My Little Drugstore

With respect to my comments on Starbucks last week, commenter Jenny asks:

So, where do you like to go for your fix?

I presume she's asking where I go to get coffee, although lord only knows, if I wanted another kind of fix, I'm sure that between Boulder and Longmont I could get that itch scratched as well.

My personal preference is the Brewing Market franchise, a Colorado local company. They make a pretty fine cup of joe. But, of course, being Jewish like I am (Jewish, in the sense of 'painfully frugal'), I very rarely buy cups of coffee there. Instead, I buy beans, which I grind at home to make both drip coffee and espresso.

Here is where Brewing Market really shines. Their coffee is good, but the beans are really quite excellent. And, since they do all their roasting in Boulder, the beans are always very fresh, usually roasted within the week or so. When I make espresso, I can really tell the difference between beans I just brought home from the shop and beans a week later, so this really makes a difference vs. a national distribution network like Starbucks or Peet's.

I just found out (scroll down to 'History of Allegro Coffee') that Brewing Market is actually a part of the Whole Foods family of companies. This doesn't really affect me one way or the other, but probably doesn't surprise me. Brewing Market beans aren't cheap ($12 a pound for the Italian Cafe Blend that I use for espresso), but they are damn good.