Roastmaster's Blog
Kemgin
Well, the holidays are upon us once again. And as usual, we have pulled out all the stops to bring you some amazing coffees during your holiday celebrations. This Wednesday night marks the beginning of Hanukkah, and Thursday is Thanksgiving, so right now is the opportune moment to purchase the first of these brilliant coffees.
Kemgin is a very high-end coffee from Ethiopia that we procured through Ninety Plus, who have brought us so many exquisite coffees throughout the years. We offered the Kemgin a couple of years ago, and it was a big hit then, so we've brought it back for another go-around. This is a coffee that has been celebrated by coffee reviewers and professional tasters, as well as winning top coffee at the Good Food Awards.
Because of the region where it is grown, the care with which it is picked, and the clean processing and sorting of Kemgin, it achieves some of the flavors that make coffees stand out as the best coffees in the world. Aromas of jasmine and lemon lead off, and as you taste the coffee, nuances of black tea and orange excite your palate, with a long, silky finish with highlights of pine. Perfect for the holiday season.
Because we care about your coffee experiences at home, we came up with two food pairings we think accentuate the coffee in different ways. Obviously you'll want to drink Kemgin by itself, but having just the right thing to go with it for breakfast and dessert makes the coffee all the more pleasurable. Follow these recipes for our Cranberry-Orange Muffins and Blackberry Cobbler.
Cranberry Orange Muffins (courtesy of our baker, Kristin Hoffman)
1 orange (including peel), quartered with seeds removed
1/2 Cup orange juice (juice of 1 orange)
1 egg
1/2 Cup butter, melted
1-3/4 Cup all-purpose flour
3/4 Cup white sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 Cup dried or 1 Cup frozen cranberries
Preheat oven to 400ºF and prepare 12 muffin cups with spray or paper liners. Puree orange quarters and orange juice in a food processor or blender. Add egg and melted butter to orange puree and blend until smooth. Sift dry ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl, then add orange mixture and combine. Stir in cranberries. Fill muffin cups with batter. Bake 20 minutes.
These tend to bring out the black tea flavors in the Kemgin, as well as some soft vanilla flavors that really make this pairing meld together.
Blackberry Cobbler (courtesy of my mom, Millie Franklin)
3 Cups frozen blackberries (do not thaw)
1 large pear, halved, cored, thinly sliced
2/3 Cup sugar
3 T orange juice
2 tsp orange zest
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Gently toss all ingredients together. Pour into buttered pan.
1 Cup flour
1 Cup sugar
Dash salt
1 Stick butter
Vanilla & Almond extracts (to taste)
Mix sugar, flour, salt, and sugar in food processor with butter until crumbly. Add vanilla and almond extracts and pulse again. Pour over fruit and bake 350 degrees until brown and bubbly (45-50 minutes).
The pears in this cobbler really smooth out the acidity in the blackberries, and the whole thing brings out the citrusy aspect of the Kemgin, and the cinnamon really carries forward through the coffee to make for a unified experience.
Both of these recipes are just unbelievably good, and I highly suggest you give them both a try while you have Kemgin in hand. And it's not going to last long, so buy some today!
Johanna Showman
Changes
My college football coach, who we called "Big Red", would remind his players on a regular basis, "Every day, you either get better or you get worse; you never stay the same." I've remembered that through the years, and found it to be true about everything. Nothing stays the same. In fact, it's virtually impossible to do something twice in exactly the same way, and it's especially improbable that you'll ever attain exactly the same outcome twice.
In my younger years, I listened to and read a lot of motivational leadership books and speeches, and it's really shaped not only who I am, but the way in which I believe. Not just what I believe. But there was a guy named Zig Ziglar, who I used to get a kick out of, and he was full of sayings about this and that. One of the things I remember him saying, in the course of convincing his listeners to change the way they do things, is that "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." I've since heard other people say this, and I couldn't disagree more. To me, it's not insanity, but it is lunacy (is there a difference?) to think that you could do the same thing over and over again and get the SAME result. Things just don't happen like that. But I do agree with Zig (and so many others) about the idea that you should institute your own change. Change your mind, change your actions, change your outcomes.
