An Embarrassment of…coffee

An embarrassment of …Coffee

Definition: embarrassment of wealth

An embarrassment of riches is an idiom that means an overabundance of something, or too much of a good thing.

Well, I wish it was money but instead it was coffee…

Anyway, the strangest thing happened when I was shopping for groceries the other day.

The guy in front of me believed that he was buying a pound of locally sourced coffee.

Unfortunately, the bagger put his coffee in my bag, so it was only when I began unloading the groceries that I discovered the mistake. There was no way that I could ever even give you the most rudimentary description of the guy ahead of me, much less his name or any contact info, so I figured: “What the heck, I guess I’ll make coffee.”

And it was good; very good.

Here comes the problem, though. While the coffee was good; very good, all I knew was the brand. I had no idea what the blend was.

So off I go to the local coffee roaster hoping that they will recognize their product.

It turns out that once the coffee is ground it’s not so easy to tell them apart- without making a pot of each.

So I bought a pound of the three most likely candidates and resolved to make a pot of the original and the next day a pot of one of the others; the day after that, a different blend- and so on. I even saved a bit from the previous days so I could A/B them more readily.

It turns out this is much harder than I would have supposed. I don’t know if the “old” coffee has changed flavor sufficiently to ahem, “muddy the water”, or I’m just not that good at telling dark roasts apart. Until that day last week, I had my old standby and I was quite happy with it.

Now I’m not so sure. An embarrassment of riches vis a vis coffee? Yeah I guess. I’ll take money anytime, though as I said, the coffee is pretty dang good.