Filed under: barista, coffee, cupping, espresso, roasting | Tags: cupping, Dark Horse Espresso, Hanks, Momi, roasting
We’ll get back to the roadtrip with the roaster again soon. But first, I had the pleasure of stopping in at Dark Horse Espresso Bar the other day to cup with one of my favorite baristas, Momi (look halfway down on the link). I brought in samples I was evaluating sent to me from Cafe Imports in Minneapolis.
I’m a big fan of bright coffees, Ethiopians, high grown Centrals, but every once in a while I like a nice easy drinking cup. I had tried a couple great Mexican coffees on my travels down in The States and wanted to add a nice one to the inventory when we FINALLY fire up the roaster.
What I originally thought would be just Momi and I turned into an impromptu public cupping. Max from Hank’s on Church stopped in and another barista from Montreal named Sameer happened to be in house. First off, I should mention that I wasn’t quite happy with my roasting of these samples. I had put a smaller charge into my sample roaster than I normally would and at the end of the roast, the coffee seemed to get away on me a bit. I also took them a bit darker than I normally would, closer to a full city roast instead of a city roast. I had cupped production roasts at Stumptown and was experimenting with going a bit darker in this exercise. Oh well, lesson learned. 
We cupped a Tanzanian Peaberry, Washed Congo, a few natural Sidamos including one from only red cherries, a Columbian Supremo, and 3 different Mexicans. Even through the roastiness, some of the coffees that stood out were the Peaberry, the Sidamo from red cherries, the Colombian, and one of the Mexicans. The day after cupping at DH, I ended up reroasting the samples to my usual city roast and found the peaberry to have an apple crisp type quality. The Sidamo had heaps of beautiful red fruit with an interesting bit of bergamot you’d expect from a Yirgacheffe. The Colombian was easy drinking and paired really nicely on the Chemex with some coconut cupcakes my wife made. And finally, the Mexican was really great, huge body, with chocolate and rich cashew nuttiness. Unfortunately, the Congo was a bit of a disappointment at both roast levels. Next samples to roast…dare I say it, DECAF! Cheers.
Filed under: barista, coffee, cupping, espresso, travel | Tags: Albina Press, cupping, espresso, Portland, Stumptown
…Next stop on my our road trip: Portland. First off, let me just say, when you are driving solo in unfamiliar territory, what a blessing GPS is. I’m usually a map only, always know which way is North type of guy. But the GPS made my travels easy and stress free. Having said that, I wasn’t aware that in the”avoidance’s” setting in the GPS, “Ferries” wasn’t selected. So the day before on my way to Bremerton, it had me drive down into a small town to catch the ferry across Puget Sound. Lesson learned.
I arrived into Portland at the “Thriftlodge” on Burnside. Maybe my GPS should have an avoidance for bad motels. Oh well, it was central, had parking for my cube truck, and was across the road from a pretty cool Restaurant/Hotel/Club: 
Doug Fir Lounge. The next morning I started with some an awesome omelet at Screen Door down the street on Burnside. I kinda hate dining alone, but at least they had a bar to sit at. Next I was off across the river into downtown to check out the Portland Saturday Market. To be honest, I couldn’t really get into it, but I wasn’t in the mood for shopping either. I think the only thing I even considered cool was the guy with the duct tape wallets.
Next I was off to Stumptown’s downtown location. I had an amazing shot of hairbender pulled for me. I was struck by the dark crema and the huge chocolate and caramel and citrus notes. Really loved the location as well. Gotta love them spinning vinyl!
I then walked over to the Portland Farmers Market at the entrance of the State University. I knew my wife would have gone crazy at the sight of the beautiful chanterelles that were on offer. I visited the guys from Cafe Velo who have a
pourover station as well as airpots that they french press (or as we call them in Canada “Bodum”) coffees into. I had what was soon to be some of the last of the El Injerto Bourbon left for the season.
The rest of the weekend was spent visiting more coffee shops. I had some really nice coffee and conversations at Albina Press with Kevin and Extracto with Chris. I was struck by the care and attention that baristas everywhere took preparing my coffee, without even knowing that I was into coffee, ometimes pouring a shot 2 or 3 times before they would serve me a drink.