And that's what we strive to do here at the DoubleShot. I know we're not going to pull the exact same shot of espresso twice. I know that we're not going to brew the exact same cup of coffee twice. I have no doubt that your experiences here are different every single day. And I'm ok with that. Since change is inevitable, I feel that it is our duty to try and get BETTER every day.
With that in mind, we've been working on three different projects in an attempt to brew better coffee.
When we opened the DoubleShot in 2004, it was very important to me that we have great drip coffee, even though I couldn't afford to invest in a high-end machine. So we brewed through your standard commercial brewer, and in order to make the coffee taste extra good, we also brewed a french press of the coffee, and added it to the airpot. (Interestingly, as a side note, I found that most coffee, when dispensed through an airpot, aerates as it comes out and has bubbles on top; but coffee brewed with a french press will not aerate. You cannot aerate french press coffee for some reason. Maybe because of the heavy oil concentration.) The second phase of our coffee brewing came when I finally upgraded to a Fetco brewer. The brewed coffee was markedly better, and the need to add a french press to the pot was negated. We suddenly had so much more control over the brewing variables, and a large shower head that saturated the entire bed of coffee grounds in the basket. For around 8 years we used that brewer, switching about a year ago from 85 ounce airpots to 1 gallon dispensers. But our volume has actually long outgrown it. And so it was that last Friday we installed a new, larger Fetco coffee brewer. With new control and sensitivity, we began to experiment with all the brewing variables, changing the brew time, the water temperature, water volume, coffee grind coarseness and weight, and pre-wet volume and time (This is the period at the beginning of a brew cycle when the Fetco dispenses hot water onto the dry coffee grounds, saturating the bed, and then pausing to let it bloom before commencing with the brew cycle.). These variables, working in tandem, each change the coffee in some way, and when they are all put together right, the coffee produced can be really good. And, well, after a lot of trial and some minor palate burn-out, we are currently satisfied with the results. I know you're going to love the new recipe, so be sure and come by for a cup soon. (Incidentally, if you'd like to buy our smaller Fetco brewer, it's currently listed for sale on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/sch/franklin527/m.html
The other things we've been working on here at the DS are akin to building a better mouse trap. As an exercise in creativity and brewing science, I asked all of the baristas to come up with an idea for a new brewing method. The future of coffee brewing. How will we be brewing coffee in 5 years? As you can imagine, the results were interesting and sometimes a bit amusing. I recorded a podcast about it, which you can hear at aacafe.org. If you've never listened to our podcast, you should go check it out. I started it in July 2005, though some of the earlier episodes are no longer available, and you should thank me for that. Since its inception, the podcast content and format have gone through more changes than the… well, suffice it to say, if you don't like it, just wait til the next episode; it will change. Mark Brown, former editor at This Land magazine, and author of Argentfork, is my cohost for the podcast. We talk about coffee, but mostly we talk around coffee. Take a listen sometime, and pass it on.
Our other mission is concerning how you make coffee at home. Or on the road. Over the years, we've worked hard to find the best products for home coffee brewing, and we offer those in the store and on our website. The baristas are all well-versed in different brewing techniques and are happy to help you figure out what best suits your situation. Soon we will publish our own manual for various brewing techniques, in a pocket-sized booklet that you'll want to buy and keep handy when making coffee.
Some of our efforts through the years have resulted in unique products for your home, such as the V60 Filter Crib (check out the new, updated version). And some have been about making coffee during travel, like the CONNECT3 Adaptor Ring (now available as a complete set!).
But what about making it easier to brew coffee at home without investing a lot of money in equipment? That's our next assignment. If you listen to the TED talks, or are part of the "maker" community, you know that things are trending toward simplicity, sometimes through extremely technologically-advanced machines, like 3D printers and the like. I'm interested in open-source, simple to construct coffee brewing devices. I'm both interested in something you could print with a 3d printer, as well as something you could adapt from things around your house in order to make a great cup of coffee. Hopefully someday there will be so many ideas about ways to make coffee that the only reason you could have, no matter where you are, for not making coffee, would be if you didn't have any fresh-roasted DoubleShot Coffee beans. Stay tuned for these ideas as we develop them over the next few months.
