No Bad Reviews: A Coffee Podcast

When we came up with the idea of doing an episode about decaf, we thought it would just be a discussion about the different processing methods. Turns out there’s WAY more to decaf than any of us expected. Of the inventors of the three major decaffeination methods there’s a guy that was friends with Hilter, a guy who was killed by the Nazis, and a guy from Switzerland that tried for 50 years before...

In this week’s episode, Marcus and Steph try PBR Hard Coffee while Jenni tags along for the story of the Pabst Blue Ribbon company, a history older than the Civil War. The story of the Pabst company starts with a family of German immigrants in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Thanks to a devastating event in the next major city over and some little blue silk ribbons, PBR became the largest beer company in th...

In this week’s episode we learn about the iconic New York coffee brand, Chock Full o’Nuts. This company was the Starbucks of New York City long before the era of Starbucks. With coffee shops scattered across Manhattan, this counter style diner served up exactly what people needed when they needed it for a price they could afford. Listen to hear about the fascinating life of the eccentric businessm...

Why choose between your morning energy drink and your morning coffee? In this week's episode we try the combo that is both! Steph tells us the history and current events of the leading energy drink coffee company and this company has it all. Girls, large trucks, lawsuits, sexual harassment accusations, and so much intensity. Find out what we think in this week's episode! Further media: https://www...

It's a birthday spectacular! Happy Birthday to Marcus and Jenni! Steph decided to give Marcus and Jenni the gift of a podcast episode. In this week's episode, Steph tells the very fascinating history of birthday cake and then we try Birthday Cake Coffee from a fitness/marketing/coffee brand called Coffee Over Cardio. Does this coffee take the cake? Will it make our booties fine? While none of us t...

There may be no bigger genre than true crime at this moment in time so we decided to see if we could find a true crime coffee. And what do you know, we found the Murder Coffee Company. This week we delve into the psychology of true crime and the macabre and then we try a blueberry flavored coffee called Turning Blue. Find out what we think about this veteran owned coffee company that bills itself...

It's a Marcus coffee nerd episode! None of us have ever tried cascara but have been very curious about it so we were all really excited to try this herbal tea made from the fruit of the coffee plant. Marcus tells us the history of cascara, how and where it is consumed today, and we figure out ways we think it would be best enjoyed. Find out what we think of it in this episode! Further media: https...

This week we try Breakfast with Elvis, a peanut butter banana flavored coffee that attempts to pay homage to the favorite sandwich of the King himself. Steph takes us on a journey back in time, before Elvis, to the earliest days of rock and roll. We then learn about the meteoric rise of the King and how the world was perfectly poised for his kind of stardom. Unfortunately, Elvis fell as quickly as...

It’s a couple of weeks later than we had hoped to release this episode, but we found the history of Juneteenth to be incredibly fascinating and we were excited to try the coffee from BeanFruit Coffee, so we thought better late than never. In this week’s episode, Jenni covers the history of Juneteenth and the end of slavery in America. We all learned surprising facts that they didn’t teach us in sc...

We're back to recording! This week we get back to our roots and try cotton candy flavored coffee from the Bones Coffee Company. It's like a carnival for our mouths! Maybe? In this episode, Steph tells us the history of cotton candy and it's been around a lot longer than any of us could guess. Then she tells us what little information she could find out about the elusive Bones Coffee Company. Cotto...

In this week's episode we try Manhattan Special, a coffee soda that is about as old as modern coffee, around since the late 1895 in the same location in Brooklyn, New York. It is a New York classic that we were excited to try! Steph tells us the tale of the Manhattan Special company and with a company this old, it definitely has some history. Now run by the fourth generation of the same family tha...

This week we are in the midst of fulfilling a pretty insane order and did not have any time to properly research or record a regular episode. But we didn't want you to go a week without us so we decided that it would be fun to release an exclusive Patreon bonus episode. You hear us mention Love It or Leave It every week and so we'll let you take a listen, this time on the house. We decided on this...

In this week's episode we have Joanna Goss, our resident Trader Joe's expert, bringing us not only an insider's perspective on Trader Joe's but also the history as our storyteller! In addition to her day job as a store artist at Trader Joe's, Joanna is an accomplished artist, published author, and vintage reseller. We loved having Joanna on the pod and are so grateful for her research. For the cof...

