Hasta La Ideas

Southeast Portland’s micro roaster and bean-to-beer experimenter

Portland has developed quite a name for itself over the years as a hub for coffee innovation. Whether it boils down to exotic beans, an experienced roaster, the espresso machine or the whole package, each boutique that opens up has a fresh spin on coffee that goes beyond gimmicks and instead delves into absolute coffee nerdery. One of the more recent shops to open up in Portland’s Southeast Industrial area is Water Avenue Coffee (WAC), a casual cafe serving up brews at its 50-foot long bar built from century-old reclaimed fir.

WAC is the brainchild of Barista Exchange founder Matt Milletto and former Stumptown roaster Brandon Smyth. Using their respective knowledge, the duo has created a coffee roasting plant and full-service bar that’s as experimental as it is straightforward. After tasting WAC for ourselves—you can pick up a bag online or at their shop—we checked in with Smyth to learn more about what makes this Portland outpost so unique.

What kind of roaster do you use at WAC?

I roast on a slightly modified 1974 SASA Samiac 20-kilo coffee roaster built in France. What makes these machines unique and sought after is they were handmade at the time, and customized for the purchaser. The one at Water Avenue was constructed for a lefty who evidently loved fire engine red. They also sport dedicated motors for the cooling tray, tray agitator and exhaust. So, with the addition of a Variable Frequency Drive to the exhaust motor, the roaster can have complete control over the airflow during the roast. This is a huge advantage for a micro-roaster like us with delicate and unusual coffee cultivars with vastly different flavor profiles and seed density. Changing the airspeed during certain times while roasting can bring out sweetness, acidity, or produce a super clean cup. For espresso roasts I can slow down the airspeed, creating a very sweet, balanced roasts perfect for shots, or speed it up to bring out the lemongrass notes in an Ethiopian single origin. We are stoked to have this 1,700-lb Frenchman as a part of our daily operation.

From where do you source your beans?

The beans are sourced through a nearby importer or, ideally, directly from the farmer. I’m heading to El Salvador in a couple of weeks to purchase some coffee for next year from some amazing farms: Finca Manzano, run by Emilio López Díaz, champions experimentation with production to create coffee that gets better with every crop, and Fincas de la Familia Menendez that grows the insanely delicious Pacamara hybrid varietal on the upper slopes of their Las Delicias farm. That Pacamara has consistently been my favorite coffee since I first sampled it, and we are really excited to bring in WAC’s own lot for 2012.

WAC is also sporting new, custom Tyvek bags that are 100% paper, compostable, tear-proof, watertight, reusable, and most importantly, white. We are dorking out over them and they are inspiring excitement with our design and engineering regulars.

You’re brewing a Northwest Pale Ale from coffee beans?

We have had a lot of success with our Oak Barrel Aged Sumatra experiments, and are planning on expanding our R&D super lab to tackle some other uncharted territory—like how to brew a real coffee beer. Not a Porter or Stout, but a bright, clean, Northwest Pale Ale. We are currently in the development phase, and enjoying the process immensely.

What does this process involve? What are some of the challenges it brings when compared to brewing coffee?

This process involves a huge amount of experimentation to get right. Right now we have been focusing on the synergism of a lighter roasted coffee with the bitterness of a pale ale. To date, this hasn’t worked well, but we are experimenting with roast levels and the timing of introducing the coffee into the mix. The biggest hurdle to overcome is how to find a coffee varietal at a specific roast level that will not overtake or compete with the flavors already present in the ale. We want the acidity and floral notes in the coffee to shine without becoming too astringent or not complimenting the already flowery nature of the hops.

It has been a real fun experiment thus far, but we haven’t had many batches come out worth celebrating over. It will take a while to get this right, and perhaps it is a doomed venture, but it is something that when perfected Portland will embrace wholeheartedly. This city loves exciting, daring flavors, and its three loves—children, coffee and beer.

Farm to cone ice cream made with the finest Northwest ingredients

New to the foodie community in Portland, OR, Salt & Straw makes truly unusual, delicious ice cream with the finest locally grown ingredients. We were recently tasked with sampling a handful of the latest “farm to cone” flavors and—though the team was split over which varieties they preferred—Salt & Straw definitely won us over.

Each of the unexpected flavors remains refreshingly true to taste, rather than something concocted in a lab experiment. The Ninkasi Oatis Stout—made with craft beer from Eugene, OR-based Ninkasi brewery and laced with ribbons of fudge—trumped any doubts over the combination. The hoppy, oatmeal flavor, while perfectly suited to a sweet scoop of ice cream, was still reminiscent of the beloved local beer.

