My last café review was about Albina Press, a place that I said could be a good substitute for the Portlandia set (I probably have mentioned the show too much already, but this time it’s more relevant than usual). Coincidentally, the café that I’m writing about today was part of the actual set for Portlandia. That’s right, part of your favorite satirical show about the city we drink coffee in was actually shot on-site at Oblique Coffee Roasters.
Oblique Coffee Roasters
Somewhat hidden away on Southeast Stark, not too far from Laurelhurst Park, Oblique Coffee Roasters is one of the nicer spaces for a café that I have seen around Portland. The café is located inside what used to be a mercantile, built in 1891. John and Heather Chandler, the owners, completely remodeled it after they bought it.
Actually, ‘remodeled’ makes it sound like they just did a little fixing up, and it doesn’t accurately describe what they did to the building. You can see all of the work they did here. The transformation of the building is remarkable, and I don’t use that term lightly. What they have now is a beautiful space that makes a great place to write or drink coffee.
It's the first day of the month today, and you know what that means. . . . Tomorrow is the second.
Okay, that wasn't funny-I heard the groans. To make up for you having to put up with all of my bad jokes (and a few good ones), I want to try something. I'm going to give away a bag of coffee to the first person who can identify the café from the picture below. Call it the "It's the First of the Month and I Wanted to Post Something but I was Tired After Yesterday's Marathon Post so I Decided to Come up with Something to Keep You Interested Caffeinated PDX.com Coffee Giveaway Contest".
The coffee will be from a Portland-area roaster. It will probably be a 12oz bag, since most places seem to be reducing bag size rather their prices as the cost of green coffee shoots upward. I haven't picked the roaster or the coffee yet (sponsorship opportunity), but it will be a good one. I won't send you anything that is not fresh. However, if you live a long way from PDX, I can't guarantee that the coffee will be fresh by the time it gets to you. Then again, if you live a long way from PDX, you probably won't recognize the picture in the first place.
Each day, starting tomorrow and continuing until someone figures out the mystery, I will Tweet (I can't believe I just wrote that) a clue to help you. If you're not following me on Twitter, it might be a good time to start (obviously, I'm not above bribery). Click the button on the right sidebar to do that (it's the one with the blue bird). Good luck to all, and here goes nothing. . .
Recognize this?Oh yeah, one more thing. You should post your guesses in the comments section below. You get one guess per day. Please don't break that rule. If this goes over without too many problems, we may try something like it again next month.
On Friday, January 28th I attended my first barista championship—the Northwest Regional Barista Championship (NWRBC), held in Tacoma, Washington. If you didn’t know that the NWRBC was happening, don’t feel too bad—I didn’t even know it existed until last fall, when I interviewed Brandon Arends.
Brandon is probably the biggest coffee enthusiast I have ever met—he is as enthusiastic, knowledgeable and opinionated as any of the highly-skilled baristas and café owners I have met around Portland—so I was glad when he agreed to go to Tacoma with me. On the trip up, he told me all about the competition and about the experiences he had volunteering at previous regional and national barista championships.
Before we went up to Tacoma, Brandon got in touch with Marcus Boni, Marketing Director for the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA), to see if we could volunteer. Brandon had worked for him at the NWRBC in 2009 when it was held in Portland, and Marcus was happy to let us volunteer. I was excited because volunteering would give me a closer look into the competition.
We left Portland on Friday about 7am, giving us time to stop for coffee along the way. We stopped at Lava Java, near Ridgefield, Washington, which turned out to be a great stop, despite my initial reservations. I’ll share that story with you soon.
The NWRBC is the first step in the path toward the US Barista Championship (USBC). Finalists at the regional level are eligible to compete in the USBC, which you might say is kind of like the Miss America pageant for coffee nerds. The Northwest region covers Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and anyone who lives or works in one of those states is eligible to compete at the NWRBC.
Walking into the competition area at the Tacoma Convention Center felt somewhat familiar, even though it was my first time attending the championship. The large conference room smelled just like walking into a specialty coffee shop in Portland. The sweet, toasty smell of freshly-ground coffee greeted us as we entered, and I saw many faces in the room that I recognized. Some of them had been at Coffee Fest in Seattle and others I had seen or talked to around Portland. One of the first people I recognized was Nathanael May, from Portland Roasting Coffee. He had come up earlier in the week to get certified as a judge for the competition. He told me that the certification test was more difficult than he thought it would be, but he passed and was going to judge the second day of competition.
Brandon and I went over to talk to Marcus, who assigned us to station maintenance. It would be our job clean up the stage after each barista competed and make sure that the espresso machines were immaculate.
