Roastmaster's Blog

I spent last weekend in San Francisco with my girlfriend.  We visited with some nice people and spent time coffeeshop-hopping:  Four Barrel, Sightglass, Ritual, Blue Bottle, Stanza, Reveille, and even peeked through the windows of the supposed Intelligentsia store in Potrero.  We wandered into Dandelion Chocolate on Valencia, and Beer Revolution in Oakland.  Ate a donut at Dynamo on the water's edge, relaxing with the slosh of water against sailboat hulls, and enjoying the classic Golden Gate vista.  I had a romantic cocktail with my sweetheart in the Top of the Mark, overlooking the lion's share of the city.  We rode the ferry, the train, BART, we walked, we ran, and we dilly-dallied a little.  It was a great trip.  Fun and full of new experiences, new sights and sounds, and it was nice to talk to other people in the coffee industry again, to see what's happening in the Bay. 

Change is inevitable, but whether you steer the direction of the change or not, is up to each of us.  I came back from San Francisco mentally refreshed and inspired, with new ideas and a little extra energy to work on my ideas that are already in the works.  So hopefully the changes you see along our journey will be progress and innovation, serving our customers better and continuing to enjoy unique coffees in creative ways.

Next month I'll be visiting the Hartmann's in the Volcan region of Panama, from where our Ojo de Agua was grown.  We'll actually be staying in a cabin at the Ojo de Agua farm, way out in the forest without any electricity.  For a couple of days, we'll hike through the coffee trees and forested land adacent to La Amistad International Park, making our way to the farmhouse where we can taste more coffees.  The result of my trip to Panama last year is the coffee we're drinking today at the DoubleShot:  Hartmann Honey.  The coffee is outstanding.

This coming Monday afternoon, I'm going to roast the first batch of another, very small lot of coffee called Hartmann Natural.  It's also from Finca Hartmann:  the same coffee, but different processing.  Honey processing (as in, Hartmann Honey) is one in which the cherries are picked ripe, the skins are stripped from the coffee berry, and the coffee beans are laid out to dry on raised beds with mucilage still intact.  After the coffee is dried in the sun, the mill strips off the dried mucilage and parchment, leaving the raw, green coffee beans for me to roast here at the DoubleShot. 

The Hartmann Natural is a dry-processed coffee.  The coffee cherries are again picked ripe, maybe on the same day, from the same trees.  But then they are spread out on the raised beds to dry whole - skins, mucilage, parchment, everything unaltered.  Once the cherries shrivel into a tasty, sweet coffee raisin, the mill strips them down to the coffee bean nubbins.  And I roast them to perfection.

Do the coffee beans look different?  They do.  In fact, the Hartmann Honey is a bit more yellow, and is stained with the golden-brown of dried mucilage, whereas the Hartmann Natural is a slightly varied mix of green-yellow (or is it yellow-green?).  And the fragrances emanating from the grain pro bags encasing each of the two coffees is really amazing and distinct, from sour fruit to grass and fermented grains.  And that difference, like twins raised in two different cultures, carries over into the roasted bean and into your cup.  It's another really interesting study in the effect of processing on coffees. 

On Friday, I'm making the trip to Panama again to get a feel for the lay of the land and to taste coffee at Palo Verde under the canopy of ancient rainforest, to experience the culture and connect with the growers.  What a contrast this trip will be from the hustle and bustle of San Francisco, but it's the journey to the source of coffee that allows us to push the envelope and serve coffees that are as good as any you'll find anywhere else in the world. 

As soon as I return, we are having another Coffee Illuminati event to taste the contrast of these two amazing coffees: Hartmann Honey and Hartmann Natural.  The event will be held on Saturday, February 16 at 10a here at the DoubleShot.  I'll talk a little about my trip to the Hartmann farm and about the coffees, and you'll get a chance to see and taste the differences and similarities side-by-side.  This is an event you don't want to miss.  As a fundraiser for the Coffee Illuminati [a 501(c)(3)], your $10 donation would be greatly appreciated.  We use these proceeds to support children and families of coffee farmers.  For more information about the Coffee Illuminati, check out www.CoffeeIlluminati.com and for more info about the tasting, read CoffeeIlluminati.blogspot.com.

Put that on your calendar, and then go check out our new Hartmann Natural.  Buy it now and we'll ship it to you right after I roast it Monday night.  Want to do a comparison tasting right in your kitchen?  Get the Hartmann Dubbel, available online now in half pounds or full pounds.  It's like San Francisco all wrapped up in Panamanian rainforest, right here in Flyover Country.

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.

