Sì, la bellezza ha un gusto

Going to business school, you get to learn all kinds of fun stuff, especially if you haven’t spent much time in the corporate world. Our first term of the MIM program we took marketing from Brian McCarthy, a former GM of marketing at Microsoft. His class was lots of fun and very informative, and it really opened my eyes to how companies try to reach customers. The biggest challenge that all companies have is trying to get people to try their products. Then they try to create some type of emotional bond with their customer. Most people are creatures of habit, and once they find something they like, it is hard to get them to try new things. You could say that marketing is the science (or art) of overcoming that resistance to change.

Ever since taking Brian’s class, I pay more attention to ads and commercials. I try to figure out what they’re trying to communicate. For example, I will see a commercial for Chevrolet pickups and try to dissect it. What is it trying to say? Chevy Trucks (a more “manly” word than pickups) are tough, reliable and American. The message goes beyond the products being sold and moves into the realm of emotions and values.

One of the projects we had to do for class was to develop a marketing plan for some type of product. We could either choose to market our own business idea or we could take some company’s product that we liked and pick a country outside the US in which to market it. I chose to write a marketing plan for Illy coffee in China, probably because I was drinking a lot of Illy coffee at Park Avenue Café at the time.

One of the things I came across when I was creating the marketing plan was the following commercial (it’s much better if you play it with something that has good speakers and turn up the sound):

Elegance. Style. Art. Beauty. The finer things in life. These words describe what comes to mind when I watch that commercial. I was captivated when I saw it. The music (Atlantico by Roberto Cacciapaglia) was dramatic, the images were beautiful and graceful and the tagline, La bellezza ha un gusto (literally “beauty has a taste”), captured the spirit of both Italy and the company. Italians care deeply about the quality of the food and drink they consume, and their companies are well-known for their beautiful design (think Ferrari, Ducati, Gucci).

In the marketing plan, I wrote that the commercial would resonate in China too. The people in both countries have a strong appreciation for beauty. Italy and China are also the home of two of the world’s most important ancient civilizations and if done right, a campaign of “East meets West” over a cup of Illy could be very effective.

One question about the commercial is whether it ended up selling more coffee or not. I have no idea, but at the very least it provided me with some entertainment for a while. Two years later, I still haven’t forgotten about it, so Illy was effective at reaching at least one customer. My question is, does it capture your attention like it did mine?

Soaked on Mississippi

After leaving Ristretto, I headed back towards Interstate Ave to hop on the MAX. About two minutes after I left the café, the pleasant drizzle that had been falling turned into a steady downpour. Naturally, I didn’t have an umbrella with me (my native Eastern Washingtonian habits are hard to shake). When I got to Mississippi, I ducked into Mr. Green Beans to check out what they had to offer and to escape the rain for a minute. After reading the Oregonian’s article on DIY coffee roasting two weeks ago, I had been thinking about trying it out. An acquaintance of mine swears by roasting at home. He says that it is the only way to go when it comes to making coffee. “You’ll never have a better cup,” he repeatedly claims.

I’m a little bit skeptical by nature, so when someone tells me that I’ll never have a better cup, I tend to not believe him. Still, I’m open to trying new things, so I plan to try roasting a batch or two for myself someday. Since Mr. Green Beans is where he gets his beans, and since I was in the neighborhood, I decided to stop in at the store and ask a few questions about roasting at home.

A short conversation with the owner, Mr. Green Bean himself (Trevin Miller), convinced me that I wasn’t quite ready to try roasting my own coffee. I asked him if it was a good idea to roast coffee if you don’t have a vent hood in your kitchen. He said probably not and told me that a better place to roast is outside (using a popcorn popper and an extension cord), because roasting creates a lot of smoke. There are home roasters that have built-in smoke reducers, but those are pretty expensive if you’re not convinced home-roasted coffee is the best ever. Since our kitchen has no vent fan and we don’t really have a good outside space either, I decided to wait until we move to another place before trying the DIY roasting. Being responsible for a barrage of Portland Fire Department trucks descending upon our apartment building is not something I want.

I thanked Mr. Green Bean for his advice and left, hoping that my stop in the store would give the rain time to pass. Nope. It was raining even harder when I left the store in route to my train. As you can imagine, when I finally got to the train station, I looked like a wet dog. Water was running off my head and down over my eyes. The rain had soaked through my jacket and I was starting to shiver from the cold. I was grateful that PDX has a good public transportation system. It saved me from a long, miserable walk home.  

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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Keeping it Weird

Two more weird things seen in PDX recently.

First, at PSU:

Not my style, but. . .

And, from Southeast PDX:

Would YOU park there?They don't mess around in Southeast.

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 Fair (PDX)

I took a quick trip up to Coffee Fair this morning at the World Forestry Center. For $8 you could try coffees from ten or twelve different roasters. It was a pretty quiet event compared to last week's Coffee Fest. Many of the roasters were from Portland, but some had come from as far away as Sisters, Oregon and Olympia, Washington.  My favorite coffee from the morning was Nossa Familia's Italian roast, brewed in a French press. It was a sweet and toasty dark roast. For those interested in roasting their own coffee, Mr. Green Beans (Trevin Miller) was there to help you decide which coffee to roast and how to do it. I didn't stick around for too long, and only managed to get a couple pictures worth sharing.

An interesting contraption for cold-brewing coffeeTwo booths were giving out free samples of vacuum pot coffee. If I had only known. . .

The vacuum pot was a popular attraction

The Magic of the Vacuum Pot (My $9 Cup of Coffee)

When you read what I did yesterday, you might want to ask me: Are you f---ing nuts? Believe me, I asked myself that question more than once. What did I do? I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but I spent $9 on a cup of coffee (12oz). No, that’s not a misprint. I promised a reader (Jake) that I would write about the vacuum pot, or siphon method of brewing coffee. I knew that Barista in the Pearl District had them, so I went there on a mission—seek out a vacuum pot and report on its mysterious powers. Then I got there and saw the price. It almost made me cry, but I had made a promise. . .

What is so special about the siphon brewing method? Well, for one thing, it’s great coffee theater.  A vacuum pot looks cool—almost space-aged, even though it has been around for nearly 150 years! You don’t see them in use very much, so when you do get to see one it is worth watching. I stood there captivated as the barista prepared my precious coffee, an Ethiopia Sidama from Intelligentsia.

This is how the siphon method works: First, the barista measures out the correct amount of water into the lower bulb of the vacuum pot. The bulb is then placed over a heat source. It could be a flame or a hot plate, but at Barista, they have specially-designed heat lamps that heat the water (it looks cooler that way). While the water is heating, the barista then measures out and grinds the proper amount of coffee, setting it aside until the water is ready.

Warming up

When the water begins to boil, steam travels up a tube, condensing back into water as it travels upward. When it reaches the bowl on top, the water is about 202 F, just the right temperature for coffee extraction. When nearly all the water has reached the bowl, the barista adds the ground coffee and stirs it, making sure that the all of the grounds are in contact with the water. While the extraction is taking place, the small amount of water in the bottom bulb continues to rise into the extraction chamber, helping maintain a constant temperature. The coffee is allowed to brew for two to four minutes, depending on the grind.

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