Are you a caffiend like me?

Between the traffic-jamming lineups at the Tim Hortons drive-thrus and the myriad locally owned cafés concentrated in the downtown core, there’s no denying St. John’s has a bit of a crush on the coffee bean.

We’re like a little Italy, sure, knocking back coffees, cappuccinos, and mocha frappuccinos with whipped cream on top on a day-and-nightly basis. But apart from our poor, shot nerves, is there anything to be concerned about here?

Not surprisingly, it seems that the more syllables one of these bevvies has, the more calories it contains (and, sadly, the less caffeine).

David McCandless, of the Information is Beautiful blog, has put together a handy chart plotting just about every caffeinated drink and snack you could conceive between their calorie and caffeine content.

Here’s a sample:

The full chart goes much higher in calories than this, and details which type of 30 minute exercise will be needed to burn those calories away.

I’m not one to count calories, or anything for that matter, but a chart like this helps put my café choices into some semblance of perspective — at least beyond the usual “I want. Gimme. Yum.”

Welcome to our seventh installment of Café Days @ Signal!

After spending some time talking to Jeff LeDrew about coffee, I’ve come to the logical conclusion that the stuff is in his blood — literally.

LeDrew is the owner and founder of Jumping Bean Coffee. Apart from actually growing and harvesting their own beans, Jumping Bean are in the business of everything coffee can be and do.

In their defence, the climate in Newfoundland is nowhere near suitable for growing coffee, but as LeDrew proudly explains, it’s the perfect weather for drinking the stuff.

The Jumping Bean café is situated at 47 Harvey Road, right across the street from Tim Hortons — a seemingly bold move. But as much as he enjoys seeing the occasional Tim’s drinker wander in out of curiosity and leave a new customer for life, LeDrew knows that he and Horton are in two different markets.

And the café is really just a branch on the Jumping Bean tree. It’s roots are in roasting.

Jumping Bean is a major supplier of freshly roasted gourmet coffee in Newfoundland. Along with doing custom blends for many local restaurants and cafés, they also have their own brand of coffees available in grocery stores such as Belbins and Sobeys. Eventually, LeDrew sees Jumping Bean supplying the coffee they roast throughout Canada.

Having never received any formal training of any kind, LeDrew is something of a self-taught coffee virtuoso. The East Coast Roast was Jumping Bean’s first official blend, a discovery LeDrew arrived at after much experimentation and diligence. He’s since expanded his repertoire considerably, but the East Coast Roast is the one that got the Jumping Bean, well, jumping, and so remains his favorite.

Important as coffee roasting and supplying is to the Jumping Bean business, LeDrew says that having the café helps keep things grounded. Afterall, the enjoyment of drinking a great cup of coffee is what got him on this path in the first place.

Along with a wide selection of Jumping Bean coffee brewed fresh at the café every day, there’s also the full line of espresso beverages to choose from like lattes and cappuccinos. Considering they not only roast the stuff themselves but are also one of Newfoundland’s major suppliers and servicers of both commercial and home espresso machines, I think it’s safe to say they know their espresso inside and out.

There’s even an old fashioned Italian espresso machine out front called an Elektra Belle Epoque that looks like a steampunk rendition of R2D2. Though presently in a state of disrepair, Ledrew is looking forward to having it up and running again (as soon as he can spare some time to get in there and start tinkering with it).

Despite being neighbours who both serve coffee, there’s no doubt Tim Hortons and Jumping Bean are two peas in two totally separate pods, so neither is much of a threat to either’s business.

Even so, I’d say it’s more likely Jumping Bean will end up converting the odd Tim’s drinker over the years than the other way around.

Jumping Bean are open:

Weekdays 7:30am – 5:00pm

Weekends 10:00am – 5:00pm

Welcome to our fifth installment of Café Days @ Signal!

So let’s state the obvious here: Hooked Up isn’t like most of the cafés in this town. Their main business isn’t coffee, it’s internet and gaming. They’ve got an impressive fleet of computer systems all tricked out to play the latest batch of mind bending, eye twitching games, an array of consoles jacked into beefy HD screens, and a fat pipe with burly security for all your online needs.

