bad coffee – The Coffee Commander's Home

August 10, 2014

More coffee….. We all need it some days.

Since I’ve moved into my new place, I have a conundrum for the ages. As a drinker or better said a former drinker of outside coffee because I was too impatient to wait for the coffee pot , have the coffee cool down than make it into an iced coffee. I’ve bought coffees from almost every major company that served iced coffee. But as the years press on and the coffee gets watered and cheapened its getting very hard to make a choice , Now i can’t blame the companies , Its more over the franchisees . There are problems all around, They have crazy employee turnover and skip on machines in order to earn more money.

Formally, You’d have well trained employees that could manipulate the machines , now they just do whatever the hell they please when making coffee. For the milk and cream containers they have straws that need to be cut to a certain length , You just do not see that anymore, also the portioning has gone fucking nuts. Dunkin Donuts for explain if you ask for extra sugar , You summon the Brimley god and have to sign a contract.

I’ve said in other post that i’ve sort of cracked the enigma code of ordering from dunkin donuts, if you look at the receipts they do not list regular sugar/ Medium sugar /Extra sugar/Extra super Diabeetus sugar. If you watch the cash register when you order a coffee you will see the coffee droid press the Sugar button with a fix amount of sugar 1 2 3 4 5 6 sugars normally, I’ve seen these go higher. For the poor souls that do not know this system and ask for extra extra sugar they normally get this in there coffee!

There maybe a dunkin donuts under that pile! After they get a bulldozer to check where it is .

Honey Dew on the other hand 95% of the time they are fairly good repulsing the Brimley god away, Even asking for extra sugar the does not quake with the Eventual resurrection of the Brimley god. On a rare occasion at honey dew though you will get a new worker that makes the mistake of it but they are whipped tortured and appeased to the brimley god so he does not rise. My only problem with honey dew these days is travel time. I walk or ride my bike so its a little bit of a huff to get to my preferred coffee. Though my bike was just stolen not too long ago. So my options are not really that great right now due to limited travel and health issues and being disabled does not help me get a bike .

Starbucks ….. Is …. Special , there is no way about this, they are just damn special. The last time I attempted getting coffee from there was a failure on all levels. Ten monkeys on miralax had a better chance of getting my coffee, I walked in thinking hey no line, A guy working on a particle physics book and 5 workers…. I thought to myself “this just might work” The person in front of me ordered a simple coffee and I thought this will be quick. I have no idea of the mental breakdown between five workers and two customers could reach critical mass this easy. So after standing around watching these coffee baristas in action, THis is where all things started going down hill. Out of the 5 coffee droids 4 had short outs and the register droid was broken as well. The order was made and from Cashout to coffee serve was longer than 10 minutes. I have never seen so many question in my life about an order and I tried to be patient. While Starbucks is a bit higher in price i was ready to pay the premium to avoid Dunkin Gonuts. Wrong move there, I should of just rolled around in coffee grinds while forcing K-cups into my eyes. I ended up leaving ten minutes into this exorcize of watching how coffee is made by professionals.

This was the final straw, I’ve gone to making my own iced coffee. Sure it has a learning curve, but the money savings are excellent. In 3 weeks i’ve only bought myself coffee outside the house 2 times and both were goooooood.

You can make your coffee any damn way you want it . Even if you want nuclear death coffee or coffee that you can mess with genetics with and rewrite the base of the universe. Overall i’ve spent 10 dollars on making my own coffee and its worked out really well. I keep perfecting my coffee to the taste i want. which is pretty much Stronger than all of the coffee shops aaround without tasting like burnt donkey ass (starbucks) Coffee Flavored Water (dunkin) Or A fairly ok Coffee for day to day that i miss (Honey Dew) . But the savings are extreme by making your own coffee…. I’ve likely been saving somewhere around 5$ a day by avoiding coffee shops.

Note: this post was made at 4:30, I’m half brain-dead.

With a new place to live i am testing more ways to make coffee and trying to replicate drinks from coffee places and see what I can come up with. I have pretty much nailed down iced coffee to perfection of what i want.

In two and a half weeks my wallet is also noticing that i am saving money on my attempt to make my own coffee, From my own math so far in 2.5 weeks if i had gone to a store for coffee everyday I would of spent over 70.40 in coffee , Thats fucking insane, Since I’ve started this i’ve spent less than 15$ for coffee and still have half a bag left.

I am curious to see where this goes and see how much of a savings there is by the 21st of this month… Lets see…

Coffee post to follow up shortly!

August 7, 2014

The price of coffee and you.

