myShoggoth

Seattle Area Ice Cream

http://mollymoonicecream.com/

If you are in the Seattle area, go there.  Go there now.  Stop reading this, go.  I'm serious, why are you still reading?  Go.

If you are outside the Seattle area, come visit so you can try this place.  It is worth it.

Long overdue coffee reviews

As part of my career gyrations in the recent past (which is one of the reasons I've been writing so little here) I've been having coffee with a lot of people.  Combined with our long weekend in Portland, I've had a chance to sample some coffees and form opinions.

Victrola Coffee has an excellent and well deserved reputation.  When I drink coffee at a cafe these days I normally have a machiatto or an americano, depending on whether I think the place is likely to be any good or not.  The machiatto at Victrola was silky smooth, it was all I could do to not interrupt the conversation and run back to the counter to order five more immediately.

A new bakery has opened in Kirkland called The French Bakery.  You'll never guess what they serve.  The coffee there was quite Italian style, and good for that.  My guess is that they use Illy beans, but a review says they have beans flown from Bologna.  Um.  Okay.  Did they fly them in green and roast them locally, or are they just trying to make sure they're not fresh?

In Portland we had a Stumptown Coffee Roasters shop in the hotel (Ace Hotel) we were staying at, and it also has a well deserved good reputation (and one for taking themselves a little too seriously).  Their style is more Pacific Northwest.

With espresso drinks you can go a few different directions with the taste, one is the Italian style which is usually smooth with a bite (from robusta beans), the PNW style which is a very dark roast to give the bite in a different way, or totally smooth.  Over the past week I've now had a sample of a very good cup of each, and it has been great.  My wife keeps asking me to decide which one is better, but when they're totally different styles the comparison doesn't work too well.

Current Coffees

It has been a while since I last wrote about roasting coffee.  I still roast, although I don't have the audience I once did when I was roasting and supplying coffee for half a Microsoft building out of my office.

I thought of this because I met my business partner at the Starbucks closest to my house while wearing my Sweet Marias Home Roasting tshirt.  One of the barristas asked if that meant I roasted myself, whether I had a roaster to do it, etc.  She also asked where I got the beans, if they were really good quality, and then something completely unexpected:  She said I should bring a roast in for them to try out.

Huh.

I'm almost tempted to do it, although I have no idea to what purpose.  I certainly have enough green beans right now to do it several times over and not even notice.

Anyway, here are my current stocks of green coffee beans:

• Bolivian Organic Peaberry de Montana
• Costa Rican Tres Rios - La Magnolia
• Ethiopian FTO Yirgacheffe DP
• Small amounts of leftovers from previous bags that I'll eventually combine into a Frankenstein Blend.

None of these are listed at Sweet Marias because I bought them a while back (green coffee beans are less expensive and keep a while).  They're crops, so one year they may pass Thom's blind taste test and the next they won't.  The La Magnolia is one I've seen on and off for the entire time I've been his customer, around 10 years now.

If you're in the greater Seattle area and would like to try a home roast drop me a line, it is one of those joys us crazies are more than happy to share.

Temperature and Bland Coffee

We're off on a short little vacation to Roche Harbor, on San Juan Island.  It is a nice little getaway, last time we did it off peak season and the place was deserted.  Now we're here during prime time and it is... not.

Since it is only three or four hours of travel we brought a cooler of food and related, and are renting a small condo.  We can cook our own food for breakfast and even lunch and not stress about making it to a restaurant in time.

One major advantage for me is bringing my own coffee, so I roasted up some of the Bolivia Organic Peaberry de Montana, the star of my last order from Sweet Maria’s.  Peaberry is just a genetic mutation of the seed of the coffee tree's fruit, it doesn't actually in itself make for a better coffee.  Growers know they can get a premium for them, however, so they take extra care in the picking and preparation.  That extra care makes them better, reinforcing consumer's idea that they're intrinsically better.  Sometimes perception creates reality.

This particular coffee is incredible.  Karthik, one of the Messenger team devs, has gotten addicted to it and asked me to roast up a batch for him to take home.  As I did that I also roasted up a batch for this little vacation.

We brought my burr grinder to make sure it would be as fresh as possible when brewed.  We also used bottled water to avoid San Juan's... mineral tasting tap water (that's being kind). All of this preparation and forethought, and then... flat.  Blah.  Nothing special.  What happened?

