Torque Coffee Roasters, Vancouver, WA

While Vancouver does not have Portland’s renown for coffee, our northern neighbor has a burgeoning group of cafés and roasters that care about serving you good coffee. Nor’West, River Maiden (and its sister café, Dripster), Paper Tiger (under new management) and Lava Java(technically in Ridgefield) all call the Vancouver area home. Sophisticated Vantuckians do not have to settle for over-roasted, over-syruped coffees unless they choose to.

The scene continues to improve, too. A new shop called Torque Coffee Roasters recently opened downtown, close to the Convention Center. En route to Vancouver for a Monday morning meeting, I left PDX early to check it out. With a little help from my GPS, I found the café without too much trouble.

Pulling up to the slate gray building, a long row of parking meters greeted me (welcome to Vancouver). I don’t like to pay for parking (who does?), but I accept it as a fact of life in most cities. The problem was that Vancouver’s meters are coin-operated, and I didn’t have any spare change. I could take the chance and park without paying, or I could find somewhere else to park.

Hmmm. . . It was a pretty dead morning in the “‘Couve." Who was really going to care if I parked there for an hour without paying?

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Espresso presentation

It's always nice to receive good service when you visit a café.  This is how the barista served my espreso (at the table, no less!) when I visited the Arbor Lodge yesterday (read about an earlier visit is here). I thought the presentation matched the service. Nice work!

Slugging Espressos

In the last couple days, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting three top Portland cafés: Coffeehouse Northwest, Extracto and Barista Alberta. If we were talking about baseball (and the season is just around the corner), these three cafés would be comparable to the 1927 Yankees (the famed “Murderer’s Row”). In other words, I was expecting a great lineup of espressos.

At Coffeehouse Northwest I ordered both of the espressos on grind (the famous flight), each roasted by Sterling. The first, from Los Piajos de Tolima (from Colombia), was impressive. If I were scoring it for a barista competition, I would give it high marks in many categories. The appearance of the crema was shiny and consistent, the persistence and consistence very good (thick and lasting). The taste was well-balanced—sweet, sour and bitter elements all came through in a way that was pleasant. A sweet plum flavor punctuated the first sip. Its tactile balance, or mouthfeel, was superb. It had lots of body but still fit comfortably inside my mouth.

After enjoying the Colombia, I took the second leg of the flight, to Rwanda. The coffee, grown by the Coko cooperative, was also roasted by Sterling.  The crema had an even color with a light sheen, but it was a little on the thin side. When I sipped it, I immediately noticed the differences in mouthfeel compared to the first. It was very heavy and syrupy. The acidity was the most prominent of the flavor components, although it did not overpower the others. The coffee left an aftertaste of toasted popcorn (where some of the kernels had been on the bottom of the pan too long, adding some caramelized flavors to the mix). Overall, very good but not quite as good as the first.

At Extracto , the single-origin espresso I tried was a Kimel peaberry from Papua New Guinea. Savory, savory, savory—that’s how it tasted. The barista said the earthiness should really stand out. He wasn’t kidding. The thick espresso had the bite of a fresh rosemary leaf or green tomatoes. The bitter element stood out a touch more than the sweet or the sour, but all three were present, so it was fairly balanced.

My second Extracto espresso was the blend on grind (unfortunately, I forgot to ask the name). Like the previous espresso, it was also very thick and syrupy. Cocoa notes came through in the first sip and caramel flavor about halfway down the cup. The espresso left an aftertaste kind of like a Twix candy bar (without adding any sugar).

A couple blocks away, at Barista Alberta, I headed back to South America and ordered a single-origin Peru Cevasa, roasted by Stumptown. A quick visual inspection gave the coffee good marks – it had an even, shiny reddish crema (a small blond stripe in the middle would cost it the “excellent” rating in competition). The first sip was bright, but the brightness quickly backed off. Flavors of green apple washed across my palate. Although the espresso seemed heavy at first, it did not linger, quickly dissipating and leaving a clean mouthfeel behind. 

Looking at the box score, the cafés went 5 for 5 with two home runs (the Colombia and the blend at Extracto).  Not even the most feared lineup in the history of baseball could do that every day. I tip my hat to a job well done. 

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Barista Alberta - the great escape

It is easy to argue that Portland’s weather is a big factor in why the city has so many cafés. Drinking copious amounts of coffee is one way to fight the blues that can accompany long stretches of nothing but clouds and rain.

While caffeine will keep you going for a while, relying on a coffee-only strategy to push away the dreariness will only carry you through part of the winter. By the end of February, you need an additional strategy to deal with the grayness. Otherwise, the next three months of clouds and rain will drive you crazy.

