The Best Coffee is Made at Home

I'm happy to have my brother visiting my new home in Portland, Oregon over the weekend. Yesterday, we got the day started at the bright and early hour of 2 PM, and walked a good part of the city so that he could see the sights. Naturally, we needed coffee throughout the day and had a total of five coffees each. At some point at the end of the day, we realized that ironically, the worst coffee we had all day was the one that was served to us in a restaurant.
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We enjoyed our first cup of coffee at home. It was from a pound of Kenyan Peaberry, roasted by Portland's Coava Coffee Roasters, quickly becoming one of my favorite roasters in the city. From there, we started our trek by crossing the Willamette River and walking to Coava's very location on Grand Avenue for our second cup of the day.We had lunch at a great local restaurant and before the bill came, we both decided that we needed a coffee. It was the worst coffee we had all day. Compared to the two great coffees before it, it was noticeably bitter. As our trek continued throughout the day, we had another coffee at Stumptown Coffee Roasters, a stalwart roaster on Portland's coffee scene. And finally, between the day's walking and nighttime activities, we stopped at home where I made us one last coffee for the day. It was a Nicaraguan single-estate coffee that I had purchased from Coava earlier in the day. My brother liked that one more than the Kenyan coffee I'd made in the morning.It's ironic to me that one reason I had started this website was to teach people how easily they could make "restaurant-quality" coffee at home. That tagline is still throughout the website even. And yet, over the course of a day and five coffees, the worst one we had was in a restaurant. Further proof that good coffee comes from two places: your local roaster and your own kitchen!