It's been sometime... Oops.

So, it really has been a few months. August if I'm not mistaken? I've been busy. School is well under way and fully kicking my ass. I've been rendered nearly useless regarding any non-work, non-school endeavours! Boo-fucking-hoo.

I suppose this brings us to the present. Today officially starts my first day as Blue State Coffee's Coffee Trainer for New Haven. A small achievement, but an achievement non-the-less. I passed the 2.0 Barista Certification and now get to spend my Fridays honing my skills and helping others perfect theirs! So thanks in advance for the congrats and gifts. I wear a medium.

I have also been bringing in some new coffees recently. We have a new edition to the Sidamo family. The Guji Triple Sort! It's pretty fucking rad. It's a natural process, which means it's sorted by hand. The sorting process is a whole lot more picky as well. Hence the triple sort! Seriously, the process requires a more rigorous sorting process. The cherries are all supposed to be bright and at the peak of ripeness to ensure a consistent, even flavor throughout all roast profiles. Ours comes in as a city roast and certainly lives up to the standards the sorting process requires. We have also been privelaged enough to have one of the best coffees to come out of this years Cup of Excellence qualifiers. Honduras Finca Las Amazonas is one of the most dynamic coffees we've had on at Blue State. So fruity. Really fruity. Really fucking fruity. Clean cup, nice body, and lots and lots of fruit notes. So many it's rather difficult to pick one from another. Notables include- lime, mango, banana, red cherry! Cup this coffee! If you have access to it that is.

I have more, but I'm saving them!

On a side note, the world famous Colombia Don Telmo is back! My favorite coffee. Hands down.

Hope all is well. Happy Turkey Day and all the shit. Dry your portafilters!

Two Ethiopians

I know, I know! It's been for fucking ever since I posted! I have good reasons though! We have had the fortunate opportunity to bring in some new coffees. This means, though, that I needed to familiarize myself with them, so I took a break to do so. The first coffee on the list was an old favorite with a new face.

The Ethopia Sidamo is one of my favorite coffees. It's versatility makes it one of the most fun coffees to experiment with. It's bright, juicy, and complex as an espresso. It has beautiful milky, chocolatey goodness as a drip and pour-over and an equally chocolatey experience as a cold brew. I've used it many times in the past for all of the above. This is all found in its naturally processed state and as a city roast. Our roaster, New Harvest Coffee, features a different coffee every month or so as a really great dark roast, appropriately titled "The Dark Roast of the Decade". Love it. So where is this going? In a stroke of pure genius, New Harvest chose to roast the natural processed Sidamo as a dark. Perfect.

I did a few things with these two together.

First- Cold brew. I did two batches. Equal parts dark and city. The first was the city on the bottom. The end result was beautiful. Viscous and rich in body, full flavor profile for your tongue, and as smooth as shot of Bushmills. Chocolate EVERYWHERE. Flavored like a mild dark chocolate. The second batch was dark on the bottom. All of the above descriptors with the added bonus of being the most decadent glass I've had yet. Simply the best dark chocolate you've ever had. A little bitter, very rich, very smooth, all chocolate. Amazing.

I then decided that it was time to fuck with the Fetco. I layered my coffees accordingly. The result is the same. So Fucking Good!

I strongly suggest that each and everyone of you abandon your blends and do it yourself. If you're a roaster, stop mixing. It's old news. LAYER! Layering is the way to go. It all extracts differently creating a much more complex flavor profile. Seriously, just try it. Take your favorite blend and pick it apart, create your ratios, and layer.

So with that, dry your portafilters, weigh your shots, stop blending, try something new and enjoy your creation.

ERROR! ERROR!

Todays batch went awry. Sad I know, but fear not! I've recreated the batch and will have a thorough report tomorrow. I can, however, highlight the terrible things that happen when a batch does go wrong.

As I outlined yesterday, I used the Finca Los Mangos and Sumatra Mandheling beans. The previous batch was the El Salvador Cerro Las Ranas. On its own, the Las Ranas is a really crisp and clean coffee. Hot, it goes down smooth with a really unobtrusive, but distinctly Central American spice complimented by a great tropical undertone. That batch was added to yesterdays to create a flop. A muddled, indistinguishable Starbucks like conconction which begs to be forgotten. I imagine it's much like adding ice to some home brewed auto drip coffee after 4 hours on the counter.

This leads me to the moral. Learn from your brewing mistakes! Seriously! If that espresso shot comes out at 19 seconds looking like an aerial view of Cameron Diaz on the beach dump it out, adjust your grind, and pull another. The same goes with bad batches of iced and hot coffees. Don't serve shit for the sake of overhead or your profit and loss margins. You can go to any diner or local italian restaurant for terribly extracted espresso or shitty, watery coffee.

