A Tale Of Two Yirgacheffe

Back in the day you went to South Philly for two reasons.... Down 9th Street to grab a hoagie from Sarcone's or a cheesesteak from either Pat's or Geno's. Want a coffee? Thirty years ago your best option was to grab one from a local deli.

[caption id="attachment_212" align="aligncenter" width="560"] Joey Joe's, Philadelphia[/caption]

Historically, South Philly has been dominated by old-school Italian Americans. For the last decade, cheap real estate has also attracted an influx of Vietnamese immigrants and hipster art students. A sure sign the neighborhood is well on its way to becoming über cool, Ultimo Coffee has become ground zero for these new inhabitants.... the perfect third wave destination and meeting place.

Back in April The Daily Meal anointed Ultimo as the number 1 coffee shop in America. Does it live up to its title? Personally I think these rankings are akin to reading in People Magazine who's the sexiest man alive, at the end of the day it's meaningless. Ignoring they hype, I went into the heart of South Philly to check Ultimo out.

[caption id="attachment_214" align="aligncenter" width="225"] Pour Over Bar, Ultimo Coffee[/caption]

Down the block from Scotty's Bar and just around the corner from Joey Joe's, Aaron and Elizabeth Ultimo opened their first location in 2009 and their second in 2012. In the South Philly location they share their space with a craft beer shop. The vibe is quite different from the surrounding 'hood. Ultimo takes their coffees seriously, using filtered water and a Marzocco GB5 carefully dialed in to the selections of the day, all from their roaster, Counter Culture. I selected the Banko Gotiti, Yirgacheffe as a pour over on their Beehouse drip bar. It was perfectly prepared and had really interesting citrus and tart apple notes. As I sat and enjoyed my cup a steady stream of customers kept things hopping.

[caption id="attachment_210" align="aligncenter" width="560"] Entrance, Greenstreet Coffee[/caption]

Once finished I decided to drive up to another coffee shop, the recently opened Greenstreet Coffee Co. This shop represents another trend in the Philly coffee scene, serious in-house roasting. Brothers Tom and Chris Molieri started their roastery in 2011 and soon gained a reputation for producing well crafted beans. So in February when they were presented a chance to take over a former coffee shop, they dived in with both feet.

I really like their space. Small and architecturally quirky, it has a cool vibe, a welcome feel that's quite popular with the locals. It's a bit more laid back than Ultimo and the enthusiastic staff is very welcoming. This is the kind of place I could spend a lazy afternoon. And the coffee? The Molieri brothers know how to roast and do it well. In their shop I was offered a choice of four selections, two from Ethiopia and one from El Salvador and Mexico. I was interested in comparing my experiences so I ordered the pour over Kochere Yirgacheffe, and was impressed by what I was served. The Greenstreet selection was a bit brighter than the Counter Culture version and the citrus flavors really shined in the cup.

All in all Philadelphia's Third Wave coffee scene has something for everyone. Whether you are looking for a craft cup of coffee roasting by some of the most well-known in the US or you seek some great local roasts, you can find it in this vibrant city.

A word about the next blog post: I'll be on vacation for a few weeks so things will be a bit quiet. But never fear, there's more to come once I return.

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Greenstreet Coffee Roasters: http://greenstreetcoffee.com

Ultimo Coffee: http://ultimocoffee.com

The Daily Meal: www.thedailymeal.com

Counter Culture: http://counterculturecoffee.com

God In A Cupping Bowl: Geisha Cupping At La Colombe

[caption id="attachment_177" align="aligncenter" width="560"] Todd Carmichael Warming Up The Crowd At His Geisha Cupping[/caption]

Todd Carmichael is stepping it up. Last week at the Philadelphia Dilworth Plaza location he held the first Roasters Jam, a monthly blind cupping of single origin lots from different coffee producers. Thirteen lots from the iconic Hacienda La Esmeralda were presented to a room full of coffee professionals. Talk about setting the bar! It certainly sent a message.

When they started 20 years ago, Carmichael and his partner Jean Philippe released their four classic blends. They were a huge success and the partners grew from 20 accounts when I first met them in 1995 to over 5,000 today with cafes in Philly, New York, Chicago, Seoul, Washington D.C. (opening soon) with an eye on other cities. Carmichael has become a bit of a coffee celebrity (a kind of Macgyver of the coffee world), writing for Huffington Post and Esquire as well as starring in two seasons of "Dangerous Grounds"  on the Travel Channel

His direction is not without controversy. Todd is highly opinionated and his articles have sometimes rubbed some people the wrong way. In addition he's been criticized by a few fellow roasters for producing blends and favoring a darker roast style. And yet Carmichael is sending the coffee community signals that sets the bar even higher.