My strategy for making it through the early part of spring is to go into denial. After three years in Portland, I still haven’t bought an umbrella. Part of the reason is thrift, part sheer stubbornness, and part is just a way of maintaining a connection with my hometown, where it doesn’t rain enough to warrant buying an umbrella. Living in my own version of reality, I have come to accept that sometimes I will be lucky and stay dry and sometimes I will get soaked.

On a recent trip to visit Barista Alberta (a.k.a. Barista II), I started out with fortune on my side, narrowly escaping a good drenching as I walked to the bus stop. As I stepped into the shelter, the skies cut loose. By the time I reached Northeast PDX, though, the rain had stopped and the ground was dry. I stepped off the bus at 42^nd and Alberta, thinking I could quickly walk the ten blocks or so to the café, safe from the whims of the weather. 

My luck did not hold, however. By the time I reached the café, twenty-five blocks later (travel tip: always check the address of where you’re going before you get off the bus), the rain had returned and I was sopping wet.  The walk was worth it though, for Barista Alberta is a café unlike others in Portland.

Approaching the front door of the café, I was somewhat wistful. Barista Alberta represented a sort of milestone in my coffee journey. There are other cafés in PDX that I have yet to visit, but of the top-tier, coffee-centered cafés, Barista Alberta was the last one I had to visit. I have known about the café for the last year and a half, but for one reason or another, had not yet made it there. I’m glad I saved it until last. I would not have appreciated it as much had I visited a year earlier.

One of the few cafés in town to carry the Financial Times, Barista Alberta caters to the artsy crowd as well as the banker crowd. With its dark wood paneling, the café feels like the study of a distinguished 19^th century aristocrat. Stuffed antelopes, pheasants and ducks stare down at you from the walls with suspended indifference. If you visited the café in another era, you would expect to see men in tweed suits sitting around the tables, smoking cigars with each other, planning mergers and acquisitions or complaining about the current political landscape. In the current age, however, you see people enjoying finely-crafted coffees and staring intently at their laptops.

As expected, Barista’s espresso menu featured multiple roasters’ coffees. There were three espressos available on grind—Stumptown’s Ethiopia Yurga, Heart’s latest from Guatemala, and the Honduran Esmerín Enamorado from 49^th Parallel in Vancouver, B.C. I didn’t check what was available as brewed coffee—why bother?

After a moment’s deliberation, I chose the Honduras Esmerín Enamorado. The barista pulled a nice, smooth shot that was rich and creamy. The flavors reminded me of buttered popcorn, with a sweet hint of prunes at the finish.

Sentiment permeated the air and my spirits were lifted as I sat at a corner table. Over the speakers, Toto sang about “blessing the rains down in Africa” (how could I curse the rains in Portland while listening to that song?). When Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” came on, I was transported back to my days in elementary school (it’s weird how music does that to you—every time I hear  a Journey song, I think of the 1980’s Journey video game we played at the local pizza parlor. If you don’t remember it, here’s a humorous YouTube review of the game to rekindle some memories).

With some of the finest baristas in town, Barista Alberta is creating a new, 21^st-century aristocracy—that of quality coffee. The café stands out for the uniqueness of its form and the quality of its substance. It can be hard for cafés  to distinguish themselves in this town, but Barista II clearly succeeds. You can visit the cafe to explore espressos or to escape the melancholy of spring. You could even try to hide in there until the rains go away and summer arrives. Just be sure to save me a table. I hope to return soon.

Vitals
Address: 1725 NE Alberta, Portland OR 97211 (map)
Phone: No
Hours: Monday-Friday 6am-6pm
            Saturday-Sunday 7am-6pm
Wi-Fi? Yes
Recommendations? Sit at the bar and watch the baristas in action
Website: baristapdx.com

Competitive coffee – How I became a barista competition judge

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Day 2 - Judgement Day

Brrriiiiingg! Brrriiiiingg! Brrriiiiingg!

My eyes popped open and I looked around, trying to figure out where I was. The room was still dark. What the hell? Will someone shut that bell off please?—I thought, half-dazed. Then I remembered—the bell was my 5:15 alarm going off. It was Thursday, January 26, and I was supposed to go to Tacoma for the 2012 Northwest Regional Barista Championships (NWRBC). Yawning, I rolled slowly out of bed, grabbed a quick breakfast and made my way to the bus stop by 5:50am.