So, until tomorrow, dry your portafilter and watch for channeling. Cameron Diaz should stay on the beach and out of your demitasse.

Blue State Coffee

So Mondays start the first cold brew of the week. I had a new batch of single origins in so I have a few new variations to try. Today I used a light roast from Costa Rica. The Finca Los Mangos is a really nice subtle coffee. A little bit uncharacteristic for a Costa Rican coffee, less spice than usual. It has some really neat dryness to it. Its overall fruity flavors really add to its appeal as an iced coffee. The other bean is a favorite of mine, a full city roast Sumatra Mandheling. As a single origin espresso this bean really shines. Really well rounded, deep fruit notes like plum or date with a really awesome cinnamon like finish, almost like cinnamon toast crunch! The layers are set up with with the Costa on the bottom and top layers. Hopefully this will allow me to avoid the cinnamon on the finish and really highlight the great fruit notes. But only the first taste will really tell so I'll be following up tomorrow.

In the mean time, I'd like to a minute to highlight the shop I work at. Blue State Coffee is committed to sustainability in many of its incarnations. I have been with the company since the day we opened doors at the Wall St. location in New Haven. I've had the pleasure of helping develop blends, different menu items, develop training and hire a really amazing staff. We have some really talented barista working for us. In addition to amazing coffee, we also have a great community outreach program. In each location we donate 5% of sales quarterly to 4 different local non-profit organizations. The total amount donated to each organization is decided based on voting by the customers we are earning sales from. As a company we have donated well over $100,000! We are also committed to environmental sustainability. We compost all of our grounds, filters, and tea bags. We also carry all corn based plastic cups and lids, potato starch based plastic utensils, and compostable paper products and straws. And we actually send our products to an industrial composting facility so it doesn't go to a fill to rot in the sun for decades. If it's not compostable it better be recyclable. While we can't catch everything, we do our best. I think one bag of trash a day is pretty fucking good. So if you're in Providence or New Haven check out one of our shops and have a latte.

All City Championships

While coffee is my money maker (ironic i know) fixed gear freestyle is my focus. I ride for a few companies: All City Cycles, Mishka's D.A.R.T. team, and OPEN Bicycle. Jeff who owns All City and the Bike Jerks Blog is throwing this huge 4 day event called the All City Championships. I'll be driving from New Haven to Minneapolis with my wife. I'll be documenting my coffee experiences as i go. I know, Phew! What would you do without me?



Thursday Aug 19th- Trick Comp
Friday Aug 20th- Sprints
Saturday Aug 21st- Alleycat and Afterparty
Sunday Aug 22nd- Final day and Free Ride Cruise around Minneapolis.

If you are looking for more info check out Bike Jerks.

Hope to see some of you guys there!

Hi.

So this is my first attempt at blogging. As my profile says, I've been working in coffee for a few years now. I have spent a large chunk of that time training and refining my pallet as well as learning to make the best damn cappuccino in New Haven. Texturing milk is not a difficult task. It seems to me that there tends to be too much focus on pouring the perfect tulip rather than understanding what variables come into play when dialing in the perfect shot to go along with that milk. In doing so I have begun to play with different types of brews and different methods of brewing.

Iced coffee is something that most people write off because it is often too bitter or weak or it hasn't the body comparable to a hot single serving pour over. The Yama cold brew towers have an amazing amount of variables that you can play with. Rather than throwing the same old iced blend in and letting it go, I've begun to experiment. For those of you that aren't familiar with this brewing method check this link.

The cold brew method that I use is not the one outlined on most sites. Rather than a 3 hour brew I allow it to go much longer. I've found that 8 to 10 hours yields a really strong, really fully bodied coffee. I grind 10 oz. of coffee on a french press setting through a bulk grinder. I use cold water rather than a water/ice combination and I allow 1 drip every 3 seconds. Trust me. If the coffee is fresh, within a week of its roast date, it will taste amazing.

My initial theory was that there is an obvious difference in extractions between different levels in the grounds so why not create different layers based on their roast and flavor profiles. The layers would extract differently, thus creating a very specific flavor profile when blended. At this point I've been through at least 5 different trials. I am quite fond of Ethiopian coffees, specifically a naturally processed bean from the Sidamo region. Most of these trials have incorporated the Sidamo in some way. The most successful and flavorful batch was a combination of a Costa Rica El Alto C.O.E finalist and the Sidamo. The ratio was 70% El Alto and 30% Sidamo. The first layer was 35% El Alto, the middle layer30% Sidamo, and the top 35% El Alto. The result was a full bodied coffee full of fruity tones throughout, with a nice bit of chocolate to finish. The thing that makes the cold brew really stand out is the finish. It finishes like a hot coffee. Not bitter, not harsh, just coffee.

As the days go by I'll be adding more test batches and results. Most will be much less long winded. Thanks for reading. Dry your portafilters.