Actually, "closet coffee drinker" probably isn't correct. My son, Jon, isn't hiding and drinking coffee. I just didn't find out, until very recently, that he's a regular coffee drinker although he rarely drinks it at home.

Fast Food Coffee

I noticed Jon drinking a cup of coffee in his bedroom a few days ago and I started asking questions. It's not that he was doing anything wrong; it's just that I never saw him drinking coffee. He usually drinks water, bottled tea, bottled soda, or fruit juice. I asked him how much coffee he drank on a regular basis and I was surprised that he drank one or more cups per day.

Jon doesn't give himself enough time to have a cup of coffee in the morning, after he showers and eats breakfast. I haven't figured out why he doesn't have coffee with his breakfast, but there may be more to it than meets the eye.

After he dresses in his school uniform (he's pursuing a nursing degree here in the Philippines) and heads out, he rides a jeepney with a classmate to the main gate of the Subic Bay Freeport Zone and then has to wait for a shuttle bus to take him to the college at Cubi Point.

He and his classmate each get a cup of coffee at one of the fast food places while they're waiting on the shuttle. His classmate is a neighborhood girl he's fond of (but not his girlfriend) and I suspect he treasures the time spent with her over a cup of coffee in the morning.

Regular and Irregular

Jon only drinks coffee in the morning. He never drinks coffee when I'm drinking it a night. He also doesn't drink coffee on the days in which he has no classes to attend. The fact that I saw him drinking coffee in his bedroom should make me out to be a liar, but he was up early in order to attend duty in another province and he hadn't had enough sleep. This was something irregular in his regular schedule.

My wife doesn't drink coffee every day either and she has no place she needs to be on a regular basis. I guess I'm the only REAL regular (drinking two or more cups every day) coffee drinker in the family.

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The last time I was at the Royal Subic store aboard the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, I was looking for teabag tea to use with my iced tea maker and had difficulty finding anything other than various green teas. I prefer black tea and I'm not sure why, but it's probably because that's what I grew up with. The Olongapo markets carry Lipton teas, but I was looking for something a little different and I found it.

Black Tea with Cinnamon

I had never heard of the Steuarts brand of tea, but I was willing to take a chance. Before I brewed my first pitcher with it, I looked it up on the net. I found the George Stuarts Product Page but strangely, this particular product wasn't shown.

This tea is part of the Ceylon tea collection sold by the George Stuart company, and a little research told me that Ceylon was one of the former names of the country of Sri Lanka. So now when I see a tea package of some kind that says "Ceylon", I'll know it comes from Sri Lanka.

The Taste Test

I wasn't disappointed. The cinnamon taste did not overwhelm the natural taste of black tea like the teas with lemon flavoring added (or any fruit for that matter). I like the natural flavor of black tea and that may be one of the reasons I don't like the tea you buy in jars and cans with fruit flavors added. The fruit flavors are all that I ever tasted with brands like Snapple and Arizona Iced Tea.

The cinnamon taste isn't strong and there's just enough there to tell you that it has cinnamon in it. My wife's aunt is staying with us on vacation and when I walked near her, she said she knew what kind of tea it was by the smell. I think she cheated and saw the box in the cabinet and tried to act like she knew something she didn't. Unless that lady has a super keen sense of smell, I don't think the cinnamon smell is strong enough for you to smell unless you have the cup at your lips.

I'll be looking for similar types of teabags the next time I'm out shopping for groceries, regardless of where. I kind of like having a variety of tastes and smells to go along with the natural taste and smell of black tea. I'll even deal with green tea if I find something suitable. The only requirement I have is that the added flavor doesn't overwhelm the natural flavor of tea.

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Whenever I shop at the Royal Subic store at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, I always stock up on coffee. I only shop there once a month, so you can imagine how much of any particular item I might buy at one time.

The problem I have is that when I enter the store's coffee and tea aisle, I tend to get stuck there, ogling all the different brands and kinds of coffee (and sometimes tea). I'm talking about everything from automatic drip coffee to canned coffee, locally produced and imported. Apparently, I'm not the only coffee lover to get stuck there at times because at least two other people were in the aisle, looking at coffee, for as long as I was. One of them was still there when I exited.

