Trying As Much Coffee As I Could at Sea Otter 2023

Along with about 4 million other bike industry people, I've made my way to California and am now at the Sea Otter Classic, the annual springtime racing and commercial goods and culture opening of the official bike season. As you might know, I've been off work for the last six months recovering from a brain injury, but through some conversations with the Pinkbike crew we decided it made sense for me to come be part of the bike world - this world I've built so much of my life around - for this weekend.

It's been an interesting balancing act, trying to figure out whether or how much I'm going to work while I'm here, and I've mostly settled on the idea that I can write an article or two, but I won't be covering bike tech. Bike tech happens to be a lot of what exists at Sea Otter, so unlike my last two times here, I'm pivoting to covering some softer but still pretty compelling areas of life, like coffee.

Caffeine has also been on my mind because this week I listened to the audiobook version of Michael Pollan's 'This Is Your Mind On Plants,' an exploration of the human relationships with opium, caffeine, and mescaline. I recommend it to anyone interested in any of that bunch of topics.

Arriving at Sea Otter and seeing the mill of all kinds of industry people, riders, colors, sounds, food, bikes, and more, it seemed like the only thing to do was to throw myself into a bit of my own chaos, and putting my brain onto the hamster wheel seemed like an okay way to do that, so I set off on my mission.


Continental



The Continental tent was just about 20 steps from the Pinkbike tent, so it was an easy first stop. I went at coffee rush hour, right after the venue opened, so the long wait in line was not surprising (but did mean that I missed my tentative not-plan to have breakfast with Christina. The two people making coffee were wearing Corsa Pro hats, which gave me the impression they'd been contracted by Continental to come in and attract all of us into the booth. It worked!

There was a sign indicating that our options were espresso and Americanos, I think because they had some technical difficulties with their portable refrigerator and had no milk. I'm an Americano fan, so the options at baseline worked for me, but I was a little bummed not to have the option to add half-and-half as I usually do. Still, it didn't feel foreign to drink black coffee. I was a black coffee aficionado for a solid decade after I started drinking coffee, but over the last few years have become easier on myself and/or care a lot less about whether or not I feel 'tough' or whatever was going through my head.

The black coffee made the multi-stop comparison samples less equalavent, but I ended up adding some cream from a different place after leaving the tent, so I did end up keeping them as consistent as I could. Note that any consistency does nothing to make me a qualified coffee reviewer. Know that this is just a write-up of my experience, not by any means a review to be treated as legitimate.

I want to mention that the Continental coffee tent also had a foosball table outside. Beyond mountain biking and paragliding, foosball is one of my favorite activities. (In the 8th grade, we had a foosball table in my classroom that I used through every break. At the end of the year, my teacher, who was about to take his sabbatical year, gave me the table because it made me "come alive" in ways that he wasn't used to seeing from me.)



Shimano


I've long been a fan of Shimano components. Unlike what many seem to feel, I don't have a real preference between Shimano and SRAM - they both have real strengths and relative weaknesses! - but the Shimano zone gave out coffee at Sea Otter, so that's a pretty big plus.


Like Shimano shifting, Shimano coffee is user-friendly. I showed up a bit after what I imagine to be rush hour, so there was no wait whatsoever. I wandered into the booth while chatting with a couple of friends and mentioned that I was looking for coffee, and the barista started brewing something great in almost no time. It's hard not to start drawing comparisons between the drivetrains and coffee, since the coffee was easy to drink, very pleasant, less strong than that of Continental, and more smooth than biting, if I'm going to self-congratulate myself into thinking I can use coffee-connoisseur terms.


Specialized


Specialized is good at making crowd-pleasing products (remember when they made the golden retriever bike?) and their coffee is no exception. Once again, the coffee seems congruent with the brand The Specialized tent is a vast world of all kinds of things, but the coffee stand took up a prominent corner, with a vast menu of seemingly every kind of coffee drink I'd ever heard of and some that never crossed my mind.

The person in front of me in line was handed some form of quadruple macchiato, which made my Americano order feel a little lackluster until the drink was handed to me and I remembered why I love it. There was a full bar of types of milk and sugar and other additions, easily accessible, so I added a bit of half-and-half and carried on with my wanderings.


The coffee itself tasted a little muted, maybe dusty, nothing remotely harsh or edgy or "bright." I don't say that by any means as a bad thing. I think the coffee is roasted a little darker than some that give me the impression of being "bright," but I'm deeply unqualified to be assessing and reviewing coffee so take that with many grains of salt.

At this point in the day, I just about hit my caffeine intake limit; it started feeling like I could hear colors, think in abstract shapes, have conversations with birds. I understand that feeling coffee-saturated could affect my judgment, but this whole process is unscientific enough that I think I can get away with my mediocre and self-righteous opinions.


Canyon


Like Continental's, Canyon's booth was within view of Pinkbike's, so it almost taunted me for all the time that I was not visiting it. I finally gave in and crossed the pathway. The process was straightforward: I stood in line for a couple minutes while chatting with a few people I'd just met. I have the tiny complaint that it was kind of loud in the booth, loud enough that my hard-of-hearing self had trouble hearing anyone talking, but we made it work. I asked for my Americano, waited a moment, and watched it appear. I then asked for some milk and was given the options of oat and macadamia. I have the slight suspicion that those were my two options because they don't require as much refrigeration as milk that originated in a cow, but I have absolutely no proof of that. (I do think maybe Continental should have opted for the oat milk option, but we all have different comfort levels with unrefrigerated products.)


The Canyon coffee also has the honor of being one of the few coffee drinks ever to give me the feeling of "ugh, more coffee."

Canyon is European enough that I expect them to have slightly better taste in many things than I do, and I'll count coffee among those things. The coffee was quite nice, despite my not wanting to drink any more today. I'll take the long-shot guess that the roast level is medium, more "bright" than "earthy" but still seeming very well balanced, at least in my opinion.


It's worth noting that this is the least direct comparison, being coffee mixed with oat milk rather than half-and-half, even though I think oat is the most similar non-dairy milk to dairy milk. Actually, none of these include anything remotely scientific, but drinking free coffee and walking around and saying hi to bike people is a decent enough excuse for me to ramble in an article a bit, so I'll take it.

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Well, that's my roundup of the free coffee of Sea Otter. I probably missed one or two or five companies, so it won't surprise me one bit if the commenters shout out other brands that deserve recognition, but these were the main ones I found. I'll try to visit even more next year, but in the meantime, that'll mean putting in the training to help my over-caffeinated brain get strong enough to handle what the world has in store for it.