The Falcon   |   Volume 81, Issue 26

Published 6/02/10   |   Log In

Coffee crawl pricey but fun

The coffee mug above Seattle's Best Coffee on Post Alley and Pine Street at Pike Place Market marks the starting point of the Seattle Coffee Crawl.
Photo credit: Courtesy of STEPHANIE ALLEN.

Tour offers a history of Seattle and culture

By COURTNEY MILLAN, Features Editor

Published: May 27, 2009

Seattle is known for its coffee. It's almost impossible to drive through Seattle without seeing multiple coffee shops on each corner. So it would make sense that Seattle has its very own Seattle Coffee Crawl.

The Seattle Coffee Crawl begins under the neon coffee mug at Seattle's Best Coffee on Post Alley and Pine Street at Pike Place Market. The two-hour tour then takes tourists on a 1.6-mile walk through Downtown Seattle to Pioneer Square as tourists learn about the city, its culture and, of course, coffee.

The tour is a little pricey at $20, considering within the two hours you only taste small samples of drip coffee from four of the six coffee shops along the tour. So if you expect the tour to be all about coffee and to experience lots of coffee tasting, this may not be the tour for you.

Although the Web site claims this is a tour "for everyone, not just coffee lovers," that seems to be a little misleading. Again, the coffee tastings are all of black coffee: no cream, no sugar. The tour guide wants tourists to experience each coffee, tasting for flavor and origin. The origin, more specifically the soil of the coffee bean, can greatly affect the taste and flavor of the coffee, the tour guide explained. Throughout the tour, tourists learned to differentiate and taste for the fruit flavor, the boldness, the citrus and overall quality.

The best stop for coffee is probably Seattle Coffee Works near Pike Place Market. This stop consisted of three tastings: a Java Taman roast, a Mexican roast and a Kenyan roast. The Kenyan roast had more of a brighter, fruity citrus flavor compared to the earthy flavor of the Mexican blend.

For those who aren't as keen on the coffee, a stop at Dilettante Mocha Cafe will provide a change of pace with very good and needed hot chocolate. Other stops include Seattle's Best Coffee, Monorail Espresso, Trabant Coffee & Chai and Zeitgeist.

Outside of coffee tasting, tourists get a rich history of Seattle, even for a native Seattleite. For example, did you know that the manhole cover on First Avenue and Stewart Street is a map of downtown Seattle or that Brazil is the biggest producer of coffee or that Finland has the most coffee drinkers per capita? These and many, many more fun facts can be learned on the Seattle Coffee Crawl.

Each coffee shop has its own unique story, and tourists will hear stories of Starbucks intertwined throughout the tour. In fact, from Pike Place Market to Pioneer Square, the tour passed by 16 Starbucks shops.

If you want to experience the Seattle Coffee Crawl, tickets are available at the SeattleByFoot.com Web site. Tours are held Friday through Tuesday, rain or shine, usually at 10 a.m. However, each tour has a maximum of 15 people, so advanced purchase is recommended.

Fun Facts about coffee:

1. Espresso has 1/3 the caffeine of a regular cup of coffee.

2. The three biggest coffee drinkers in the world are Americans, French and Germans. They consume some 65 percent of the total world's consumption of coffee.

3. Caffeine is on the International Olympic Committee list of prohibited substances. Athletes who test positive for more than 12 micrograms of caffeine per milliliter of urine may be banned from the Olympic Games. This level may be reached after drinking about five cups of coffee.

4. Both the American Revolution and the infamous French Revolution were born in coffee houses.

5. Dark roasted coffees actually have less caffeine than medium roasts. The longer a coffee is roasted, the more caffeine burns off during the process.

Fun Facts courtesy of http://cocoajava.com/java_trivia.html

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