The Art of Espresso Machines – the Van Der Westen Spirit

There´s the art of espresso, and then there's the art of the espresso machine. I stopped in at Heart last week and saw this sitting on the bar:

The machine, called the Spirit, was manufactured by Kees Van Der Westen, a Dutch industrial designer who spent several years building espresso machines in his spare time before working at La Marzocco, where he helped develop the Mistral. The barista said the look was patterned after the cockpit of a World War II bomber. It catches your eye in the same way walking by a chromed out Harley-Davidson, and it complements Heart’s minimal, early industrial space well.

This is what it looks like from the barista’s perspective (photo from manufacturer's website - click to see more): 

Packed with technology, the machine also pulls consistently good shots.

Very cool. 

Os Cafés do Brasil em Portland (Brazilian Coffees in Portland)

After watching Brazil destroy Spain in the final of the Confederations Cup this afternoon (3-0), I thought it would be a good time to give a shout out to Portland’s Brazilian coffee company, Nossa Familia. I stopped by there last week for a visit to the company’s (fairly) new walk-in espresso bar, on Northwest 13^th Avenue, across from the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA). Last fall, Nossa Familia held a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the new addition, and as promised, the café brings a touch of Brazil to downtown Portland, offering single-family Brazilian coffees and treats like pão de queijo (bite-sized cheese bread).

The shop had two espressos available on grind as well as a couple of different brewed coffee options. I chose an espresso of Ernesto’s Blend. It was very creamy, with a viscous mouthfeel that lingered on the palate, sweet at first, with hints of raisin and almond, and a black tea finish.

For most people, the shop will be an in-and-out stop, as seating is quite limited. Curious customers can sit next to the interior windows and watch what’s happening inside the roastery. When the weather is warm and sunny, a couple of tables on the loading dock make a nice spot to sit and enjoy a Pearl District afternoon.

Vitals
Address: 811 Northwest 13th, Portland, OR 97209 (map)
Hours: Monday-Friday: 7am-4pm
            Saturday: 8am-4pm 
            Sunday: Closed
Website: familyroast.com

One more thing…

Not everything at Nossa Familia’s espresso bar was Brazilian. As I was leaving the shop, I picked up something called a Rip Van Wafel, a small snack imported from Holland. After trying it, my question is, how has this not caught on in the US?

Rip van Yum

The Wafel consists of two thin, crispy waffle wafers sandwiched around a very thin layer of caramel. The directions tell you to warm it up by resting it on top of a mug of coffee, to melt the caramel and give it a hint of coffee flavor. Dipping or eating them plain work too, and they are tasty.

Tough to resist

Stumptown and single-origin espressos

Change is not easy (one could call me Mr. Inertia) and it is not always good, but it is inevitable. I had a conversation the other day with a café owner who had purchased an operating café from someone instead of starting a new one from scratch. The café, located in a residential area, came with a solid group of regulars who had patronized the shop for several years. When the new owner took over, he changed a few things, partly for the health of the business, and also because he had his own ideas for how a café should run. When he switched brew methods (to a pourover) and started charging for refills (fifty cents!), long-time customers pushed back. How dare he change their routine! Eventually, the regulars came around, but it took several months.

Since change can be disruptive, I was somewhat surprised when I heard that Stumptown, Portland’s most influential third wave coffee roaster, was now serving single-origin espresso in its cafés. Selling s-o espressos is not a new thing. Third wave cafés have been pulling single-origin espresso shots for years. Many offer an espresso blend alongside a single origin, while others serve strictly s-o espressos. The rise of barista competitions, where baristas highlight the farms and farmers who grow their coffees, helped push s-o espressos into the café setting.

While other cafés (including several Stumptown wholesale accounts) moved into selling single-origin espressos, Stumptown’s own shops only offered Hair Bender, the company’s espresso blend. Hair Bender is one of the company’s biggest success stories. The blend’s unique profile, with distinct lemon and chocolate flavors layered throughout the cup, stood out against the dark-roasted blends so common in the Pacific Northwest and changed perceptions of what espresso should taste like. It formed the foundation for the company to grow on. Without Hair Bender, Stumptown would likely be a much smaller, regional roaster instead of the international brand it is today.

To see how Stumptown would present its new espresso, I went to the original Stumptown café, on Southeast Division, and ordered one. Stumptown’s Costa Rica Montes de Oro, currently on grind, is the first of what is to be a rotating single-origin espresso in its cafés. The first sip seemed like it was going to be sharp, but the texture quickly rounded into something that felt very smooth on the palate. The Montes de Oro had a muted acidity, with notes of cherry and almond and just a hint of lemon. Stumptown’s foray into single-origin espressos was a nice entry into the new space.  

