Coffeepreneurs: The story behind Water Avenue Coffee

The Portland coffee scene has changed dramatically over the last three years, as several top-notch cafés and roasters have opened their doors. The (mostly) friendly competition between cafés has pushed everyone’s quality standards higher, propelling Portland to the top spot in the country for being able to find great coffee. One of the best of these new coffee companies is Water Avenue Coffee. Located in Portland’s Inner Southeast Industrial District, the shop sells excellent coffees in a setting that welcomes you to the neighborhood.

When you walk into Water Avenue, it is clear a great deal of thought went into designing the café. The shop is spacious, with a hefty wooden bar made of reclaimed Oregon fir wrapping around the shop from front to back. Painted gray walls give the café a mellow, understated ambience. Sturdy cement floors remind you of the building’s industrial past. Behind the coffee bar, the roaster cranks out batches of meticulously roasted coffee, whirring and crackling as it transforms pale green beans into lustrous brown gems.

A wealth of coffee experience behind the bar

Water Avenue has only been open since 2010, but the owners’ coffee experience goes back much further. Bruce Milletto is a Specialty Coffee Association “Coffee Luminary,” well known for a lifetime of work shaping the specialty coffee industry. He founded Bellissimo Coffee Advisors in 1991 and partnered with his son Matt to open the American Barista and Coffee School (ABCS) in 2003.

Matt Milletto, Bruce’s son, grew up around the coffee industry and has worked in coffee steadily for the last twelve years. Since 2003, he has been teaching and training at ABCS, where he serves as vice president. Matt also founded Barista Exchange, a networking site for the coffee industry that has more than 13,000 members.

Brandon Smyth, Water Avenue’s third owner, has been working in coffee for more than a decade and a half. A former roaster for Stumptown, Smyth is the coffee buyer and the head roaster for Water Avenue. He also teaches a roasting class at ABCS.

Matt and Brandon were kind enough to sit down with me to share the story behind the company.

Brandon Smyth, Matt Milletto and Bruce Milletto, the co-owners of Water Avenue Coffee

Click to read more ...

Mid-May Links

A smattering of news from around the coffee world:

Oregon Public Broadcasting has a nice video about the USBC in Portland. In the article, the producer did forget to mention two other PDX baristas who competed, Laila Ghambari (Stumptown) and Tom Pikaart (Water Avenue), so we’ll make sure they get a mention here. If we're being picky, it's Brett Felchner, not Brett Fletcher (edits!).

Leave it to Philly – From a city that boos Santa Claus and throws batteries at its underachieving NFL team, this might not come as a surprise. A man who apparently did not want to pay for his sandwich threw his coffee at the cashier in a Philadelphia doughnut store.

At least he didn’t steal cash and cigarettes too.

It’s up, it’s down, it’s up, it’s way down. Investors holding Green Mountain Coffee Roasters stock have been on a quite a ride over the last year. The company’s stock price went from below $40 to $115 to back down to about $45 at the end of the year. This year has been more of the same. So far, the first five months of the year have brought changes of +19%, +22%, -28%, +4% and -50%, respectively. With K-Cup patents running out this fall, traders aren’t sure what to do. Then again, judging from the last two weeks, maybe they are.

Do you find it hard to carry your coffee around without spilling it? If so, you should probably slow down and keep your eye on the cup. You will be less likely to match the “sloshing frequency” of the coffee with your gait.

One of Japanese eating champion Takeru Kobayashi’s world records is eating 69 hotdogs in ten minutes, so he probably didn’t find his latest stunt too difficult. Kobayashi drinks 42 cups of coffee in about three minutes in a promotional video for Eight O’Clock Coffee.

Fresh-roasted (really fresh) coffee is coming to Detroit. Roasting Plant, the New York coffee company that roasts, grinds and brews coffee on demand is expanding out of the Big Apple and into the Motor City. I question the assertion that it is the “best coffee in Manhattan” but it would be interesting to see how the whole operation works. link

Tension is growing between people who work/study in cafés and those who go there to drink coffee or meet friends.

