Known for their mugs and cups designed to provide optimal fluid dynamics (aka the best possible set-up for pouring and drinking coffee), the newest creation from notNeutral—a division of Rios…
Continue Reading…
Cracking open a cold one in the great outdoors shouldn’t mean lowering your standards. While many favorite brews are bottle-bound, the crew at Upslope Brewing Company of Boulder, Colorado knows…
Continue Reading…
Our interview with barista champion and Dublin coffee bar owner Colin Harmon
Three-time Irish barista champion Colin Harmon loves Dublin. We got a taste of his infectious enthusiasm for the city on a recent tour of his two Third Floor Espresso (3FE) coffee bars there—one in the Twisted Pepper building, where it serves as a cafe by day and cocktail lounge for the music venue at night, and the newer 3FE location on Lower Grand Canal Street.
While he was working on opening 3FE, Harmon turned down numerous offers in other European cities in favor of staying in his beloved hometown. This emotional decision propelled him into becoming a leader in the burgeoning community of food makers and entrepreneurs in Dublin.
We recently talked to Harmon about his coffee journey while driving around Dublin in the 3FE delivery vehicle, gleaning insight on the 3FE company and his goals to be an ambassador for the city he loves.
I do some traveling as part of my work and every time I meet people from another country they say, “Oh, it must be so bad there with the economy and the recession and everything.” You read terrible things about the city and the country and what’s happened, but ultimately life goes on. You can see there are still buses driving around and still people going to work and getting on with it. That’s the ethos of what 3FE is about. We started with very little money. We started with just enough money to get a decent espresso machine and some good coffee.
I sold my car. It was very much “spend the money where you need to, then bootstrap from there.” So we make a little, we spend a little. I suppose it’s a very Irish way of doing things.
Irish people are very good at starting off with what you have, putting your head down and getting on with it. I think doing it in a friendly and approachable way means everything to us—engaging people, talking to them and making them feel welcome. At 3FE we feel like we are ambassadors for the city. We have a lot of tourists coming in who have been recommended by friends. We are proud Dubliners and want to show people that we might not be the richest city in the world, but we still can do things right. We want to work hard and have a good time as well.
Before this I worked in finance. I was a trustee officer for a professional investment fund. I was very well paid. I tried to quit five times and they kept shouting bigger numbers at me to make me stay. Finally I left my job and decided I wanted to find something I love doing. I fell into coffee. I got a job at Coffee Angel that is owned by 2006 Irish barista champion Karl Purdy. And after six months with coffee, I won the Irish Barista Championships. That year I finished fourth in the world.
Yeah. I had set up a competition training room in my third-floor apartment. Then I did a lot of traveling for about a year, but I wanted to stay in Dublin. I am a Dubliner. I wanted to be here, so I started to look for a shop. Not having the budget to open a retail store I was kind of hamstrung. I then met Trevor O’Shea who owns Bodytonic Music and runs the Bernard Shaw on the South Side, and the Twisted Pepper on the North Side. Trevor was trying to get people in during the day. So he said, “Why don’t you come in, set up a coffee shop, and when you are making money you can pay the rent.” It gave us a hand-up. The banks had been laughing at me. It was the only serious offer we had.
We only serve Has Bean, whose owner, Steve Leighton, is my business partner at 3FE. Steve started Has Bean about nine years ago. He originally had a shop, but decided to focus on roasting. We met just before the World Championships in 2009 when I began looking for someone to roast my coffee as I was representing Ireland. Steve was the first person I contacted and he was so accommodating and supportive. We’ve been thick as thieves ever since.
So we started 3FE. And it literally was one cup at a time. We were serving maybe 15-20 cups of coffee a day, but the next day it would be 25 and the day after that would be 30 cups. Be nice to people. Make good coffee. Hopefully they will come back and bring a friend. Soon we got too busy for the front porch at Twisted Pepper and we had to move in to the main bar. Last September we opened our second shop on Lower Grand Canal Street. We also supply other coffee shops in the city and train their staff. We now employ 14 people—two chefs and 12 baristas.