But what should also be obvious by the time you finish reading this is that coffee at Hooked Up is in no way an afterthought found somewhere down the line on the mandatory refreshments list for gamers. Far from it.

“I like good coffee and I like good coffee.”

That’s Hooked Up internet and gaming café owner Ross Barney talking. And no, he’s not repeating himself.

Barney is particular about the beans he brews in his café. They have to smell right, brew right, taste right. But they also have to be produced right, which for Barney means buying only fair trade.

Barney’s spent a lot of time in coffee producing countries serving as a United Nations Peace Keeper and an IT specialist with Geekcorps. He’s seen first hand the difference fair trade practices can make for coffee producers.

Before opening his doors in December of 2007, Barney settled on a fair trade coffee supplier, locally owned and operated Executive Coffee. He then spent the next several months experimenting with different fair trade beans until settling on both the light and dark roasts he presently serves.

Like a true coffee drinker, Barney knows to brew his light roast in the morning, then switch to dark later in the day. As mentioned here before, light roasts give you that pre-noon jolt you’re after, while dark roasts are more of a keep-you-going brew.

Typically there’s only one or the other on, but Barney says if you walk in craving whichever’s not, he’ll glady brew it up for you.

It’s not altogether unseen, Barney says, for a gamer to enter the café and settle in for a session with a Tim’s cup in their hand. As time rolls on they usually wind up needing a second jolt, and when they try the coffee Hooked Up’s serving it can be something of an awakening for them — and I’m not just referring to the effects of the caffeine.

But you don’t have to be a gamer to level up your coffee drinking experience. Barney says many people in the area just pop in to grab a cup on the go. The nearest coffee place from Hooked Up, located at 206 Duckworth Street, is the Tim Hortons on the corner of Duckworth and Prescott.

Maybe the next time you’re lined up outside the Tim’s there you’ll consider the one minute journey east and hook yourself up with a coffee that’s certainly worth crossing the street for.

Hooked Up are open:

Monday to Thursday 12:00pm – 10:00pm

Friday and Saturday 12:00pm – 12:00am

Sundays 4:00pm – 12:00am

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t show you the inside of Hooked Up’s bathroom, featuring an ongoing photo essay by owner Ross Barney.

[photos by Chad Young]

While Café Days @ Signal is on temporary hiatus, I figured we could at least take a look at what Tim Hortons has been up to in light of our recent suggestion that people try something else in the coffee department.

Clearly we’re having an affect, since Tim’s has just recently announced a nationwide promotion wherein they’re giving away their new Iced Coffee beverage for free on Thursday, June May 21st, between noon and 5pm.

Sheer desperation. McDonald’s did a similar thing recently with their coffee. McDonald’s does coffee? Exactly.

Ok, so maybe I’m not quite so hepped up on meds to believe that this has anything to do with our friendly little campaign, but you still have to wonder why it took not-so-tiny Tim quite so long to figure out the iced coffee concept. They’ve been doing their Iced Capp for years now.

Just like the Iced Capp, the Tim Hortons Iced Coffee is a blatant rip off of what independent cafés have long been doing, but with that Horton Hears a Who twist of mystery mix (fat, sugar, and who knows what else) thrown in for flavour. Which is to say, thrown in to cut through the real taste of their coffee — something I doubt many people would enjoy on its own (hence the double double phenomenon).

I’d like to see someone order the Iced Coffee without the mix thrown in – if it’s even possible – and then try and count how many heads you’re suddenly seen as having.

If you want a real Iced Coffee, where the flavour of the coffee itself is something you actually enjoy and you can sweeten to your own particular taste, I sincerely recommend you try ordering one from a real café. In the meantime, I expect a lot of people will be idling their cars at the drive thru next Thursday as they wait for their first free taste of Summer by Tim Hortons.