Lastly, I have some good news and some bad news. The Ethiopia Natural Sidamo Korate is all gone (though watch for the commemorative tshirt). This coffee has been a huge favorite around here with employees and customers alike. But this is how things go with coffee. Out with last year's favorite and in with the new favorite. Tonight I'll roast the inaugural batch of a new natural Sidamo called Adem Chilcho. This coffee is different from the Korate, but absolutely delicious. It's grown in the Sidamo region of Ethiopia, near a town called Dilla. Three indigenous groups took part in growing this coffee on small plots, and then the coffee was dried in the sun on raised beds before it was cleaned and sorted and made ready for me to roast it. Read more about it here: http://www.doubleshotcoffee.com/products/ethiopia-natural-sidamo-adem-chilcho
And BTW, if you've been trying to come in the wrong door for the past three years, you're in luck; I finally built and installed a sign over the café!
Just add hot water
Last weekend, just prior to the inception of this new calendar season, but after the much-appreciated arrival of Daylight Savings Time, I took my girlfriend down to the Ouachita (WA-chi-ta) Mountains for a night of car camping and an overnight backpacking trip over the spine of the range. We drove into Cedar Lake National Recreation Area, where no one seemed to be around, and so we stopped to look at the campground map. A ranger stopped and asked us if we needed something, and when we told him we were camping, he looked at his clipboard and said he didn't know if any of the campsites were open. He told us campsite #57 was available, oh, no, that one is reserved. Well, it looks like we have one available - number 68. Right next to another occupied campsite, in an almost-entirely vacant campground. Besides our two camps, there were maybe two other campers in the campground. I suspect this ranger doesn't like people camping in his recreation area. (Subsequently, a friend called to reserve a campsite at Cedar Lake, and was told that nothing was availble. Hogwash. Maybe they're running a covert moonshine business out of there.)
We pitched our tent and gathered a pile of decaying limbs and branches from the forest floor near our camp. With this, I made a campfire while Julie fired up the backpacking stove to cook some sausage links and ramen noodles, complimented nicely by a plastic cup or two of Eco Vino Helibiker Red.
1 pkg Chicken flavored Ramen Noodles
4 breakfast links
Cook breakfast links in skillet. Boil water. Remove from heat and insert brick of ramen noodles plus cooked sausage links. When ramen is tender and enlarged, strain water. Add flavoring packet. Stir. Eat. Pair with appropriate wine.
And after a couple of smores for dessert, we went to bag inside the airy tent. The weather was so nice that I saw no reason to use the rain fly, and as we laid our heads on wadded up shirts and pants, we could see through the tent mesh a legion of stars in the night sky. Camped in the midst of a pine forest, which is unusual in Oklahoma, the tall, straight trees swayed in ebbs and gusts of wind that howled through crowns and jingled a trillion needles.
Morning came as the wind receded, as if the earth spins faster in the dark. I built a new campfire to take the edge off the morning chill, and Julie prepared the rest of our sausage links and some scrambled eggs. Camp coffee has been an ever-changing ritual for me through the years, and though I always have DoubleShot Coffee, my methods have traversed many genres. I've crushed coffee beans in a plastic bowl with the back of a screwdriver, which is no easy task. I've pulverized coffee beans wrapped in a tshirt using a large rock, which works surprisingly good and I'd recommend it if you're ever in a pinch. I've made pourovers using a bandana or a paper towel as a filter. I've steeped, I've french pressed, and I've even tried to make coffee from cold stream water when minimalist backpacking.
Give a frontiersman coffee and tobacco, and he will endure any privation, suffer any hardship, but let him be without these two necessaries of the woods, and he becomes irresolute and murmuring.
