Daniel's World of Coffee

Fresh Crop El Salvador Cupping

Hello from Marin County, California. Yesterday we roasted over 40 samples of fresh crop El Salvador coffees and weighed out cups. This morning we got up extra early to do a preliminary selection cupping of the 40+ samples. We picked out 16 exemplary lots, bourbons and pacamaras, washed and honey process. Some friends at Bay Area super specialty roasters came over and cupped them more fully with us.

These are very young, very fresh coffees. All micro-lots, specially selected in El Salvador by Graciano Cruz. 30 bags maximum exist of each of these coffees. They are super high-grade coffees that in the past were getting mixed together and lost at the exporter level. We're doing some really exciting work to keep them separated out and offered to roasters like these folks who will give them the TLC they deserve. There are a ton more honey process coffees on the way too, but they are still being processed at this point.

Thanks to everyone who came by.

Tomorrow morning I'm off to Ethiopia for the Cupping Caravan in Harar. More on that to come!

No Pacamara, No Cry

I went on and on about pacamara coffee yesterday, and included some links to places you can buy some. One of those places was Plowshares Coffee in New York State.

A good buddy of Coffee Scholars, coffee expert-roaster and all-around good person Anthony Kurutz, founder of Plowshares, dropped me the following notice on Twitter:

Plowshares_@CoffeeScholar I sold out of Pacamara for the year just before you posted this! Thanks for the shoutout anyway. btw it was delish.

I can vouch for the delish-ness. I had some of this coffee back in — July, I think? — and it was a classic pacamara, and expertly-roasted. Anyway, if you are looking for pacamaras, don't go to Plowshares.

But, ironically, that's a good sign that if you are looking for good coffee, you should go to Plowshares. Anybody who has perfect coffee from every world origin in stock at all times of the year is either lying to you or clairvoyant. Either they are selling you old-crop coffee, or they somehow, magically, sold out of the last bean of one year's coffee on the same day they received their shipment of the next year's coffee.

I'm sure Anthony doesn't enjoy running out of a great coffee like his pacamara. But the very fact he did is a good sign that you should feel good about buying whatever else he has on the shelf. And try the pacamara next year! They usually hit the shores of North America right around June 1st.

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Roy Street Coffee (by Starbucks)

This is the second "rebranded" Starbucks I have been to in Seattle. I already had some positive experiences up at 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea, so I had high hopes for Roy Street Coffee.

For those of you familiar with the neighborhood, Roy St. is in the bottom of that condo building at the very north end of Broadway, where it splits off to 10th Ave. Not the Kinko's (which is still there), but that empty retail space that has been empty forevvvvver. So good on Starbucks for putting it to good use.

I had a decent macchiato prepared by the friendly and chatty Flanny. Also some really outstanding oolong tea. My friend says the tea maven for these new concept Starbuckses also does the tea for the Queen of England. Every time I learn a little bit about tea, I am overwhelmed by how much there is. We must have spent at least 10 minutes just smelling the lid of the tea pot and discussing aromas.

For the decor, there's a lot more recycled and repurposed stuff in this Roy Street store. Actually, it has a much more natural and organic feel than the 15th St. one. They heavy hanging curtains everywhere in black and red, which really break up the space and make it feel warm, homey, and lived-in.

I want to do a full review of these stores sometime soon. But I snapped this photo while in the shop today, so I thought I would pass it along real quick-like here on the blog.

(For all you gearheads, that's a Synesso Hydra hiding behind the barista.)

Coffee Shop: Zoka in Kirkland

For those of you who don't live around Seattle, these little coffee shop reviews might be less interesting, but I have an overall comment on the industry to make here. I'm going somewhere with this, I swear.

As I've mentioned before, I'm on the road for an extended time right now, in the Seattle area and then to make one or two origin trips in October and November. While in Seattle, I'm staying on the Eastside, where my parents and sister live. I've gotten to know the booming little suburb of Kirkland.

Now, no one's going to mistake downtown Kirkland for a chic neighborhood like Greenwich Village in New York, or an urban-grit-cred one like the west side of Capitol Hill in Seattle, but it's not quite what you expect in a suburb. It's a dense little pocket of housing, retail, and mixed-use buildings. The downtown core is very walkable, and indeed you see people of all ages walking there, especially on the weekends. Just a few miles south, in downtown Bellevue (by all measures a much larger city, though with similar demographics), the only place people walk is within the confines of the mall.

I didn't grow up around here, but my sister has lived in the area for a few years now, and I've become accustomed to spending time in Kirkland. One of the biggest changes to the neighborhood since I was last here was the opening of a huge, beautiful third-wave coffee shop right on one of the busiest corners (for foot traffic and for cars) in town: Zoka's new Kirkland location.

Zoka has been making good coffee in Seattle for years. Their Greenlake and U-District locations are neighborhood anchors. They're one of the original cluster of Seattle-based companies that have been doing specialty coffee in the "Third Wave" style. I remember driving in Ravenna one time years ago and hearing a radio spot on KCMU — er, KEXP — inviting people to come in and try Zoka's Ethiopia Yirgacheffe. That was the first time I'd ever even heard the work Yirgacheffe spoken outside of a coffee shop or roastery.

Well, flash-forward a few years and now Zoka has locations in Snoqualmie and Kirkland in addition to the two Seattle stores. I've been to the Kirkland store several times now, without announcing myself (I know, bad form), and I want to say a few words.

