the next big thing

so the long-rumoured Stumptown 'Annex' opened today.

what is this?
imagine a high end wine merchant but selling coffee beans. imagine all the education, all the expertise of a wine merchant. imagine the tastings, the discussions, the equipment and accessories. but with coffee.

it's very very cool.
you want to cup coffees? drop in and see when folks will be cupping.
you want to buy a vacuum pot? swing by and choose from a couple (and get an explanation on how to make coffee at its best).
you want to choose from a dozen or so of the world's greatest coffees? no problem - they're all there.

it's really amazing. i've been dropping by as it's been getting close to opening and i think this has the chance to really push coffee to the next level. this gives the customers a chance to get the knowledge and insight that coffee professionals have - without having to get into the industry.

for far too long the coffee industry has treated this stuff as some sort of intellectual property and has done its best to obscure it from the customers. now the wall is falling.

drop by Belmont and SE 34th (two doors down from the Stumptown Cafe) and check it out.

it's a revolution.

way too much fun

The last week has been total coffee nirvana for me.
I'm smiling as I write this.

Last week there was a single origin tasting at Stumptown where coffees evaluated included the following:

Honduras El Puente - Gorgeous sweetness, intense bright fruit (pomegranate, grapefruit), floral aromas. A little tannic as espresso.
El Salvador Las Nubitas - Amazing. Caramel, ripe apples, a touch of Belgian chocolate... Such a wonderful coffee. Very balanced and complete. Fantastic "fluffy" mouthfeel. Love it.
Ethiopia Harar - Super concentrated and intense, with dried blueberry and dark chocolate and a hint of potpourri. Powerfully aromatic though perhaps not quite as defined as one might wish from espresso.
Rwanda Musasa - The shocker of the day - an amazing espresso. Medium bodied and very fruit forward with tons of truffle sweetness and wonderful berry notes. Strong floral aromatics and a candied finish.
Nicaragua Finca el Injerto - Very focused and intense. Dominated by chocolate and fig notes this was a tightly wound shot. Quite strong on the front of the palate.
Guatemala Finca San Vincente - Soft, smooth and very round. Medium bodied and very sweet with wonderful cherry and milk chocolate and tropical fruit notes. Bright enough to balance out all the sweetness and light on the palate. Nice.

The crew at the tasting was fantastic - with folks like Gabe from Ritual in SF and Brent from Crema here in PDX and Phuong from LavaJava and the Dog River folks as well as Sarah and Ken from Barista Magazine and all the Stumpies. There were a ton of other people there but I didn't get a chance to meet most of them and I apologize in advance to all people who I've failed to mention.
It was a seriously good time. And oh my was it great coffee.

Anyway... I liked this so much I grabbed a pound of the Las Nubitas (which is selling in the Stumptown cafes for a shockingly low price) and took it home for the weekend.
Las Nubitas shots.
Las Nubitas macchiattos.
Las Nubitas cappuccinos.
Does life get any better?

Oh yes it does...
So yesterday was cupping and analysis and prep at the new Stumptown Annex. Duane and Robert (from Mocca Java in Oslo) and I cupped some coffees (the Panama Don Pachi, the El Puente, the Las Nubitas and the wonderful Los Delerios) and then compared notes and began working on optimal "brew-by-the-cup" methodologies.
The Don Pachi is amazing... a big bold round fruity candy monster of a coffee.
The El Puente is like some sort of ur-Central. All of the acidity and cleanness - but with balance and sweetness.
The Los Delerios is Ranier Cherry Pie with Chocolate Granita in a cup.
And the Las Nubitas... godlike. Sweet and yet bright. Round and yet exciting. Floral and yet balanced.... it's got it all.

And then today...
Annex experimentation take two.
Starting off with a cupping to die for. Don Pachi, Las Nubitas, Los Delerios, El Puente, an amazing (truly) Sumatran and, of course, the mighty Esmerelda.
In this company the standouts were the Esmerelda (of course) with its bergamot, jolly rancher, watermelon, muscato d'asti, tangerine hard candy insanity and the Sumatra.
I'm not usually a huge Sumatra fan but this was different. Shockingly clean, with no hummus or mushroom notes. Powerfully piney/resinous with strong herbal notes but with incredibly clear acidity. One of the brightest and most balanced Sumatrans I've ever tasted.