About 3 years ago the price of coffee went up in all the coffee places around, which was understandable due to the market price of coffee went through the fucking roof. now that the markets are going back up yet again chains are putting there coffee prices slightly higher, the problem is the prices never went back down when the price of coffee (commodity) went down.Yes the prices have jumped for year 2014 but look at the price in 2011 , we should of seen a decrease in those prices. I know someone will say BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THE OTHER PRICES. Oil has stayed somewhat stable but what ever the fuck they do to increase on that is always a mystery, its like someone goes “SHIT the suns out SOMEONE INCREASE GAS PRICES QUICK!” . Milk prices are slightly up and there is a multitude of reasons for that that could get its own post, but considering the milk to coffee ratio it would have a lesser effect on the total price.

A lot of the times companies find the easy way to raise the price of things is “insert random thing happening here to a small portion of the total that really doesn’t have on effect on the thing in question”. Bob shit himself again.. RAISE PRICES! of all the times I’ve read about oil refinery fires and how they are going to spike gas prices , doing a little research you find out that said refinery is only responsible for 0.1% of total fuel production, that makes you go WTF are they making there? It seems every other commodity market has gone into the practice of manufactured disasters or some sort of market manipulation to increase prices.

CWT financed ten rounds of herd retirements from 2003 to 2010, during which CWT was responsible for removing over 500,000 cows from production, reducing the nation’s milk supply by approximately 10 billion pounds…. By the end of the program in 2010, it was responsible for a cumulative increase in milk price revenue of $9.55 billion.

That resulted in a class action suit for price fixing. Since its not about supply and demand, its more over about money and more money. So at this point I’ll stick to making my coffee at home.

August 5, 2014

Dunkin Donuts unveils coffee flavored donuts …….. WTF?

Apparently Dunkin Donuts just does not get it… they have completely lost connection with there customer base. They have released a Coffee flavored donut… Denis Leary has an opinion to this new donut.

Dunkin Donuts has lost there fucking minds. They are going to make coffee flavored donuts but not coffee fucking flavored coffee. Most dunkin donuts you walk into you have a shot in the dark on getting a coffee that is remotely drinkable for long. Generally when you order and iced coffee and use the system of dunkin donuts that they have , You can get an ok flavored coffee but when its hot outside by the time you walk 50 feet from the store you are drinking coffee water. Its an annoying prospect, it makes you want to fire your coffee like a hand grenade that really has no gratification.

The Glazed Coffee Creme donut is made with a glazed yeast shell and filled with coffee buttercream. It’s topped with a drizzle of chocolate icing. The Coffee, Creme & Sugar Donut is also made with a glazed yeast shell and stuffed with coffee butter creme and topped with powdered sugar. The two donuts will only be available for a limited time at participating Dunkin’ Donuts locations.

At a guess these donuts maybe a better flavor than their coffee , who knows I might stick a straw into a donut and just see. Honey Dew donuts on the other hand has gone to another extreme they have made a Maple Bacon donut.. Breakfast overload! They are not fucking around…

While bacon is good, Putting bacon on everything on the fucking planet just doesn’t work all the time.

No!

WTF?

MMMMM bacon tits…. but no. BaconSandwich YES! FUCKING BACON SANDWICH…

Anyways… enough bacon.. Dunkin Donuts is so proud of their new donuts they have put out a press release for it .

Dunkin’ Donuts also unveiled new Coffee Creme Donuts, the brand’s first donuts made with Dunkin’ Donuts’ famous Original Blend Coffee.

Utoh… re-read that… made with Dunkin’ Donuts’ famous Original Blend Coffee.. Joy! Boiled ass in donut form now! Rather than fuck with a time tested recipe for donuts .. why not make… COFFEE??? If Denis Leary walked into a dunkin donuts right now he’d go on a rampage , smoke 17 packs of cigarettes than go on the hunt for the elusive coffee flavored coffee.

Mind you these day the closest coffee places to me are Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks… its like a personal hell of coffee drinking, I’ve gone from getting coffee out of the house to getting coffee from the coffee maker. The last trip I made to starbucks was a 15 minute wait while 5 people could not figure out how to make coffee…. it was a strange and awe inspiring journey into a strange land, my hope for coffee places fades as they fuck about, I am waiting for the release of Bacon flavored sour patch kid coffee from either place at this rate.

March 18, 2014

Coffee musings….. Dunkin Donuts Vs Honey Dew Donuts.

I just realized something… it’s fucked up alright…. Yes , there has not been a coffee post in ages…

For the coffeecommander to make such an error .. this has to be fixed for the one that drinks more coffee than the combined amount of water in the great lakes..

Now for my situation has changed and I’ve had to take some concessions… While I do have access to Honey Dew Donuts at times due to the harsh winter I’ve had to goto Dunkin Donuts …. A lot.. The problem is most cities and towns will bitch when residents do not shovel their walk, Yet when a business does not do it they seem to get a blind eye. With the choice of walk to dunkin while getting killed because you have to walk in the road versus walking triple the distance in the road and getting killed because its a major artery through the city, I chose the lesser of two chances of death . But, With that I take an even greater risk with my coffee. I usually order the same coffee year around, and being there so much you’d think one of the donut droids would get my coffee after a time? FUCK NO… they say its easy to order a coffee from Fuckin Gonuts.

This picture I’ve posted makes it look easy… but, You have a better chance of beating Arnold Schwarzenegger at one liners. At first I’d order my coffee like I used to when I had a Honey Dew down the street. Large iced coffee , Large , Milk with sugar on the dark side..

I’ve always ordered my coffee on the dark side because it keeps them from making the same screwed up mistake you’d think they would learn after the nine billionth time, If you try to match consistency with cream with milk, that’s not coffee you’re getting. You’re getting a milk flavored with coffee at that point. I’ve tried everything with drunkin donuts to get my coffees right and its just a miracle when they did until I noticed something. When they ring your order up to make it they go through a very convoluted route to do so with the register. I don’t know if they track coffee metrics if there is such a thing, but they do take your order through the register with stunning accuracy. but, that’s where the accuracy ends.

If you look at this example receipt, Its very telling to an anal level. One hot coffee medium 1 skim milk 2 equal. Again… why the hell that’s on the receipt is beyond me . I really don’t think its for customer gratification.. I can’t see someone opening a coffee and slamming the receipt down yelling about how there was only supposed to be 2 equal in there but he can taste 5. As soon as your order completes the next steps as far as a dunkin droid making your coffee is near black magic as far as I can figure. But using terms like “regular milk”, “Extra sugar” and dark gets you a fucking science project every time where you can only guess the contents. There are very few dunkin donuts I trust to order a coffee with little input as possible, very rarely I’ll say at dunkin donuts “large iced coffee, milk, with sugar.” Getting back to the register though.. If you order your coffee and with somewhat fair amount of consistency, and you are a regular at a particular dunkin donuts. Watch the register, if you see what the person puts in on the amount of Milk or cream (pick your poison) and sugar. By watching that you can go back to that dunkin donuts and with some amount of accuracy you can get a repeat performance on coffee service. Asking for regular milk on the numbers they input into their registers I’ve seen everything from 3 to 7 on that. funnier is the machines they use are funny as hell because calibration is different from week to week and even day to day at times, You’d think with a machine to help along the process to make your coffee they would be pretty static on how much milk is in your coffee. Not even close.. Asking for 1 milk one day will sometimes get you this much

about a thimbles worth..

This monster fuckload of milk

Sugar of course has the same issues at dunkin. I cut down on sugar completely after having coffee with more than an inch of sugar in the bottom. So again at dunkin donuts I have mitigated how much sugar by going by numbers. its not fool proof but it works.

Saying extra sugar at dunkin donuts appeases the Brimely Overlord.

It all feels like a damn science to order a damn coffee from Dunkin Donuts, At honey dew I’ve never had that issue and even if they do screw up usually its a one timer if you turn up again.

The final point on dunkin donuts and honey dews coffee is the most confusing one. they both order from the same distributor for their grinds… yet, the coffees are so astronomically different its confounding. If you let your ice melt in a dunkin donuts coffee the flavor is just … water coffee… there’s no way around it the coffee is done. If you do the same with honey dew, even after the ice as melted you still get a pretty good tasting -ice coffee.

So, at this point i cant wait for warmer weather and a bit of a longer walk for better coffee , I’d just rather have good taste than need a mathematics and science degree to order a fucking coffee.

April 12, 2012

Dunkin Gonuts advertising gone wild.

Apparently dunkin donuts is trying smell based ads , I guess we can be thankful that its not taco bell .. Though i could imagine that ad as cheech marin and Tommy Chong shitting their brains out and going “duuuude yo quiero taco bell”. I’m just not sure on this one but, since it’s based in another country perhaps they have a better smell than most dunkin donuts i’ve gone to around here. I’ve come to a bit of a truce with dunkin donuts and they have seemed to have learned there lesson from serving boiled cat vomit. Since a few year back when bluesteel and I were getting consistent bad coffee(read: bad milk, watercoffee etc) we swore off dunkin for quite the few years.

Its just weird to try to use advertising by smell, and the jingle don’t they do enough already? They would likely tattoo the back of eyeballs and forehead if they thought it would sell more coffee with the logic of getting more impressions. Seriously instead of coming up with random shit like this , improve the coffee and the people will come, otherwise you will just piss people off on there way to work with this and they will just wait till they can get to the coffee at work.

Rather than put your ads everywhere and go into visual overload or just plain lying, improve the product. In burger king the other they removed the wall painting to add vinyl pictures of people having a meal on the wall and the first thing I thought about them is “what the fuck fast food joint has this kind of service” since the pictures on the wall were a large salad in a metal mesh bowl, people with smiles drinking out of glasses, and burgers that had no bearing on burgerking it self, it was more to remind you, If you spent this money at a real restaurant this is what you could of had for $8.

Maybe in europe they have that kind of service, but not here. As i’ve said – Improve your service and product, and not try to play the follow the leader or someone on acid thought of a really cool idea for advertising stoned off there ass. Divert 10% of your ad budget to the people and the products and you will create a better impression than trying to give the image of a good impression on TV that you know was thought up while people laughed and say we don’t do this shit.

December 27, 2010

The Price of Coffee and You.

In the last couple of years you may have noticed that a cup of coffee is not exactly cheap anymore. What used to be under $2.00$ is now over $2.50 or higher.

This is a many part problem, on the one hand you have weather and whatnot but that does not affect the longterm supplies as there is always next year and so on. On the other hand you have the stock market which is now played like the worlds largest and most expensive slot machine. In the end Both hands play together and effect you.

When a crop of coffee is destroyed and mass media picks it up they generally don’t play the news in a way that is helpful to the average person . instead they go on a just about myspace approach and say “OMG COFFEE GOT BLOWN UP ZOMG THERES NO MORE COFFEE OMG PRICES RISE!!!” well the problem with that is its one crop in some place in the world. But, if you take the news at stock you’d be going “shit… thats going to hurt.” Coffee is grown world wide. From the National coffee association of USA Coffee is grown in about 50 countries . In the last year coffee commodities has have rose about 70% due to speculators looking for a pay-off with any commodity. The problem with that is speculators tend to buy up the coffee at unheard of rates than force the price up , the problem is that people that don’t even sell coffee have the ability to buy up coffee in the stock market, I could see if they had a limit cap on this but they don’t many other foods fall into this trap where they get bought up and sold and resold to the point of insanity.

Soon the only way to get a good cup of coffee is bleeding your self to death at a blood donation center, Giving blood is not a half bad idea but.. the price of coffee should not require you to give a damn kidney.

I’ve never liked the idea of speculators, because of the control they can assert over a market. Commodities should have some limit cap to outside buyers that have no reason to purchase coffee. to lock speculators out would be a bad thing but, limiting the damage they can do in the whole scale of things.

the reason i say limits is it makes the market much harder to game and force the prices way the fuck up .

Even dunkin donuts knows a bad thing when they see it

“Something as simple as a good cup of coffee at a fair price is under threat today because of intense pressure by hedge funds and other speculators,” said Ed O’Rourke, chief procurement officer for Dunkin’ Donuts National DCP LLC, a franchise-owned cooperative that handles purchasing and distribution to more than 6,000 Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins outletsnationwide, in a Dec. 14 letter to the CFTC.

Honestly, it seems like the stock markets are based in fantasy as far as the “Recovery”, and speculators are NOT helping things .

February 27, 2010

Time: Top 10 most dangerous foods. ORLY?

Every now and than I find an article that just makes me go WTF. It starts off .

Top 10 Most Dangerous Foods

The American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement on Feb. 22, recommending the labeling and possible redesign of hot dogs to prevent choking deaths among children. Here’s a look at 10 risky foods

So it basically starts off as “Since hot dogs killed some amount of people, Here are foods that we think are dangerous and cause controversy. but the list gets rather silly. Here’s tonight’s top ten list…. (seriously with the foods they include David letterman should announce this one. Bold Stuff is Comments by me.)

Eat at Your Own Risk

1. Hot Dogs: Common sense issue. CHEW YOUR FOOD!
2. Fugu: blowfish? are you kidding me. how many times in your life do you eat this one?
3. Ackee: Random Food that You’ve likely never eaten
4. Peanut Panic: This shit answers itself. Notice its Peanut Panic and not nut allergies.
5. Leafy Greens: does not belong on list- wash your damn food first , I know this doesn’t work for restaurants. Unless of course its killer tomatoes.. than run
6. Not Exactly Sweet as Pie: Rhubarb… And this one gets the stupid award. Eating the leaves can lead to poison but the article misstates a certain issue. You’d Have to ingest 11pounds of it in order to die.
7. Tuna Tremors : You can stop sucking on broken thermometers and start eating tuna!
8. Cassava: This one I’m leaving alone.

9. Coffee: Coffee…… Really? Just wait for it.. Lets pour on the stupid, From the article “. In 1992, McDonald’s had some trouble when 79-year-old grandmother Stella Liebeck of New Mexico sued the fast-food company because a scalding cup of 170° coffee caused third-degree burns over 6% of her body, including her thighs, buttocks and groin. Liebeck was awarded $2.86 million (the amount was later reduced in a settlement).”
10. Mushrooms: No no lets go back to 9 , everything else on this list is either, use common sense, or stupidity.

The Fact they even put coffee on the list and the reasoning is beyond me. But, what they point out coffee for being dangerous is ridiculous. Say! Lets open this scalding hot coffee between my legs! Yes. that’s the idea you want to bring to your readers. I know… this was before the time of the whole cup warning thing.

Every coffee cup sold these days has that warning, Call it common sense but, apparently some people don’t have it. Who knew that hot coffee was hot? Shit whats next Water is wet? I know I’m being a bit angry with this one and yes someone did get severely injured. But to put a warning out on coffee being one of the most “Dangerous” foods. Also “Leafy Greens” What is the times trying to do make everyone so neurotic over food that they end up in a Psych ward? They go out of the way to explain how ZOMG bad these things are but do no explain what good these things do.

In this article there is an AMAZING amount of disregard for any sort of good practice in writing. Half-asses sources half truths and willingly causing fright. Also most of the issues are from the retail side of things as in bad preparation, questionable practices and such. Not many people are going to be going “Honey LETS CUT SOME BLOWFISH TONIGHT WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”

As Far as the times. They wonder why print is going out of style like the dinosaurs.

June 18, 2009

Coffee grinder recall , may cause coffee to taste different due to ..

Laceration hazard… OW…

Starbucks has received three reports of hand lacerations when the product — sold as and Seattle’s Best Coffee Blade Grinder — turned on unexpectedly during cleaning. The company has received 176 reports altogether of the grinder failing to turn off or turning on unexpectedly.

I dont know about you but when cleaning anything with blades, batteries or a plug, generally the idea is Unplug first than clean. from the article it sounds like a poor power switch was used and triggers easily .

June 16, 2009

Dunkin Donuts Focus’s on making good coffee…. NAH…

Apparently dunkin donuts is trying out new ad based system in order to up there sales, rather than trying to make there coffee not suck. I used to goto dunkin donuts all the time. Over time there coffee got worse and worse. I found that honey dew donuts had much better focus on coffee rather than carpet bombing the nation with dunkin donuts.

Dunkin’ Brands, the Canton company that operates the Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins chains, said it is marking the official opening of its 15,000th store today.

Anyways rather than make coffee they are investing in a system which uses camera and reconizes the person.

Ad targeting is coming to a store near you.

In the latest effort to tailor ads to specific consumers, marketers are starting to personalize in-store promotions based on products the consumer recently picked off a shelf or purchased — and in the near future, based on what the shopper looks like.

The problem with dunkin donuts is they have given up on making an acceptable brand and would rather just plop down coffee stores every 10 feet from each other. After there “you kin do it” campaign, they seem to be still trying to get new customers even through dunkin has gone way downhill. but this new marketing is funny they are trying effectivly a popup ad which you know how well those work.

Really, is this sort of advertising needed ? NO!, Most people who go into dunkin donuts have already decided what they want weither its a coffee (if you can call it that). but, needing video camera for serving ads wtf?

March 2, 2009

You kin do it! donuts barf

Dunkin Donuts is at it again with a new advertising campaign but, I can’t help but laugh every time I’ve seen the commercials. “You kin do it!” But, Seeing the words makes me think of another thing besides brand recognition.

Dunkin Donuts has appearently spent $100million on this new campaign which i find funny. The Waterboy movie on the otherhand spent $23 million making the movie and by any figure the 18 seconds of time Rob Shneider spent saying that line in the movie cost $76662. Dunkin spent $100,000,000 on this so far in three 30 second TV spots. So really it would be just cheaper to hire Rob Shneider for 90 Seconds at $383,310 vs $100 million. And people wonder why businesses are crying for a bailout?