The room was a typical conference room, and up front there were three different performance areas. Each of the areas consisted of a Nuova Simonelli espresso machine, an adjoining preparation table and a high presentation table where the four sensory judges would sit and taste the drinks.
Three stations, waiting for competitors
The competition works like this: competitors have 15 minutes of preparation time to set up their area. The baristas set out their tools, pitchers and cups, go over any last-minute adjustments on the grinders and set out any other props they have for the presentation. The competition is a combination of skill and style, so many of the set-ups were fairly elaborate. The baristas set out napkins and saucers for each of the sensory judges and many of the place settings resembled that of a fancy restaurant.
One interesting place setting
At the end of the 15-minute prep time, the judges come out and shake hands with the competitor before taking their positions. Each competitor is judged by a total of seven people: two technical judges, four sensory judges and a head judge. The technical judges hover around the grinders and espresso machine as the baristas grind the coffee, pull shots and steam and pour the milk. They are looking at all of the little details that go into making the drinks. Baristas are expected to dose and tamp the coffee correctly without wasting coffee, flush the group heads before pulling shots and to keep the stations clean while they work. The judges closely watch all of these.
The four sensory judges sit at the presentation table and it is their job to evaluate the beverages. They stir, smell and taste the drinks to evaluate their consistency, balance, mouth feel and overall quality. They also judge the competitors on their presentation skills and enthusiasm for the coffee.
The sensory judges, listening attentively to Bryan Arndt, from Coeur D'Alene, Idaho
The head judges have the role of making sure that the sensory judges and technical judges are judging in a consistent manner. They taste all of the drinks so that they have an idea of how the judges should score the drinks. If one judge has a score that is abnormally high or low, they can correct the score. Head judges have a lot to watch, but their scores do not count toward the competitor’s score. They essentially referee the other judges.
As you might imagine, there is a long list of technical and sensory specifications that the judges are looking for (If you’re interested, the rules and regulations for the Barista Championship can be found here). It takes both technical skills and presentation skills to be a champion. According to the USBC rules, a champion barista is someone who:
Has mastery of technical skills, craftsmanship, communication skills and who is passionate about their profession, in addition to service.
Has a broad understanding of coffee knowledge and serves high quality beverages.
May serve as a role model and a source of inspiration for others.
In other words, a barista has to have the skills and passion necessary to be an ambassador for the specialty coffee industry. That is the overarching goal of these championships—to promote the craft of specialty coffee and elevate the standards of coffee as a beverage.
The baristas have 15 minutes to make a total of 12 drinks: four single espressos, four cappuccinos and four specialty drinks they have created on their own. They have to work quickly and efficiently as they describe to the judges what they are doing. The limited amount of time adds pressure to the competition. A large red LED timer is posted at each station and during the competition, you can feel the tension in the room rising as each barista nears the allotted 15 minutes. Most of the baristas finished on time, but there were a few who didn’t quite make it. They generally got hung up when they made their specialty beverages too complex.
To give you a better idea of the way the competition goes, I shot some video of Ashley Rauch, from Sterling Coffee Roasters in Portland, explaining her espresso selection to the judges. She was competing in her first competition and was a little nervous, but she did a nice job (and finished within the time limits). You can see how she put a lot of thought into her presentation. Take note of her descriptions of the complex aromas and flavors that the judges can expect when they taste the espresso.
Being a barista is truly an art. I like to joke about the tattoos and interesting fashion that baristas are known for, but when it comes down to it, a barista’s skills make a huge difference in the way your drink tastes. They are the final step in a very long, complex process that brings the coffee from where it is grown to your cup. As Brandon said to me, if baristas think about how complex the process is to produce high-quality coffee beans, they should feel an obligation to prepare it in the best manner possible. As consumers, we should appreciate their efforts.
Brandon, making sure that the machine is spotless
About half way through the competition, I was re-assigned to busing tables. After each round of drinks was judged by the sensory judges, I had to help remove the drinks from the table. It was more fun than station maintenance because I had a closer view of the baristas in action and could more easily taste the drinks that the baristas made.
Speaking of tasting the drinks, I probably tried about 40 different beverages throughout the day. Even though I had just a sip of each one, all of the sips added up and by the end of the competition, I was floating around in a caffeine-induced haze.
