Roastmaster's Blog

I'm sure you're scrambling to figure out what to buy for certain people on your holiday gift list.  You've probably been googling to see what cool new gifts are out there for people who love coffee, and who doesn't love coffee?  Well, google no more.  I have compiled a list of my TOP 10.  The top 10 things that, if I didn't own the DoubleShot, but I were still me, I would be stoked about getting for Christmas (which makes shopping for ME a lot harder).  Here it is, David Letterman -style: from number 10 to number 1!

10. A DoubleShot gift card. If you just have no idea what to get, but you know they like coffee, get them a gift card. Buy a card in the DoubleShot or buy one online HERE. We can even email you a coupon to send to your favorite coffee drinker so they can buy on our website!

9.  The new DoubleShot Corporate Mastermind Tshirt!  You know your friend loves the DoubleShot.  Get them a shirt so they can let everyone else know.  It's the new design, it's just arrived, and it comes in two colors:  blueberry or split pea soup.

8.  The Thermos Sipp stainless steel travel tumbler is the most popular cup we've ever sold.  They're so popular that it's hard to keep them in stock.  Rightfully so.  All we get is positive feedback from these awesome cups.  They keep coffee hot for hours and hours, they don't leak, they're indestructible, and they come with the stylish DoubleShot logo right there on the side.  This cup has been missing from our shelves for a few days, but the new shipment will be here today.  Order now, or stop in to get one before they all go bye bye again! 

7.  The DoubleShot proprietary coffee travel kit.  I've been using one over the past year, and it's just been a lifesaver on the road.  I got the idea when I was packing for my trip to Tanzania, and it took me a few months after my return to fabricate the missing link to the whole kit:  The Connect3 Adaptor Ring.  This ring, which I construct by hand right here in the DoubleShot basement, makes it possible to screw the Hario Skerton hand grinder directly onto a Nalgene bottle (I prefer this stainless steel version), so you can grind and brew with the H2JO right in the bottle.  Saves tons of space and makes brewing on the road a piece of cake.  See a video of how it all works here:  http://www.doubleshotcoffee.com/products/connect3-adaptor-ring

6.  Gooseneck kettle.  I've been using one of these kettles for so long that whenever I try to make a pourover without it, I remember how much I like my kettle.  Available in electric or stovetop models.

5.  Everything you need to make a pourover (except the kettle).  Get your friend a Hario V60 pourover cone, some filters, and the DoubleShot filter crib to keep the cone filters neatly stacked on your counter, and they'll be in coffee paradise.  This is the method and the equipment I use every day to make my coffee, so you know I think it's good.  There's really no need to own an auto-drip if you're patient enough to make coffee by hand.  It's so much better.  Watch a video of how it works:  http://www.doubleshotcoffee.com/products/hario-v60-dripper

 4.  A burr grinder.  I've often said that, second to great coffee beans, the biggest difference I've ever noticed in my coffee brewing has been in the grinder I'm using.  Anyone using a blade grinder to whirly chop their coffee to smithereens is not getting the most out of their coffee.  A burr grinder uses a set of grinding disks that adjust to grind consistently coarse or fine, depending on your brewing method.  A consistent grind size will change anyone from a coffee drinker into a coffee taster.

3.  Subscription!  Get someone signed up for our automatic coffee shipments.  One pound of coffee will be shipped to them either weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly for 6 or 12 times.  They'll remember you each time a pound of coffee shows up at their door, and they'll thank you every time they see you.  Sign up online and we'll get started shipping whenever you say the word.

2.  Maduro coffee beans plus a MADURO chocolate bar.  This is THE gift for someone who is a coffee and chocolate lover.  The Maduro, an exclusive natural coffee from Colombia (only available at the DoubleShot), is just an amazing coffee, and since we're always trying to push the envelope, we teamed up with a chocolatier to produce a chocolate bar made with Belgian dark chocolate and bits of crushed-up Maduro coffee beans, roasted right here at the DoubleShot roastery.  Satisfy two vices with one awesome gift.

And the number one gift on my list this year is...

1. The Perci Red/Lycello box set.  THIS is the ULTIMATE gift.  The best gift ever.  It's a 2 Barrel Project double wooden box, containing the Perci Red experience and the Lycello experience.  This set is extremely limited and will only be produced as they are ordered, so order yours today.  If you want this before Christmas, you'll have to get it done asap.  My dad has been nice enough to build some more Double-boxes for this awesome gift set, so you still have time to get one, but you should hurry.  The box is solid and beautiful, and the lid is etched with the DoubleShot and 2 Barrel Project logos.  Two Gesha coffees, one washed and one natural, in one box - and each with their own cup!  (If I can't have this, I'll have one of each, Lycello and Perci Red.)

