Kramer Books & Afterwords

1517 Connecticut Ave NW

Washington DC

Like Schwarzenegger in Predator, I thought my coffee trip to Kramer Books and Afterwords was going to be a quick in and out operation, however much like “Dutch” discovered, my mission unexpectedly ended up taking a great deal longer (although admittedly with a far lower body count and physical battery). DC has a lot of policy wonks who like to read books and drink coffee at all hours of the day. So it makes sense that the ‘coffee joint in the bookstore’ is a commonly occurring phenomenon. Some of them are even pretty good (see Modern Times as an example). So, is the coffee at the KB&A simply fuel for a ferocious page turner, or does it challenge the steely concentration of the bookworm to pay attention to a different sense altogether? This was what I aimed to figure out.

I ordered a caffe latte and thanks to the machine being in the middle of the store I got a great position right next to the barista to watch this thing unfold. I asked for the smallest cup possible to-go hoping for an 8oz, but the 16 oz cup (that’s a whopping 473ml for you metric buffs) that emerged had me a tad concerned. Observing the brew’s construction was a unique experience – the barista not so much tamped as massaged the coffee (several times) into the group head. The resultant screams of the milk jug had me convinced that I was riding the bus down a road called disaster and rightfully so – I received an overly diluted, milky coffee with minimal fullness in the mouth feel. However underneath all that milk, there was relative silence, flavours too difficult to discern as the pull was heavily muted by the milk. Intrigued, I had to go back and sit down to find out just what this barista was capable of with a naked 7 grams.

Second visit, different barista. I asked for an espresso, but a wink and a smile convinced me to go for a double…so why not up the ante? What I received, was that same 16 oz cup I received on the first visit, that was HALF FULL of an overwhelmingly sour “espresso”. Basically undrinkable. Now I want to say upfront, I have had some excellent coffee here in Washington (and the absolute cream here is on par with Melbourne’s finest) However, if there was ever a classic illustration of the perceived chasm between the American and Australian approach to espresso coffee, this is the poster child.

No beans

Coffee: Unknown