I blame the brewer, it is a little automatic drip piece of junk and my money is on it not getting the water hot enough.  You need a high enough temperature to extract the coffee oils that the roasting has brought from deep within the bean to the surface (that's why dark roasted coffee looks and feels a little oily).  If your brewer isn't at the right temperature range when the water hits the grounds, it won't be able to pull out much of the oils and you'll be left with whatever it is able to get.  Flat.  Blah.  Nothing special.

The upshot is that I need to consider bringing my own brewers on these little getaways, and I will need to order another batch of the Bolivian Peaberry soon.  Coffee is a crop and there's no reason for me to believe that the next harvest even from the same farm(s) will produce as nice of a result.  Enjoy it while you can.

Lyonnais Coffee

We're now in Lyon, and I have a few small updates to make in the coffee arena.  I've had a few very nice coffees, including at top notch restaurants (including L'Etage), a coffee stand/bar placed near the main pedestrian bridge across the Saone, and tonight at a cafe above the Raconte-Moi La Terre.  I stand by my assessment that the overall coffee quality is about on par with the United States:  You can find the good stuff at speciality stores and some restaurants, but there isn't an overall pride in it that you see in Italy.

Where France just rules from orbit is with the food: unbelievable.  I can also understand where Lyon got its reputation, we've been stuffing ourselves beyond reason with amazing food.  My only regret is that we're not staying longer and I can't try out each and every one of the world class stuff-yourself-silly-eterias that this place is lousy with.  I'd have to buy a jacket to get into some of them, but hey I'd be willing to make sacrifices.

Now we have future TBD sketchy plans laid out for one vacation in the French Riveria, and one for Lyon and the surrounding areas (especially the French Alps).  No idea when that will happen, and we still have northern France to go on this trip.

So far most everyone in Italy and France have both been very nice, patient, and helpful despite our basic lack of knowledge of either language.  We're adding to our vocabularies to get by, but it is mostly individual words and short phrases.  In fact, the wife is downstairs in the bookstore as I type buying a phrase book intended for French speakers looking for English phrases, because we just plain can't find a English speaker's French phrase book in France.  So buy one before you get here, or you'll have to improvise like we're doing.

Southern France especially lived up to its reputation for extremely nice and helpful people, I'm really hoping that Paris fails to live up to its reputation for rude and unhelpful folk.

Small update:  The phrase English phrase book for French speakers is very entertaining, the only thing it really lacks that the opposite would have is help with the French pronouciation.

Even More Nice Coffee

We just finished breakfast in Nice and I had a couple cafe au laits, which was close to the Italian latte machiatto in my opinion.  Mostly milk with a small amount of coffee added for the caffeine and as flavoring.  The quality of the coffee itself is pretty unimportant, since its flavor can't cut through the milk enough to get noticed unless it is very strong.

This is one reason why the espresso style works so well in the latte, it has a strong enough flavor to cut through the milk and be noticed.  It is still very muted, and any subtlety in the flavors are all lost.  Yes, there is subtlety in good espresso, and yes it is lost in the coffee milkshakes a lot of people love.

That works to the advantage of coffee providers, since they don't have to differentiate based on quality of coffee (which is very difficult at large scale) but on the rest of the ingredients that the coffee itself accompanies.

We only got one night and maybe half a day total in Nice, which is a big shame and we will definitely be back here again for a longer vacation on the French Riveria.  Based on our one night I can heartily recommend Hotel Felix (which we got from the Fodor's 2004 guide to France).  I'm writing this sitting on our balcony over the pedestrian mall area after having had an excellent breakfast at the patisserie next door (where in a stroke of genius the hotel proprietor outsources his breakfasts to), and all I can think is how nice it would be to stay and explore this area more.

However, the vacation we have planned has us heading to the Provence area next. I'm sure we're going to have a fantastic time.

How good was breakfast?  While eating I quoted History of the World Part I:  It is good to be the king.

So far my opinion is that Italian coffee is far and above the best, maybe in the world for general quality level.  French coffee quality is about on par with American, hardly anything special.

Nice Coffee

We're in Nice now, and I've had two interesting coffee experiences I want to share.

The first is a cappuccino during lunch, which came with added sugar and chocolate.  I can more or less understand the idea, because in many ways cappuccinos and lattes are dessert drinks, with a small amount of coffee and a lot of milk.  Latte machiattos are even more so in the same vein.  But I just don't get adding stuff like that before giving it to the customer, rather than giving them the tools to be depraved with their coffee themselves.