First he installed five $15,000 Alpha Dominche "Steampunk" coffee makers in his cafes. They are a marvel of groundbreaking technology, able to recreate almost any brewing process and deliver a perfect cup. And now with the Geisha cupping, Todd is sending a strong signal that he too can produce some of the best single vineyard coffees on the planet.

On the day of the cupping we met and mingled for a while before the tasting. Quite a few local industry people turned out including Old City Coffee, One Village, Greenstreet, and Shot Tower just to name a few. Todd worked the crowd, charming everyone. We got a chance to talk for a few minutes and he shared with me a sample of his exciting rum soon to be made at his new distillery located at his roastery.

After a brief but dramatic introduction where Todd told us that the person who guessed all 13 lots in the correct order wins $1,000, the cupping began.

Many of these lots cost over $100 green and to taste 13 of them is a first for me. We first checked out the nose of the ground beans and again after breaking the crust. Each participant was given a handout listing the names of the lots, altitude, rainfall, directional facing, approximate night temperature and harvest dates. Todd took me through a few and his observations were instructive. He went at a rapid pace, telling me "check out the tomato aromas in 5, lemon in 6 and lime in 7!" The comparisons and contrasts were striking. All were brilliant but of course there were favorites.

The overwhelming winner was the Leon Natural. Almost all participants picked it out as being the best coffee in the room. The flavors were profound, reminding me of crisp apples with berry undertones that one taster said reminded him of blueberry waffles. Just recently, a lot of this went for $176 a pound green.

Before the cupping began Todd proclaimed that, in the next few years, Philadelphia will be recognized as being on the forefront of specialty coffee in America. If he's right....and he's not often wrong, La Colombe will be right there, front and center.

http://lacolombe.com

http://haciendaesmeralda.com

Does Terroir Matter in Coffee? by Serious Eats: buff.ly/13HQLEL

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Astoria Coffee Part Two: Cupping Cafe Brioso's Beans

When Astoria Cafe's Dennis Lee sent me some beans from their Ohio roaster Cafe Brioso, I couldn't wait to check it out. Dennis and his girlfriend Liz hail from Columbus and moved to Queens, New York in 2009. Their dream is to open their own coffee shop in the neighborhood.

Elixr Coffee

After the beans arrived, I decided to contact Evan Inatome, owner of one of Philadelphia's best coffee houses, Elixr. He was all about cupping the beans and we arranged a tasting.

Cafe Brioso sent me a bag of their Colombia La Primavera Microlot and Evan thought it would be interesting to blind taste them against other roasters' offerings from the same country. The lineup contained,

Toby's Estate's Santa Ines (cup A)

Heart's El Desarrollo (cup B)

Square Mile's La Buitrera Huila (cup C)

Cafe Brioso's La Primavera (cup D)

Four coffee professionals joined me in the cupping. Evan presented the coffees in cups labeled A-D so that we could check them out blind.

So what was the consensus? Interestingly, our opinions were unanimous. The coffee in the first three cups were very sound. The lighter roast brought out interesting fruit and floral notes that wasn't as pronounced in Cafe Brioso's full city roast. But cupping them side by side brought out nuanced differences and Heart's El Desarrollo was the winner. Between the three, the La Buitrera Huila was just a hair past it's peak, perhaps because it was roasted a few weeks earlier and then shipped from the UK. With that said, Evan felt that any of them would make for excellent pour overs.

What about Cafe Brioso's offering? Although quite good and well crafted, the group felt it was a bit too assertive, perhaps because it seemed to be a darker roast than the other selections. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing and one of the group offered that it would probably be a really nice selection to use with milk based drinks such as cappuccinos.

The next day I tried the Brioso using my Aeropress with and without milk. I liked the strong, earthy tones and think the added lactose rounded out the flavors. It should make a nice house selection when Astoria eventually opens its doors.

