The Quest For A Good Cup Of Coffee (Part 2)

This is a guest post by Mike Brown. Learn more about how you can guest post for Daily Shot Of Coffee. This is the second part in is series. You can read the first part here. Huge thanks to Mike for sharing his search with us!

The first leg of our honeymoon was fantastic, the people and the places were everything we expected and more. The only thing lacking was good coffee, but that was sort of expected! We left the castle and headed to the Galway for the afternoon. Galway is a small college town type of place, a place where I hoped to finally find a decent cup.

I must backtrack a little bit here and mention that when packing for Ireland we packed rain gear, cold weather gear etc… When we got to Galway it was 70 degrees and sunny out. This was actually a theme for our honeymoon, very little rain, abundant sunshine. No complaints here!

Back to Galway, we walked around town for a while, had some delicious fish and chips, and next on our list was a café. What I learned from my time in Ireland is that drip coffee is something that is not easy to find. Most places have espresso drinks only when it comes to coffee, and anything else you may get is anyone’s guess! We see signs outside of the café advertising Puro Coffee sold here, as you can see from the website they are fair trade and so things were looking up. Maybe there was drip coffee after all! I ordered a black coffee and Ellen ordered a Cappuccino, again proving that she has the brains in the relationship! There was a theme here, and ordering tea was looking more and more promising. Little did I know that things were going to change…for the better.

We left Galway and headed to Clifden, our next stop, and a B&B. When you arrive at a B&B in Ireland, usually coffee or tea is offered to you while you chat with the owner about the area and ideas for places to eat etc… Both of us asked for tea! At this point of the trip I was getting to the point where coffee just didn’t sound appetizing to me.

Again let me backtrack a little bit. I get my coffee from Good Dog Coffee, grind it myself and am very passionate about quality coffee, which is fair trade and shade grown. Ask anyone who knows me and they will definitely say something about my coffee habits! What I am getting at here, is coffee is part of who I am, so saying it didn’t sound appetizing was something that hadn’t crossed my lips since 1987 or so!

Waking up the next morning I decided I would go ahead and be adventurous, so I ordered coffee. To my astonishment the owner comes out of the kitchen with a Mr. Coffee drip coffee pot and pours me a cup. If you saw my face at that moment you would probably ask me if I was OK. Drip coffee, here in Clifden? I couldn’t believe my eyes. Sure enough it was, and guess what, I asked for a refill! Later I learned that the owner hits this side of the pond (the US) and I was assuming that is where she got it from. Once again everything about this country was proving itself true, only this time there was good coffee thrown into the mix! We were ready to hit our final destination, Dublin, the city, where I was sure good coffee could be found.

Our stay in Dublin was at a small hotel, a boutique if you will and it was wonderful. We were once again met by the owner, so it was like a B&B in that sense, and of course we were asked if we wanted coffe or tea. I ordered coffee, saying to myself if the last place had drip, maybe this place does to. Once again I was in for a pleasant surprise. Ten minutes later the coffee comes out in a single serve French Press! I was having a string of good luck. I happily ordered coffee every morning with my breakfast and although there were some nice cafes in Dublin, nothing could compare to the last two stops on our journey, things had gone from instant to French Press and it wasn’t raining! What I learned more than anything on our honeymoon (when it comes to coffee I mean) is how much I missed my cup of coffee every morning. I was reliant upon someone else everyday for something that I take for granted!

Having said all of that, I am now married to the most wonderful woman on the planet who let me do this while on our honeymoon! I love her more than anything and as I have said in these paragraphs, she is my better half.