The bus took me to meet Brandon Arends, who was driving us up to Tacoma. The NWRBC didn’t start until Friday, but we were going up a day early to get certified as judges for the competition. Over the last year, ever since we volunteered together at the 2011 NWRBC, Brandon has been trying to get me to try judging. For a long time, I was reluctant because I didn’t think I had enough relevant coffee experience. It’s one thing to regularly drink and write about coffee, and quite another to be working with it all the time. He finally convinced me though, which is why I found myself rolling up I-5 towards Tacoma at 6:15am.

I was a little nervous about the day ahead. I didn’t know what to expect at the training because I had waited until the last minute to register and never got the email with the day’s schedule and instructions. Brandon, who registered on time, had given me a little advice on Wednesday night, when we discussed our travel plans.

“Make sure you check out the rules and the score sheet,” he told me.

“I’ll do it,” I replied, not really intending to do much studying.

I should have heeded his warning a little more closely.

Tacoma – center of haute café (for a few days, at least)

The barista competition was once again being held at the Tacoma Convention Center in downtown Tacoma, where bail bonds shops outnumber specialty cafés. Since Tacoma is not the hotbed of coffee in the Northwest, you might wonder why the SCAA decided to hold its convention here two years in a row. I know I did.

Brandon suggested two reasons. First, Tacoma’s proximity to SEA-TAC airport makes it easy to travel there. Second, it would have been Portland’s turn to host, except that the city is hosting the United States Barista Championship in April. My theory is that if the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) held both competitions in Portland, it would be too openly admitting that Portland is the center of the universe when it comes to specialty coffee. Portlanders already know this to be true, but we wouldn’t want to hurt Seattle’s feelings.

Whatever the reason, the Tacoma Convention Center makes a good spot for the competition. It has lots of space, there’s free parking just a couple blocks away, and hotel rates in Tacoma are reasonable (late January is the low season for tourists in Tacoma).

Ready or not…

We scooted in through front doors at 9am and took our places at the only available seats in the room (the training was kind of like going to church—if you arrive late, you sit up front). The head judges welcomed everyone and introduced themselves before going over the protocol for becoming a judge. Each of the head judges had worked in the coffee industry and had years of experience judging competitions all over the world.

But what about the rest of us? What type of people are judges for barista competitions? Most of the people in the room worked full time in the coffee industry, as trainers, café managers, baristas, marketers—all types of roles.

However, not everyone had years of experience in the industry, so I didn’t feel as out of place as I thought I might. One woman was a writer from Seattle who was trying to learn more about coffee. Another woman had only worked in coffee for a year. She had never been to a competition before, but her manager encouraged her to come to judge.

After introductions, our teacher said it was time to take the certification test, and that we “have to get an 80% on the exams to get your certification to judge.”

Test?! Already? Eighty percent? I felt a whoosh of air around me as the test takers gasped in unison.  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t get the memo about knowing the rules beforehand.  Could they really expect us to know how to judge before we got there?

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recalled Brandon’s advice from the night before. At least I had read through the rules in the car on the ride up to Tacoma.

How much do you know?

I started down through the exam, which consisted of multiple-choice questions and fill-in-the-blank questions about both technical and sensory elements. The test took me nearly an hour to complete and covered the USBC rules and the official competition score sheet. It had questions like, “How do you judge the integrity of an espresso’s crema?” and “How thick does the foam on a cappuccino have to be for the drink to be eligible to receive a “Very Good” score?”

As I worked my way through the exam, I pictured myself back in college, sweating my way through an English literature exam I hadn’t prepared for. I employed every trick in the book I could think of, eliminating obviously incorrect answers and leafing through the different sections of the test for clues.

When everyone had finished the exam, we took a short break before resuming our training. Multiple people I talked to during the break were pessimistic about their results on the test.

It’s not getting easier

After we had been tested for our knowledge of the rules, we moved on to actually figuring out what made a good drink and what didn’t. One of the most difficult things about judging is to get all the judges to grade consistently between competitors. This process is known as calibration. The head judges showed us slides of what to look for when we looked at a good espresso crema (and a bad one). The crema is the foamy layer that sits on top of an espresso. It is formed when the steam is forced through the coffee grounds, emulsifying the oils inside. 

In each slide, the crema looked a little different. We discussed how they differed and which deserved good scores and which did not. The session helped us better understand the official standards of the competition.  We then took a quiz, looking at several photos of espressos of varying quality.

Just before the lunch break, we did a triangulation test to check our palates. I propose another name for it: the Sesame Street test (“one of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong…”). A triangulation test is an exercise where three coffees are set out on a table together. Two of them are the same and the other one is different.  The testers sip each one and mark down which of the three is different.

