Trick or…Coffee?

Halloween activities most typically involve costumes, collecting candy or cavorting in the Castro (or the location du jour), but I, unintentionally, managed to associate Halloween with the anniversary of this blog. That’s right. I started writing Man Seeking Coffee two years ago on October 31, 2007. So I’ll start this post by patting myself on the back, saying Happy Birthday to me, and by extending an enormous thank you to all of you.

It boggles my mind to think that I’ve only been writing this blog for two years. In part, my amazement stems from the fact that my obsession with coffee has been going on for much longer, but that’s not the core of it. Mostly I’m amazed by the strides the coffee industry has taken in just the past two years.

In the Beginning…

I’ve hardly been blogging since the pioneering days of bad Bay Area coffee you might read about at that venerable institution, Coffee Ratings, and its accompanying blog, The Shot, when the one bright spot was Mr. Espresso. When I started two years ago, Blue Bottle was then a well-established roaster and kiosk-vendor while Ritual was finally coming into its own as a roaster and even beginning to expand, with their Flora Grubb Gardens location. New roasters, such as De La Paz were starting to make their mark, while other high quality roasters, such as Barefoot, Pacific Bay Coffee Company, Ecco Caffe, Flying Goat, and Moksha were thriving, but mostly in the outer reaches of the Bay Area.

The Expanding Bay Area Coffee Roasting Empire

Still, the coffee scene was far from where it is today. Mr. Espresso’s finest coffees were not available at Coffee Bar and Ritual had to yet expand to Napa Market or its current, many wholesale clients. Blue Bottle’s manifest destiny was not yet realized as James Freeman had yet to open the Blue Bottle cafe, Ferry Plaza and SFMOMA kiosks and brand new Jack London Square roasting facility and coffee bar. Blue Bottle also lacked a presence, as it does today, in New York, LA, Tokyo and a number of top-quality bay area restaurants (check “find us” on BB’s website).

The most important change in the last two years, however, may have been the emergence of Four Barrel Coffee, which I watched go from back alley kiosk to store front to fully fledged roaster. While determining true causality can beguile the best of us, it seems hard to deny that Four Barrel’s arrival correlates with a huge growth in the local industry. First is the arrival of highly acclaimed roasters such as Verve, intriguing newcomers such as Scarlett City, and soon-to-be roasting companies such as Sightlass (currently serving Verve). Second is the massive increase in new, wholesale client cafes focused on great cafe design and superior quality coffee.

The March of the Wholesale Clients

In San Francisco, some of the many new wholesale clients include Haus (Ritual and De La Paz), Stable (De La Paz), Epicenter (Barefoot), farm:table (Verve), and Sightglass (which will eventually be roasting). Other wholesale clients worth noting include: Mojo Bicycle Cafe, which switched from Ecco to Ritual and De La Paz; Dynamo Donuts, which focuses on donuts but serves quality Four Barrel; and upgrades at Specialty’s, promising an experience worthy of their Intelligentsia beans.

More exiting for me, given where I live and work, is the recent explosion of wholesale client cafes in the inner East Bay, which include great new spots such as Local 123 (Flying Goat), Subrosa (Four Barrel), Remedy (Ritual), Modern Coffee (Verve and Four Barrel, and a heavy guest rotation) and Cafe 504 (Blue Bottle and Ritual). Of course, these join what are still relative newcomers (within the last two years), such as Awaken (Taylor Made) and 33 Revolutions. This newest wave of wholesale client cafes appear to offer both extremely high quality coffee, more or less on par with what’s come to be expected from their affiliated flagship roasters’ cafes. And, what they can’t match in quality, they typically compensate for in variety, offering coffee from multiple roasters or via a variety of brew methods.

Coffee Elsewhere

While there’s no way I could fully cover the last two year’s of change abroad…er…beyond the Bay Area, I’ve spent too much time on this blog covering that growth not to give it a brief mention. Certainly there is Intelligentsia’s expansion into to LA (1,2), Stumptown’s expansion to New York and Counter Culture Coffee’s increasing saturation up and down the east coast. In part due to the efforts of these three macro-micro roasters, and a handful of others, New York and the greater LA area are hardly the coffee wastelands they were just two years ago. And changes have been happening rapidly in countless other cities across the country, including coffee mainstay cities such as Portland. (I won’t even dare to touch the foreign market.) It’s reached the point where this near-exponential growth is getting difficult to follow.

What’s next for Man Seeking Coffee?

Of course, there’s no shortage of coffee to write about, and given a new job, new school schedule for the kid, and far too many cafes to cover, I’m getting increasingly behind. I hope to get caught up soon, including a collection of reviews from a past trip to the Northeast. I also plan to continue to cover spots further afield, reporting back on coffee from new cities rarely covered and those I’ve been dying to get back to for some time.

More importantly, though, I’m working to make this blog better. In just a few days, Man Seeking Coffee will be closing its doors to begin some much needed upkeep and improvements. Don’t worry, you’ll still be able to access everything here while I work behind the scenes. I just wanted to give you the heads up in case things seem a bit more quiet than usual. Stay tuned for further details and I’ll see you on the other side.