I turned off the air conditioner in my house five days ago.  Yesterday the temperature crept up into the nineties outside, and in my house, the insulation I so fervently felt I needed made sure to keep that thermal energy from escaping.  And so here I sit, sweating beneath the impotent, oscillating ceiling fans.  My body radiates in a futile attempt to generate a moisture barrier to cool my skin through evaporation, adding to the haze of humidity that permeates my lungs like second-hand smoke in a crowded bar.  I pick up where I left off on a dog-eared page of Out of Africa, hoping Karen Blixen will carry me off to a place where the heat seems justified.  And where I might crawl into bed under a translucent net to keep from the mosquitoes that so debilitated Henry Morton Stanley on his long trek across Tanganyika in search of Dr. Livingstone.

My legs are tired because my lungs don't work right because of this damned air conditioner.  And because I rode my bicycle 68 miles yesterday.  A twinge of pain in my knee.  And in my ankle, where I turned it on a rubber tire trying to reenact my youthful and more agile days of high school football.  And a scene drifts across my mind, as if a movie projected on the shadowy ceiling silhouetted by the outline of deer antlers, of Hemingway's gangrene-addled invalid adventurer in the Snows of Kilimanjaro.  

I've just finished another AA Cafe podcast, and I can still feel the hike and conversation with Steve Holt of Ninety Plus Gesha Estates on the farm, in the mountains, surrounded by rainforest, sweating in the unbroken rays of the midday sun.  Steve brings us up the mountain and around the largest Gesha farm in the world, describing the coffees of Panama; and across the Atlantic Ocean, across the dark continent, to the origin of coffee and of Ninety Plus to tease us with tastes of what's to come from Ethiopia this year.

Ethiopia is having a good year for coffee, and we hope to gather a nice crop from a variety of regions and processes (or of the influence of fruit, as Steve Holt defines it).  The newest of our Ethiopian coffees is from the Harrar region.  It's called Deep Blue, and it is a dry-processed coffee, which means the fruit had a large influence on the taste of the coffee.  This Harrar Deep Blue is a product of many very small farmers, who picked the coffee cherries when they ripened and laid them whole on mats and cement patios to dry and shrivel into coffee raisins in the high-elevation equatorial sun.  The coffee, from its terroir and its unique varieties and the weather that allowed the coffee to dry properly at each farmer's home, blends together to give us brilliant flavors of chocolate and blueberries and cinnamon.  So good.

Reminds me of an experiment we did back a couple years ago in Colombia, at the farm of Las Animas, where we asked Gabriel and Orfilia Escobar to let the fruit influence their coffee.  And I remember my visit last year to Concordia, when I rode in the back seat of a pickup truck over dirt roads, winding through coffee trees with no leaves bearing immature green fruit that would never ripen because of a fungus called the Eye of the Rooster.  We rolled up to Finca San Rafael, where Alfredo Correa tends his grandmother's coffee and has produced such an amazing product for us in the past, but instead of picking or milling or sorting coffee like Alfredo usually is during the harvest, we found him working on his motorcycle.  The Eye of the Rooster took 95% of Alfredo's crop and the sweat of all his years of toil dried up on the mountainside and was replaced with the sweat of a young man with almost nothing to show and no way to pay.  Somehow Alfredo produced one bag of super-high-end coffee this year that rivals the best washed coffees we've offered, and we have that bag.  It's a great example of fruit influence in a washed coffee.

I've just finished a cup and washed it down with a rinse of water and the taste instantly transported me to another sweaty time in college, working for my dad.  He is adamant that it must be hot inside in order to lay commercial floor covering, and so we worked on dirty concrete floors with scratchy carpets and heavy ceramic.  And all day long, we drank coffee out of the little metal-covered plastic lid that screws on the top of my dad's beat-up green metal thermos, on our breaks and in between our breaks; and when we needed some water, we would fill up that empty cup and the residual coffee would lend a distinct, mild, flavor to the water.  And the residual coffee in my mouth lent a coffee taste to everything.

The "coffee taste" can't be so easily generalized or genericized any more, as the variety of DoubleShot Coffees spans a breadth of flavors broader than all the Scotch of Scotland.  And even one coffee can become three (like the Holy Trinity) when extracted through different methods.  We are going to do just that.  One coffee, three brewing methods.  On June 28 at 7p here at the DoubleShot, we will premier Alfredo Correa's Colombia Finca San Rafael through pourovers, presspots, and espressos.  Three different stations will allow you to learn the method, pose questions of the barista, and enjoy the unique flavors that permeate each cup.  Alfredo's coffee has depth that is best explored through different types of extraction.

This event is brought to you by Coffee Illuminati, and proceeds will be used to build a swingset for the children at Ninety Plus Gesha Estates.  You can register for this event at the DoubleShot by talking to your barista or by emailing info@coffeeilluminati.com