Café Time Coffee

Since I have a monthly food (and drink) budget that isn't very flexible, the only thing I can really do is taste test anything other than the coffee I normally stock up on. This time was the first time I saw this particular brand of canned coffee on the shelf.

Café Time Coffee is produced by the Apex Food Company out of Taipei, Taiwan. I bought two flavors, the french roast and the espresso. I checked out the ingredients before buying: Water, coffee, sugar and powdered milk. There's nothing unusual to be wary of.

I have since finished off both cans. The french roast tasted exactly like french roast should, but the espresso wasn't nearly as strong as I thought it would be. The cost was 80 cents (USD) for the french roast and 90 cents for the espresso, and at 11.5 fluid ounces each. This was far cheaper than anything Starbucks has to offer in the store and more liquid to add insult to injury. Do the Starbucks "frappuccino" flavors taste the same, worse or better? In my opinion, the Café Time Coffee tastes almost the same.

More Taste Testing

Next month, I plan to buy a couple of other brands of canned coffee. At this time, I have no idea which brands I'll select but I'll be steering clear of the brands I've already mentioned.

There are some really nasty-tasting coffee brands on the shelves at the Royal Subic and I hope I don't accidentally buy one or more of them since I can't remember which ones are which.

I guess I'll have to consider the luck of the draw when the time comes.

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The time before last that I drove to the Subic Royal store aboard the Subic Bay Freeport Zone to go grocery shopping, I noticed a new Starbucks coffee shop in the process of being completed. I made a mental note that I'd have to stop in and take a look around when it was done. Well, it was done by the following trip (more than a month later), but I didn't feel like stopping in at the time. Little did I know that my son had already been there.

Bum Scoop

A couple of days ago, one of my sisters-in-law (Florian) told another sister-in-law (Darlene) that they sold t-shirts and blouses at the Starbucks coffee shop. She had overheard it in a conversation while riding a bus from Olongapo to Bataan. The next day, I decided to go there with my son, Darlene and her daughter, Ashlene (who's 3-years old I think).

The coffee shop is easy to find because it's on the corner of Rizal Highway and Argonaut Street and it almost stands out like a sore thumb. Parking is on Rizal Avenue on the opposite side of the intersection, so going through the intersection and turning around in order to park in that parking lot was interesting to say the least. Cars coming off the exit from the Subic expressway don't slow down for anything as they try to beat the light at that corner.

Well, there were things for sale at the Starbucks coffee shop, like coffee mugs and other assorted items, but not clothing of any kind. Florian must have heard the conversation wrong. I now call her "Bum Scoop Florian".

Starbucks Coffee Prices

My son wanted a "Java Chip" drink like he'd had before so I ordered two of them. I also ordered an "Apple Berry Freeze" (apple and strawberry with crushed ice) for Ashlene since Darlene didn't want anything. When I paid P490 (just over USD $10) for the drinks, I remembered why I didn't frequently go to Starbucks when I was in the US. I'm sorry, but those prices are absurd.

What's even more absurd is that Starbucks expects to do well at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. Their prices are too high for the average resident in the Philippines, so they must be catering to the upper class and tourists. I'm not in the upper class and I'm not a tourist, so I guess I won't be going back there again. I'd be much better off (and probably "save" a lot of money) by buying my own coffee beans, a coffee grinder and brewing my own coffee.

On second thought, I think I'll stick to making coffee like Starbucks at home using Nescafé instant coffee and milk. My worn-out taste buds really can't tell the difference.

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I recently made a big mistake when buying cheap coffee at the Royal Subic store at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. I normally buy Nescafé Classic, but the regular jars of it were out-of-stock. The store is in a remodeling phase and food products are being moved around. It's difficult to find what you're looking for, even if you know where it's supposed to be.

The Best Instant Coffee Brands

I don't know why certain brands of instant coffee are made differently from each other. Whether it's coffee powder, freeze-dried coffee, or coffee with coffee crystals makes no difference to me. The best brands I've ever personally consumed are those made by Folgers and Nescafé, regardless of the particular variety.

My parents have been drinking "Taster's Choice" for years (and I obviously leech off of them whenever possible) but it was only recently that I discovered that it was a brand owned by Nescafé and only when they put that word on the label. It didn't used to be there (kind of like when they changed the "Quik" chocolate drink to "NesQuik"). I've been drinking Nescafé and Folgers (instant coffee only) for quite some time myself.

