Turkish coffee at Marino Adriatic Café

If you are hanging out in Portland and you get tired of drinking great espresso and brewed coffee, you have some other options available too. I was wandering up Southeast Division the other day when I came across Marino Adriatic Café, a quirky spot just a couple blocks down the street from the original Stumptown. The café is definitely an original, and it might be the only café in the city where you can get Vispak, a coffee roasted in Bosnia. When I went, I was looking for something different, so I ordered a Turkish coffee.

Kristi, the barista, showed me how they make Turkish coffee at Caffè Marino. She started with super-finely ground coffee, and put one or two tablespoons in the bottom of a cezve (also known as an ibrik), a small copper pot that is the traditional vessel for making Turkish coffee. She set the cezve on the counter while she heated some water in a kettle.

When the water began to boil, Kristi took it off the burner and placed the cezve containing the dry grounds directly on the burner for 5-10 seconds, toasting them a little bit.

At this point, she added the water to the cezve and put it back on the burner. In less than a minute, the mixture began to boil, creating a frothy brown layer that threatened to spill over the sides of the cezve. Each time it was about to spill, Kristi pulled the pot off the heat and gently tapped it on the counter. She repeated this process three times.

Having prepared the coffee, she served it on a small round copper tray, along with a delicate ceramic cup about the size of a demitasse. Kristi suggested I wait a couple minutes before pouring my coffee so that the grounds could brew a little longer and so they could settle to the bottom of the cezve. There is no filter involved with Turkish coffee, so you have to be careful when you pour it, or you will get a cup full of grit.

My Turkish coffee, served in the cezve

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Coffee links - February 25

Links for February 25, 2011

Is it possible to grow coffee in Portland? Marrowmag.com has an interesting article about Coava’s Matt Higgins trying to grow coffee in his basement. link

Coffee futures reached their highest price in fourteen years this week. Of course, it could be worse for consumers—cocoa prices are the highest they have been in thirty-two years. link

Brazil’s government is holding onto its coffee stocks, in anticipation of even higher prices to come this year. link

After seeing Starbucks make a deal with Tata to enter the Indian market, Dunkin’ Donuts decided it wants some of the action too. link

Dunkin’ also made a deal this week with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters to put its coffee into the K-cups. The question is, should you short Green Mountain’s stock? That’s what Steven Syre, writing in the Boston Globe, tries to figure out. link

If you like Bollywood films and you like coffee, you might like Kudirithe Kappu Coffee. link

The Calgary Herald sees a parallel between the coffee and the chocolate industries. link

Even as worldwide demand for coffee has increased, Kenya’s coffee production has decreased over the last two decades, according to Business Daily Africa. Richard Gitonga, the author, proposes some solutions. link

Growing higher-quality coffee has brought a higher standard of living to coffee farmers in Uganda. link

I just like the picture in this coffee article.

Did you know that you can make oatmeal in your coffee maker? A better question might be, why would you want to?

I know I’m getting older, but. . .

I received a letter in the mail today that kind of surprised me. The letter was from the AARP—formerly known as the American Association of Retired People, a lobbying organization that advocates for people over 50—and it contained my new membership card (see photo below). Now, I know that Portland is a place where “young people go to retire,” but this is a little ridiculous (I’m 34). Isn't this kind of like McDonald's marketing Happy Meals to 6 year-olds? You know, get them hooked early...I think I’ll tell the AARP to try again in twenty years.

What the . . .?

Barista Profile – Thomas Suprenant

[Over the last several months, I have spent quite a few hours in cafés, learning about coffee and giving my impressions of the cafés. It has been fun. There are so many good cafés and I have been spoiled to be able try so many different (and high-quality) coffees. While I love the adventure, one of the downsides of doing this is that I feel an obligation to keep looking for new cafés all the time, and I never really become a regular at any of them.

Over the next few weeks, I hope to focus more on the people and the stories behind the coffee shops in this city as opposed to the cafés themselves. I am still going to write the occasional café review (there are more cafés that I want to visit), but that will be less of a focus. Instead, I will be working to meet people and talk about a variety of coffee-related things. If you are someone who has a café, is a barista, roasts coffee or just loves coffee and has a unique story to tell, let me know what you are up to and I will share your story here. I would like to interview you and learn more about the great things you are doing (if you are doing something great that is not related to coffee, we can figure out some tie-in, even if we just sit down over a cup of good coffee). The following is the first post in that direction.]

