Friday, September 20, 2013 at 9:39AM Here are a few pics from today's Grand Opening at Portland Roasting's new cafe:
PRC is offering free coffee drinks today (Friday, 9/20) until 5pm!
Vitals
Address: 340 Southeast 7th, Portland, OR 97232 (map)
Hours: Monday-Friday 7am-5pm
Coffee: Portland Roasting
Pastries: Pearl Bakery
Recommendation? A pourover of the Kenya
Wi-Fi? Yes
Website: PortlandRoasting.com
Thursday, September 19, 2013 at 4:32PM Near the end of July, I visited Ristretto’s new café, at the corner of Northeast Couch and 6th. At the time, the café was still under construction and the workers were frenetically working to finish the build-out. You couldn’t really tell what the café was going to look like. I finally made it back to see the café, and all I can say is, wow.
With shapely steel and bamboo tables, Ristretto Couch is another example of Accelerated Development’s faculty for design, elevating the industrial look to an art form. I didn’t think anything could trump Ristretto’s Nicolai space, but Couch comes close. (Apparently, I’m not the only one who was impressed. New York Magazine’s Grub Street blog included Ristretto on its list of 58 Extraordinary Shops Around America.)
It is not just beauty that makes the new café enjoyable. The coffee is good too. The barista pulled a very nice shot of espresso (Beaumont Blend)—sweet, smooth, almondy* and chocolaty.
Steampunk, modified.
The customized Steampunk is another reason to check out the cafe. A technological curiosity, the Steampunk is kind of like a vacuum pot, kind of like a Clover, and kind of like a French press. Mostly, it’s just kind of unique. It is a fully automatic brewer that can be programmed to mimic all kinds of brew methods.
The Steampunk, from the backThe barista can control many different brewing parameters, including water temperature, agitation (frequency, strength), and brew time.
Action shotRistretto is the only café in the Northwest to have one so far, so if you are interested in trying coffee brewed this way, Couch is the place to get it. (I tried the Ethiopia Yirgacheffe on the Steampunk. It was a bit more roasty than some of Ristretto’s coffees I have tried. It opened up as it cooled, with some sweetness and a mild acidity coming through.)
Getting ready to serveNew for Ristretto, the Couch shop sells several beers and wines, as well as some food options beyond the typical morning pastry fare. The tapas plate, with bread and olive oil, Marcona almonds, and green olives was tasty (though at $10, a bit pricy to be a regular habit). You can add prosciutto from Olympic provisions for a heartier meal.
Artful
The café is roomy enough that both workflow and customer flow should be smooth, as long as people don’t stop too long to gawk at the Steampunk. Overall, Ristretto Couch is a great addition to the PDX coffee scene.
Vitals
Address: 555 NE Couch Street, Portland, OR 97232 (map)
Phone: 503-284-6767
Hours: Monday-Saturday 6:30am-8pm
Sunday 7am-6pm
Coffee: Ristretto
Wi-Fi? Yes
Recommendations? A shot of Beaumont Blend
Recommendation #2: Check out the W.C. (seriously)
Website: RistrettoRoasters.com
*My spell checker didn’t like almondy, but I didn’t like almond-y, so I’m going with it.
Monday, September 16, 2013 at 10:35AM If you enjoy regularly trying new coffees, but lack the time to search high and wide for new roasters, one option you have is to sign up for a coffee subscriptions service, and let someone else find the coffees for you. One relatively new company that provides this service is Hamptons Lane.* But how do the people at Hamptons Lane know which coffees to send you?
When you first visit the company’s site, you are encouraged to take a short survey about what types of foods/beverages you like. Based on your answers, the company assigns you a profile and sends you a sampler box with four different coffees that it thinks you will like. After the first month, you can continue to receive the samplers or pick the coffees you want, delivered to your door. I haven’t seen any Portland roasters on the site yet, but there are several from the West Coast.
The survey is kind of fun to take, and while I’m not sure how accurate it will be for everybody, this is the profile it assigned me:
;)
Can't argue with that...