I also visited Stumptowns Annex location for the public cuppings they do twice daily. I cupped some of the same coffees I had tried in Seattle. The Kenyan Gaturiri Reserve really shone. It is unusual for Kenyan coffees to bypass the auction system. This is Stumptowns first offering from Kenya via their “Direct Trade” program. What I found amazing at the Annex was watching and listening to the customers coming in. It has become part of the culture for people to come in and buy their freshly roasted coffee every week. They also seem to understand that coffee is seasonal and were ready and willing to try something different even though their latest favorite was no longer available.
My weekend in Portland was coming to an end. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Portland, sure I loved the coffee, but I wasn’t sure it was the city for me. Maybe I was just itching to get moving homeward and grumpy from all the noisy people wh
o stayed at my motel following a Vic Chesnutt concert across the road at the Doug Fir. I do remember passing by a shop somewhere on the East side with a big sign above saying “Keep Portland Wierd“. I think maybe that kinda summed something up for me…. Coming next the road trip home….
Filed under: barista, cupping, espresso, roasting, travel | Tags: Diedrich, Mercanta, Stumptown
Well, the above pictured map pretty much sums it up. In November of 2008 I flew down to Seattle WA to pick up my Diedrich IR12 roaster. It was a 2800 mile drive back, across some beautiful country and I had some exquisite coffees along the way.
Going to the west coast for the first time felt a bit like travelling to Mecca. I’ve read for years about Stumptown, Albina Press, and Vivace and even sampled some of their coffees but there is nothing like visiting them in person. After landing in Seattle I picked up my Penske cube van (I was told that Uhauls were a bad idea) and valiantly but nevously drove my big truck into Seattle to get my first west coast coffee. My first stop was Vivace at their newest location across from the REI store. I had sampled their Dolce and Vita espresso blends a few years back. I can’t remember which one I prefered at the time but one of the blends has a very distinctive “funk” clearly evident of Monsooned Malabar in the blend. I’ve played with MM in blends at home over the years
and can see how it can be interesting in a blend but its really not my favorite.
After visiting Vivace, I managed to visit both Stumptown locations, finishing at the roastery. Luckily I was early enough to participate in their daily public cuppings. I chatted with their roaster, Wolf, about my trip and we cupped numerous coffees including a beautiful Maragoype from El Injerto in Guatemala. I loved the idea of regular cuppings involving the public. I think it is a perfect way to introduce people to experience the complexity of coffee and connect them to the whole seed to cup chain.
The next morning I met up with Leah Warren of Mercanta Coffee at Victrola Coffee. Mercanta just recently set up North American warehousing for some of their coffees. I had the pleasure of sampling some of the coffees, including a beautiful Kenyan Thangathi, before I left on my trip and I was meeting with Leah in person before picking up coffees from their Portland warehouse.
I had the pleasure of spending the rest of the day training with Chris Davidson of Atlas Coffee Importers. I first met Chris at a roasting workshop in Minneapolis at SCAA conference. At Atlas’ training facility we cupped like crazy, and roasted a bunch of coffees for single origin espresso and also played with blending. One highlight, if you could call it that, was Chris exclaiming “Hey, here’s your defect” as we cupped a Sumatran. It’s so rare to find defects in specialty grade coffee and I gleefully came over to experience rotten fruit taste myself.
I woke up the next day filled with excitment. The big day was finally here. I was off to Bremerton to pick up my roaster from Phil and his wife Leah who run Ootopia coffee roasters. They had decided to buy a bigger roaster, an IR24, for their wholesale roastery. I spent a few hours with them, hearing about thier experiences in the coffee business. It was good to get Phils perspective, especially reminding me that passion and ideals are great but in the end, it is a business and the numbers have to work in order to be sucessful. Loading the roaster into my truck was interesting to say the least. Their neighbour had a forklift to help get it into my truck and it just cleared with 3″ to spare. They handed me the awesome old school manual for my roaster and off I was for Portland, but that is another story…
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