Salt & Straw collaborated with other NW neighbors, Stumptown Coffee and Woodblock Chocolate, blending Stumptown’s fair-trade beans with Woodblock’s freshly roasted cocoa nibs for a sophisticated version of classic coffee ice cream. Also made with Woodblock is the Ocumare single origin chocolate flavor we found to be more complex, and less overtly sweet than what we had as children.

Other flavors that had the CH HQ talking were Arbequina olive oil and pear with blue cheese. While the olive oil was a definite hit with its novel balance of savory and sweet, the pear and blue cheese was met with mixed reviews. For some, the blue cheese overpowered the subtle pear, but then again, anyone who opts for an ice cream accented with a stinky cheese is likely up for a flavor adventure.

Regardless of individual preferences, the fresh flavors remained consistently authentic across the board. Salt & Straw is sold online and at their scoop shop located in NE Portland’s Alberta neighborhood, where you’ll find a rotating selection of seasonally influenced flavors.

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.

What aspects of 3FE do you feel are uniquely Irish?

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.

How did you raise the money to buy the espresso machine?

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.

How much does 3FE’s home influence the way things are done?

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.

How did you get the Twisted Pepper space?

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.

And at that time, you had bought the machine and it was in your apartment?

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.

How did you decide on a coffee to serve at 3FE?

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.

What’s on the 3FE menu?

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.

You get some famous fans?

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.

How do you respond to people who ask, “What’s the big deal? It’s just a drink”?

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.

A sneak peak at the new flagship store in LA’s downtown Arts District

For the last few months, the corner of 5th and Mateo in the Arts District of downtown Los Angeles has been abuzz with activity as the WoodSmithe team puts the finishing touches on Handsome Coffee Roasters‘ flagship store. Handsome has made a splash in the specialty coffee world since they announced that Tyler Wells and Chris Owens would be teaming up with World Barista Champion Michael Phillips to launch the coffee company of their dreams.

With the space nearly ready to open its doors, the collaboration between the roasters and the builders—who also happen to be neighbors—seems like a natural one. Also in on the operation is Na Young Ma’s Proof Bakery, whose pastries will be served alongside the coffee.

We met with Owens to see the space coming together and talk more about their process for sourcing and roasting. “Every roaster is going to color the coffee in some way,” he says. “You bring your style to it. The dynamic, interesting, sweet, fruity coffees that we tend to buy are complimented by the roast style. I want to start thinking of it as a partnership between mother-nature and me as a roaster.” Summing up their simple philosophy, Owens adds, “We source beans responsibly and sustainably. We are going to buy delicious coffees, prepare them well, and try not to mess that up. Really, that’s it, I want to get people excited about coffee.”

Handsome’s Tyler Wells and WoodSmithe’s Nathanael Balon also sat down with us to talk about the new ultimate custom-designed coffee bar.

The inevitable question, where did the name Handsome come from?

Wells: We went around and around about names for more than two months. Basically our whole aesthetic and philosophy is about way back when, when things were made by hand. Things were quality, a recall to the days of really cool equipment like sewing machines. I was thinking about old bread ovens because I like baking. One morning I was half asleep in bed and it hit me, Handsome Coffee. We are Handsome Coffee Roasters. I texted Chris: “Handsome Coffee Roasters?” He texted back “expletive… yes!” It was perfect. It’s a little bit tongue and cheek, but as the aesthetic builds and as the brand gets bigger, you get it.

How did you find this location in the Arts District?

Wells: The Arts District was our first choice. Mike was still in Chicago but we had agreed to terms. Chris and I would drive around this neighborhood at least one day a week, but had a hard time finding anything. We met Carl from Creative Spaces. He asked us to describe our dream: Arts District, corner, bow truss, skylights, 3,500 square feet, clearspan, 220 power, three-phase. He called me at 10 o’clock that night and said we were going to see a space at nine in the morning. It was almost fate. When you get to the Arts District you start to understand the community down here. It is not as dense as some of the rest of Los Angeles, but quality-wise it is 100%. Every person down here is doing something awesome.

Nathanael, how does the Handsome Coffee fit into what you do at Woodsmithe?

Balon: I think it made sense on a number of levels. Primarily the local. We are local. This is my neighborhood. This is where I live. This is where I work. I have a built-in high value for new businesses and the types of businesses that are going to take the time to really create a great product and offer it here in my neighborhood. Right off the bat, I started to understand the level of quality coffee they were going to bring into the neighborhood. These guys had language for what they wanted to create. What we do is translate that language into form. We want to work with brands that have great stories and are interested in doing great work. The fact that they are doing it blocks away from our office and shop is just perfect.