If I felt fairly confident about the capabilities of my palate before Thursday, I finished the triangulation test wondering if I had ever tasted coffee before in my life. We did six groups of three, and I was confident about only two of the groups. The rest of them were similar enough that I ended up guessing. I figured I had failed the test and would end up washing dishes instead of judging.

Everyone seemed relieved when lunch was served. As we gathered around the buffet table, I overheard several people in shock at the difficulty of the triangulation test. I don’t know if it really helps to know you aren’t the only one struggling, but I know I felt a whole lot better after eating.

After lunch, the head judges gave us our test results. By some miracle, I had passed! I was relieved (the judges also passed around a new exam for those who needed to re-take it. It turns out the first test was not our only opportunity to become a judge—but we didn’t know that at the time).

The real calibration – testing drinks

When everyone had their tests done, the group finally got down to calibrating with real drinks. We went to the main hall where the three espresso machines had been set up for the competition. Technical judges grouped up at one machine, and the sensory judges divided into two groups and gathered around the other machines. Each machine was staffed by a barista who made us a variety of drinks. Our barista tried to vary the quality of the shots he made, attempting to make the calibration more like the competition.

We began by evaluating espressos. Espresso is the main focus of the Barista Championships. Espresso is the most difficult type of coffee to make well and make consistently. If a barista wants to score well, he or she needs to make great espresso, not only in the espresso course, but also in the cappuccino and signature beverage course. As the baristas pumped out the espressos, the trainers let us write down our impressions, helping us keep to the regulations in the rulebook.

The calibration was fun, but challenging. All of the judges who were new to the certification process were reluctant to make a definitive score for each of the drinks we tried. We would taste a drink then look to our trainer for guidance, instead of writing down the score we thought it deserved. After a while, when we had evaluated shot after shot and cappuccino after cappuccino, we began to get a pretty good sense of what was good according to standard and what was not.

Each drink gets the following scores. Unacceptable=0, Acceptable=1, Average=2, Good=3, Very Good=4, Excellent=5 or Extraordinary=6. You can give scores with half-point increments, but no scores of 0.5 are allowed, and the head judge must approve any scores of Extraordinary. As we practiced judging, we were encouraged to use the words instead of the numbers in order to accustom ourselves to the official scoring language. The language helped us score the drinks more accurately.

We finally finished up the calibration about quarter to six. The head judges sent us home and told us to be back at 11am the next morning. We were well-caffeinated and ready to go find some dinner. My fears about being judged unworthy to be a judge had not been realized. When we got the schedule for Friday, I was assigned to the first, third and fifth competitors. I knew I would be nervous, but thanks to our trainers, I felt confident that I would do a good job.

Searching for the right word at Courier

You know how hard it is to come up with the right word sometimes, either in conversation or in writing? When I read great writers’ work, I am amazed at how well they are able to describe the scenes in their stories.  They make it easy to imagine whatever they are writing about. Settings are as crisp as the sharp crack of breaking glass, and the psychology of the characters burrows into the readers’ consciousness like an earthworm tunneling through soil. The best writers give you just enough description to trigger the images in your mind, without overburdening you with details.

As someone who writes a lot, I read often and try to emulate my favorite writers – Murakami, Asensi, and Hemmingway, for example (if you’re going to do something, you ought to try to do it well, don’t you think?).  I figure that if I aim for the stars, I might at least hit the moon.

One of the challenges of writing is trying to keep the writing fresh. You want to come up with new ways of saying the same thing. Think about it – how many ways has the ‘boy-chases-girl-girl-rejects-boy-boy-doesn’t-quit-until-he-wins-her-heart’ story been told? Thousands? Yes, but each time in a slightly different way.

If you use the same descriptors all the time, you start to be boring and you don’t grow your creativity muscles they way you could. My goal is to write about coffee without saying the same thing every time. In other words, keep it fresh, like good coffee (no apologies for bad puns, though. I like to hear the audience groan once in a while). Here is today’s snippet:

Coffee Cake

Courier Coffee was my destination this morning. They had several coffees available as pourovers, and one single-origin espresso. When I asked about being overpowered by the single-origin’s acidity, the barista assured me that even though it was a washed Ethiopian coffee, it was well-balanced and not overwhelmingly bright (no lemons). He didn’t have to work hard to persuade me to order the espresso.

The first sip entered my mouth and swelled like the ocean before a storm. The tangy flavors began in the center of my mouth but grew until they filled the entire space. In some cases, the syrupy nature of an espresso comes through in the crema, but in this case, the coffee itself was heavy. The espresso’s texture stood out the most. The coffee bathed my entire tongue with a thick, viscous syrup. If it were a piece of clothing, it would have been flannel or denim, not silk or polyester.