The drinks I tried varied in quality. On our way up to Tacoma, Brandon and I had talked at length about what went into making a good cappuccino. He told me that the espresso needs to be able to stand up to the milk and create balance. Some of the more floral single-origin espressos tend to disappear when they are mixed with milk, making the cappuccino unbalanced. At the competition, I probably tasted 15 different cappuccinos and now I understand what he was talking about. Some of them had very little coffee flavor, while others were much more balanced between the milk and the coffee. That’s one of the reasons that people like Stumptown’s Hair Bender Blend. When it is used to make a latte or cappuccino, you can still taste the coffee.
Watching the competition, you could tell that some of the baristas really enjoyed the spotlight. Confidence and a flair for performing were definitely two characteristics that separated the better competitors from the rest. On the first day of competition, Laila Ghambari of Stumptown Seattle and Ryan Wilbur of Stumptown Portland were the two competitors who seemed to most enjoy performing, so it was no surprise to me when they made the finals.
While most of the competitors at a competition work for a café, there are a few independents that compete too. One independent was Rick Cox, a self-described “super-passionate home barista” from Auburn, Washington. He developed a routine and competed at the NWRBC without support from a café. He didn’t make the finals, but hats off to him for having the courage to try. Becoming a competitive barista requires lots of practice, and the baristas who spend hours each day at their cafés honing their skills naturally have an advantage over non-affiliated baristas.
Rick Cox, at the beginning of his presentation
Even though it is a competition, the baristas are generally friendly and supportive of one another. They want each other to do well, because they know that ultimately, they are all trying to do the same thing—to help spread the word that producing specialty coffee is an art form. It is not something that can just come out of a machine (McCafé, anyone?). It takes skill, practice and pride in the craft to become a great barista and that is why when you go to a great café you should always be appreciative of what the baristas are trying to do. They work hard to help you experience the coffee in the same way that they do.
After watching and helping with nineteen different performances over six hours, I left the convention center tired, but thankful that I had been a volunteer. It was much better to be an active participant than just a spectator. I learned a lot about what it takes to become a top-notch barista and enjoyed my front-row view. Next year, when the regional competition comes to Portland, I may try to become a judge. It would be a great way to learn more about this thing called specialty coffee, because once you start learning, you don’t want to stop.
I spent most of the day on Friday at the Northwest Regional Barista Championship in Tacoma. Brandon Arends and I went up and worked as volunteers, and we had quite a trip. Portland was well-represented on the first day, with 10 of the 19 competitors coming from PDX. In between cleaning stations and busing tables, I managed to get a few action shots of Portland's finest. You will probably recognize some of them from some of your favorite cafés.
Unfortunately, I did not make it to Saturday's preliminaries or Sunday's finals, so I missed the five Portland baristas who competed on Saturday (including the eventual champion, Sam Purvis from Coava). I'll have more of a recap tomorrow.
Ashley Rauch, from Sterling Coffee Roasters, competing in her first Regional Barista Championship.
Kelly Kieft from Cellar Door Coffee Roasters
Kyle Salmi, Albina Press, waiting patiently for the judges
Marty Lopes, Barista. His boss, at far left, looks pretty nervous.
Ryan Wilbur of Stumpton put on quite a show. He ended up finishing second overall, by 0.5 points.
Ray Penrod of Public Domain was stylin'
Devin Chapman, Coava Coffee Roasters, explaining how the cherries and blood oranges blend well with his coffee. In addition to competing in the Barista Championship, Devin won the first-ever Regional Brewing Competition.
Jenny Dorsey, from Case Study Coffee, showed off her cider-making skills in addition to her barista skills.
Adam McGovern, from Sterling Coffee Roasters, holds court.
Thomas Surprenant, from Cellar Door, was the last competitor of day 1. His hops-infused espresso signature beverage was one highlight of the day.
It's Friday already, and we're another week closer to spring. Hooray! Here's today's links.
A woman in Georgia is set to receive a $1.2 million dollars after a convenience store cappuccino shot hot water at her. link
A new documentary about lawsuits and tort reform examines the well-publicized case of the woman who sued McDonald’s after being burned by the company’s coffee. Sounds pretty provocative. link
Please be careful with your coffee. It’s hot. link
The Starbucks iPhone payment app is a game-changer, according to Bob Sullivan of MSNBC. link
Coffee is sometimes used for political reasons, as is the case in Ivory Coast, where the president-elect of the country has called for a halt on the country’s coffee and cocoa exports in an effort to starve the government of the incumbent (who refuses to cede power after losing the election) for funds. The US is backing the embargo. link
Seattle’s Best (talk about a misnomer) announced the nationwide release of its iced canned lattes. Yay for them. link
The New York Times estimates that you would have to drink 42 cups of coffee at one sitting to be at risk of ingesting a fatal dose of caffeine. For the record, that’s only eight Starbucks Trentas. link
Coffee drinking is growing quickly in India, and guess who is partnering with Tata to push into the Indian market? Yep, the big green apron. link
In an effort to reduce coffee theft, the Coffee Board of Kenya is trying out a new tracking system that follows coffee from the field to market. link
I almost had a heart attack when I saw that the price of a tall Starbucks latte was $5.50. Then I realized that I was reading an article from Singapore. Must be the conversion rate, I thought. Then I looked up the conversion rate and found that US$5.50 is SD$4.30. Ouch. And we complain about high prices here. link
I’m headed up to the Northwest Regional Barista Championship in Tacoma today. It’s a three-day event, but since I’m not competing, I’m just going to see the first day of competition. Hopefully there will be a good story or two to come out of it that I can share with you. Have a good weekend.