~U.S. Army Lt. William Whiting, 1849
But now I have a system that I really like, and we take it with us everywhere we travel. It's compact, light, and easy to use, and it's only possible because of an invention created right here at the DoubleShot.
So I retrieved some Yirgacheffe out of the car, along with my Coffee Travel Kit. I've pre-measured 60 grams of coffee in the hopper of my Hario Skerton Grinder and sharpied a line, up to which I filled the grinder with Yirgacheffe. I filled our cooking pot with the water from my stainless steel GSI Infinity bottle (which is the same size, but much better for making coffee than a plastic Nalgene bottle because it is easier to clean and retains less funky coffee taste). Using the Connect3 Adaptor Ring, I screwed the grinder onto my stainless bottle, and ground the coffee while the stove brought the water to a boil. Detaching the grinder and ring, Julie and I enjoyed the delicious, floral fragrances of vanilla and citrus emanating from the Yirgacheffe. And then I twisted the GSI H2JO filter onto the bottle and filled it with the hot water. After four minutes, the coffee was ready, and I poured us each a dose into our multi-purpose coffee/wine cups to enjoy with breakfast.
After breakfast, as the fire was dwindling, we struck camp and spread all our gear on the picnic table to load our packs with everything we'd need for the rest of the day and night and the following day. And then we set out on a trail through the pines toward Horsethief Springs.
I'd never spent any time in these woods. So I didn't know what we would encounter. But I do know that this area is home to Black Bears and Copperheads and some say the North American Wood Ape resides here. It's been years since I last went backpacking and it showed. My pack felt heavy and my hips hurt. But we trudged on and after a couple of miles passed under my borrowed boots, everything started to feel better. The pines shortened and mixed with oaks and other deciduous trees, and our trail wended its way along ridges and gullies, climbing up to the Ouachita National Recreation Trail.
Horsethief Springs probably used to be a big deal, since water can be scarce in these hills. (We pretended to follow the horse hoof prints toward the springs, because that was where the horse thieves congregated.) But, to our disappointment, when we reached this exciting landmark, it turned out to be a CCC-built rock pool with a few inches of water in the bottom, covered in green moss, and it looked like a cesspool for all the things we were trying not to drink. And there was not even a trace of any horse thieves to be found. We started with a gallon of water between us, and by this time we were down to about a quart, and feeling a little thirsty. Since it was only mid-afternoon, we decided to head down the other side of the mountain toward Billy Creek, hoping to find water somewhere along the trail. Though the land fell away to either side of our path, which was a narrow way amidst a thick forest of 3-foot tall baby pines, the land seemed dry and we weren't crossing any waterways. Looking off to our east, the gully appeared dry. But once the trail opened up a bit on the hillside, I decided to drop my pack and head down the western slope in search of water. And though it wasn't much, I found a small stream flowing down the mountain parallel to our trail. This is where we decided to camp.
Foot-tall stout grass and crunchy leaves made our tent-site a little scratchy, but once we cut out most of the roots and shoots, it felt nice enough. I wandered the hillside looking for flat rocks to make a place for us to sit down and to cook on. We hadn't seen much wildlife up to this point, except for some circling hawks and a few squirrels, but out there under every rock it seemed I would find something different and interesting. Maggots, termites, ants, spiders, a centipede; ticks found there way onto our legs, looking for dinner.
Dinner-time for us brought more Eco Vino wine and a spicy, rice-based backpacking meal and some cookies. We camped without a fire because the place seemed especially well-suited for a forest fire, and we didn't want to take any chances. We filled all of our bottles with purified stream water and hung our food from a high branch in a tree and climbed in the tent. This night was as calm as the last one was windy. It was unusually quiet. There was not even the sound of crickets, nothing. So in the middle of the night when something was walking through the woods near by, crunching leaves, it was the only sound to be heard. It was like one of those movies where you hear footsteps in the dark and they're coming closer and closer. I shined my flashlight out the tent screen, but I couldn't see anything. I've been fooled by this before, and so I knew it was just an armadillo wandering through the leaves looking for whatever it is armadillos eat. Probably all the things I found under those rocks. No bigfoot, and no bear.