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Astoria Coffee Part One

A few weeks ago one of my Twitter followers @AstoriaCoffeeNY asked if I'd like some coffee beans. Who could refuse so of course I said yes. While I waited for a sample of their coffee from roaster Cafe Brioso based in Columbus Ohio, I learned more about Dennis Lee and his girlfriend Liz Wick's journey and challenges in their quest to open their own coffee shop.

Dennis and Liz moved to Astoria, Queens in 2009. They had met in Ohio working in a coffee shop opened by a mutual friend. Noticing that their Queens neighborhood had only a few places to get a decent cup, they began discussing opening a place of their own.

So far it's been a challenge opening a brick and mortar. Finding an affordable lease in a great location and obtaining financing hasn't been easy. In the meantime Dennis and Liz started a neighborhood whole-bean coffee delivery service and were just awarded a $10,000 business start-up grant through the Queens Economic Council.

I asked them why they picked Cafe Brioso over so many other options closer to New York such as Toby's Estate and Stumptown. One reason is their connection to Columbus and its burdgening coffee scene. In addition Dennis and Liz work directly with Jeff Davis the owner/roaster at Brioso and prefer that to working with a sales rep.

So how does Cafe Brioso's beans compare to other roasters? Tomorrow I'll publish the results of a comparison cupping against beans from Heart, Toby's Estate, and Square Mile.

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Bethlehem Pennsylvania, Embodying the Poetry Of Decay

Introduction- What does this week's post have to do with Coffee? Nothing at all! I'll return to coffee related posts next week. I was inspired by my visit to Bethlehem PA and want to share my thoughts and photographs. I hope you enjoy them.

A few days ago I traveled to Bethlehem, PA to pour wine at a food and wine festival at the Sand's Casino. Driving to the casino I passed through the town that had seen better days. Small, dilapidated houses line the streets, leading me to the top of a hill where suddenly below there's a huge factory taking up most of the horizon. It's an impressive sight, filled with multiple buildings and smoke stacks... a vast behemoth. I could immediately tell this monstrous mill has seen better days. Altough the blast furnaces stopped working back in 1992 and the plant folded in bankruptcy nine years later, a large portionof the facility still stands, a rusty shell of it's formar self. It's a vast complex covering over 4.5 acres.

The $700 million dollar Sands Casino hotel and convention complex stands on the site of the former ore pit of the old Bethlehem Steel Plant. That was my destination for the day. A wine and food festival was being held inside their event center and I was tasked to pour for a few hours. After setting up I slipped away to check out the casino floor. The Sands opened in 2009 and the hallway smelled like it hasn't been cleaned since then. I went up the escalators and into the main casino.

Altough it was Saturday afternoon, very few people were in the casino itself. The place seemed to reek of flop-sweat and desperation. A few people, mostly senior citizens and asians, listlessly fed the slots, chained smoked and stared blankly at the slot machines. I left after a few minutes.

Walking back to the event center, I passed by an indoor outlet mall, about a hundred yards from the casino floor. There were multiple shops filled with clothing, jewlery, electronics and the like. Not a living soul was shopping. It felt something apocalyptic happened and reminded me of the decay just outside the building. After four hours pouring wine, the day's responsibilities were finished and I left the building to explore the remains of the mill.



The mill itself takes up several city blocks and there's two complexes with a bisecting street. On the one side the mill looks like a vast ship with rust towers, pipes and walkways. The middle of the mill has been torn down, making way for a street, the casino, local PBS station, bandshell, and museum.

What was once the rolling mill resides on the other side of the street. Both sides are protected by fencing which I suppose protects the public from any sudden collapses or falling debris.

It's a bizarre sight. The whole thing reminded me of what I imagine Chernobyl or a factory abandoned after a disaster would look like after decaying for a few decades. Although on the one hand it's depressing.... like an ancient momento mori it reminds me of death, on the other there's a certain beauty to this slow distruction that aestically captivates. This fascination of the "Poetry of Decay" or "Ruin Porn" has been an inspiration for artists and writers for many decades. But what I found particularly interesting is the irony of the slow decay inside the casino contrasting with nature's decay just outside the windowless rooms.

   

Failed Architecture: The Poetry of Decay

http://failedarchitecture.com/2013/03/the-poetry-of-decay/

Reckoning With Ruins

http://phg.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/11/27/0309132512462271.abstract

Detroit Ruin Porn And The Fetish For Decay

http://hyperallergic.com/16596/detroit-ruin-porn/

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