The texture and the taste lingered – they coated my mouth as if I had just eaten the richest piece of chocolate cake from the finest bakery, with nothing to wash it down. I thought I could call it cakey, but according to the Urban Dictionary, that’s might not be the best word to use. I guess  I’ll just have to keep searching for the right word…

Espresso or Pourover? (answer: both!)

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Saturday morning, after an hour spent chasing kids around OMSI, we stopped by Coava coffee. Writing a blog about coffee, I feel it is my duty to stop by Portland’s best cafés as often as possible (it’s a tough gig). My wife had not been to Coava’s industrial-styled shop before, so it was also an opportunity for her to share my world for a few minutes. We used the stop to further our coffee knowledge.

The café was full of people, and there were two recognizable faces behind the bar—Devin Chapman, 2010 Northwest Regional Brewer’s Cup champion, and Sam Purvis, 2010 Northwest Regional Barista champion (I do not personally know either of them—but they are celebrities in this small part of the coffee world). It was somewhat ironic that Chapman was running the espresso machine and Purvis was in charge of the pourovers, since each had earned their titles on the other method. Both are highly-skilled professionals, though, so I wasn’t worried about getting a quality cup of coffee.

Shayna ordered a pourover of the Costa Rica Finca Zarcero, and I ordered the espresso version of the same coffee. While I tried to keep the kids corralled, she listened attentively as Purvis described the mechanics of a good pourover.

My espresso came up quickly, and I drank it while it was still fresh. As an espresso, the Zarcero brought a burst of citrus. The acidity walloped my mouth, and the silkiness of the syrupy crema lingered, long after the drink was gone.

After a little pleading, Shayna let me try her coffee so that I could compare it to the espresso. It would have been wise to start with the pourover or to eat something to “reset” my taste buds after their encounter with the bold flavors of the espresso, but it was still possible to compare the two.

As you can imagine, the two versions came out very different. As a brewed coffee, the flavors were much more subtle. It had a very light mouth feel, and although it was still citrusy, the flavors packed less of a punch. Shayna described the coffee as “different from any other coffee” she had ever tried (in a good way, I think).

Trying the same coffee prepared in two different ways is a fun way to learn more about coffee and expand your own tastes. Doing it at Coava makes it even better, though you have to be careful. If you stop there too often, you might get spoiled by the quality of the coffee and the baristas (I think it’s a risk worth taking). Then again, if you are in Portland, can you really justify not being spoiled by the city’s coffee scene?

Flying high and keeping your costs down

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When you go to Coffeehouse Northwest (on West Burnside) and look at the menu board, you might choke a little bit when you see that an espresso costs $3. I know I did the first time I saw it. Even with the run up in coffee prices over the last year, most cafés still charge between $2.00-$2.50 for an espresso, so $3 seemed spendy. However, there is a way to get around the lofty price, by ordering a “flight,” something you won’t find on the menu. A flight is a pair of espressos, one of each of the two types of coffee on grind (my guess is that calling it a “flight” has something to do with how you feel if you drink them too fast). CHNW keeps two different espressos available, usually from Sterling and often both single-origin coffees. Today’s offerings were from Ethiopia and El Salvador, respectively.

If you order the flight, they only charge you $4.00 total for both of them. If you plan to spend more than an hour there, this is a good deal. Coffeehouse’s baristas know what they are doing, and they pull good shots. They will also let you spread out your espressos so that you don’t get buzzed too quickly.

That’s your bargain-hunting tip for the day.

On a side note, while I was sitting in the café today, I overheard an interesting conversation about stripping (I just report what I hear, okay?). Three women at the next table were having a very open conversation about how to make good money working at a strip club. It sounded like the most important rule is that you sell the customers without letting them know they are being sold. According to the most experienced of the three, between “acts” you get down off the stage and work the crowd—talk to the customers, shake their hands, ask how they are doing, etc. The more social you are, the better, because creating a connection with the customers pays dividends.

I’m sure there’s a business lesson in there somewhere…

Slamming espressos, Seattle style

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I was passing through Seattle yesterday and had a couple hours to kill, so over a span of two hours, I did my own mini coffee crawl, hitting three different cafés.

For the record, I really like Seattle. It seems quite a bit larger than Portland, in a good way. The city is so hilly that from lots of the intersections downtown you can see out across Puget Sound and over to the Olympic Peninsula. These views make Seattle seem more open than it otherwise might be.