And then extraction testing with all the various equipment at the Annex.
Melitta bar El Injerto... Eva Solo El Injerto... Press Pot El Injerto... Vac Pot Don Pachi (mmmm good)... Moka Pot Don Pachi (amazing)... Moka Pot Esmerelda (okay, out of control now)... and then shots of espresso from the La Pavoni.

I feel like each day is this special present for me - where I get given the best coffee in the world perfectly prepared.
I'll never forget this.

regrets

as i've mentioned before, i really miss some things from my Stumptown gig.

i miss the people.
i miss working bar shifts.

i really, really miss cupping coffee with people like Duane.

but right now, more than anything else, i'm regretting that i won't be going to the Nordic Barista Cup this year. last year's NBC was an amazing and life-changing experience for me. i met so many great people and had such a good time. i was really looking forward to this year's cup.

have fun, each and every one of you.

Call me Heretic

I've been doubting the flavour results of the Naked Portafilter recently.

I know, I know...
I can hear the screams of rage and pain from here.

Yes, I was one of the people who so zealously promoted them.
And yes... I still believe that they are incredible for training purposes.

But recently I've been finding myself less and less satisfied with the flavour of the shots. The mouthfeel is wonderful, there is no doubt about that. But I've been finding that with some coffees the resulting balance is off (sometimes dramatically).

I had a couple visitors the other day (Dom and his lovely wife) and was pulling some shots and Dom mentioned that I was not using the naked. So I swapped.
The last shot from the normal portafilter I pulled for us was wonderful. Total clarity, wonderful balance, finessed, polished - with great depth and transparency.
The shots from the naked, however, while looking great, lacked the balance. Instead of a round and polished profile, they were jagged, with exagerated high-mid notes and a noticable drop off on the bottom.

Hmmm...

So I've spent that last couple days experimenting and I'm finding that, with some coffees, I'm getting better results from the normal (spouted) portafilter. This is particularly noticable with the Hairbender (for example), where the shots show the above described "jagged" flavour profile. In fact, I'm noticing that the more balanced the espresso is (or, perhaps, how important balance is to the style of the espresso) the less desirable the naked shots are.

The shots from the naked portafilter are very much "shock and awe" in all ways. They're stunning to look at extracting, the colours and textures in the cup are interesting, the mouthfeel is wonderful and the flavours are "all over the place" in your mouth. But there is a lack of finesse that I find displeasing with some coffees. There is a lack of subtlety that bothers me.

So, for now, I think I'm retiring my naked portafilter from production use and will use it purely for diagnosis, experimentation with techniques and training.

My review of the Fiorenzato Briccoletta is live at Home-Barista.com now.
It was really enjoyable. I learned a huge amount.

And today I had a totally amazing espresso. It was an experimental blend from Andrew Barnett at Ecco Caffe. Just unbelievable balanced. So round and finessed and polished... lovely marzipan and honey and caramel and date... truly wonderful.

cupping highlights

So I cupped a whole bunch of coffees over at Stumptown today.

I'll put it this way... it was one of those "heavy hitter" tables. There were some seriously insane coffees to check out. Duane, me and for a while Matt were the lucky ones to get to taste 'em all.

Brazil Sul de Minas Yellow Bourbon "Top Sky" - Far more reminiscent of a coffee from Peru (or even Colombia) than what you expect from Brazil. Sweet, smooth, balanced, nice acidity. A nice coffee.

Brazil Mogiana Fazenda Cachoeira Yellow Bourbon - Wow. Tons of tropical fruit and persimmon, a little medicinal note, particularily in the aroma. Very, very sweet but not flabby, has good acidity. As it cooled, held structure though it became a touch astringent. A really lovely coffee with crazy complexity of fruit cough syrup bomb action.

Panama Don Patchi Estate - Another one of these crazy Latin geisha coffees. The round butteryness of it was amazing. Super sweet - like butterscotch and old rum. Tons of fruit acidity, but with the low-end to balance. Powdered chocolate complexity - insane and gorgeous.