This week in part one of our two part Aldi vs. Trader Joe's series, Steph tells us the founding story of Aldi and what history she could learn about the reclusive brothers who made it the store it is today. This story would not be complete with all the drama — World War II, a family rift, and even a kidnapping! We also welcome a special guest, Joanna Goss! Joanna is an accomplished artist, publish...

We've seen Cometeer advertised quite a bit so, intrigued by the concept, we decided to do an episode about it. A coffee concept born of a lazy college student, Cometeer is a frozen coffee concentrate meant to be constituted with water and claims to be as good as a freshly brewed cup of coffee. Developed between said college student, an OG of specialty coffee, and a bunch of venture capital money,...

When Marcus and Jenni went to Portland a few months ago, Marcus was so excited to learn that a Coava coffee location was just blocks from their Airbnb. At the crack of dawn he walked on over, met some super friendly baristas, and enjoyed a most excellent cup of Chemex brewed coffee. So they brought back a couple of bags to share with Steph and all of our listeners! Matt Higgins, the founder of Coa...

It's our first interview episode! Steph retells the story of her friend Derrick who has a lovely and romantic tale about his idyllic childhood spent within a stone's throw of the Royal Cup Coffee factory and how he by chance met this coffee again in his adulthood, hundreds of miles away. Then we try this coffee that everyone has likely had but noone has ever heard of. What do we think of this coff...

Spicy Taco Coffee is the coffee no one asked for but somehow exists. For this episode, Jenni's childhood best friend thought it would be fun to send the podcast this treat of an abomination and test our commitment to no bad reviews. And guess what! We did it. In this episode we not only manage to give no bad reviews, one of us emptied the cup, despite the artificial beef flavoring agent. You'll ha...

Blast off with us as Jenni takes us through the history of coffee and space flight from the first Apollo mission to the moon, the space shuttle missions, and the International Space Station. Each new era of space flight brought a new era of coffee consumption along with ingenuity to make the coffee experience as much like Earth as possible. If there's one thing we learned it's that, for astronauts...

Yep, that's right, Green Day the band makes a coffee . When we found out, we had to try it for the sake of 1990s nostalgia. In this episode we learn about the history of Green Day from their days as wee lads singing Beatles tunes at the retirement center to them winning all of the awards. Then we discover what inspired them to start a coffee company, who they partnered with, and if it makes the gr...

First thing we need to say, this episode gets our first trigger warning for mentions of sexual violence. We don't like to tell stories with trigger warnings, but here we are. Maybe don't play this episode with the kids in the car. This episode is a deeper dive into the allegations that we touched upon in Episode 11: Twinkies Coffee. If you haven't listened to that episode, we recommend you start w...

When friend of Modest Coffee, Big Mike, told us about the Twinkies K-cups that he saw at his local Menards, we knew we had to make an episode. Little did we know, this story held much more than we expected. Steph covers the history of Hostess, the birth of the Twinkie, and the company's convoluted path to the hands of an (allegedly) disturbing CEO. We also learn a valuable lesson, if it comes in a...

It's a Marcus episode! As a coffee podcast, we thought it important to maybe tell the story of coffee itself so we asked our resident expert to weigh in. When a friend sent us a bag of Jamaican Blue Mountain that she picked from the Island in the same week Marcus roasted some JBM for another friend, an episode was serendipitously born. Marcus tells us the tale of the history of coffee, its many ha...

There were so many fun stories about Coca Cola that we decided to give you a bonus episode rather than leave these outtakes on the cutting room floor. Steph tells us how one guy made nearly a billion dollars on a $74,000 investment in Coca Cola, how Coca Cola infiltrated the Soviet Union behind the back of Stalin, in what ways Coca Cola definitely has the best marketing, and how Coca Cola caused a...

It's the cocaine episode, err, the Coca-Cola with Coffee episode! Steph tells us the fascinating history of the Coca-Cola company and how they came to create Coke with Coffee. Will cocaine infused Coca-Cola cure the founder, John Stith Pemberton, of his morphine addiction? When did Coca-Cola remove coca leaves from Coca-Cola? It's more recently than you'd expect. Find out all this and more in this...