We split our menu into two sections: a tasting menu and a drinking menu. The drinking menu is for people who just want a cup of coffee. If somebody comes in and orders from the tasting menu, we understand that they are there to experience something. They’d like a sample or to learn something about the farm. The coffees change every week. When you order a trio on the tasting menu, you get the same coffee beans made as an espresso, a cappuccino and a filter coffee. It’s a good way to get to know a very distinct coffee. The other one that is popular for us is the filter tasting. We serve two different coffees side by side. We do hand pours. We always make two very different types of coffee. We might serve a washed Kenyan next to a pulped natural Brazilian.
For our hand pours, we use a Marco Uber Boiler that is made here in Dublin. We also have a Marco batch brewer. For espresso, we use the Aurelia Nuova Simonelli. It’s the competition machine. We have one in both of our stores.
We get a lot of people who are coffee daytrippers. One day these guys came in a sat down at the bar. They said that they would like to taste something interesting, and had a few hours to spare so I told them they could sit there and I would feed them tasters of everything and that at the end they could pay what they thought it was worth. They seemed up for it and they seemed like nice people. I started making them espressos.
Then if I was making a filter coffee for someone else, I would give them a small cup to let them taste the thing and talk them through different flavors. Basically I had a chat with them for about three hours. In the course of this they said hey were going to Oslo soon. I suggested they go see Tim Wendelboe. I asked, “What do you do?” “We’re musicians.” I said, “Really? What is the name of your band?” They said, “We are Arcade Fire. Have you heard of us?” My jaw dropped at this stage.
They’ve become very good friends of ours at the shop. They often email us from different cities and ask our advice for where to go. We have sent them to cafes in Croatia and Copenhagen and everywhere in between. Every time they come back to Dublin they do a coffee tasting with us.
It is just a drink, but I think at the core of everything that is generic there can be something amazing. So you could take something like lasagna—why would I order a lasagna? But there is definitely a place to go where the lasagna will blow you away. It’s the same for ice cream, same for stout, same for whiskey. I think that engaging people with something as common as a cup of coffee, but making it amazing—how incredible that can be.
Caffeine-driven collaboration at A Startup Store
As demand for high-quality coffee gains force, the myriad varietals and methods for roasting and brewing come to light with a range that can be intimidating for the average connoisseur.
Aiming to marry the sophistication of coffee drinking with the accessibility it needs to reach its growing audience, A Startup Store will host Coffee Common for its first public event in the U.S., 19-22 January 2012.
In the spirit of its core value of collaboration—between farmers and growers, roasters and baristas—Coffee Common will team up with the story-based retail concept shop in Chelsea before its official opening in February. For three days, and for only $5 a pop, the event will bring together key vendors to demonstrate novel methods in creating the perfect brew, showcasing how to use the best equipment. Besides the demos and informative, direct Q&A opportunities with baristas, attendees will come away hopped up on some of the world’s finest brews being served throughout.
The two parties came together when Startup Store founder Rachel Schectman saw “COMMON: Collaboration is the new Competition” in action at TED and “fell in love.” She says, “Our retail experience is about bringing content, community and commerce to life through rotating story based exhibitions, it was a perfect match before we emerge from beta.”
They’re bringing together representatives from places like Joe, RBC and Cafe Grumpy, as well as champion baristas Ben Kaminsky from Ritual Coffee in San Francisco, Anthony Benda from Cafe Myriade in Montreal, Trevor Corlett from Madcap Coffee in Michigan and more. Plus, the board is made up of National and World Barista Champions and Judges, and for the event, Coffee Common has partnered with Breville on appliance giveaways. For those who can’t make it to NYC, A Startup Store will be broadcasting the event in various Google+ hangouts.
Tickets are available for $5 online or at the door. For full event hours, visit Coffee Common online.
Coffee obsession reaches new heights in this small Hong Kong café
Given Hong Kong’s tradition of amalgamating cultures and cuisines, it’s no surprise that it’s embracing the craft coffee movement. In the quirky residential neighborhood of Sheung Wan in the Central district, I happily stumbled upon one of the city’s newest coffee shops, Knockbox Coffee Company—a three stool cafe with an intensely serious passion for java.
The space is tiny, and shared with gown designer Cerise Yip, with odds and ends for sale ranging from Delta Blues Audio’s Tuba iPod tube amp to books and sunglasses. Occasionally hosting the work of local artists, Knockbox acts as an ambassador for Hong Kong’s hip.