In a way, the addition of single-origin espresso to the menu was coming full circle for Stumptown. The company that pioneered the third wave in Portland was borrowing some tricks from the companies following in its footsteps.  The more success you have, the more you have to lose, so it was refreshing to see Stumptown, one of the most successful Portland coffee companies, try something new. The change was not huge, but it showed that Stumptown is willing to experiment with new things and, when it does, to execute very well.

The question is, what’s next? 

Either/Or Café – Sellwood’s new coffee star

Southeast Portland is known for having a lot of neighborhood commercial districts, tucked away inside residential areas. These districts are full of hidden treasures, if you can find them. One new destination worth seeking out is Either/Or, a brand new coffee shop in Sellwood. Either/Or takes up a few square feet in the Old Sellwood Square, a small commercial center on Southeast 13^th Avenue, two blocks south of Tacoma.

Either/Or’s owners, Natasha Miks and Ro Tam, live in North Portland, but they fell in love with Sellwood on trips to the area shopping for antiques. Coffee aficionadas, they thought the neighborhood’s offerings needed upgrading, so they decided to start a café. They leased the former site of Love Cup, spent a month remodeling it, and opened in the middle of March.

Either/Or’s main coffee is roasted by Heart. Ro and Natasha had gone to a lot of coffee shops around town and found that Heart always seemed to be their favorite. “We feel like Heart’s coffee is cutting edge,” Ro told me. “We like the way they take a scientific approach.”

Elegant service

Heart’s owner, Wille Yli-Luoma, is very careful about who he works with for wholesale accounts, so if Ro and Natasha have his trust, you know they are going to take good care of the coffee. They pull every shot of espresso in a way that optimizes it for each beverage. Recently, they began pulling their shots served as espresso with a little more volume, to bring out more sweetness and complexity. 

In addition to serving Heart coffees, Either/Or keeps a guest roasters’ espresso on grind (so far, the guests have been Sterling, Coava, and Roseline). The café also serves pastries and treats from Bake Shop. Several outdoor tables increase the seating capacity, at least when the weather is pleasant.

Ro Tam and Natasha Miks, Either/Or's owners, behind the bar

The shop has only one drawback. It’s kind of out of the way. “Nobody comes to this side of Tacoma,” Ro said.

They should start. Either/Or is a treasure that should not remain hidden.

Vitals
Address: 8235 SE 13^th (map)
Phone: 503-235-3474
Hours: Monday-Friday 7am-3:30pm
            Saturday-Sunday 8am-4pm
Coffee: Heart + rotating guest roaster
Wi-Fi? Yes
Recommendations? The espresso flight—two espressos side-by-side, paired with a small “tasting bite”
Website: https://www.facebook.com/EitherOrCafe?fref=ts

Coffee school – Two days at ABCS

Many coffee people have told me that being a barista is difficult. Whenever they say that, I am always skeptical. How hard could it be?

To find out, I took a two-day barista course at the American Barista and Coffee School last week. The class, led by ABCS’s Tom Pikaart and Sara Ziniewicz, was designed to give students a hands-on introduction to pulling espresso shots, steaming milk, pouring latte art, and maintaining equipment. Eight students took the class, at ABCS’s headquarters on Water Avenue. Some of the students had their own cafés, and others worked for roasters, supporting wholesale accounts. Most had at least some prior coffee knowledge or training.

In his opening remarks, Pikaart made it clear that the purpose of the course was not to perfect our technique. Rather, it was to teach us how to approach learning the craft of being a barista. No one can become an espresso expert in two days, he told us, but you can learn what you need to know to get started. If you have the right mindset, competence will follow. These were the five things he said we needed to focus on:

• Cleanliness
• Self-betterment (self-improvement)
• Passion
• Self-discipline
• Consistency

Dialing, pulling, steaming, pouring

After an introduction to the principles and procedures of making espresso, we moved over to the machines and got to work. One of the coolest things about ABCS is the number of different grinders and espresso machines students can try during the class. Our group spread itself out between four different espresso machines, and there were an additional three or four more we did not use.

The first activity was to dial in the grinders. To do this, we adjusted the distance between the grinder’s burrs, which changes the fineness of the grounds. Every day, as conditions in the café change (temperature, humidity, etc.), baristas must make small adjustments to the grind so the espresso tastes good. Knowing how to do this is a critical skill for a barista.