In the Philippines, Nescafé is also the cheapest, good brand of coffee and it's made in the Philippines even though Nescafé is a Swiss product. When I shop for coffee, I normally shop for Nescafé. If it's not available and I can find Folgers coffee on the shelf, I'll opt to buy the Folgers coffee even though it's usually twice as expensive.

The Worst Instant Coffee Brands

When it comes to coffee, you can't substitute a good brand with a generic-sounding brand. You just can't. It will taste like crap compared to what you're used to. Even certain brand name coffees taste like crap compared to what I'm used to.

Maxwell House instant coffee, for example, just doesn't taste good to me. I don't know if it's due to their manufacturing process or if they just use inferior coffee beans. Whatever the case, I don't like it.

On my last shopping trip, I couldn't find the Nescafé varieties or the Folgers coffee anywhere. I ended up buying an offbeat brand called "Sunny Select". It was a big mistake. That coffee tastes like I boiled my socks and tried to make coffee out of the results, it's that bad. Sunny Select makes a lot of food products and lot of it's good, but they have failed when it comes to coffee. I didn't buy this brand because it was cheap coffee. I bought it because it was all that I could find that wasn't Maxwell House.

Automatic Drip Coffee is a Different Story

I don't own an automatic drip coffee maker, but I plan to get one in the next few months as my budget allows. In my past experiences with automatic drip coffee brands, several brands always topped my list. In the case of drip coffee, Maxwell House is actually very good even though their instant coffee sucks.

Folgers is another good drip coffee. You really can't go wrong with Folgers. There are some other brands that I won't touch with a ten-foot pole and the reason is because they aren't 100 percent coffee. Some brands include things like chicory and I want my coffee pure. I like the taste of coffee, not that other nonsense they use to dilute the flavor. When they do something like that, it tells me their coffee beans are inferior to start with.

I've learned a lesson — never settle for second best. If I have to settle for second best from now on, I believe I'd rather do without having any coffee at all.

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If Kona coffee isn't considered a gourmet coffee, it should be. An arabica variety of coffee, it has a rich, full taste sought after by coffee connoisseurs like myself. I once spotted a bag of Kona coffee at the Royal Subic store, Subic Bay Freeport Zone (adjacent to Olongapo City, Philippines) and I wanted to buy it, but it was just too expensive for my budget at the time. I haven't seen any there since.

The Kona Coffee Bean Process

A lot of people are unaware that a coffee bean is actually the seed of the fruit from a coffee plant. The very same people that say coffee isn't healthy will go on an on about eating more fruit to stay healthy. Coffee is a fruit! Specifically, it's part of a berry, a form of fruit.

I watched something on TV once about the Kona coffee bean selection process and how they dry them and prepare them for shipping. I think it was either on the Discovery Channel or the History Channel, I can't remember.

I really don't remember the complete process. I do remember that they're sun-dried for a period of time. The Wikipedia article on Kona coffee goes into detail.

Maui Wowi

While I was searching the net for places that sell Kona Coffee, I stumbled across the "Maui Wowi Hawaiian Coffees & Smoothies" blog, which supports their main website, and simply had to laugh out loud.

I hadn't heard "Maui Wowi" since watching "Up in Smoke" back in 1979. In the movie, Tommy Chong described a marijuana joint that was composed of mostly Maui Wowi and some Labrador (a dog ate the marijuana and pooped it out and he and Richard "Cheech" Marin smoked it).

The amazing part of finding that blog is that the store is located not far from where I used to live in Phoenix, Arizona (59th Ave and Peoria in Glendale, to be exact). The next time I'm in Phoenix, I plan to stop by there and get me a cup of something. I didn't see any prices at their website, but their coffee can't be any more expensive than Starbucks or Seattle's Best.

I need a coffee maker!

What good does it do to buy a bag of gourmet coffee like Kona coffee if I don't have a coffee maker to brew it in? Most people here in the Philippines drink instant coffee, like Nescafé, and don't have anything to brew coffee in and I haven't seen a coffee maker in any of the stores.

I guess I'm going to have to go on a search and find mission to get me something like a "Mr. Coffee" coffee maker or something.

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