Posts Tagged ‘espresso’
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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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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Tags: Birch Coffee, Café Grumpy, Coffee!, Empire Coffee & Tea, espresso, Intelligentsia, McNulty Tea & Coffee, organic, Peru, Porto Rico Importing Co.
June 12, 2010
Posted in Coffee!, New York | 1 Comment »
Tags: B. Koffie, Birch Coffee, Coffee!, cold brew coffee, cold press, espresso, Ethiopia, Intelligentsia, Kenya, La Columbe Torrefaction, NYT, soccer, t, tweet, Twitter, World Cup, World Science Fair, Yirgacheffe
June 5, 2010
It was painful to pass so close to Stumptown at the Ace Hotel without stopping, but I was glad I did, finding myself off the lobby of another boutique hotel, the Gershwin, in a different temple to caffeine — Birch Coffee. I had been wanting to visit after noticing it on The Times’s list of the best of the new coffee cafes. It was love at first visit.
The decor gave me a warm feeling right away. True, you’re not going to find a half-dozen varieties of obscure single origin coffees from as many countries, as you would a couple of blocks away, but there are chairs and stools, something Stumptown eschews. And food. And wine. And beer. And a lending library upstairs.
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Posted in Coffee!, New York | 2 Comments »
Tags: Ace Hotel, Birch Coffee, Coffee Labs Roasters, Coffee!, computers, drinks, espresso, Flatiron, Gershwin Hotel, Guatemala, India, Monsooned Malabar, Museum of Sex, Nicaragua, NYC, NYT, Stumptown
May 29, 2010
Bad news: Now closed.
For the longest time, lovers of single-origin high-end culinary coffee in the upper Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood have had to travel downtown for beans. Even this place is a bit far from the West 50s.
Now comes B. Koffie.
The new shop drew a fair amount of attention when it opened earlier this year as the first place to offer a disposable a French-press-to-go cup.
I went to see that and try it out, but I was more interested in the selection of single-origin beans, all imported from Africa.
The beans are sold in Mason jars, the ones made by the Ball Corp., the type that my parents used to use for canning preserves, sauces and pickles.
If you return the jar for a refill, you get a discount, the barista told me.
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Tags: Africa, African coffee, B. Koffie, Coffee!, espresso, FAEMA E61, French press, Hell's Kitchen, