The Vancouver Indy Coffee Scene

Well Michael Breuer decided to challenge me on my hatred of Starbucks and although it took a while to get the dates confirmed, (his people needed to talk to my people) We set out last Friday to the home of Coffee in Vancouver Commercial Dr and we picked our corners.

Shift Manager Claire

First we attended the Starbucks on the Drive, where we found shift manager Claire to quite nice and knowledgeable about ways of the Starbucks. She was also totally game on our little adventure. Her shots came through at a prefect 14 seconds for their machine, now I have learnt over the years that 14 seconds is way to short for the real extraction of the flavour of the beans to happen, but Claire claims that it is running perfectly so I won’t disagree.

Breuer and myself sat down and entered the first round. We both found it a bit weak but yet with the familiar dark roast flavour Starbucks is famous for. To my surprise Breuer agreed with me. Could this be happening? Could we have a convert in our midst?

Round Two

On to Prado where we ordered what we though would be the same exact Americano to make this as scientific as possible. We also cleaned our palette with water and waited a bit to really compare the two roasts.

Owner Amy York was behind the bar and pulling the shots the timers on the shots at Prado was about 22 seconds which is prefect operating speed for her machine. We gathered the drinks and had a seat on the patio.

We both took a sip and whoa this was almost freebasing espresso here. It was bold, woke us up and was as strong as Starbucks was weak.

What we were left with were so many variables that it was hardly what I would call accurate comparison for either side.

What was so different Well here is a list. . .

	Starbucks	Prado
Drink size	A large 8 oz cup	A small 6 oz cup
Timed shot	14 sec.	22 sec.
Orgin of Beans	South American Blend	Brazil, Ethiopia and the South Pacific
Mug	Paper	Porcelain
Crema	Crema Starbucks Americano	Crema Prado Americano

Also when we look at the crema for each round you can see that Prado (pictured on the right) has triple the amount of crema as apposed to Starbucks (on the left) and that is truly important part of this exercise, because for an Americano that is where most of your flavour comes from, the less the crema the lesser quality cup.