 Happy holidays!

The first time I took a vacation as an adult, I had never really been anywhere besides Illinois, Oklahoma, Louisiana and the couple states in between.  So when it occurred to me to go somewhere, my options seemed limitless.  I eventually settled on Moab, Utah, because I was really into mountain biking and everyone knows that Moab is the "Mecca" of mountain biking.  So I packed up my bike and began this pilgrimage into a vast and mysterious territory.  I had never been in the mountains, nor desert, but I did grow up in farm country much like the scenery during the first 9 hours of my drive.

I didn't do much research about Moab, other than finding it on a map, because Moab is legendary.  Without a naysayer, the mountain bikers who have ridden Moab say it's Mecca, and the people who haven't ridden it either want to or are too scared.  I knew that Moab is in the desert.  So I had this image in my head of a desert.  The desert of Lawrence of Arabia.  Of Captain Riley's "Skeletons on the Sahara" and of my roadtrip to Little Sahara in Northwest Oklahoma during my first year in college.  Of the great, 1,000-foot dunes of Namibia.  And I wondered how people could ride their mountain bikes through sand as deep as a camel's knee, but I never questioned that they did; I just didn't know how yet.  

The drive from Tulsa to Moab is a dogleg north and straight west for hours through wheat fields and sunflower farms.  And then, on the horizon, the Rocky Mountains appear through the haze over Denver.  I camped as soon as the sun set, up on a 4WD road, and I awoke to a mountainside matrix of white trees, which I assumed were aspens.  Needless to say, the next few hours were some of the most amazing miles of my life.  I stopped frequently to look around and take pictures of landscape completely foreign to my corn-fed eyes.  And then the western slope.  And I entered Utah.  

When I turned off I-70 onto Highway 128 and traversed the ledge overlooking the Colorado River, Moab became real to me.  It was no longer a sandy, barren expanse of dunes, but this amazing, ominous land of cliffs and canyons and arches and rock formations of every unimaginable shape.  It became ride-able and beautiful and real, and better than I could've ever imagined.

And honestly, that's the way I feel about Perci Red.  For you, right now, coffee may have a certain Saharan stigma as a bitter, bland, caffeine-saturated eye-opener.  Perci Red will change your mind.  Even if you are a die-hard DoubleShot fan, and you've enjoyed the variety of coffees we offer, from the blackberry notes of our Natural Sidamo to the heavy smoke and herbals of Sumatra Aceh Gold, Perci Red will open your mind to what coffee can be.  It will change your perspective.

Perci Red is a natural Gesha coffee from Ninety Plus Gesha Estates in Volcan, Panama.  It's the sister of our washed Gesha, Lycello.  It has all the amazing flavors of jasmine and lemon and tea and milk chocolate that you tasted in the Lycello, but it has a complex stratus of flavors lingering over that base - black cherry and cranberry and mace.  Layers of complexity are the hallmark of Perci Red, and the aromas are just stunning.

When I visited Panama last January, I was able to taste the fruit of the Gesha trees and watch the coffee pickers carefully selecting only the ripest cherries.  I saw the meticulous nature by which the workers harvested and cared for the coffee.  I made my way to nearby Finca Hartmann, where the coffee was laid out on African raised beds, so the cherries could dry evenly in the sun.  And I experienced the unusual sounds and fragrances and tastes and sights that emanate from the Panamanian rainforest, which all contribute to the terroir of Perci Red.  

The coffee beans are red.  Most unroasted coffee beans are green or bluish-green or yellowish-green, but mostly green.  But the ever-curious instigators of coffee quality at Ninety Plus Coffee decided to separate these beans that mysteriously turned red in processing.  Or maybe they were born red.  And they hand-selected all the red beans from the lot of green ones, creating the coffee we have and hold in such high prestige.  The red ones turned out to be so much more intense and unique and complex from the rest of the lot.  And of the 330 pounds in existence today, we bought 132.  This is the coffee that we have chosen to offer this holiday season.

As part of the 2 Barrel Project, we took this amazing coffee and created an experience around it.  I worked with Tulsa potter, Teresa Rechter, to produce a cup that met my specifications for one that is uniquely suited for drawing out all that Perci Red has to give.  The shape of the cup cradles the Perci Red just right and draws all of its magical aromas into your mouth and nose.  The cup is accompanied by a booklet I wrote that tells all about the origin of Perci Red, and the proper brewing method for the coffee, as well as a food pairing that is just going to rock your world.  All this, with 200 grams of our Perci Red, craft roasted right here at the DoubleShot, held in an amber glass bottle and encased in a custom Perci Red wooden box, build with the tools and vision of Paul McEntire, the creator of the North American Wood Amp.  The Perci Red experience is ready, and you should reserve yours today.  