First of all the overall quality of the coffee is very good. All the espresso beverages and brewed coffee — and I have had several of each — have been somewhere on the scale from good to fantastic. I've had cappuccinos, espressos, and Melitta-style pour-over coffees.

The store is pretty glitzy and shiny on the inside, but not overly so. It actually fits in quite well in Kirkland. (The mark of a good shop is that it feels congruous with it's surroundings... this store would feel out of place in Greenlake, and vice versa.) It's got a big interior space, with lots of display given to beans and equipment. There's a big video screen that plays a slideshow of coffee photos from origin.

What really blew me away when I first walked in were the five (5!(¡cinco!)) Mazzer Robur grinders lined up in a row. I have no idea if Zoka plans to offer five espressos side by side, but they sure seem set up to do so. They have been offering two right now (an S.O. Brazil and S.O. Kenya) plus, presumably, a decaf (I didn't ask). Add in a Slayer espresso machine and that's-a spicy-a meatball-a. So they're decked out as far as equipment goes.

The staff has been friendly, fast, and knowledgeable every time I've gone. They wear smart-looking black and white clothes, which really adds to the whole feeling of professionalism.

But of course a professional look is nothing without professional execution. Happily, the Zoka Kirkland baristas make excellent beverages. Well-executed cappuccinos and sweet-tasting espresso.

Specifically: I had a shot of the single origin Brazil the other day, a pulp-natural coffee. The barista handed it over on a little tray with a gibraltar cup of sparkling water. As I lifted it to my mouth he started to tell me the flavor profile of the coffee, starting with "plum sweetness." I cut him off with a sidelong glance and a, "Just wait... I don't want you to color my perception," which came across much more rudely than I had intended. He smiled and nodded respectfully.

There was indeed a stone-fruit sweetness to it, plus a dry nuttiness like walnut skins. Overall it was fairly grassy, in a pleasing, fresh-cut grass kind of way. The total volume of liquid was just about one ounce, which always kind of disappoints me, but then, I'm back in the Northwest where the super-ristretto originates. But a good shot, overall, and knowledgeably prepared.

The real star of my visits to Zoka, however, has been the Colombia single-origin brewed coffee. Served as a pour-over cup of drip coffee, the cup I had on Saturday morning was a top twenty in my life kind of coffee. One of the most cherry-rich coffees I have ever had. All the best characteristics of high-grown Colombians with none of the nasty biting greenness or dirtiness. Deep, deep sweet chocolate and about three kinds of cherry flavors. I did not want that cup to end. Lucky for me, Zoka is just a few blocks from where I am staying, and the Colombia is still on the menu.

Sometimes people seem skeptical that great coffee will ever be anything other than a micro-niche, especially people outside the industry. It's not surprising that super-specialty coffee got its start in über-hip places like the corner of Denny and Broadway on Capitol Hill, or downtown Portland. And the urban hipster vibe is still crushingly strong in the overall industry. But Zoka Kirkland is proof that great coffee is about quality of ingredients, professionalism, care, execution, and love. Not your zip code. I'd put their quality up against just about any other shop in the country.

Coffee Circa 1961

The Structure of the Coffee Industry

It's important to have an idea of the basic structure of the coffee industry. This video from Boot Coffee explains it very clearly, along with what makes the specialty arm of the industry different, and how specialty companies can differentiate themselves.

I work with Willem often on quality-development projects and coffee education courses and programs.

Iced Coffee = More Coffee?

Today I made some iced coffee at home using a French press and some Guatemala La Soledad. I thought about a conversation I had with Steve Mierisch last week while driving to Boston. We passed a billboard advertising Dunkin Donuts iced coffee and Steve asked me if I thought we would see a big uptick in coffee consumption this year because of the growing popularity of iced coffee. I had to answer truthfully: "I have no idea."

The first assumption would be that iced coffee has indeed increased in popularity. Anecdotally this seems true to me, at least out here on the East Coast. One has to remember that there are two kinds of iced coffee drinks: iced espresso drinks and iced brewed coffee. The increase in iced espresso drinks (assuming there is one) would be thanks to the continued popularity of Starbucks and to the growth of super-specialty cafés that serve made-to-order espresso drinks.

Any increase in iced brewed coffee might come about as the result of a few different factors. Steve mentioned that in his experience, ten years ago people were much more likely to think, "Iced coffee? That's just weird! Why would I put coffee on ice?" Nowadays no one blinks an eye. So familiarity might have something to do with it. Secondly, there are ad campaigns (that fuel this familiarity), like the ones for Dunkin Donuts iced coffee that are pretty ubiquitous in the New York and Boston areas.

A third reason for growth is one that I'm most interested in, and that's the improvement in the quality and taste of iced coffee. First of all, the quality of beans that go into iced coffee bevarages is increasing dramatically, at least at the margins, just like it is with hot coffee (i.e. the same roasters are providing the beans for both, and as super-specialty gets better and better, the large specialty companies get better, and even the mega-commercial roasters are more worried about quality than ever before). But it's also improved brew methods that make for better iced coffee.

My hot press pot coffee poured over ice cubes today notwithstanding, there are some excellent cold-brew methods for making very smooth, sweet iced coffee. I'll review a couple favorites later this week.

In the meantimes, Steve was asking this question partially with his "producer hat" on (his family grows coffee in Nicaragua). Traditionally coffee consumption dips in the summer time and rises steeply again in the fall. Will this year be the year that producers notice a more steady demand from their US consumers, and if so will it increase overall annual per capita consumption? Is there some dynamic at work here that I am missing? Does anyone have good data they would like to share? Or anecdotal evidence?