Torque Coffee Roasters, Vancouver, WA

While Vancouver does not have Portland’s renown for coffee, our northern neighbor has a burgeoning group of cafés and roasters that care about serving you good coffee. Nor’West, River Maiden (and its sister café, Dripster), Paper Tiger (under new management) and Lava Java(technically in Ridgefield) all call the Vancouver area home. Sophisticated Vantuckians do not have to settle for over-roasted, over-syruped coffees unless they choose to.

The scene continues to improve, too. A new shop called Torque Coffee Roasters recently opened downtown, close to the Convention Center. En route to Vancouver for a Monday morning meeting, I left PDX early to check it out. With a little help from my GPS, I found the café without too much trouble.

Pulling up to the slate gray building, a long row of parking meters greeted me (welcome to Vancouver). I don’t like to pay for parking (who does?), but I accept it as a fact of life in most cities. The problem was that Vancouver’s meters are coin-operated, and I didn’t have any spare change. I could take the chance and park without paying, or I could find somewhere else to park.

Hmmm. . . It was a pretty dead morning in the “‘Couve." Who was really going to care if I parked there for an hour without paying?

Click to read more ...

Photos from the 2012 USBC

Here are a few pictures from the 2012 United States Barista Championship (higher-resolution versions of most of them can be found here): 

The USBC competition area early Thursday morning

Everyone was competing for this

The TV crew was ready to stream the USBC live online
Tyler Stevens from Barista opened up the competition

Click to read more ...

Welcome to Portland!

If you are out and about in Portland’s coffee shops the next few days, you might overhear more in-depth coffee conversations than normal. In case you haven’t heard, Portland is hosting the Specialty Coffee Association 2012 Event. The Event, the largest gathering of the year for the specialty coffee industry, consists of a trade show/exposition, a symposium for coffee professionals and the US Barista Championships. It might be the largest collection of coffee nerds ever convened in one place.

Here are a few things you might want to check out during the week.

SCAA Exposition

The Exposition is a huge trade show where you can walk around and be wowed by all things coffee. You’re sure to find lots of interesting demonstrations and all the coffee you can possibly taste in one day.

Details:

• When: Friday and Saturday 11am-5:30pm, Sunday 11am-4:30pm


• Where: Convention Center (map)


• Cost: Three-day pass (includes the trade show, USBC and Expo Lectures) costs $295 for non-SCAA members. One and two-day passes (no lectures) are available for $115 and $185, respectively. You can get more details on tickets here:


• Find out about lectures and other events here.

United States Barista Championship (USBC)

The USBC runs concurrently with the SCAA Event. Fifty-six top baristas from around the United States will be competing over four days for the title of US Barista Champion.

Details:

• Where: Convention Center (map)


• When:
  
  
  
  • Round 1 – Thursday and Friday 9am-5pm
  
  
  • Semi-finals – Saturday 10am-4:30pm
  
  
  • Finals – Sunday 12-3pm
  
  
  • Cost: $10 for a 3-day pass
  
  
  • For more information visit the USBC website, where you can the competition’s rules and regulations, see a full competition schedule and watch a live stream of all competitors.
  
  
  
  

Portland has seven baristas competing in the USBC. Here is their schedule:

• Tyler Stevens, Barista – Thursday 9:15am


• Ann Schneider, Sterling – Thursday 9:34am


• Brett Felchner, Barista – Thursday 12:44pm


• Thomas Pikaart, Water Avenue – Thursday 2:19pm


• Collin Schneider, Sterling – Thursday 2:38pm


• Laila Ghambari, Stumptown – Friday 10:31am


• Devin Chapman, Coava – Saturday 11:33am (automatically qualified for semi-finals as regional champ)

Good luck to all 56 competitors!

Coffeelandia

Another event to put on your calendar is Coffeelandia, a street party hosted by Portland Roasting Coffee, CBI, Boyd’s, World Cup Coffee and others. It should be a rousing event. Coffee people know how to party. Really, they do.

Details:

• When: Friday, April 20 7pm-11pm


• Where: Outside Portland Roasting, Southeast 7^th and Oak (map)


• Cost: Your $10 donation supports Portland Global Initiatives and Global Brigades and their water projects in Honduras.


• Other: Entry comes with three alcoholic drinks, plus live music, dance and karaoke. Coffee drinks will be free.