Buy Perci Red online here:  www.DoubleShotCoffee.com/red

You are invited to our free tasting this Saturday, December 8 at 10:30 a.m. right here at the DoubleShot.  It's open to the public and completely free, so bring your family and friends.  I'll talk about the coffee, show you the goods, and we'll all enjoy a taste of the Perci Red and the food pairing that really amplifies this coffee.

Thanks for being a part of all that we do here at the DoubleShot.  We do it for you, and we hope you enjoy the fruits of our labor this holiday season.  Take some time off.  Take some deep breaths, and retreat from life with a cup of Perci Red.  Happy holidays.

It's raining and about the time the sun would set, but for the storm clouds.  I've opened a window at both ends of the house, so I'm listening to the disjointed pittering and pattering of two different rainfalls in stereo.  Inside, my house is made of hardwoods and leathers and antiques and sticks I brought home from Colorado and I'm currently reclining on a dark chocolate Chesterfield sofa in front of the idle fireplace.  And the whole situation begs for one thing.

I ruminate over my humidor and finally decide on a very nice cigar from Jaime Garcia (that's HY-may).  Every bit of a 66 guage (1 1/32" diameter), this barrel of a cigar smokes cool and flavorful.  But when it's time to perform my pre-smoke ritual of cutting, feeling how moist and tightly wrapped the tobacco is, and tasting the dry-draw, I was surprised to see the tip pre-clipped.  I love my Xikar cutter, and I felt a bit sad it didn't make a showing at tonight's performance.

There's something to the rituals we perform when we partake in things we enjoy, and I can't help thinking these little ceremonies are part of the enjoyment.  I can appreciate the professional cut on the conical cap of this Reserva Especial, giving me the draw Jaime intended when designing this cigar, and I can appreciate the simplicity and sealability of a screw cap on a bottle of Martin Ray Pinot Noir; but I love the part of wine drinking that is cutting the foil and pulling the cork.  And leaving my corkscrew out of the game is poor form.

That's one thing I love about making coffee.  It's not enough to scoop ground coffee into an auto-drip; there's an experience here that is missing.  Like preparing to smoke a cigar or drink wine or have a cocktail (You don't use an auto-cocktail-maker, do you?), preparing to drink coffee has its own set of unique rituals.  The most famous coffee ritual is in Ethiopia.  The ceremony involves roasting, pulverizing, boiling a couple of times, and drinking together.  My coffee ceremony usually involves a hot water dispenser, an electric grinder, a pourover cone, and my special cup.  I enjoy making coffee by hand.  It's simple, whether it be a pourover or presspot or aeropress, or any number of methods available today, and hand-brewing changes coffee from a drink into an experience.  A ritual.  A ceremony.

I grew up going to a church on Wednesday nights and twice on Sundays that sang old hymns and baptized in a pool before the congregation.  We knelt to pray and sat quietly while the minister preached lessons from historical accounts of the Bible.  Evangelists evoked images of fire and brimstone, and camp meeting every summer was held in an open-sided tabernacle where sweat accumulated and flies were attendant.  As I got older, the church modernized and exchanged hymns for prayer choruses, history for funny stories, and kneeling for standing, suits for chambray.  And the rules of the church, the rituals of the church, the ceremonies were exchanged for a book on How to Grow Your Church.  The simple act of kneeling to pray exhibits a reverence that I felt was lost.

That's the reverence and ritual I want to bring to you with coffee.  No kneeling or praying is required, but just taking that extra effort in your coffee-making will make the experience more rewarding.  The coffee will taste better and you'll feel more connected to the process.  Take the time to smell the beans when you open the bag.  To boil some water and then grind the coffee and linger over its fragrances for a moment.  Brewing is a craft.  It's a romantic and simple craft and it will open the door to an enjoyment of coffee you've never experienced.  Your coffee-drinking should be an experience.

The 2 Barrel Project:  micro-lot experiences

We're focusing on that experience even more with a series of super-coffees starting next month.  The DoubleShot Coffee experience for you at home is going to be magnificent with each of these unique micro-lot coffees.  Each one will come to you with accompaniments and tasting notes and brewing instructions that will elevate already-amazing coffees, so you can get the most out of the whole ritual.  Look out for this new series we're calling the 2 Barrel Project*, commencing in a big way with a Gesha from Volcan, Panama.

And in the mean time, pick up a pourover or a presspot or an aeropress at the DoubleShot and add a little ceremony to your coffee time.

* Named for our Jabez Burns 2 barrel sample roaster, where we discover great coffees in 200 gram batches.