Alfred Peet

September 12, 2007 4:14 PM

Alfred Peet died last month; Is he the real father of Starbucks? Either way, cheers to some good java.
posted by bustmakeupleave (15 comments total)

My great grandpa was a coffee roaster in San Francisco. One day a young buck who worked for him came to his office and showed him a remarkably dark roast of coffee that he thought could really catch on. My grandpa hated that dark swill with the passion of a thousand burning suns and sent the kid packing. "Christ, boy! No one's gonna drink this crap! How do you make it not taste burnt?! Get outa here!" The boy left my grandpa's office with his head hung low, but took the setback in stride and went on to start his own roasting company.

That boy's name was Al Peet.

Thanks a lot grandpa.
posted by Doublewhiskeycokenoice at 4:19 PM on September 12, 2007 [5 favorites]

I'm with your grandpa on that one. No offence ment to the deceased.



.
posted by nola at 4:21 PM on September 12, 2007

I'll be lifting a cup o' that dark swill to the memory of a fine, fine coffee-roastin' man. Sad to hear of his passing, but at least now I know there will be a decent cup waiting for me in the hereafter.
posted by lekvar at 4:48 PM on September 12, 2007

Mr. Peet gave me many fond memories of my Berkeley childhood and adolescence: my mother buying me one of the 10 cent butterscotch candy cane to keep me quiet while she waited on line (I suspect they were sold expressly for this purpose) and, once I was a little older, walking by the Vine street store on my teenage rambles to see the motley crew sipping coffee on the corner outside. And then, once I became a coffee quaffer myself around 16 or thereabouts, he gave me many many perfect cups.

After Peet's turned into a chain, the coffee was never the same at the franchises.

.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 5:06 PM on September 12, 2007

Peet's was, and still is, the freshest roast around. Nothing comes close.

And the local (Palo Alto) store is like an old-timey place--friendly.

Major props for doing it fresh and right and .
posted by PhiBetaKappa at 5:44 PM on September 12, 2007

so i currently work at starbucks, a situation i'm not sure how i feel about yet. but i can say that i've recently been introduced to peet's coffee and tea, and they make the tastiest goddamn latte i've ever tasted.

dear lord. they've got that perfect mix where they don' taste like espresso in hot milk, they taste like a goddamn latte.
that being said,


.
posted by es_de_bah at 5:53 PM on September 12, 2007

If the Peets had been a Nantucket Quaker whaling family like the Folgers or Starbucks he might have been more famous.
posted by stbalbach at 7:19 PM on September 12, 2007

Didja know that the #1 traded commodity in the world is OIL? Sure you did? And the #2 traded commodity? COFFEE BEANS. It's true!

It's also true that Starbucks popularized dark roast so that they could make a variety of beans taste the same (as in BURNT) so they could deliver consistency, which is the hallmark of a franchise. It is sad that most american's don't know what a light or medium roast really tastes like and the differences between coffee bean varieties.

Roast your own, if you want the freshest beans (at a fraction of the the PRICE of roasted). All you need is an air popcorn popper.
posted by spock at 8:05 PM on September 12, 2007

That's why they're called Charbucks. See also: How the Starbucks Logo Became Less Naughty.
posted by spock at 8:07 PM on September 12, 2007 [1 favorite]

Fuck, these coffee threads get tedious, but I have to say, after weeks of catching a Starbucks americano on the way to work or some home brew, the rare opportunity to get a Peet's americano in Portland reminds me that I actually can taste the difference between the serviceable and the sublime.
posted by docpops at 8:21 PM on September 12, 2007

Mr. Peet has long been considered the grandfather of not only Starbucks, but of specialty coffee in the United States. And while he certainly schooled the you bucks -- Baldwin, Bowker and Siegl -- they apparently failed to grasp one of the fundamentals that Peet's Coffee still practices today: no matter how dark you roast, it's never so dark that the origin character of the coffee can no longer be distinguished.

While Al wanted to be remembered for his coffee, I think we'd be terribly remiss if we overlooked his contribution to a uniquely American coffee house culture. His shop at Walnut and Vine in Berkeley became a gathering place -- a hang-out for musicians and artists, writers and radicals -- long before Starbucks, or any other "Indie" tried to claim the mantle of "the third place."

I only wish I'd had the chance to meet the guy and express my thanks in person.
posted by deCadmus at 9:15 PM on September 12, 2007

Yes he is! He was a coffee genius. I hear when he worked at DE (Douwe Egberts) wayback in the seventies he kept getting samples of tea that he refused to even open. So after years of sending him samples the seller finally asked "why do you decline our tea, even when you haven't opened the pack?" and Alfred just shrugged: "It smells like diesel."

Turns out that the ventilations machine outside of the building where they dried the tea ran on diesel, and somehow Alfred could sniff this before he even opened the pack. That's talent.

He also recommended a great bean by pointing the proprietor of the coffee connection, Lee McDonald to some horrible Perle (think cheap) Hazelnut fragranced coffee telling her "if you could get this bean and roast it properly you'll have a great brew." How he could suss that through the stink of hazelnut and cheap fast roasting I'll never know, but he was right.
I was once deep in the plannings of making a documentary of the man when he was visiting his sister back in the Netherlands, but we ran out of time. Shame.
posted by dabitch at 9:02 AM on September 13, 2007

Perhaps his DE days were even further back now that I think of it, but Peet stems from a long line of DE people. He inherited that nose. Which strikes me as even weirder because man is it ever hard to find a decent cup of coffe in The Netherlands!
posted by dabitch at 9:04 AM on September 13, 2007

That would've been a cool documentary, dabitch.

Life wouldn't be the same without my cup of Peet's Major D every morning. RIP, Mr. Peet.
posted by mogget at 10:04 AM on September 13, 2007

Starbucks and Peet's both sell awfully dark coffees, but I like that a lot of the time. Sometimes I like a lighter roast. Mostly I just like a fresh roast. But I have to say, the cups of Papua New Guinea I bought at the Shattuck and Vine Peet's in Berkeley last June were everything I love about coffee. Wow.

Thanks, Al.
posted by Songdog at 6:53 PM on September 13, 2007