The first stop of my coffee junket was at Cherry Street Coffee House. Cherry Street has several different cafes in Seattle, but the one I visited was actually on Cherry Street (the original, perhaps?).

Cherry Street Coffee House

One of the reasons that I went to Cherry Street was that I had read that the café’s coffee was roasted by Dillano’s, Roast Magazine’s 2010 Roaster of the Year.  I ordered an espresso and went to sit down.

The café itself has two levels. The coffee bar is at street level, and the seating is down a set of stairs, where the café spreads out under the store next door. It reminded me of an old speakeasy, one of those secret places where people could gather discretely to buck the rules of Prohibition during the 1920s and 1930s.

On one wall, rather, in one wall, a walk-in safe serves as the café’s office, and toward the back of the seating area, a faux fireplace is painted onto the wall. Two old, bright red stuffed chairs sit in front of the fire, welcoming you to sit down. With no windows in the seating area, the café is a bit dark, but it suffices as a place to work and drink coffee.

The espresso was made from the Cherry Street House Blend, and is unique to Cherry Street cafés. The barista told me that it was a medium roast, but if that’s the case, I have to question my understanding of what a medium roast is. The coffee in my cup had a nice thick crema that stuck to the sides of the cup, and the first sip or two, I tasted some strong almond flavors and fittingly enough, cherries. After the nice beginning though, all hints of sweetness and subtleties disappeared off and what was left was very smoky. Perhaps I’m just being oversensitive, but I was disappointed how it finished.

After finishing the espresso, I headed up the street toward Pike Place Market and my favorite store in Seattle, DeLaurenti. DeLaurenti is an Italian food import shop, and it seems like anytime I visit the city, I am drawn to the shelves full of Italian tomatoes, meats, cheeses, olives, pastas and wines. I can spend hours in that store, concocting recipes in my mind and dreaming about getting on a plane to fly to the Mediterranean. If I was going to get some more coffee, though, there was no time to linger, so I grabbed a sandwich and left quickly, to avoid falling prey to the temptations residing deeper within the store.

A must-visit

Originally, I had hoped to go to Stella Caffè for some espresso (I had been thinking about it since my trip to Coffee Fest last October), but to my chagrin, the café that was rumored to have the best Robusta-based espresso in the city is no longer a café. I don’t know the story, but when I called to see what time they closed down the espresso bar, the woman on the other end informed me that they were now a bar and not a café. Foiled again. If anyone knows where I can get some of Stella’s stellar espresso, please let me know.

Instead of going to Stella, I walked up Pike Street to Seattle Coffee Works. Seattle Coffee Works is a small roastery/café located right across the street from the first Starbucks store. The café has a slow coffee bar on one side, with pourovers and vacuum pots, and on the other side it has an espresso bar. I chose the espresso side (surprise, surprise). The barista told me that although they usually had a single-origin espresso available, they had just run out of the Panama and were down to the Space blend, the café’s signature espresso. My impression was that it was just a bit on the tart side, but overall, much better than the espresso I had drunk a few minutes before.

Seattle Coffee Works

After downing the Space blend, I was feeling up for one more stop. Someone told me that Fonté was a nearby place that was doing good things, and since it was located between Seattle Coffee Works and the train station, it would be  a great place to stop for the third leg of my trifecta.

About five minutes later, I was seated at a table at Fonté, waiting for my cappuccino.

Fonté Coffee and Wine Bar

Fonté has a pretty hip feel to it (like most places I regularly frequent*). In addition to being a coffee shop, it also doubles as a wine bar. It looked like  a great place to spend a happy hour, so I was looking forward to my cappuccino.

Chic

The foam on the cappuccino had a nice texture, but the espresso was roasted so dark that it completely overpowered the milk. A cappuccino should be balanced—both the milk and the coffee flavors should come through. In this cappuccino, though, you could not taste any of the natural sweetness of the steamed milk. The coffee dominated. It was too much for me.

Visiting two cafés (out of three) that had super dark roast espressos left me disappointed but wondering, is this type of roast just the traditional “Seattle style?” Perhaps this is due to the influence of Starbucks in the city? Starbucks has a reputation for serving dark-roasted espresso, but its espresso doesn’t have as much of the smokiness as the espressos at Cherry Street, Fonté or Caffè d’Arte (another Seattle-based roaster whose espresso I have had in the past).

Do I have the wrong expectations for what espresso ought to taste like? After all, I live in Portland, where lighter roasts are the norm. Should I learn to appreciate this dark roast for what it is, instead of thinking it should taste like something else, or are the beans being treated without the care they deserve? After yesterday, these questions linger in my mind. . . I would be very interested to hear what someone from Seattle has to say about this.