Owners Patrick Tam and Frances Lam are young entrepreneurs dedicated to making the perfect cup. Our passionate barista Jonathan walked us through the coffees available that week—a global who’s who including La Ilusión Bourbon from Has Bean in Stafford, England; an Indonesian Blue Batak from Taiwan’s Caffé Artigiano (not to be confused with the Vancouver-based purveyor with the same name) that I ordered; an organic Bolivian Anjilanaka from Chicago’s Intelligentsia; and Panama’s Carmen Estate. The staff knows many of the roasters personally, and are extremely knowledgeable about the coffees they serve without being pretentious.
Coffee selected, Jonathan asked which brewing method I preferred—in addition to espresso they offer a range of manual brewing methods, including AeroPress, a Hario Halogen Beam Heater syphon, and Hario pour over drip cones. The entire process—from beans to brewing—is taken very seriously at Knockbox. Water is heated and its temperature taken, beans appropriately ground, and once brewed tested by a refractometer to ensure its optimal preparation—and enjoyment. After you enjoy your cup you can head out to explore the neighborhood’s developing indy retail shops and restaurants.
Shop B, 14 Tai Ping Shan Street
Central District, Hong Kong
North Carolina’s oldest microbrewery churns out tasty beers and more from their eco-farm
After leaving his home in Germany to study large-scale farming in England, Uli Bennewitz moved to the U.S. to work in agribusiness. His beer-brewing hobby soon became an obsession, and 25 years ago he started Weeping Radish, now North Carolina’s oldest microbrewery. The craft beer project has since grown into a fully-developed brewery and nitrate-free farm, serving up award-winning charcuterie (handcrafted by their master German butcher, Frank), alongside an assortment of German-style beers.
Weeping Radish brews their beer according to the Reinheitsgebot Purity Law of 1516, a regulation made by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria stating beer could only be made using malt, hops and water to maintain quality. Later amended to include yeast, Bennewitz and his team include the fourth ingredient in their recipe.
Bennewitz, passionate about utilizing local North Carolina ingredients, is a working example of value-added agriculture. Not only does the brewery’s pub menu follow a “Farmer to Fork” ethos, they also add the beer to ‘brats and use watered-down distilled beer to fertilize crops. They also work with the small farms that supply them beef to create sausages and charcuterie products at Weeping Radish that are then sent back to the farms to be sold.
For their 25th anniversary this year, the “hobby out of control” incorporated cascade hops grown on a farm in the mountainous region of Ashville, NC into their India Pale Ale. Bennewitz says eventually they will, “go to the next level, grow our own barley, have it malted and bring it back.” While we found the that the IPA could have been hoppier, the mild flavor was still palate-pleasing. Their current lineup of regionally-inspired flavors includes OBX Kölsch, Radler, Corolla Gold, Fest and Black Radish. The creative chefs behind nearby Boot Local Kitchen & Wine Bar told us they made regular trips to Weeping Radish for their Altbier brew, a “top notch” top-fermented beer with a slightly crisper taste.
Weeping Radish brews sell from their online beer store for $39 per case of 12 swing-top bottles.
Images courtesy of Boot
A compact illustrated guide to mastering at-home brewing
Any excitable amateur who dreams of making their own bathtub brew knows there’s a plethora of literature serving up more opinions, instructions and methods than any one determined brewmeister could ever sift through. That’s why Beer Craft, written by two actual amateur beer enthusiasts, makes a refreshing take on the endlessly fascinating culture.
William Bostwick and Jessi Rymill deliver all the info needed to get started making your own pints, from the mash to the boil to the bottle. There are chapters on personal branding, food pairings and an encyclopedic breakdown of most every type of beer imaginable. All of this is supplemented by Fantastic infographics to help visualize goals and make you the hottest hop-head on the block. Interviews with powerhouse microbrewers from all over the U.S. include start-up stories, specialty beers and useful insight into today’s large-scale independent beer breweries.
One of the greatest aspects of Beer Craft is the attention to detail and promotion of experimentation. The field guides to hops, malts and grain give extensive explanations of the functions of these ingredients, their ranges, uses and the effects they have on flavoring brews. Using these sections as guidelines, you can work to develop a truly unique taste; the authors encourage tinkering to help achieve your product — because after all, good beer is science.
Beer Craft is available on Amazon or Indiebound, and be sure to check out the website for great supplemental materials including links to local brewing suppliers.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