Despite the ubiquity of cafés in this country, a large majority of coffee that people drink is still brewed at home. There are two main reasons for this. First, brewing at home is more convenient than going out to a café to buy coffee. You don’t have to get dressed, or comb your hair or put on makeup before heading out to the café (though I have to say, these are not necessarily requirements in Portland). Second, brewing at home is generally cheaper, something that has become more important to coffee drinkers since the recession began. Buying coffee at a café can add up quickly, especially if you buy more than just brewed coffee or espresso.
Whether you go to cafés often or not, when you do brew coffee at home, you want to have good coffee. So which coffee should you buy? It can be overwhelming to walk into a supermarket’s coffee aisle. There are coffees available in lots of different packages—you can buy coffee in bulk, bags, cans, jars and bricks. There are different brands, roasts, blends, country names and even different flavors. All of these choices can be more confusing than enlightening, so you have to sort through them to get something that suits you. By remembering a couple things, you will find it easier to get good coffee.
The first thing to remember is that good coffee starts with good beans, and good beans should be fresh. It is difficult to overestimate how important the freshness of the beans is to the taste of the coffee. Coffee beans are at their peak of flavor about a day after being roasted, and after that, the volatile aromatic compounds that give the coffee its flavor begin to dissipate. Therefore, you should always look for a roast date on the package. If you buy directly from a coffee roaster, you should ask when the coffee was roasted. If they won’t (or can’t) tell you, don’t buy it. They don’t care enough about quality to warrant your business.
Since freshness is so important, it is much better to buy whole beans than it is to buy pre-ground coffee. If you buy pre-ground coffee, even if it is ground at the store or café, the coffee is going to lose flavor quickly because the oxygen breaks down the flavor compounds inside the coffee.
If you buy your coffee at a supermarket, you should be sure to check the bags for roasting dates and expiration dates. Not all coffees have this, and if a company is afraid to put the dates on the bag, odds are you are not going to get the freshest coffee. Always look for the coffee with the nearest roast date or the farthest-out expiration date. Be careful about buying from the bulk bins too. Some of those beans may have been in there a while [Insider tip about buying bulk coffees: if you grind your own beans at the store, be sure to run a few beans through the grinder before catching them in the bag. You won’t get any flavored coffee surprises that way].
In addition to buying fresh beans, it helps to have an idea of what tastes you like. Do you prefer just a little bit of smoky flavor in your coffee? If so, you might want to look at a French or Italian roast. If you like lighter, more floral coffees, try a single-origin from Africa. Bright, sparkling coffees with crisp acidity? Try a Central American coffee. Most of the time, the coffee labels have descriptions of what you can expect in a coffee. Read them and try the one that sounds the best.
The best advice I can give you to learn more about blends and regions is to visit a café that sells coffee beans (if they roast their own beans, even better) and talk to the people that work there. A good barista will have opinions about what he or she likes and should be willing to let you try some of the café’s different offerings. When possible, visit the café during a slow part of the day so that the baristas will have more time to talk to you and make some samples. If you try to talk to them during the morning rush, you’re probably not going to have their full attention and they will just want to get you out the door so they can get back to working the line of customers.
If you buy some coffee and end up not liking it, don’t be afraid to take it back to the store. Roasters understand that not all of their recommendations will be right, so they should take back a bag of beans if you don’t like them (and haven’t used most of them). You’re paying good money to get good beans, so you ought to be satisfied with what you buy.
Hopefully these tips will help you when you go to buy coffee. Buying fresh beans and learning about blends and regions won’t necessarily guarantee you a good cup of coffee at home, but they will definitely improve your chances. Once you have good beans, you’re off to a good start.
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.
Thursday, February 3, 2011 at 1:55PM 
Oblique Coffee Roasters