Here are a couple more pictures of things I saw during my visit:

Century Link Field just won't sound the same

One of the stops I made was at Qwest (soon to be Century Link) Field, which is right next to the Amtrak station in South Seattle. It’s a nice looking stadium and it was humbling to walk right up next to the behemoth and look down on the field inside. I don’t know what it is about being up next to huge objects, but they make you feel small, especially when you’re not in a crowd of people. A stadium like that is a testament to human ingenuity. It doesn’t compare to standing next to Mt. Rainier, but I was still impressed.

A closer look

The city skyline, seen from the steps of the stadium.

The Starbucks mother ship (corporate headquarters). I like the sirens rising out of the tower on top.

This statue was outside the Seattle Art Museum. One of these times I’m going to make it inside to see what treasures reside there.

Overall, I enjoyed my trip to the Emerald City, and would have been content to stay for a little longer (there are several more cafés I want to check out). The train wouldn’t wait for me, though, so at 5:30 sharp, we pulled out of the station and headed south. Until next time, Seattle.

*sarcasm alert

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A 'Tastea' Experience

Today, I wasn’t in the mood for espresso. Well, actually I was, but I wasn’t in the mood for anything but great espresso and I didn’t feel like getting on a bus to go find some. It’s not that I mind driving so much, it’s just that when I travel around the city, I prefer to walk or use public transportation when possible. Call it my small protest against the car culture. We should not have to drive a car to get places if we don’t want to.

Some days, however, it just takes too long to get anywhere on the bus and I don’t feel like wasting time, even to find great coffee. Today was one of those days, so I chose to go to a nearby café and try something new.

Instead of espresso, I decided to ‘turn over a new leaf’ and order tea (no extra charge for the pun). Looking at the café’s list of teas, I found a couple that looked interesting, including one that was called “Formosa Panfired”. The name was appealing—I like a lot of pan-fired things (or at least pan-fried)—and I asked the barista on duty what it was like. He responded that he “had no idea” and that he didn’t really drink tea. While I think that anyone who works at a café ought to try all the beverages so at least they have opinions, you could argue that he deserved a pass, since it was a coffee shop.

He brought the tin of tea leaves over to me and it smelled good, so I decided to try it. For the record, I do not know what type of vocabulary tea tasters and tea drinkers use to talk about their tea, but I’ll try to describe it anyway. If you are someone who is excited about tea and would like to comment or share your knowledge with us, please know that you are invited to do so.

Judging by the tea’s name, I assume that it was from Taiwan (Formosa, or “beautiful”, is what the Portuguese explorers called Taiwan when they passed by the island five hundred years ago). A quick check of a tea vendor’s website revealed that pan-fired tea has been steamed and then rolled in iron pans over a charcoal fire.

The tea was a green variety that seemed fairly sweet (without sugar). It had a pleasant, grassy taste (like dry alfalfa hay), medium body and some mineral undertones that reminded me of the way a chunk of quartz tastes. Along with the earthiness (grass + rocks), there was just a hint of bitterness or “crispness” too, similar to the bite that certain olive oils have when you taste them. The bitterness increased over time, probably due to the fact that I didn’t take the tea out of the cup after a few minutes of steeping.

Tea drinking is associated more with Eastern society than with Western society (though the British might disagree), so learning about them is a way to learn about other cultures, something that is very valuable. For example, green tea is especially well-revered in Japan, where the people attribute the long Japanese life expectancy to their high levels of green tea consumption. Ceremonial green tea preparation is a centuries-old tradition that anyone traveling to Japan should see. Tea is important to China too. When I was in Beijing last summer, there was tea available at nearly every meal.

Although I only drink teas once in a while, I plan to further explore tea in the future and share my findings with you through Caffeinated PDX. After all, if I’m not willing to walk or ride the bus across town, I’m going to have to find an occasional substitute for espresso. Tea is “caffeinated” too, so it fits with the theme. Right now, I don’t have the same standards for tea that I do for coffee, so I won’t be disappointed if my tea isn’t great. We’ll see if that changes over time.

Why Your Lattes Are Inconsistent

A friend of mine recently asked why the quality of her lattes varies so much between cafés. Why is it, she asked, that when you go to one café, the coffee is delicious, but when you go to another, it’s barely drinkable? The short answer is that not all cafés are created equal. However, that doesn’t really explain much, so I would like to discuss what goes into making a great (or not-so-great) latte.

Before finishing this article, I talked to a couple different baristas to get some of their opinions. One of the baristas said that “once [the cafés] are in the big leagues, you’re going to get a good latte, and it just comes down to which barista makes it the way you like it.”