Beans: Ethiopia Mordecofe
Roaster: Four Barrel Coffee
Rating: 4-

My plate is more than full at the moment; hopefully, I’ll get around to writing about my visit to Subrosa soon. In the mean time, though, I will say that although it has taken the East Bay far too long to catch up to all the good things happening with coffee in San Francisco, what has finally started to happen is certainly making this man happy (1,2). Until I get to that post, however, I’ll leave you with some notes on what I purchased at this relatively new East Bay cafe: a bag of Ethiopian Mordecofe from Four Barrel, Subrosa’s coffee supplier.

I picked it mostly because of what it wasn’t – an intensely fruity coffee from Ethiopia, of which I’d had a bit too much of at the time. Instead, the barista promised a more subtle coffee, leaning towards floral rather than fruity, delicate rather than bold.  In fact, that’s more or less what I discovered, although I would add that this coffee was also really nicely complex.

My tasting notes included chocolate, bark, mint, plum, brown sugar, pepper and some delicate floral notes like you might get from a Darjeeling tea. It had a medium body with a little bit of viscosity and mild, but well-balanced acidity. I was left with a solidly, pleasant tobacco aftertaste.

Four Barrel and Subrosa typically brew their coffee via French Press and that seemed to work best for me at home as well. That said, I found it more or less as compelling with a longer-steep method that lets through some of the oils (such as a gold cone with a Clever Coffee Dripper) or my siphon. For that matter, the Mordecofe still performed well as a pour over (I used both a standard Chemex and a Chemex filter in my Clever Coffee Dripper). While it wasn’t bad as a single origin espresso, I found that I really had to keep the temperature hot and the dose reasonably high to keep it from going over the top on the bright end. What resulted in my demitasse was a nicely concentrated instantiation of this coffee.

Overall, I was quite happy with this coffee and would gladly get it again.

Beans: Guatemala La Concepcion Buenavista
Roaster: Stumptown Coffee Roasters
Rating: 3+

Occasionally I have a strong opinion about what coffee I want (or don’t want) when I’m buying beans. That was even more the case a few years back when the pickings were slimmer and I was frequently rotating amongst different coffees from one particular roaster. These days my coffee consumption from week to week rotates roasters, crops and beans such that I’m typically much less familiar with any one roaster’s line-up. I’ve subsequently become increasingly reliant and appreciative of barista recommendations. They taste these coffees every day and get to know whats good, or at least what’s new and exciting. Not only do I get a good tip, but I also enjoy the surprise.

On my trip to the Stumptown in the Ace Hotel in Manhattan, I chose a bag of Hair Bender but relied on an overwhelming barista recommendation for this particular Guatemala. Staff described it to me as intensely fruity and floral and really gorgeous as a french press. While it’s possible this coffee was a tad over-hyped, it was very good indeed.

I found the verbal account of this coffee given to me by the cafe staff to be more or less on point. In the flavor/aroma department, my tasting notes included: lime, wintergreen, white sugar, watermelon and peach candy. It was resoundingly bright and had a nicely uplifting acidity, a medium to light body, and a thick, slightly viscous mouthfeel.

For brewing, I agree that this coffee excelled as a French Press although I enjoyed it even more as a siphon. Brewed that way, it came out a bit darker and sweeter, suggesting plenty of fruit but having a bit more depth and dimension, perhaps masked by the silty quality of the French Press? Pour over methods (namely Chemex) never quite captured the full splendor for me and I found this coffee too bright and light as a single origin espresso.

So is this all I hoped this coffee would be. No. But it was quite good and well worth your time, especially if you have a a siphon.

Name: Camino
Location: 3917 Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA
Rating: 4-

It’s a common refrain amongst those who obsess over good coffee that well-respected restaurants rarely get the stuff right. At least with espresso, you can understand why the results are often poor. Producing good espresso takes tremendous care which busy restaurant staff are rarely able to give. But the middling brewed coffee often served at fine restaurants is simply inexcusable given that a good grinder and a french press are all that are required. These very establishments pride themselves on the quality of their ingredients and skill at preparing them yet their coffee is often too darkly roasted and not freshly ground. How do people who place such a premium on food, wine and spirits, so often serve such poor quality coffee (the same often applies to beer, but that’s a post for another blog)?

Fortunately, while I’m baffled by this incongruity, I’m rarely bothered by it. I don’t do a lot of fine dining these days and when I do, after dinner caffeine is generally out of the question. (Yes, there is decaf, but that can always be better.) Still, I was intrigued by a recent comment noting that Bay Area Top 100 restaurant, Camino, uses both Blue Bottle and Four Barrel coffees. You don’t use either roaster for too long if you produce coffee that’s sub-par. And, the timing of this comment couldn’t have been better. My wife and I had just settled on Camino, excited to explore the East Bay’s booming restaurant scene and to celebrate some new beginnings – preschool for my daughter and a new job for me. The food at Camino looked impressive. The coffee, if it turned out to be good, would be the icing on the cake.

