the best java in the world, he told me that most of what you’re served as Kona in the islands is “10% Kona, 90% Colombian floor shavings,” that the good stuff gets shipped right out of Hawaii, pronto, and retails for around 40 bucks a pound.
The coffee from Mt. Hood Roasters doesn’t cost anywhere near that much – it’s quite affordable, the roast we liked so well is about 10 bucks a pound. We bought a bunch of it, some for ourselves, some to send away. In Hawaii, I settled for a series of four dollar lattes, a poor investment, to be sure.
I’m happy to be educated out of my taste for a commodity coffee, but my addiction stands in the way. I’m also a sucker for the morning or cafe house ritual, the leisure and laziness implied in a good cup of coffee, be it cheap Vietnamese, pricey Hawaiian, or something reasonable and delicious in between. Time with the roasters has made me see coffee as more of a craft and given my obsession for the bakery arts, this seems an appropriate thing.
No real conclusions here, but if you want to have coffee, hey, I’m around.
I like Trung Nguyen, too! I buy it at Lam’s for my french press. It’s good and it’s cheap.
I learned that Trung Nguyen purchased in Vietnam tastes even better. They grind the beans for you, fresh, before sealing the grounds. The difference is pretty striking!
I’m really tickled by your love for Trung Nguyen’s good and cheap coffee. I thought I was the only one.
Look for me at a coffee house near you (please don’t make me go to the honeybear, even if my blog name would indicate that I’d love it, I’d rather try someplace new (to me)). Sometime between about the 9th and 13thish of July, I’m thinking. I’ll be the pasty-white one who’s just stepped out of winter. Fun!
Trung Nguyen is the cream of the coffee crop in Vietnam, but it hardly tastes the same once taken out of Vietnam. Vietnamese coffee burst onto the scene in the past decade as a cheap (successful) alternative to superior beans, at it’s taken a hit against many countries coffee exports, like Colombia’s.
I think the secret for Trung Nguyen or VN coffee is making it very very strong, and dunking in condensed milk.
But it sure does taste good in Saigon.
I pretty much went nuts over the coffee in Vietnam, and while I agree, it’s not the same as watching it drip in to a calorie packed layer of condensed milk while watching the street life go by in Saigon, I’m still happy making it here at home in my espresso machine.
I’m a philistine.
For a lot of back story on the coffee industry you might check out Coffee Kids. It has become a commodity in most parts of the world with the growers making as little as 4 cents a pound. I would be curious to know how they can grow it so much less expensively in Oregon than Hawaii (where I live).
I’v never made it to Vietnam yet, but love the Indonesian coffees.
@Roxanne: They don’t GROW the coffee in Oregon, it’s imported. The stuff we got was ROASTED there but came from (mostly, but not exclusively) Central America. Just FYI.
Thought I’d better stop lurking after my Twitter introduction 🙂
I love coffee, and I am living in Turkey, the land of tea drinking! Would you believe it pretty much the best (and cheapest!) place for espresso or normal coffee here is Starbucks. That should give an idea of the situation…
Anyway, reading about it is the next best thing.
I wondered where they got warm enough climate to actually grow coffee in Oregon! That’s just how I read the article in the segue from one paragraph 5 to 6, kind of an apples to oranges thing that didn’t make sense to me.
My point of mentioning Coffee Kids is that coffee prices are all over the map, and do not reflect a true value relationship (i. e. more expensive does not insure better quality – which is subjective anyway). It’s an industry that suffers from global over-production and hence the commodity prices. Hawaii growers I suspect are charging what the market can bear and what it costs to produce. In many cases you are buying directly or only a stop or two away from the grower. That would seem to lower the price except when you realize that large corporations can go into third world countries and extract the coffee for pennies on the dollar.
I find a lot of this frustrating quite frankly as the pricing discrepancies can be so extreme. Seems there must be a better way?