He was referring to the better cafés in Portland when he made that statement. While what he said may be true, not all cafés are in the ‘big leagues,’ and no matter where you get your latte, the quality is still determined by four main factors. These are the three ingredients—coffee, water and milk—plus the barista, who brings them all together. The quality of these four components is what determines how good your latte is, and as you will see, there are lots of places where things can go wrong.

Made with love

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Chilling at the Cloud Seven Café

It was a cold, rainy day when I visited the Cloud Seven Café. Cloud Seven is located at the Northeast corner of Jamison Square, in the same space where Sip ‘n Kranz used to be. I had hoped to find a warm spot to cozy up to an espresso (or two), but it didn’t quite work out that way. I was disappointed when I walked in and found the café to be quite cold. In fact, it didn’t seem that much warmer than outside. I could feel a very cool breeze blowing from the café ventilation system. I wasn’t the only one who thought it was cold inside either. Behind the bar I could see one of the baristas shivering. After a while, I was shivering too.

Just below cloud nine

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Ristretto on a Rainy Day

November has arrived in Portland, bringing cold, gray, damp miserable weather. Grayness, however, is just an excuse for me to drink more coffee. Hooray! So on a rainy Portland afternoon, I took the yellow MAX line north to the Overlook Park stop. From there I walked up Failing Street, crossing over I-5 and through the trendy Mississippi Avenue neighborhood. After walking for about fifteen minutes, I reached Ristretto Roasters.

Ristretto is one of the places I have had on my list to visit since I read about it in MIX magazine in September. The company has two stores, the Beaumont cafe on Northeast 42^nd and the one on North Williams. The Williams café (the one I visited) is considered their “flagship” store, though they still roast their coffee at the Beaumont café. When I walked in the door, I could immediately tell that Ristretto is a place focused on the coffee and not just the café experience. The aroma in the air that greeted me told me that much.

Ristretto

Walking up to the bar, I saw on the board that they had two espressos available—the Beaumont Blend and an unnamed single-origin. I asked the barista which single origin she had on grind. Her eyes lit up and she exclaimed “Panama!”

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Coffeehouse Northwest

I struck out the other morning for Coffeehouse Northwest (CHNW), one of the leaders in Portland’s single-origin espresso movement. I was confident that I was going to drink some good espresso and learn more about coffee, which is something that I would not have guessed from its appearance. The first time I saw the café, I was walking along Burnside and had just passed a bunch of taverns, so I didn’t give it much credit as a café. I wrote it off as just another Burnside dive. I was grossly mistaken. Fortunately, Brandon Arends corrected me. The people inside Coffeehouse Northwest are very knowledgeable and passionate about their coffee.

You might not realize what's inside

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Coffee Fest Recap Part 2

In addition to the exhibitions, Coffee Fest also offered several free classes (and some paid ones) to help people improve their businesses and increase their coffee knowledge. Because I am one of those people who liked school, and because they were free, I decided to attend the Saturday morning classes. I had to get up at 6:15 to get there on time Fortunately, it was a beautiful clear, crisp morning and the walk to the bus stop was invigorating. The bus from Everett dropped me off a block from the convention center about twenty minutes before my first class started (Side note: Seattle’s public transportation, although primarily buses, is better than its reputation).

The street lights were still on when I got to the convention center

My first class, “How to Effectively Compete with National brands,” was taught by Sol Salzer, one of the owners of the City Bean Coffee in Los Angeles. The first thing he did was to thank Starbucks and the other national chains (Peet’s, Gloria Jean’s, Coffee Bean, etc.) for raising the standards of the coffee industry. Then he spent the next hour talking about how to beat them. He used Starbucks as his main example, telling the story of how he used the Starbucks that moved in across the street to help grow his business. Starbucks brought many customers to the neighborhood, and City Bean was able to capture some of that traffic by effectively targeting them.

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Coffee Fest Recap Part 1

If you’ve read my last couple posts, you know that I spent this past weekend at Coffee Fest in Seattle. One of the reasons I wanted to go to the show was to see the city itself. It had been a long time (8 years or so) since I visited the Emerald City, and I had forgotten how much bigger Seattle is. Seattle’s downtown area has a lot more people and quite a bit more traffic.

Like Portland, Seattle has a reputation for being rainy, but when the sun is out (as it was on Friday afternoon), it is a beautiful city. On a clear day you can see the Olympic Mountains to the West and Mount Rainier to the East. Located on Puget Sound, Seattle has a number of inlets and lakes that carve up the city.

Nothing but blue sky, at least for one day

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