Next morning, we made french toast, a first for me on the trail. I repeated the coffee ceremony and we drank some more delicious Yirgacheffe made with stream water. And then we struck camp once again, repacked our bags and hiked back over the mountain.
If you're a backpacker or a camper or just a traveler, I recommend the coffee travel kit that I've put together. It's been an accessory that I never travel without. Just add hot water.
Panama Hartmann Dubbel
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.
TOP 10 coffee gifts
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!
Perci Red
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.
Lycello
Experience: The 2 Barrel Project
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.
Percolating
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
Will Trade for Horse
I remember when I was a kid, flipping through the JC Penny catalog, looking at all the toys, and I remember that unmistakable smell of the catalog pages and seeing pictures of such lucky kids getting to play with the coolest stuff ever, and I would find the letter that corresponded with the letter next to the picture and I would read all about the best ones. I would read the whole toy section of the catalog. And I remember writing down things I wanted and noting what page each thing was on, dog-earing the pages, so my parents could find it quickly and with the least amount of effort because less fuss maybe would mean they would find it easier and buy it for me and maybe since I made it so easy they would buy more stuff, as if they were on some sort of shopping time crunch. I remember always asking for a horse.
They bought us too much. My parents must've put on soft music and slowly filled my brother's bedroom with sleeping gas, where we were determined to stay up all night coloring in our coloring books, listening for Santa Claus, watching through the curtains for the red dot in the sky that was Rudolf and not some small aircraft flying over. And the next thing I knew, my brother would be waking me up on Christmas morning telling me that Santa had come while we were asleep, and I would run out and check to see if the milk and cookies we left for him on the table were gone because I knew if those were gone it was really Santa who had been there. And the living room was always filled with presents, wrapped in colorful paper and curly ribbons, so much that we had to tip toe around it all just to get close to the Christmas tree.
It seems hard to believe now, looking back, because now I know that we didn't have much money, and I just ascribe it all to my being so small and seeing things as being so much bigger and more plentiful then. I've no doubt that they spoiled us too much and suffered on our behalf in order to make us feel like we were special, like we were rich, like we were no different than everyone else. And it worked. My parents gave us more than we needed, and I can only guess how much they had to sacrifice in the course of it all. And, for the most part, we just felt lucky that Santa Claus was so generous.
So I guess this should be a time where we look back and think about the traditions we grew up with and smile at the silly memories of the Muppet Christmas record and Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas on the TV with the rabbit ears and the channel-change knob that sometimes had to be jiggled to keep the static away. And fighting over who got to put the first ornament on the tree, which, back then, still smelled like evergreen and dropped its pokey needles about our shag-carpeted living room.
Christmas should be a time to think about the people who have made us feel special and say thanks for caring.
This Christmas I want coffee.
Every year, we try to find unique coffees to sell over the holidays. This year we have two coffees to offer. One, we started selling at Thanksgiving and the feedback has been phenomenal. Kenya Peaberry Karimikui is a nutty, rich, savory coffee that lends itself amazingly well to traditional breakfast pairings. Kenyas have been hot coffees this year in the marketplace, and I selected this lot specifically because peaberries are unique anomalies in coffee, and my experience with Kenyas have taught me that peaberries are superior and I know you'll notice the difference in the cup.
The second coffee I'm offering this year is one you may have tasted by now. Tchembe is a coffee that was sourced by a company called Ninety Plus who is out working the front lines in Ethiopia, learning what makes coffee taste great, and implementing that knowledge for us to drink. Supplies of Tchembe are pretty slim because it's such an amazing coffee. Sweet, fruity, blackberry aromas emanate from the cup, accentuated by Belgian chocolate and banana esters like you'll find in Belgian beers. Definitely a smooth cup, one of my favorites, and a strong partner with desserts and fruity breakfast items.
Both of these coffees are extremely limited in their availability. We are selling both in commemorative 12-ounce quart cans, which are great for gift-giving and help to preserve the coffee from its environment, keeping it tasty. I only have 36 quarts of the Kenya and 85 quarts of Tchembe to sell.