Panama Hacienda La Esmerelda - What can i say that's not already been said? Moscato d'Asti candy with rose water and a chocolate/berry stir stick. Bergamot, clemantine, tangerine syrup, pollen craziness. One of the world's greatest coffees. So close to being over-the-top but keeps it all together somehow.

El Salvador Finca Kilimanjaro - Now this is my kind of coffee. Far more subtle than either of the above geisha monsters - and I like this "deep waters" kind of coffee. There is a ton going on, but it's so balanced that you almost miss it. It's a nice coffee when hot, but when it cools... things get serious. Mostly SL28 - and it shows. Raspberry, chocolate sweetness with a ton of tart fruit acidity. A superstar.

Sumatra Peaberry - Resinous craziness. Nothing like what you think of when you think Sumatra. Lots of acidity, little to no earthy funky mushroom. Instead it's a chocolate cake, filled with raspberry preserve and then finished with a herbal pinon/rosemary resin oil extract. So far beyond...


Cupping with folks like Duane is so amazing. It's the thing I miss the most from my old job.

I am continuing in my ceaseless experimentation.

I've been working on trying to correlate differences in brew pressure to differences in taste. It's a bit frustrating, partially due to the incredibly inaccurate and very mechanical methodology for pressure adjustment on espresso machines. But it's also frustrating as there seem to be very few commonalities between beans when it comes to these effects. Yes, lower pressure seems to result in a softer and less viscous mouthfeel and higher pressure seems to result in an espresso with more "attack." But beyond that... it's all bean to bean.

I tasted a whole stack of wonderful beans sent to me by Andrew Barnett of Ecco Caffe. I'm going to cup them later, and it will be interesting to compare notes.

El Salvador Pulped Natural (Royal Coffee): This was a very challenging espresso to say the least. It took me a huge amount of work to find the sweet spot and shots outside of the sweet spot were pretty awful. Once there, however, it was quite nice indeed. Light bodied with a lovely buttery mouthfeel, it's a very sweet shot. It has a ton of acidity which, when outside the sweet spot, becomes tremendously lemony and sharp. But in the sweet spot, it ends up almost balancing with the sweetness. Caramel, apricot, maybe a touch of peanut butter. Might be better as a blender than an origin shot, but still quite nice. I ended up having to go with a very high brew temp, a triple basket, slight down-dose and a short extraction volume and time (1.5oz in 24 seconds).

El Salvador Pulped Natural Cerro Los Ravios: In my humble opinion, this is not suitable for use as an origin espresso. It might be good as a small percentage of a blend, especially at a darker roast, but as it is right now it is simply far too bright to be enjoyable. I tried all my tricks and could not get it to taste balanced. Tons of fresh cherry and tangerine, a little vanilla, lots of bright aromatics. Very sharp and on the front of the tongue. Will be interesting to cup this coffee - my guess is that it's going to cup out wonderfully and that it's going to be fabulous in a Vac Pot.

Panama Finca Hartmann: Another coffee that is almost certainly wonderful and lovely, but is not suited to use as espresso. Incredibly delicate and light in the cup, but as espresso there is a ton of acidity and little if any sweetness or body to balance. Plus, there is a "woody" note that comes across as tannin. I cannot wait to cup this one. My guess is that it's going to be truly mindblowing in the cup and as a French Press.

Brazil Fazenda Cachoeira Pulped Natural (Mercanta): Wow. I mean... Wow! This is a complete espresso. First - parameters... LM ridged double basket, up-dosed to about 18.5 grams, 200F brew temp, 2oz double in 28 seconds. Really lovely. Thick and rich on the palate. Incredibly coating mouthfeel. It's got lovely fruit and some nearly hidden pipe tobacco, a whole bunch of chocolate and spice and this incredible candy note. I cannot place the candy, but it's something very familiar. Not root beer barrels, but something like that. This is truly lovely. Incredible colour and crema. Wonderful as an origin espresso - you could also use it as your base for an espresso and with the addition of two (or even just one) accent coffee you could create a truly stellar blend.


Oh... on a personal note, the leg appears to not being getting better. I had MRIs recently and they discovered a lot of damage to the cartilage in the ankle. I'll know more in the next couple days, but it looks like I might have to have the ankle operated on after all. Rather depressing news really.