*I profiled another company that provides coffee subscriptions, Misto Box, several months ago. Since then, its owners went on ABC’s Shark Tank and received $75,000 from Mark Cuban to fund the company’s growth.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013 at 10:58AM After three weeks away for harvest, I returned to Portland last Thursday evening. To my dismay, the bus pulled into town in the middle of a big rainstorm. Ugh, I thought, not already—September is way too early for the gray season to return. (Fortunately, the sun has since come back and it appears summer will linger for a few more weeks.) Worries about winter weather notwithstanding, my mood was lightened considerably Friday morning by attending a cupping at Water Avenue Coffee. Brandon Smyth, Water Avenue’s co-owner and head roaster, recently returned from a buying trip to Guatemala, and he shared some of his new discoveries with a group that included Jannie Huang and Chelsea Broussard, both from Little Green Pickle, Zachary Carlsen, from Sprudge.com, Fabiola, from Not Just Baked, and someone from Imbibe (I didn’t catch her name).;)
The table, ready to cup. Photo courtesy Chelsea Broussard, Little Green Pickle.
Brandon put several cups of five different coffees on the table and walked us through each of them. The first coffee we slurped was a yellow maracaturra variety from Finca San Jorge, run by Tulio Osberto Lemus Pinedo and his son, Tulio. The maracaturra is a cross between the maragogype and caturra varieties. When Smyth visited the farm, he noticed the maracaturra growing by itself in one area and convinced Tulio to separate it out from the rest of his coffees. Finca San Jorge only produced 600lbs. of maracaturra beans this year, and Smyth bought the entire lot, recognizing its potential.
The maracaturra stood out for its sweetness, both in aroma and in pre-roast sugar content. Brandon told me that a quality green coffee typically has a sugar content around 25%, as measured by a brix meter. The maracaturra ran about 30%, a significantly higher number. Brewed, the maracaturra was sweet and syrupy, with a very mellow acidity and heavy body.
Next, we cupped a yellow caturra, also from Finca San Jorge. Smyth described it as more of a “coffee” coffee, with flavors most people associate with coffee, including lots of chocolate notes. One of the cups especially stood out for its dry fragrance, full of sweet brown sugar and raisin notes.
The star of the table was the third coffee, a red caturra from Finca Santa Isabel, owned by the Valdez family, in the Cobán region. The coffee, which Smyth scored at 90+ points (very high), had the brightness and complexity of a Kenyan coffee, with rich fruit notes that reminded me of pie cherries and rhubarb. According to Brandon, coffees from Cobán are not usually this good—there must have been something that happened with the weather, or maybe the perfect fermentation conditions that turned the coffee into something almost magical.
Our fourth coffee was a red bourbon from Finca Huixoc in Huehuetenango. Finca Huixoc won awards at the Cup of Excellence in both 2006 and 2009. The coffee was a little earthier than I expected. Smyth said it was the coffee’s first roast, and he was still in the process of nailing it down.
The fifth and final coffee had an interesting twist. First, it was from El Salvador (Finca Manzano) instead of Guatemala. Second, before the coffee was roasted, the beans had been allowed to age for a couple months inside an oak barrel that previously held pinot noir wine. Aging inside the barrel gave the coffee a distinct, winy aroma and cherry flavor. The resulting coffee was quite interesting to cup, and its uniqueness would make an interesting topic of conversation if you served it at a dinner party.
Friday’s cupping, in addition to being a nice ‘welcome back’ to Portland coffee, taught me a few things about the differences within a country. Often, we hear the name of a coffee origin—Colombian, Guatemalan, Costa Rican, etc.—and immediately make assumptions about how the coffees should taste. This cupping, however, demonstrated the limitations of that way of thinking. Within a country, region, or even farm, the coffees produced can be quite distinctive, and the different types of coffee varieties also contribute to these differences. Lesson learned.
Monday, September 9, 2013 at 9:51AM For the last few months, the frequency of posts on Caffeinated PDX has been kind of slow, because I have been putting my energies into writing a book (working title: Are You Serious? It’s Just Coffee…Right? Why Portland’s Third Wave Coffee Scene is Way More than ‘Just Coffee’). I am happy to report that I finished the manuscript in the middle of August, and am now working with Indigo Editing and Publications to get it ready for publishing. It is exciting to have someone to collaborate with on the project, and I am looking forward to releasing the book early next year.