I’ve had to put our series on local cafés on hold this week due to illness. A throat infection has hijacked my ability to speak and swallow, and I need those powers for interviewing café owners and drinking their coffees.

We will resume Café Days @ Signal next week. In the meantime, be sure to have a look at last week’s series here, here, here and here!

As a side note, I’d like to leave you with the following:

This grinning gob is but one of a whole collection of happy, smiling faces printed on the latest batch of Hava Java’s take away cups. The result of some sort of shipping error, apparently. Kind of makes you wonder where they were headed in the first place.

And yes, that’s the inside of a microwave in need of a cleaning. And yes, I microwave my coffee — the trick is to set the power to medium high so it doesn’t burn your buds.

So… how close are you to collecting the whole set?

We’ll be back Monday for the continuation of Café Days @ Signal. In the meantime, here’s a look back at the first four cafés we’ve covered:

Hava Java has a real neighborhood café feel with friendly, familiar staff and plenty of regulars.

Coffee & Company are as knowledgeable about their coffee as they are welcoming to newcomers.

Coffee Matters are a fine dining experience in a coffee cup, and have three locations to serve you from.

Folly are as much funky late-night eatery as they are chilled out café with an emphasis on espresso Italian style.

Welcome to our fourth installment of Café Days @ Signal!

Bates Hill, for such a tiny little street, manages to cram in a lot of goodness. Tucked between Duckworth Street and Queens Road, you’ve got a top notch Mexican restaurant, a whimsical children’s book store, and now Folly, the newest addition to the St. John’s late night eatery scene.

On top of serving funky, delicious pizzas, burgers and more, and an awe inspiring selection of beers (36 imports alone), spirits and wine, they’re also a full service café with a wide range of coffees available.

Folly’s coffee follows suit with Bates Hill and it’s good things come in small packages way. They do their coffee as the Italians do. This starts with coffee beans that are roasted in Canada by Italians in keeping with the Italian ways, and finishes with a drink that has the traditional ratio of espresso to milk.

If you’re used to drinking your cappuccino in a cup the size of a beer glass, they can gladly accommodate, but if you’d like to know what a real cappuccino experience can be, go with the Folly flow. Once you’ve experienced the true taste of espresso as balanced by just the right amount of milk, you won’t want to go back to the tall hot glass of beige most North American’s are accustomed to calling a cappuccino or latte.

For the Tim’s drinkers in the crowd, this might be a bit of a leap from what you’re used to. I have my doubts you’d regret it, but if you’d rather take a smaller first step, Folly does your standard drip coffee, too. Standard in that it’s drip coffee, not in it’s authenticity of Italian roasted taste.

As a late night eatery, Folly’s hours are a little outside the norm for most coffee drinkers. Currently they’re open from 6pm – 6am, though that’s going to change to noon – 6am as of June 21st. Still, if you’re a student, a late-shift worker, or simply just a night owl who always tends to see the sun rise from the opposite end of the waking day than most people, know you’ve got a great café available that fits with your schedule in Folly.

There’s free wi-fi, a stylin’ decor full of local art, a chilled vibe, and Mara, Folly’s owner, who is always on hand and knows how to take care of her customers. She’s all about people hanging out and says she’s happy to see people come down with a book or a laptop, order a coffee, settle in and stay as long as they like.

I’m pretty sure this gal never leaves.

It’s Friday evening as I type and Folly is filling up fast. Come 3am they’ll have a lineup going out the door. As far as late night eateries in St. John’s go, Folly’s boldly followed their own recipe and it’s turned out to be a hit. If you ask me, the secret ingredient in that recipe is their coffee — a secret there’s no shame in telling.

Folly are open:

Wednesday to Sunday 6pm – 6am (noon – 6am as of June 21st)

Welcome to our third installment of Café Days @ Signal!

Coffee Matters arrived on the St. John’s café scene just two short years ago, setting up shop at 1 Military Road, and in that time they’ve grown to include two more locations: 320 Water Street and 1429 Topsail Road, in Paradise. A unique feature in and of intself for a locally owned and operated café, but it’s not the only way in which they set themselves apart from the crowd.