• This is a 21 and over event, so you'll have to leave the kids at home.


• More details at the Coffeelandia website.

Discover: Lever

Learn about the Astoria Gloria lever espresso machine at Clive Coffee. The event description promises a “hands-on educational experience,” so if you go, you’ll probably get your chance to try your had a pulling a shot or two.

• When: Thursday, April 19 6pm-9pm


• Where: Clive Coffee, 79 Southeast Taylor (map)


• More details at the event’s facebook page.

Coffee Tours

Between the show and the other happenings, you might not have much time to visit PDX cafés, but if you can sneak out for a quick coffee tour, here are a couple itineraries to help streamline your explorations:

• Downtown Power Tour (map): Coffeehouse Northwest -> Barista (Pearl) -> Caffè Umbria -> Courier -> Public Domain -> Spella -> Stumptown (Downtown)


• Eastside Quickie (map): Water Avenue -> Coava -> Heart


• Northern Sips (map): Ristretto (Williams) -> Albina Press -> Barista (Alberta) -> Caffé Vita


• Killingsworth Crawl (map): Red E -> Coffeehouse Five -> Extracto

It should be a great week for coffee lovers. Prepare yourself to hear about more coffee origins, roasting profiles, espresso machines, extraction percentage, barista competitions, grinder technology, etc. than you ever have before. Hopefully, you’ll get a little sun to go with your coffee. Enjoy!

Espresso presentation

It's always nice to receive good service when you visit a café.  This is how the barista served my espreso (at the table, no less!) when I visited the Arbor Lodge yesterday (read about an earlier visit is here). I thought the presentation matched the service. Nice work!

Friday (the 13th) Links

The lines in your favorite cafés might be a little longer next week. Portland is gearing up for the Specialty Coffee Association of America 2012 Event (annual conference) next week.  Thousands of coffee enthusiasts are expected to attend the event, which runs concurrently with the US Barista Championship. Kelly House, from The Oregonian, has a preview.

OregonLive.com (the online partner of The Oregonian) has selected the finalists for its coffee photo contest. The winner gets a $50 Starbucks gift card. I'm rooting for the Case Study picture.

One of the stranger things I’ve seen in a while: A few cafés in Tokyo let you pet rabbits while you drink your coffee. You just can’t make these things up.

Starbucks recently announced its policy favoring “marriage equality”. In response, the National Organization for Marriage, a K-Street lobbying firm based in Washington, D.C., created a “Dump Starbucks” online petition to get people to forego Starbucks until it changes its position. The petition has about 31,000 signatures so far. That’s an average of about 2 people per Starbucks store.

It appears that SBUX customers are not going anywhere, although they might if they knew how good the coffee at their local micro-roaster can be.

The New York Times has a long article about Andrew Rugasira, founder and CEO of Good African Coffee. Rugasira wants to use trade to develop the economies of Africa instead of aid. 

Truth in advertising? In Seoul, South Korea, Dunkin’ Donuts is enhancing its radio ads on commuter buses by having an atomizer spray coffee fragrance on the bus while the spots run. I have two questions. First, is DD really doing this or is it just an internet rumor? Second, would you consider this type of advertising intrusive? I would. Then again, it might be a welcome intrusion if they were spraying something that smells like Ristretto, Sterling or Extracto.

This week, the Huffington Post readers got their chance to hear about how Portland is such a fine place to visit, sharing “10 Things We Love about Portland, Oregon” (coffee was #7). HuffPo editors managed to spell Extracto and Coava correctly, unlike Fox News a couple weeks back.

Smarter Travel, a travel blog, called Spunky Monkey one of America’s Best Coffee Shops. The café certainly has a lot of PDX character.

Seattle techies have come up with a coffee machine that takes orders by text message. 

More cafés should do what a café in Norwich, England did. Baristas will no longer take orders from people talking on cell phones.  If you can’t put your phone down long enough to talk to the person behind the counter, you’ve got a problem.

In a blind taste test, the Huffington Post determined that Starbucks Via Colombia was the best tasting instant coffee. If you bother to click on the link, be sure to read the comments of the people who tried the coffees, especially on the lower-rated ones.