Nor'West Coffee

My quest to find good coffee took me outside the city limits the other day. I traveled up the I-5 corridor from a city who’s catchphrase is “Keep Portland weird!” to a city that likes to say “Keep Vancouver normal.” While the cultures of the two cities are very different, one thing they share (besides the rain) is good coffee. Before any Portlanders reading this get upset, I want to make it clear that I’m not implying the two are coffee equals. So far, Portland has a clear lead. In fact, until the other day I didn’t even know that Vancouver was competitive.

However, yesterday a friend of mine from Vancouver, Tim Downing, introduced me to Nor’West Coffee and I found that there are a few coffee experts in the state to our north as well. Nor’West is a café that has been around for nearly three years. After roasting his own coffee for about seven years, Mike McGinness, the owner, began roasting commercially three years ago under the name Compass Coffee. The company has three retail outlets—one in downtown Vancouver (Compass Coffee), one in North Vancouver (Nor’West) and one in Beaverton (Java Nation) that it acquired three months ago.

Nor'West Coffee

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Extracto

If you happen to be out walking along Northeast Killingsworth Street someday, and the breeze is blowing just right, you might find yourself drawn to a small, white building with red trim and a couple tables out front. From that building, a rich, toasted-sweet aroma pours out onto the street, an aroma so attractive that you cannot help but want to find the source. There is no sign outside to tell you where you are, but you will have just found Extracto, one of Portland’s famous micro roasters.

A humble exterior

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Happy National Coffee Day!

In case you didn’t realize it, today is National Coffee Day here in the US! Apparently, it’s not that famous—I didn’t know about it until 3:30pm. Someone needs to do more to promote it (a Caffeinated PDX project for next year, perhaps?). Had I realized it a little earlier, I would have extended an invitation to have coffee with me at Park Avenue Café today, my treat, as a thanks for reading. I suppose I still could—so if you are downtown tonight and are interested, shoot me an email and we can meet up. The café closes at 8pm, so you’d better let me know soon.

The video below is from a morning news program from Connecticut. They’re telling their viewers about National Coffee Day and about Dunkin’ Donuts’ free coffee giveaway. I’m posting it because it’s kind of funny—as the reporter talks talking about DD’s promotion, all of the video footage is of Starbucks! The big green apron is a marketing MONSTER, even when they don’t mean to be! The company might not have the best coffee that you can buy, but when it comes to being everywhere, no one can touch it!

Coffee Capsules--Sustainable?

One of the things I talked to Brandon about the other day was the issue of sustainability in the coffee industry. I don’t want to try to tackle the entire issue yet—it is a very complex issue and to discuss all of the challenges of making the industry economically, environmentally and socially sustainable would take an entire book—but I would like to start a discussion about a part of the industry that is growing very quickly: single-serve coffee and espresso capsules.

There was an article in the New York Times in early August that featured Green Mountain Coffee and its K-Cups, plastic and tinfoil cups that are designed to make one cup of coffee and then be thrown away. According to the article, Green Mountain will sell nearly three billion of these capsules next year and it expects to sell many more in the future. The single-serve coffee industry has been growing around 30 percent each year for the last decade and industry experts expect this to continue.

The growth of the industry (and its future potential) has caused some battles between firms, as companies try to stake out territory in the single-serve market. Nestlé, one of the pioneers in this technology, recently sued Sara Lee in an effort to protect its market dominance.

Since there is nothing to suggest that the market is going to slow down anytime soon, I want to ask you:

1) Do you ever use any of these single-serve type coffee makers (Nespresso, K-Cups, Illy espresso capsules, etc.) and if so, what kind?

2) How does the coffee compare to what you get at your favorite coffee shop? 

3) What do you think about the impact that the capsules (a majority of which are non-recyclable and non-compostable) have on the environment?

Just curious to know what you might be thinking. . .

Interview with Brandon Arends, a Portland Coffee Enthusiast

In my pursuit of coffee knowledge, I had the most interesting conversation the other day with Brandon Arends, a coffee enthusiast/expert, who is about to get his Master of International Management from Portland State University. In past conversations I’ve had with Brandon, his eyes always lit up whenever the conversation turned to coffee, and I wanted to understand what makes Portland’s coffee so special. Brandon agreed to meet with me and talk about the Portland coffee scene. He told me so much that if one quarter of what we talked about stays with me, I will know more about coffee than 95% of the US population.

We met at Coffeehouse Northwest on Burnside Street in Northwest Portland. When we arrived, I asked Brandon what he usually ordered. He told me that he usually doesn’t go out for coffee because he has a “crazy setup at home”, but when he does, he gets a double cappuccino. Rather, I thought he said a double cappuccino, but he really said a double espresso and a cappuccino. What a way to get going!

Our first stop, Coffeehouse Northwest

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The Rocking Frog

Today’s adventures took me to Belmont Street, where I stumbled across the Rocking Frog Café. With a name like that, I couldn’t resist stopping into see what I might find. On the corner of 25^th Avenue and Belmont, the Rocking Frog occupies an old green house. Go in, hang your coat on the rack and make yourself at home. At least that’s the feeling I got when I walked in. The café looked like someone’s living room that happened to have a coffee bar where the dining area would normally be. A few vintage lamps hung from the ceiling, and there were books everywhere—on either side of the old fireplace, on shelves next to the fridge and in the alcove that acted as the library, where I sat.

Rock it

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Interested in cupping? Come cup with me!

In order to understand coffee better, I would like to learn how to taste it properly. When I worked for Starbucks a few years ago, I learned some about “cupping” (tasting, in coffee lingo), but I never was able to become an expert at the art. Looking for ideas to improve my coffee skills, I looked around for ways to learn about coffee tasting. In the September issue of MIX magazine, a monthly publication that covers Portland’s food and drink scene, I ran across an article on how to brew great coffee at home. The article surveyed some of the best baristas in town to find out their secrets for making a cup of coffee that people rave about.

One of the sidebars in the article gave some suggestions on where to go to learn the secrets of the pros. One of the tips was that Stumptown gives free cuppings every day at 12pm and at 2pm at the Annex, a tasting room located right next door to the Stumptown Café on Belmont Street in Southeast.

The Annex

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