There are two ways you can get them.
1) Take your chances and come in and hope we have some when the time comes.
2) Or guarantee yourself some by purchasing a voucher. Come in and pick one up at the counter or buy one (or however many you need until they run out) online.
Purchase your vouchers here for IN-STORE PICKUP after I roast:
Tchembe - http://doubleshotcoffee.com/store/index.php?productID=137
Kenya Peaberry Karimikui - http://doubleshotcoffee.com/store/index.php?productID=136
Of course, you can still order online and I'll ship them to you. But get it soon because both of these special coffees will be gone before you know it.
Happy holidays.
Brian
ps. If you're wondering what to get me, I like New York Strips (preferably dry aged) and I still haven't gotten that horse I've been asking for.
Contrast
But I love contrast, and so I sit smoking a Nicaraguan cigar, sipping Russian River Pinot Noir, listening to Mendelssohn and reading iPhone texts from my winsome girlfriend about the beauty of the moon (which is glowing from behind my arched roofline) and the bright planet hanging below (and behind a tall, tall tree).
Contrasts are important. All of one or the other and you might not notice either.
We had driven for hours along a graded dirt road strewn with rocks and the holes they dislodged from, occasionally passing another vehicle and its trailing red cloud of dust, sporadically stopping to look at a care-free elephant or a distant ostrich, a black orb overing on the horizon, or an almost-imperceptible serval cat with its over-sized ears, pouncing on a snake in the knee-high grass. We passed wandering Maasai warriors in tartan shukas driving emaciated cows and goats, and awkward, skittish, knobby-kneed giraffes chewing leaves of the thorny Acacia. The road became paved and began climbing and I nodded, fighting drowsy, motion-induced slumber. The plains turned to forests as we ascended the side of a volcano that was probably one of the tallest mountains on the continent of Africa before it blew its top and formed a 12-mile-wide crater. The cool green rainforest was a far cry from the brown, endless plain we spent days criss-crossing, pointing out perfectly camouflaged antelope and their predators. The smallest Dikdik, the fastest Topi, the ugliest Wildebeest, the sleekest Cheetah.
In high-elevation mist, Baboons sat on the road, licking the pavement and plotting, like Yogi Bear, to steal our pic-a-nic basket. And as we rounded a switch-back, our Tanzanian guide quickly stopped and exclaimed, "Oh look at this!"
Five lionesses and a great, maned, muscular beast walked down the road toward our Land Cruiser and warily but confidently skirted by, three feet from our faces pressed against the nippy windows. A wild kingdom. Our hearts raced, and we continued our windey, ascending drive. Until suddenly, the trees opened up before us, over the edge of the crater into the clouds below and the ridge beyond, and the wilderness transformed into a palatial hotel, colorfully-robed and kufi'd bellmen dashing here and there, fetching bags and escorting us, like foreign dignitaries, into a grand lobby. Marbled floors and huge, carved, wooden columns, exquisite lounge furniture next to glowing fires, under an ominous, thatched dome. We lived like royalty, sipping Scotch in the bar overlooking the crater, fine dining on white tablecloths, and escaping to our '70s-style quarters to where we were escorted by an armed guard, wary of the predators about.
A shocking change. But I don't think it would've had the same effect on us, had we not spent the previous three days in a primitive safari camp, washing in a gravity shower, eating in a mess tent, and zipping our door behind us at night to slumber with the sound of hyena calls.
We'll be exploring contrasts in coffees through a coffee tasting that you are invited to on Thursday, October 27 at 7pm. I'll brew a few of my favorite coffees for you, tell you where they were cultivated, how they were processed, and together we'll taste and smell and enjoy the variety that DoubleShot Coffee can offer.
Entry is $10 and we're using the funds through our 501(3)(c) not-for-profit, Coffee Illuminati, to give to projects that support coffee-growing communities.
Spots are limited, so register right away by emailing me at Brian@DoubleShotCoffee.com.