Once we had the grinders where we wanted them, it was time to make some espresso. The first shot I pulled was comically slow, and, as I had to stop and think about each step in the process. As we pulled more and more shots, my technique became more fluid. I would like to think my espressos got better over time, too.

After lunch, we moved on to milk. Steaming milk was less intimidating. Having steamed a lot of milk as a Starbucks barista, I had some idea of what to watch and listen for. It was fairly easy to adapt the techniques Tom and Sara told us about to what I already knew.

Tom Pikaart teaching latte art theory

Pouring latte art, on the other hand, was completely new. Latte art, a common sight in Portland cafés, does not necessarily make the drink better, but it does indicate how serious the baristas in a café take their craft. This is an example of what we were aiming for:

A soft heart, poured by our instructor

I found that pouring beautiful latte art is not easy, especially when you are starting out. (You can see a couple of my early tries below).

Not going to win any competitions, but not bad for a beginner

Getting better...

Teaching others

One of our exercises the second day was to teach a partner how to make a (caffè) latte. We had to write down (from memory) all the steps, then our partner was supposed to follow them exactly, no matter how many things we left out. I had thirty steps on my list, and I still forgot a couple. The lesson helped me understand why some café owners train their employees for a month before allowing them to make drinks for a customer. It takes time to make all these steps automatic.

Another important takeaway from the class was how important cleanliness is to the quality of the products. Both Tom and Sara emphasized how important it is to clean the machine regularly and thoroughly. Roasted coffee is full of oils that can creep into the hidden nooks and crannies on grinders and espresso machines. These oils degrade as they contact the air, and produce some funky flavors and odors if left long enough. For practice, we pulled our espresso machine apart and cleaned all the parts that come into contact with the coffee.

One thing that surprised me about the course was its emphasis on using our five senses to monitor the quality of our drinks. I had expected we would rely more on scales, stopwatches and thermometers, and while Pikaart advocated using these devices to check a barista’s consistency, he said we need to be able to use our senses. Measuring everything, every time, is too time-consuming to use in a café setting. and with practice and attention to detail, a barista can learn to be very accurate and consistent using just the five senses.

Lesson learned

After taking the class, I understand why people say being a barista is hard. With so many minute details that factor into making great drinks, you need to practice for a long time to become good. It takes time to master the skills of the craft.

“Being a professional is an attitude. It is not a skill set,” Pikaart told us, as he closed out the class. We might not start out as experts, but we will get there if we keep learning.

A good lesson not just for being a barista, but for life as well.

No coffee for Portland today

There will be no coffee today in Portland. The weekend heat wave created an exceptionally high turnout at the city’s cafés on both Saturday and Sunday. Several café owners claimed they had never seen anything like the waves of people coming in their cafés. While this was great for business, the higher-than-usual number of customers ordering cold brew coffee, which requires a high coffee to water ratio, created a shortage of roasted coffee for other drinks. Every decent café in the city was drunk completely dry by 6pm Sunday evening.

With roasters working around the clock to get caught up, the shortage is expected to last only one day. The more fortunate cafés should have coffee by late afternoon Monday. Until the cafés are restocked, grumpy Portlandians have been urged to drink tea.  

All that's left

In other news, the European Union figured out its banking crisis and has a credible plan for dealing with the trade imbalances within the Eurozone. 

Fairey was here - street art in PDX

Yesterday, around Northeast 20th and Sandy, this caught my eye:

Obey the Giant

Fans of the 2010 documentary, Exit through the Gift Shop, will recognize the image as a rendering of Andre the Giant, created by street artist Shepard Fairey. The film, nominated for an Academy Award, takes a close look at the world of street art. It tells the story of Thierry Guetta, a compulsive videographer living in Los Angeles, who finds himself so intrigued by street artists that he begins following them around, collecting hundreds of hours of footage as they create their art. Fairey is of the artists Guetta captures on video. 

Produced by legendary street artist Banksy, the film is mystifying. By the end, you are left wondering if is just a documentary, or if it is something more. Did Banksy, who was accused of selling out (for selling his art), create it just to sell more art? The viewer is left to contemplate that question, and two years later, there is still no definitive answer.

Whether or not you believe street art is a legitimate form of art, there is no question the film is entertaining and forces you to think about the ownership of public spaces. If it were my ad on Sandy that had been painted over and replaced by Fairey’s image, I would be mad. But, since it wasn’t, I can just appreciate the audacity of these artists to challenge us to think differently about the world.