Originally, the plan was to publish it just before Christmas, but in the book industry, the two main seasons for book releases are spring and fall. To have the book ready for November would compromise quality, so I decided to wait instead of rushing out a poor-quality book.
Today's post fueled by shots of espresso at Albina Press Hawthorne
Despite the wait, I am excited to share the book with you. Part guidebook, part history of Portland coffee, and part personal memoir, Are You Serious? includes many profiles of the people and companies that make Portland’s coffee special. Inside, I give a brief history of coffee, then delve into the Portland coffee story, putting it in context with what has happened in the specialty coffee industry over the last decade and a half. Mixed in are several personal stories of how I became a coffee nerd. Some the stories included are edited versions of past blog posts, but most of the information is new. Over the last year, I interviewed a wide variety of coffee roasters, café owners, baristas, and other coffee people around the area, to hear their stories and discover why Portland coffee is so highly regarded around the country.
The specialty coffee industry is exploding, with new roasters and cafés popping up every day in cities all over the U.S. The entire coffee industry has undergone some big changes over the last fifteen years, and while every city is unique, we can better understand these changes by taking a look at what has happened in Portland. I especially recommend Are You Serious? for anyone who wants to understand specialty coffee and for people who want to know Portland better. If you like Portland or its coffee, the book should be a treat to read.
Why did I decide to write a book? I’ve asked myself that question more than once. Overall, though, the writing experience has been a good one. Once I learned a little bit about coffee—peeked behind the curtain, so to speak—I found it interesting enough to keep learning a little more, which led to more discoveries, and so on. Soon, coffee was nearly an obsession. (I say ‘nearly’ because I’m still mostly on the sidelines of the industry—the people who actually work in coffee are the ones obsessed with coffee. I just tried to capture their passion and help others understand it.) In addition, writing a book fits my personality. I enjoy delving deeply into things and focusing on them. The subject of coffee provides many avenues to do that. Finally, I admit that part of the reason I’m publishing the book is for the sense of accomplishment that comes with it.
Over the next few months I will keep you up to date on the book’s progress. When it’s ready to go, I’ll be sure to let you know that too. If you are interested in helping spread the word about the book, drop me a line and we’ll talk more about how you can do that.
Also, you will soon see some changes to the Caffeinated PDX website, to make it more reader-friendly and better organized. I may broaden the scope of topics a bit too, while keeping coffee as the primary subject. Since the bulk of work on the book is finished, I plan to post here more frequently—generally twice a week, as long as I can find interesting things to write about. (I am always looking for article ideas, so feel free to send them in.) September’s articles will include a post about a cupping Guatemalan coffees at Water Avenue, as well as the story of Nossa Familia extending the ‘familia’ into countries besides Brazil.
To get those stories out, I must get back to writing. Happy Monday.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013 at 4:12PM Late August/early September might be my favorite time of the year. The weather is as good as it gets all year, the tomatoes finally ripen, and people get out and really savor the waning days of summer. For me, the end of August signifies it is time to head back to my hometown of Dayton, Washington, to help out with wheat harvest. My family has a farm there, and returning to work for a few weeks is my way of staying connected with the family and the town where I grew up. In the last thirty-six years, I’ve missed just one harvest (and I didn’t like it). These days, I don’t usually work the whole thing, but I try to pitch in when I can. The hours are long, but it gives me an opportunity to work outside and enjoy the foothills of the Blue Mountains (see below).
A friend of mine starting a new photography business took the picture (click to enlarge). I’m driving the combine on the left. To see more of Nick’s work, visit nickpagephotography.com.
It is always fun to return to my roots, to see friends I’ve known forever, and visit with people from the community who played such an important role in making me who I am today. With a population around 2,500, Dayton is what many writers would call the idyllic small town (I just call it home). Tucked into the Touchet River Valley, the town is a jumping off point for a wide variety of outdoor recreation. Local motels fill up for hunting season (deer, elk, and pheasant hunting are most popular). Fishing for trout, steelhead, and salmon in the nearby Touchet, Toucannon, and Snake rivers also brings people to the area. During the winter, skiers carve up the crisp, dry powder at Ski Bluewood, a short drive up into the mountains. Dayton has a bustling downtown, with several shops, restaurants, a brew pubs, a brewery, two museums, and a few art galleries.
