A Coffee Can for You (16 of 63): Alto Grande Super Premium Coffee.

This is the coffee can that started it all, since I got it from a friend as a gift along with a nice stovetop Italian espresso maker, which last thing has become my standard 'wedding and baby' gift for my marrying friends and my friends who have begun to pop them out:



After I drank the coffee, the can was kind of neat, so I saved it and put some shit in it, and after that I kept trying different brands to see what coffee I liked best, and now I'm up till 63 cans and what can I say, without knowing it, I had a coffee can collection. To think that I had stoppped collecting books since they're heavy and expensive and piss me off when I move, but the collector in me kept collecting it without my realizing it.

I still give this can a place of honor, by the way; it's the only can I still store shit in - in this case, laundry tokettes for the communal washer and dryer in my building's basement (my Croatian landlady doesn't want machines that take quarters since she doesn't want anyone coming in and breaking in to get at them for the money).

A Coffee Can for You (15 of 63): El Pico Cafe Latino.

To me, this is the Latino coffee can par excellence:



Bright red and yellow color scheme, kind of grainy paint job on the medal, solid coffee inside - it just doesn't get any better than this.

A Coffee Can for You (14 of 63): Sleepy Hollow Gourmet Coffees.

This can raises so many questions for me:



I found it when they stocked it one time at the dollar store in my building like right after I moved in, and I've never seen it again ever, whether there or anywhere else.

First, although it's cheap, it's so cheap that its label is matte and not shiny.

Second, it has the plural "coffees" on the front.

Third, Sleepy Hollow?

In any case, I had to choke this shit down for like a month - it was bad even when it was cut with other, better coffee - and yet, I remember it more fondly that the Sant'Eustachio bullshit I got recently.

A Coffee Can for You (13 of 63): Melitta Colombian Supreme.

I distrust coffee cans that say they're supreme:



It's like that one black spiritual that goes "Everybody talkin' 'bout heaven ain't gettin' there..."

Also, I wonder if "Melitta" is based on the Indo-European root *mel-, from which we derive the English 'mill' and is the root of pretty much all the words meaning "mill" in all Indo-European languages ever.

A Coffee Can for You (12 of 63): Caffe Kimbo.

This is another black coffee can:



I have no particularly strong feelings about it either way, though "Kimbo" sounds like an African name to me, and it sounds like "arms a-kimbo", or maybe the neighbor of Little Black Sambo.

Also, now that I look at it again, the font in which the coffee name is written is kind of nice.

A Coffee Can for You (11 of 63): Sant Eustachio il Cafe.

This coffee can cost me twenty fucking dollars, if you can believe that:



I've only ever seen this coffee at a yuppie market, and it's always been priced at twenty dollars every time I've been in there, so I decided that this would be a reward for myself when I finished the second-to-last paper of my masters program, which I did a few weeks ago (for the last one, I'm getting me an Illy can!).

I was very confused since when I shook this can, it sounded like roasted beans, so I asked the guy working the coffee counter at the yuppie market, and he agreed, so he said to open it and he'd grind it for me if it was beans, and it was, so he did.

Unfortunately, the coffee is still really shitty, though I did notice that for some reason someone stamped "BEANS" on the can:



Also, the address is Rome, which is why yuppies probably pay twenty dollars for it:



Also also, note the weird stag-and-cross thing going on on the front. High end coffee cans are weird like that.

Lastly, the whole thing about this being beans in a can made me think more about the parameters of my collection. I think it's kosher; the only things I refuse are empty cans, and things that are supposed to be coffee but aren't, like the weird combos of chopped-up roots that are the coffee substitutes that you can buy in places like the organic markets of Fairfield, Iowa.

A Coffee Can for You (10 of 63): Cafe La Llave.

This coffee can is one of my favorites, though I'm not sure whether I should capitalize the "l" in "la" or not whenever I write the name of the coffee can in not-all-upper-case letters (Cafe la Llave? Cafe La Llave?):



Unfortunately, the picture messes up the color of the can, which is a rich dark green color, and not so much vomit-y green.

It took me forever to find this can -- in fact, I only ever saw this coffee in bricks when I was at Latino markets looking for coffee cans, so I actually thought for a while that such a can didn't exist.

I also like the alliterative quality of "Cafe La Llave", and how it's "Coffee the Key" when translated from the Spanish.