As their Director of Operations, Scott Hillyer, describes it, Coffee Matters offers people in St. John’s the opportunity to have a fine dining experience with something as simple as a coffee or as romantic as a glass of wine. Which makes them an ideal choice for a date that looks, tastes and feels fancy without the part where you drop north of a hundred bucks for your obligatory meals.

Another reason why they make for a great place to bring a date? Chances are there’s a least a few more couples there in the same boat. So if you’re feeling a little lost or unsure of how to act, just take a look around you and do as the other Romans are doing.

Speaking of which, the decor is another area where Coffee Matters stands out. Romanesque statues and pillars punctuate the ornate styling found inside all three locations. And that consistency in look and feel is matched by their belief in a consistency in coffee, too.

All baristas at Coffee Matters undergo a full five to six days of training and must pass a written exam before they can start making and serving coffee. This ensures that whether you get your latte one day in Paradise and the next day in Downtown St. John’s, you can expect they’ll be essentially the same.

Something that is undeniably different about their Paradise location, however, is the drive thru. While it wasn’t their intention to offer drive thru service, the new location already had one built in. Great for Paradise, really, since many of the people living there commute and are therefore driving back and forth a lot.

So if you’re a Timmy’s drinker accustomed to driving thru, and you live in the area, it would be easy for you to give Coffee Matters a try. Just know they are unable to offer espresso beverages like lattes and cappuccinos at the window — you’ll have to park and go inside for those.

Many a Tim’s drinker accustomed to their version of an espresso beverage, like the when-powder-meets-water French Vanilla cappuccino, might be surprised by what they’d get if they ordered the same thing in a café. The staff at Coffee Matters understand that, and have gotten really good at being able to spot these wanderers from the Tim Hortons fold.

If you turn out to be one such wanderer, rest assuerd that Coffee Matters welcomes you with open arms — and the opportunity to sample a few of their different espresso drinks until you find the one that suits you best.

Coffee Matters are open:

Monday to Friday 7:00am – 11:00pm

Saturday and Sunday 8:00am – 11:00pm

Welcome to our first installment of Café Days @ Signal!

Hava Java is your friendly neighbourhood café, regardless of what neighbourhood you live in. Located at 216 Water Street, they are in the heart of downtown in more ways than one. Friendly staff, a warm decor, and lively conversation at their many tables give the place a welcoming feel whether you’re a regular or just walking in for the first time.

At Hava there’s always three different brews of coffee to choose from, and you can see which three, with a description of each, on the cards placed before them by the cash.

The cards even tell you how dark or light a roast each coffee is with a meter indicating one of four different strengths at the bottom.

Dark roasts are stronger in flavour, but weaker in caffeine. They go really well with lots of milk and are suitable for drinking in the afternoon, when a more caffeinated coffee might wire you well past your bedtime.

Light roasts are weaker in taste, sometimes a little more bitter, and are higher in caffeine. They’re what you’d want first thing in the morning to get the fog, cobwebs and cotton balls out of your head.

Hava Java does all your usual espresso beverages very well, along with a wide selection of teas, a few different kinds of hot chocolate and fresh squeezed juice made from orange, cantaloupe and/or carrot (your choice).

You can get snacks and treats such as cookies, muffins, cake and bagels all day and night, and they have a lunch menu of soup and freshly made sandwhiches from noon until 2pm on weekdays.

They’ve also got rice paper rolls that show up on Friday and are gone by closing time Saturday night, and veggie chili available on the weekends until 5pm.

If you wind up falling in love with the coffee you’re drinking, why not take some home to brew yourself?

Their friendly staff will help you pick the perfect bean, then bag it for you, either as beans or ground however you like – just tell them what you have at home for brewing coffee (drip machine, french press, moka pot, etc.) and they’ll know how coarse or fine to grind the beans for you.

There’s always a few of today’s papers kicking around, all the free local publications are on hand, along with books, board games, and free wi-fi access, making Hava Java a nice place to go and relax with a coffee or hunker down and get some work done.