Farming is still the main industry in the county, and when wheat prices are good (and interest rates are low), the town economy seems to do well. Recently, wind power has become an important part of the economy. A few hundred wind turbines add to the county tax rolls and provide several good-paying jobs. In June, PGE announced it would build a large wind generation project—116 new turbines—just north of Dayton. Construction on the new project will start this month.
Tourism plays a significant role in the county economy too, and foodies can get their fix here. Dayton has a French restaurant, Patit Creek Restaurant, well-known throughout the Pacific Northwest. The Weinhard Café serves varied dishes created from local ingredients. An upscale chocolatier, Alexander’s Chocolate Classics, moved over from Washington’s West Side a couple years back. The Monteillet Fromagerie, a traditional French fromagerie, produces a variety of artisanal cheeses from the milk of its Alpine goats and East Freisan-Lacaune sheep. Some Portlanders may already be familiar with Pierre-Louis Monteillet, the owner, who can be found several Saturdays a year at the Portland Farmer’s Market at PSU, selling his cheeses from a booth toward the north end of the market.
Besides wind power and French cheeses, Dayton has a couple other connections to Portland. Toward the end of the 19th century, Henry Weinhard’s nephew, Jacob, moved to Dayton from Portland to establish his own brewery. The brewery is no longer around, but the Weinhard name still resonates with Dayton’s residents. Two businesses, the Weinhard Hotel and the aforementioned café, bear the famous name.
One of the newer additions to Dayton is Mace Mead Works (mead is a type of wine made from honey). Reggie Mace*, the owner, would fit in well in Portland. Sporting a robust set of lamb chops and thick-rimmed glasses, he looks like a hipster from the Hawthorne District. In addition to his signature “dry mead”, Mace makes a couple different wines. He sells a lot of his mead in Portland (if I can catch up with him before I head back to Portland, I’ll do a more in-depth profile). He brings a little bit of Portland to Dayton, offering cured meats from Olympic Provisions.
To celebrate the town’s history and its food culture, Dayton is hosting the Heirloom Weekend, a celebration of food, wine, and local cuisine, from September 20th-22nd. The event includes wine and cheese tastings, garden tours, live music, and a special dining event at TamiJoy Farms.
If you’re looking for a new place to explore, Dayton’s diversity of food and drink makes it a great place to visit. I could go on and on about the town, but it’s better to see for yourself. An easy four-and-a-half-hour drive from Portland, come visit Dayton for an early fall getaway. You’ll be glad you did.
* Prior to opening his own business, Mace worked several years at Walla Walla Roastery, probably Walla Walla’s best coffee roaster. Coincidentally, Walla Walla Roastery’s owner, Thomas Reese, lived in Portland for a while during the 1980s, where he did a lot of skateboarding with Din Johnson, who owns Ristretto Roasters. Years later, both were surprised to find that the other had ended up going into the coffee business.
Monday, July 29, 2013 at 1:51PM Two weeks ago, Ryan Cross, Ristretto’s director of wholesale, led me on a quick tour of the company’s new café, at Northeast Couch and 6th. As you can see below, the space wasn’t quite finished, but it should be opening any day now.
The view from the front door
And from behind the bar
The most unique feature of the shop will be its Steampunk brewer. Built by Alpha Dominche, a company based in Utah, the brewer made its public debut at the SCAA 2012 Event in Portland. It is a programmable brewing system that looks kind of like a cross between a French press, a Clover, and a four-group La Marzocco Linea. The Steampunk can simultaneously brew four different coffees (or teas), each to their own (programmable) specific brewing parameters. It will be the centerpiece of the café’s unofficial ‘slow bar’, where customers can get individually brewed coffees to order.
The Steampunk is headed for the spot on the bar framed by the scaffolding and the ladder
Ristretto is the first company in the Pacific Northwest to get a Steampunk, and I was hoping to snag a couple of photos. Unfortunately, it happened to be at Accelerated Development’s workshop, where workers were building a custom countertop for it. Next time…
One last perspective