After dinner we were given the dessert menu and to my surprise they had extensive coffee listings, including five named origins:  Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, Pure Colombian, Moka Ethiopian, and Java Blue Mountain.  It wasn't specified what brewing method would be used (my wife was hoping for French Press, or what she hoped they would call.... "Press").  I ordered Moka Ethiopian out of curiosity, and it came out espresso style.

First, 'Pure Colombian' was an interesting term, and not one I'd associate with coffee first and foremost.  Second, Moka Ethiopian is a strange term.  Moka coffees generally describe coffees that come from the Arabian peninsula, such as Yemen.  Ethiopia is the origin of coffee, and there it grows wild.  Maybe it was a blend.

As for taste, I knew what I was in for when they put the cup in front of me.  Ethiopian and most other African coffees tend to have a lot of acidity, which give them a tanginess similar to the bite of citric acid.  It can make them outstanding, and pretty much unsuited for espresso.

The ending taste of a coffee is dependant on many things, including:

Coffee origin - the factors here are the strain of the plant being used, soil conditions, weather conditions, and processing/storage.
Brewing method - brewing coffee is all about getting the oils out of the beans and into the water while leaving in as much of the bitter compounds as possible, each brewing style attempts to do this in a different way and tend towards different tasting characteristics.

Unfortunately, the espresso brewing style tends to highlight acidity, and if you take a coffee that is highly acidic to begin with it can be overwhelming.  This is what I knew would happen when the waiter set down the Moka Ethiopian, and sure enough it had a strong bite like a lemon juice.  Drinkable, tasty, but if it were me I would have definitely gone with a vacuum brewing method instead.  Not the best use of the beans at all, if not a waste.

Train Coffee

The coffee on the train from Milan to Nice is instant.  There is no God.

I'm not sure how they get away with it, otherwise the Italians seem to take their coffee very seriously and I've had very good coffee in places I otherwise wouldn't expect it.  Hotels, touristy restaurants, other places where in the US I'd fully expect garbage.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, though, considering this is the food service on public transport and those seem to be universally the worst around.  If anyone is going to half-ass it, they're at the front of the line.

The train coach we are on looks like it is from the 70s or maybe even the 60s, and since it appears to have the original interior I have no real hope of conditions improving until we get to Nice.

We lost two of our Sherpa a few stations back.  Hopefuly we won't have to resort to cannibalism (again).

So if you hear an announcement on an Italian train of 'Chef Express', cower in a corner and try to blend into the background, hope they don't notice you.  And get your coffee before you get on the train.

I just heard the bell for the service cart, better stop moving.  Ciao.

Milanese Coffee

Quick coffee review from Milan:

1. Cappuccino at breakfast in the hotel was wonderful (about the only thing we liked about the hotel).

2. Espresso machiattos at the restaurant in the Galleria at the Duomo were good but not great, and the quality between the two I had (one at the beginning of lunch and one after) varied quite a bit.

We're taking the train from Milan to Nice tomorrow bright and early (leaves at 7:10am), so I'm very likely to have many coffees on that long ride (10 hours or so) to report on.

In sum I think Italian coffee is as good as its reputation.  The only reason I'm not going to miss it is because I roast my own, and if I get the desire for Italian style I can make it myself.  One thing I might miss is quality Baristas who are not either moody teenagers or alternative hipsters (or both) that want to correct my pronouciation of made up Italian words for coffee milkshake sugar drinks.

Venetian Coffee

Quick review of the coffee in Venice.

All in all, very very nice.  My normal drink has been espresso machiatto, and in most cases they have been wonderful.  Had the first one in a random restaurant in the touristy area near San Marco, and it shocked me by being so incredibly good.

Another one that was about as good was at another restaurant near our hotel.  Other places had very good (but not quite as good) coffee, with the only let down being at Murano.  It was drinkable, and better than you'll get at some espresso stands in the States, but a real downer compared to what I'd gotten used to.

Another surprise is that the coffee served by our hotel for 'breakfast' was really quite good.

Most of this (except possibly the Murano coffee) does not seem to have much or any Robusta content, and from what I remember that's generally true of Northern Italy coffee.  Clean, smooth, and very tasty.  Despite the perception coffee beans used in espresso need not, nor are they usually, roasted nigh unto charcoal, and the concept of an "Espresso Roast" as sold back home is just silly.  Espresso is a style of brewing, not roasting.

Anyhow, the coffee side of this trip has been very successful so far, and once we arrive in Milan in an hour or so it will be time to continue the investigation.