A Taste of Seattle

I was able to sneak out of Coffee Fest last weekend for a few minutes to check out a couple Seattle coffee shops. My first stop was Seattle Coffee Works. Located near Pike Place Market and across the street from the first Starbucks café, Seattle Coffee Works catches your eye with its distinctive sign outside and then it catches your taste buds with its interesting coffees. The café has an espresso bar and a “Slow Bar” for those who are interested in a pour-over or vacuum pot of coffee. A blend of Brazilian and Indonesian beans were “on grind”  along with a direct trade single-origin Guatemala (or El Salvador?).

Seattle Coffee Works

My second stop was Stella (not to be confused with Spella in Portland). I had been told that Stella has a 100% Robusta espresso blend that is the best in the city. Unfortunately, I went there about 5pm and—take note other late-afternoon coffee drinkers—Stella closes down its espresso bar at 4pm. The barista told me to come back Saturday after 10am.

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Coffee Fest Recap Part 2

In addition to the exhibitions, Coffee Fest also offered several free classes (and some paid ones) to help people improve their businesses and increase their coffee knowledge. Because I am one of those people who liked school, and because they were free, I decided to attend the Saturday morning classes. I had to get up at 6:15 to get there on time Fortunately, it was a beautiful clear, crisp morning and the walk to the bus stop was invigorating. The bus from Everett dropped me off a block from the convention center about twenty minutes before my first class started (Side note: Seattle’s public transportation, although primarily buses, is better than its reputation).

The street lights were still on when I got to the convention center

My first class, “How to Effectively Compete with National brands,” was taught by Sol Salzer, one of the owners of the City Bean Coffee in Los Angeles. The first thing he did was to thank Starbucks and the other national chains (Peet’s, Gloria Jean’s, Coffee Bean, etc.) for raising the standards of the coffee industry. Then he spent the next hour talking about how to beat them. He used Starbucks as his main example, telling the story of how he used the Starbucks that moved in across the street to help grow his business. Starbucks brought many customers to the neighborhood, and City Bean was able to capture some of that traffic by effectively targeting them.

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Brown Scent?

My friend Jennie, an MIM grad who lives in Korea and writes the blog Not Just Kimchi, sent this to me yesterday. It’s the picture of a coffee shop in Seoul. Interesting name, don’t you think? 

I doubt if Howard Schultz is going to try to steal their marketing manager

Coffee Fest Recap Part 1

If you’ve read my last couple posts, you know that I spent this past weekend at Coffee Fest in Seattle. One of the reasons I wanted to go to the show was to see the city itself. It had been a long time (8 years or so) since I visited the Emerald City, and I had forgotten how much bigger Seattle is. Seattle’s downtown area has a lot more people and quite a bit more traffic.

Like Portland, Seattle has a reputation for being rainy, but when the sun is out (as it was on Friday afternoon), it is a beautiful city. On a clear day you can see the Olympic Mountains to the West and Mount Rainier to the East. Located on Puget Sound, Seattle has a number of inlets and lakes that carve up the city.

Nothing but blue sky, at least for one day

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Quick Hits from Coffee Fest-Day 1

A few observations from the first day of Coffee Fest:

1. Smaller companies tend to be more interested in talking to a writer who doesn’t work for a major publication than some of the larger, more established companies. Not always, but it’s the impression I get.
2. There are coffee nerds from all over the world.
3. The Carraro booth is a good place to practice your Italian.
4. Cherry cupcake is not a flavor I would recommend for a smoothie.
5. If there were a competition for “Sexiest Espresso Machine,” Nuova Simonelli would win, hands down.
6. If you want to be popular at a coffee trade show, bring your espresso bar and give away free drinks. People like chocolate too.
7. If you don’t want to be popular, bring a selection of wooden stirrer sticks. The guys at that booth looked really bored.
8. If you tell someone you work for Caffeinated PDX, they say “Oh!” and nod politely.
9. The worst location for an exhibitor is the booth opposite the flashing LED sign exhibit. The guy working there probably has “Open” burned onto his retinas by now.
10. Not everyone who works a booth needs to be extrovert, but they ought to at least be able to maintain a conversation.
11. People can get excited about anything if they try hard enough. I got into a very engaging conversation with a woman about the effectiveness of single-direction de-gassing valves in barrier-type coffee bags. Go figure.
12. My kids don’t know it yet, but it looks like they’re getting coffee swag for Christmas this year.

I’m starting off day two with an 8am class on “How to effectively compete with larger chains.” It better be good—I got up at 6:15 on a Saturday to get here.

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Coffee Fest

Road trip! This weekend I am headed up to Seattle for Coffee Fest. Coffee fest is a trade show that combines educational activities, networking opportunities and new product demonstrations. I plan to attend some classes, meet some people, see what’s new for 2011 and drink lots of coffee. When I’m not at the show, I plan to explore Seattle a little bit and check out some of the Emerald City’s better cafés. Right now, I have a list of seven places that people have recommended. Hopefully there will be time to see them all! I’ll be posting updates on Twitter (@CaffeinatedPDX) throughout my time in Seattle and will share the stories that I just can’t fit into 140 characters here at caffeinatedpdx.com. It’s going to be a fun trip and I look forward to telling you all about it.

Coffee Fair

Next weekend (November 6-7) is the Coffee Fair at the World Forestry Center in Portland. It is an opportunity to check out several local roasters’ coffees without traveling all over town to do so. The fair is open from 10am-3pm each day and there will be tastings and demonstrations of various brewing techniques. I’ve never attended the event, so if any of you know what is a can’t-miss event at the fair, please share it with all of us. If you see me be sure to say hello!

Chasing the Black Cat (Red E Café)

In multiple conversations with people around Portland, I have been told that one of the best espresso blends on the market is Black Cat—an espresso blend from Chicago-based Intelligentsia. In hushed tones, people discretely tell me that it might be better than Stumptown’s Hair Bender blend. It can be hard for a Portlander to admit that there is an outsider’s coffee that beats the hometown hero, but many do say they love Black Cat.

Since I heard about it so much, I knew I had to try it. The trouble was that Intelligentsia doesn’t have a café in Portland, at least not under its own name, so Black Cat is hard to find. Asking around, I was told that Crema used to have it, Barista has it some of the time and that Red E is the only café in town that consistently carries it. I hadn’t been able to make it to Red E yet, and  my Black Cat dreams kept getting stronger and stronger until I finally went to North Killingsworth to find the Red E and its magical brew.

Ready for the Red E

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