Posts Tagged ‘Café Grumpy’
November 14, 2010
It was a busy summer and autumn, both personally and professionally, so I suspended my coffee blogging — but not my coffee drinking. The best bean by far was the (expensive) Honduras Cup of Excellence Lot #4 from Fernández Farm in El Cielito, Santa Bárbara, Honduras, as roasted by Cafe Grumpy. (It’s still available: I picked up some today.)
The tasting notes: “Red currant aroma. Floral brightness. Sweet notes of aged bourbon & molasses.” The Cup of Excellence rewards barista skill, of course, but you have to start with a good bean, and this far exceeded my expectations. I was parceling out beans like bits of gold on mornings with important business.
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Posted in Coffee!, New York | Leave a Comment »
Tags: Aeropress, B. Koffie, Café Grumpy, Chelsea, Coffee!, drinks, espresso, Finca La Tina, Hell's Kitchen, Honduras, La Columbe Torrefaction
July 3, 2010
When you step into McNulty’s Tea & Coffee in the West Village, you feel as though you are stepping into another era of coffee, when specialty shops like this were the main purveyors of gourmet beans from around the world. In that respect, it reminds me of Empire Coffee or Porto Rico Importing Co.
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Posted in Coffee!, New York | 1 Comment »
Tags: Birch Coffee, Café Grumpy, Coffee!, Empire Coffee & Tea, espresso, Intelligentsia, McNulty Tea & Coffee, organic, Peru, Porto Rico Importing Co.
April 4, 2010
I have a new device. No, not that device. Or that one. No, this is a Nespresso Aerocinno.
I saw one at a friend’s house on a trip to Los Angeles last winter. This thing is amazing. Usually I’m content to take my espresso or coffee straight, but every once in a while I want some foam and froth.
I have managed to steam and froth milk with various steam-shooting attachments on espresso machines over the years, but it was usually a big mess, and the results were mixed.
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Tags: Apple, Blogging, Blogs, Café Grumpy, cappucino, Coffee!, computers, drinks, foam, iPad, Nespresso Aeroccino, Novo, NYC, Pandora, soy, technology
March 26, 2010
I don’t remember how I first came across the Aeropress, but as soon as I saw it, I wanted it. I had been looking for a way to make coffee — espresso in particular — in my office without creating a lot of mess. For the past few weeks, I have discovered that something like this is possible. No longer am I the slave to the stale, vaguely machine-flavored Illy served upstairs in the cafeteria or the over-roasted swill found in the Starbucks shops of Midtown Manhattan.
Using air pressure, the press extracts delicious “espresso” (not really) from two scoops of finely ground coffee. Top it off with hot water, and you have an Americano. So far I’ve had the best results with the Kenyan Gatomboya from Stumptown and the Novo Decaf Espresso carried by Cafe Grumpy. I heat the water to 175 degrees Farenheit using this Breville electric kettle, served up in these supposedly unbreakable glass mugs.
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Posted in Blogging, Coffee!, New York | 7 Comments »
Tags: Aeropress, Brazil, Breville electric kettle, Café Grumpy, Coffee!, decaf, drinks, espresso, Illy, Kenya, NYT, Starbucks
January 30, 2010
I’ve been neglecting the blog for quite a while. It’s so much easier to Twitter, or post Facebook updates, or check in with Foursquare, that it’s hard to work up the head of steam it takes to write about coffees that have only mildly impressed me, or books that I haven’t managed to finish, or what have you. It’s the doldrums of winter, the eve of February, the shortest month on paper and the longest in the northeastern mind.
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Posted in Coffee!, New York | 1 Comment »
Tags: Café Grumpy, Coffee!, espresso, Facebook, green tea, Twitter
December 20, 2009
I was too busy for blogging these many weeks, but I was drinking coffee, and so my record here will have a gap. There was a roast from Verve that was quite tasty but is no longer available, and I made it through a couple of rough weeks with the delicious Peet’s Holiday Blend, which my wife carried back from Los Angeles.
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Tags: Buddha's Brain, Café Grumpy, Chronic City, Coffee!, Costa Rica, drinks, espresso, Jonathan Lethem, NYC, Peet's Coffee & Tea, Rick Hanson, snow, Twitter, Verve Coffee Roasters, zazen, zen
November 15, 2009
Interesting things seem to be happening at one of my favorite New York coffee haunts, Café Grumpy. For one thing, the shop’s official blog is looking flashier and busier. And Grumpy — which turned me on to many of the best roasters in the country (Intelligentsia, Verve, Barismo, and Ritual) — is now roasting selected coffees of its own at its Brooklyn location.
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Posted in Coffee!, New York | 3 Comments »
Tags: Café Grumpy, Coffee!, drinks, espresso, Intelligentsia, Stumptown, Verve Coffee Roasters
September 28, 2009
It is a little known fact that coffee improves your objectivity as a journalist. O.K., I’m kidding.
I don’t believe in “objectivity” and usually avoid the word. It sounds like an impossible God-like standard. Most people who use that term are setting up a straw man. I prefer terms like balance, neutrality, fairness. And conventional newspaper journalism can certainly reach conclusions, so long as they are supported by evidence, and qualified.
This just happens to be a topic on my mind and in my Twitter stream. The fairness/objectivity debate is in the air.
I work for a news organization that promises fairness and ethics. Like Buddhist enlightenment and perfection in general, they may not be attainable. The value to the reader comes from aiming for the worthy goal, without fear or favor, bias or prejudice. Even the best newspapers print corrections every day, but they still set accuracy as the standard. We don’t give up because perfect accuracy is unattainable.
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Posted in Blogging, Coffee!, Social Media | 1 Comment »
Tags: balance, Blue Batak, Café Grumpy, Coffee!, espresso, ethics, fairness, journalism, neutrality, news media, newspapers, NYC, NYT, objectivity, politics, Sumatra, Twitter, Verve Coffee Roasters
September 19, 2009
I found myself on a fool’s errand trying
to research this coffee, suggesting that it has already sold out. And, as so often happens, I got distracted wandering the Internet. The seller, Ritual Roasters has a great video tutorial about espresso, using a French press, the Clover and other topics. I was hooked after the first one, in which the barista explains the wide variety in espresso flavors, even with the same beans, and he compares the intensity of espresso to the slap in the face of whiskey. I never thought I’d have this much fun watching videos of coffee geeks do their thing.
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Posted in Coffee! | 1 Comment »
Tags: Café Grumpy, Coffee!, drinks, espresso, French press, geeks, Ritual Coffee Roasters
It was a busy summer and autumn, both personally and professionally, so I suspended my coffee blogging — but not my coffee drinking. The best bean by far was the (expensive) Honduras Cup of Excellence Lot #4 from Fernández Farm in El Cielito, Santa Bárbara, Honduras, as roasted by Cafe Grumpy. (It’s still available: I picked up some today.)
