🚀 go-pugleaf

Raymond Willemann says:

   the [coffee] shops that we've visited around here appear unlikely to offer a
   quality product.  Many of them have several dozen varieties (often mostly
   anonymous beans with various flavors added; don't the people who shop here
   like coffee?) and very few customers.  Naturally we suspect the beans are
   not fresh, and if we ask when they were roasted we get incredulous looks
   from the clerks (don't the people who work here like coffee?).

No, apparently nobody in this damn town likes coffee.  You should be glad you
found shops that sell a variety of beans at all -- two years ago, there were
none.  I still can't believe there isn't a restaurant in DC that stays open
late at night and sells good coffee, but I can't find one.  

The next best answer is mail order.  I buy stuff from Bong Brothers in Kona and
Torrefazzione Italia in Seattle, and both arrive fresher (and better all
around) than anything I've seen in three years of looking around DC.  There was
just a long list of good mail order coffee places posted to rec.food.beverages,
so you might check there.  In an emergency, Fresh Field's turnover is high
enough so that you have some chance of getting fresh, if not wonderful, beans.

If anyone else has a source of fresh, moderately darkly roasted beans, suitable
for expresso, I'd certainly like to hear about it.

						Larry

--
Lawrence Hunter, PhD.
National Library of Medicine
Bldg. 38A, MS-54
Bethesda. MD 20894
(301) 496-9300
(301) 496-0673 (fax)
hunter@nlm.nih.gov (internet)