Avoca Coffee Roasters

This morning I woke up in my new, hundred-year-old house in the Fairmount neighborhood of Fort Worth, Texas. Alone and disoriented, I didn’t know where anything was. Oh yeah, I moved here from San Diego last night. Eventually I got myself together, managed to find the keys to the house and walked down Magnolia Avenue in search of some good coffee.

Avoca is probably – but I’m not sure yet – the closest coffee snob-type shop near my house, and it’s a big space that I naturally gravitated toward. As I moseyed on up to the counter two guys behind me discussed Captain Beefheart – an excellent sign. Yes, this place has hipsters galore, and a few burnouts, but also Realtors® in business casual meeting up with their clients. In short, it’s a neighborhood coffee shop.

The important thing is the coffee. In San Diego a lot of the more serious coffee shops are following an unfortunate trend, which is to brew their coffee with under-roasted beans. I believe this trend is a reaction to global chains like Starbucks whose “bold” brews use horribly burnt beans. The idea of a lighter roast is to push the real flavor of the beans (actually seeds) to the forefront instead of burning the flavor out. The problem comes when the roast is so light that the drink ceases to taste like coffee and instead tastes like some acidic, fruity dietary supplement that’s supposed to help you lose weight or something. I am happy to report that Avoca’s house coffee, whose beans are roasted on the premises, is a very nice, smooth, flavorful medium roast.