How would you describe the WoodSmithe aesthetic?

Balon: I am always striving for simplicity and honesty in design and an exposure of as many of the elements as possible. Our aesthetic is typically pretty strong, fairly masculine with clean lines and simplistic forms. We purposely put as little as possible in the space to be able to expose as much of the process as we could. You can see green coffee in the back on the pallets in bags, and we put in a huge glass wall to showcase the roasting process. Then, you are staring at a finished product.

How did you design the area for the Probat roaster?

Balon: The Probat roaster is an amazing piece of machinery. Its simplistic, strong, and clean. It’s a beautiful machine. Our goal there was to take more of a museum or art gallery approach. Let this unit stand-alone in a clean space and just be beautiful.

The wall by the roaster is made from white subways tiles and along the hallway wood ones. What are those made from?

Balon: The wood subway tile is made from one of Handsome’s core materials…aged Maple. We utilized Handsome’s brand imagery through laser etching to overlay a wall-paper like pattern over the wood layout.

What’s on the menu?

Wells: It reads like this: brewed coffee, espresso, espresso with milk. Three ounces, six ounces, 10 ounces. That’s it. It’s pretty straightforward because if you took a poll of the people who come in here and asked, “What do you think a cappuccino is?” everyone has a different idea. It will strip away the stigma and attitude that often comes with serving great coffee.

Are you going to frown at people who pull out a sugar packet?

Wells: No, but they will have to pull out their own sugar packet because we won’t have any. It’s not because we are anti-sugar. I have one hell of a sweet tooth, but I don’t want sugar in my coffee. This coffee is fantastic and it does not need sugar. We have probably served about six or seven thousand cups of Handsome coffee at this point. Almost invariably people come back and say, “this does not even need sugar.”

What do you say to the people who might ask, what’s all the fuss?
It’s just a drink.

Wells: That’s actually fine. Crappy coffee is just a drink. Chris’ sentiment is if you want to opt in, then we’ll nerd out with you. But if you just want a drink that is good, that’s fine too, just come in to order a coffee without having to hear about every detail. On its base level it should be user friendly. That is the whole idea of the space. You come in you know exactly where to order. Someone is right there.

To learn more about how Handsome’s flagship store came to be, check out this video of the building process.

Handsome Coffee Roasters

582 Mateo Street

Los Angeles, CA 90013

Intense coffee knowledge in a casual environment at a new cafe in Brooklyn

The Third Wave Coffee movement is all about taking the bean and beverage to new levels of consideration, placing huge importance on sourcing, roasting and then brewing. As we could see on a tour of their soon-to-open Brooklyn location, Australian outfit Toby’s Estate Coffee seems to be fully on board, but founder Toby Smith is serious about keeping pure enjoyment at the forefront.

Smith’s laid-back attitude may feel slightly out of place in an industry cranking out caffeine-fueled drinks, but his casual approach allows customers to truly relax, and learn about the blend or bean origin. The teachers are professional baristas who might be pouring hot water into a ceramic double dripper from a Hario kettle, or pulling a carefully calibrated shot of espresso from one of only two La Marzocco Strada machines found stateside. Smith and head roaster Deaton Pigot aim to create a comfortable atmosphere, encouraging guests to remain at the bar and chat with the skilled barista while their drink of choice is being made.

A man who originally got into the craft by roasting beans in his parents’ garage over a decade ago—and who subsequently offered tastings in their garden—Smith keeps this art form alive with a massive Probat roaster and cupping room (equipped with a La Marzocco GB/5) on-site. This is not only where serious consumers can take one of Toby Estate’s highly in-depth courses, but it also serves as a place where Pigot and the team can taste each batch for quality assurance and make adjustments to the roasting and brewing processes.

Besides the extremely high-tech and relatively exclusive espresso machine, one of the other aspects that sets Toby’s Estate apart from other Williamsburg cafes is Smith’s fervent interest in sourcing the beans. Whether stalking small batches online until they’re up for auction, scouring the globe himself or keeping in close contact with his men on the ground in countries known for harvesting beans, Smith adamantly ensures that Toby Estate locations have some of the world’s most distinctive beans on tap.

Toby’s Estate marks a refreshing addition to the Williamsburg cafe scene with its enlightened staff and sun-drenched space, inviting customers to loosen up while learning about a complex beverage at the same time. The Brooklyn shop and roastery open to the public 9 January 2012, where you can expect an exciting menu of seasonal offerings to enjoy there or brew at home.