Chemically Imbalanced (espresso-jogged screeds)

cfest viii: decadent mommy-pleasing decaf blogging …

… wherein CI scrapes the final coffee fest leftovers from the side of the casserole dish by comparing premium decaf coffees to formless new-age music!


it’s phil’s fault. the blogwife, being great with child, had reached the limits of trade-show-floor caffeine, and, being casually installed next to the counter culture booth where her less restrained cohorts were snorking single origins like it was the long-lost antidote to atlanta’s resistant strain of tuberculosis, was offered the mexican zaragoza decaf being somewhat ignored by those fawning o’er the peanut butter bolivia.

she loved it. had to have it. immediately began plotting a way to sell hand-embroidered emu-hair fall leggings for the trendy children of hollywood stars as a way to pay for a clover in which to brew it. etc.

it didn’t end there. next day, there was the Smashing Idea from the Wondrous Ether, wherein she supposed that consumer-savvy coffee sourcers and roasters everywhere could design the perfect blend for pregnant females. now, if you asked this blog about a target flavor profile for such a demographic, it would draw upon its extensive fathering experiences and guess, roughly, that it should involve kidney beans and creme brulee. maybe waffle fries. rotisserie chicken.

but, no. according to the ingenious one, a blend that met the following terms would amount to a no-lose, slam-dunk, market-fawning winner:

a
praline,
peach,
apricot,
custard,
caramel,
hazelnut,
nutmeg
gelato

which seems like it would clog a roadside ditch, not mention the delicate circulatory systems in play. too, this blog recently heard mr. owens describe the difficulty of pairing roughly two favored taste descriptors in a personal blend, so the chore of developing a litanous taste set like that above could be roughly on par with steaming milk via bike pump.

still, we think the blogwife is totally brilliant. particularly since this, er, muddled profile matches up nicely with peter giuliano’s description of the decaffeination process, whereby the most delicate high and low points in a coffee’s flavor profile are obliterated as the bean character is soaked out in a tank, then rammed back in sans caffeine. if it were music, in other words, you’d be turning a masterpiece into a pop groove, an arvo part choral work into marconi union “cinematic melancholy”!

nevertheless … if it’s hormonal cravings we’re talking about, no objective is too far-flung for this blog. we think all those clubby triple-waveists should take heed.