As we entered the restaurant, I knew things were going to be good. Camino has a lot to offer in the way of design. The chairs and benches look like those from a old school house and the cast iron chandeliers are reminiscent of something rustic, European and from another time. The open kitchen with multiple fires and ovens makes restaurant cooking look surprisingly easy and amazingly rustic and primitive. Only four chefs, cooking and plating, seem to do all the work. It remains something of a mystery how everything gets prepped and the dishes washed.

Approaching things backwards, I started with an espresso as an aperitif, rather than one of Camino’s compelling looking cocktails. The coffee setup is up front with the bar serving as the space for all drinks – coffee and alcoholic. However, Camino is better equipped than most restaurants in its class, sporting a two group La Marzocco Linea and a fleet of Clever Coffee Brewers lined up to go.  I watched the staff grind my espresso to order and test the first few shots before serving mine. Since we were basically the first people seated its not surprising that they still had to dial in the espresso. It’s also refreshing to note that they did.

I never did catch which Blue Bottle blend was used, but it was laden with long-lasting crema served with sugar in the shot glass version of their rustic-themed, heavy glasses. I found it earthy and savory with orange zest acidity and notes of cocoa. Overall, very nice, even for a cafe, although I wondered if the espresso might not be a tad too fresh; it seemed a tad gassy and not quite at its peak. Then again, I could either be imagining things or simply fishing for something that might be wrong.

Our terrific meal progressed through a sharp and savory butter lettuce salad to grilled calamari to a smokey, grilled chanterelle and radicchio entree. Despite needing to sleep that night, I did order an after dinner coffee which is where the Four Barrel comes in. I noted that Camino uses a gold cone filter with their Clever Coffee Brewer. This neat trick yielded a cleaner version of a french press coffee with many of the rich oils but only trace amounts of silt. The La Tortuga Nicaragua had a mild, but pronounced acidity and overall struck the right tone for an after dinner coffee. Sadly I was unable to detect dwell on much nuance given that my palate became quickly occupied by an amazing almond cake, salty lavender short bread and vanilla ice cream.

The big drawback, as I see it, is that Camino is a restaurant and not a cafe. It’s not obvious to me that the good coffee will compel people to visit it over a competitor. And you wouldn’t like just stop in for coffee given the primarily evening hours and restaurant prices ($3 for the small coffee or espresso). But the trick, I think, is that Camino serves brunch. I know that I’d find their choice of coffee, especially in conjunction with the food, a more than compelling factor in making my weekend plans, and likely enough to sway me in their direction.

There’s no doubt that this is the best coffee service I’ve encountered in a restaurant of this caliber. By using two coffees from two roasters, Camino has created variety while keeping things simple. While I’d like more choices, I don’t think most diners will. More importantly, their use of top quality equipment, skill and attention and use of high quality coffee means that despite the strain on staff, they’ve carried their commitment to food and food preparation through to their coffee. May this be the beginning of a beautiful trend.

Beans: Hair Bender
Roaster: Stumptown Coffee Roasters
Rating: 4

A true metaphysical puzzle for any coffee roaster is how to name a signature blend. The challenge is that the components of any blend change, both seasonally and from year to year (I’m not even considering variation from roast to roast). With single origins, the challenge is easy. This year’s Esmeralda Geisha is simply different than last year’s crop. But a signature blend conveys a kind of platonic form – one often identified almost as readily as the roaster that produced it.

Some roasters, such as Ritual, have sought to get around this challenge by simply throwing uniformity to the wind, letting their signature espresso vary each season and naming each one accordingly. Others, such as Intelligentsia, still strive for a principled uniformity but acknowledge the change. Black Cat includes an “ingredient label” so that the consumer can note how the formula changes over time. Other blends, like the Hair Bender are stalwart companions which may change and shift under the hood, but retain a solidity to their external appearance by clinging tightly to their god given name. While I tend to prefer the more transparent and Heraclitian approach of the former, it’s still nice to once and a while fall back upon the tride and true.

I can’t tell if it’s the lack of transparency or simply my personal sense of taste, but I’ve never swooned over Hair Bender even when I’ve been served some pretty spectacular shots. Of course, I’m also not exactly certain how Hair Bender may have been different in the past. The bag I purchased (now that full disclosure will soon be required) on my recent trip to the Manhattan Stumptown in the Ace Hotel, however, got me better acquainted with the stuff. Even if I never swooned, I found the Hair Bender to produced consistently top-rate espresso.

My tasting notes for Hair Bender included chocolate, fall leaves, earth, light black tea, caramel and a hint of fruit – maybe cherry? I found it to be a bit mercurial as espresso, changing often, but never temperamental. I almost always got, at minimum, a good shot that was well-balanced with mild lemon acidity and solid, earthy bottom notes. The shots were clean and slightly clingy, complex without being challenging. They also worked extremely well in milk, which brought out the more chocolaty and caramel notes of the blend.

While I personally wouldn’t jump at the chance to drink it as a drip coffee, I found it worked reasonably well as a french press. It was certainly better than many espresso blends, which are usually too dark when brewed as coffee. The Hair Bender brews up mellow with a bit of personality, but nothing overly compelling. If you are inclined towards purchasing a multi-purpose bean, then Hair Bender is a good bet, even though I’d encourage you to think of it first and foremost as an espresso blend.