Mr. Howell dismissed the ashy flavor of the Kona with a wave of his hands.
Things looked up with the Ethiopian Shakisso. “This one’s not bad,” Mr. Howell said. “In spite of the darkness you can taste some of the floral aromatics.” But the Aged Sumatra had a long, unpleasantly bitter aftertaste.
…
Mr. Howell sipped the Arabian Mocha Sanani and made a face. “I hate it. That’s really spoiled fruit, like really bad wine,” he said, adding that he was perplexed at its popularity.
If none of the coffees made a favorable impression, we concluded, it seemed that the problem lay less with the Clover, or the quality of the beans, than with the roast.
All the beans we tried had the oily surface you get in a dark roast, commonly called French and Italian roast. Starbucks and other companies are often criticized by coffee connoisseurs for using over-roasted beans.
A dark roast does not deepen flavor. In fact, over-roasting can destroy nuances of flavor, Mr. Howell said.
…
The drip coffee tasted burned and acidic.
…
” NY Times article about a taste test of coffee brewed with Starbucks’s new Clover machines. When Jess and I first moved to Seattle, Starbucks was still primarily a local phenomenon. We went into one and ordered drip coffee. After one sip, we went back to the woman behind the counter (the term “barista” wasn’t common knowledge back then) and suggested that the coffee might be overbrewed. No, she said, the brew times are all measured by timer, so that shouldn’t be the problem. We asked if she wouldn’t mind trying some herself. She agreed, poured herself a fresh cup, and took a sip. We both quietly freaked out as we watched this woman calmly taste the coffee and then shrug, with all the aplomb of some sort of alien whose taste buds were immune to flavors so strong that they would kill mere humans…and that was our introduction to Starbucks.