Hava Java won The Scope’s Best of St. John’s 2008 reader’s survey award for Best Cup of Coffee. So, if you’re a Tim Hortons drinker, why not skip your next double double, give them a try and decide for yourself?

Hava Java are open:

Monday to Thursday 7:30am – 11:00pm

Friday and Saturday 8:00am – 11:30pm

Sunday from 8:00am – 11:00pm

There’s no denying it. Canadians love their Tim Hortons coffee. It’s one of the few things folks across this country share in common. While bacon, maple syrup and hockey are the icons people around the world most likely identify us with, the double double is perhaps the most common bond we share in how we identify ourselves.

It’s sort of comforting in a way to know we have at least one thing in common with our neighbours. It makes all those fussy differences we seem to have from province to province just a little less distressing. A sort of coffee break from the rigors of nationality in such a geographically vast country.

But let’s set aside our national identities for just a moment and focus on what’s brewing underneath: the coffee itself.

Beneath all that cream and sugar in a Tim Hortons double double is an always fresh serving of Tim Horton’s coffee.

There are those who will argue that Tim Hortons coffee on its own is actually not that pleasant a beverage. That, compared to other coffees, it’s an inferior brew.

Some say you can taste nicotine or MSG in there, and that these ingredients are added by Tim Hortons to try and encourage an addiction to their coffee — an accusation Tim Hortons flat out denies:

Tim Hortons would like to clearly state that there is absolutely NO nicotine or MSG in our coffee. Tim Hortons coffee has NO ADDITIVES whatsoever. It is made only from a blend of the highest quality premium Arabica beans from several different coffee growing countries.

I’m happy to take their word on this, but that doesn’t change the fact that when I drink a Tim Hortons coffee (milk, no sugar) it tastes like someone put their cigarette out in my cup.

None of that matters, of course, if you don’t taste it that way. If you’re a double doubler, then maybe the cream and sugar masks the coffee’s true taste, or perhaps even mixes with it to make a new taste that’s indescribably delicious. Maybe Tim Hortons coffee, however you take it, is the best coffee you’ve ever tasted in your whole life and that’s the reason why you drink it.

If that’s the case, I’d just like to ask: how much other coffee have you tasted?

Outside the comfort zone of Tim Hortons, coffee can have the appearance of being intimidating. You’ve got your light roasts, dark roasts, long and short espressos; the café au lait, americano, latte, cappuccino. Then there’s how you take whichever of these oddly named brews (the seeming complexity of how a coffee can be ordered is a tired gag in film and television). It all gives off the impression that there’s a lot to know, and if you don’t already know it then you should probably keep it that way lest you embarrass yourself by trying.

So maybe it’s best you just stick with your double double. You already know the code for ordering that one, you know you like the taste, so why even consider branching out into new coffee territory?

Allow me to spill the beans:

• Contrary to how it may seem, the coffee beverage range is not that complicated and revolves mainly around whether you’re having brewed coffee or espresso and how much milk you want with either.
• No one expects you to know anything in particular about coffee when you go to a café, and no one will judge you if need to take a minute to read the menu board or ask a question or three before ordering.
• Most coffees don’t require two heaps of cream and two more of sugar to be paletteable, so you can cut back on all that fat and sugar while still really enjoying your cup of joe.
• It’s not the complexity but the variety that makes extending your reach beyond Tim Hortons such a worthwhile venture.

There are other, not-so-caffeinated reasons for wanting to get your coffee from someplace other than Tim Hortons, such as the fact that most of the other coffee spots in town are locally owned, which means more of the money you spend there stays in our local economy, and the lineups at peak times of the day there are not nearly as long or traffic-jamming as they tend to be at Timmy’s.

Still, I can sense you’re not convinced. Which is why I’ll be profiling a different café in St. John’s a day over the next two weeks.

So keep checking in with Signal for a daily walk through of what may well soon be your next favorite place to get a coffee.

[original white mug image via]