Thomas Suprenant is one of the skilled baristas at Cellar Door Coffee Roasters. In the picture above, he is competing at his first Northwest Regional Barista Championship in January. On my recent stop at the café, Thomas gave me a tour and sat down to tell me a little bit of his own story. Many thanks to Cassie, the other barista on duty, for taking care of the café while we were talking.

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Friday's Links - February 18

Friday has come quickly again this week. Hope you are ready for a good weekend. Here are your Friday links:

Reuters has a story about the coffee culture in Iran. It sounds like the country has a small but growing coffee industry that is catching on among young people. link

In the article, the author mentions an Iranian coffee chain called Raees, which Starbucks unsuccessfully sued for infringement of trademark. You can see the logo for yourself here. I cannot imagine why Starbucks was upset (sarcasm intended).

As you know, single-serve coffee is the fastest growing segment of the coffee market. Starbucks wants in on the game too. There was speculation that Starbucks was in talks with Green Mountain Coffee over using the K-cup technology that Green Mountain owns. This week, however, Howard Schultz wrote a very cryptic memo to company employees about those rumors. It appears that Starbucks is either trying to create leverage in its talks with Green Mountain, or the company has plans to develop its own technology. Either way, it does not seem like you are going to have Starbucks K-cups for a while. link

Here’s an article about Maryland coffee shops, posted on a Kitsap, Washington site. Sounds like lots of Laptopistanis are out there working in coffee shops. I can relate. link

If you’re traveling through Forsyth County, Georgia, you might want to avoid stopping at this particular Starbucks, as it has been hit by a car twice in the last month.

Good.com has an interesting map of the world’s coffee consumption. Most of the coffee is not consumed in the places where it is grown. link

If you like the toasted smoky taste of coffee but are tired of caffeine, you could always try roasted barley. link

Want to know more about the history of coffee? Prague has a good museum to visit. link

An Irish traveler visited Portland and came away with a very favorable opinion. Surprisingly, the visit was in January. link

How do you store coffee?

Quick, what are the two most destructive things on earth?

I will give you 10 seconds to come up with them.

1. . .2. . .3. . .4. . .5. . .6. . .7. . .8. . .9. . .10

Okay, what are they?

I can only guess at some of the answers you might have come up with: Guns, nuclear bombs, George W. Bush (if you are a Democrat), single-payer health care (if you are a Republican).

I might pick ignorance, but actually, the two most destructive things on earth are water and air. Water, given enough time, can move mountains. Air, or more specifically oxygen, combines with many materials to cause destruction in the form of rust, or in some cases, fire.

As you can imagine then, if you are trying to preserve your coffee beans, you do not want them to come into contact with either air or water (heat and light are two more things that coffee beans should stay away from). If  you can remember this, you have a pretty good idea of how to store coffee. Ideally, you would not store your beans for very long, but if you must, then these tips will help you get the best flavor out of them.

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Cellar Door Coffee Roasters

Cellar Door Coffee Roasters is one of those places that has been on my radar for quite some time, ever since I wandered by on a sunny autumn day (yes, we do have sun in Portland once in a while). After watching the first day of the Northwest Regional Barista Championships in Tacoma, I decided to make visiting the café a higher priority. Cellar Door had two baristas competing at the contest, a sure sign that the café’s baristas care about their craft.

Cellar Door Coffee, located on the busy SE 11^th Avenue between Hawthorne and Division, has been in its current location for about three years. Jeremy Adams and Andrea Pastor, the owners, founded the company in 2007, roasting small batches of coffee in their garage and selling it at farmers markets. As their direct-to-customer business increased, the operation outgrew its original location.

Today the café takes up the lower floor of an old (Victorian?) house that has been remodeled. It is not large, but the space is comfortable. There are a handful of tables in front of the bar, a few seats along the front window and a back area that has some soft chairs and a few toys for kids. A small roaster sits by the front door that Adams uses to roast coffee samples for cupping. Large trucks occasionally roll by and give the café a gentle shake.

Cellar Door

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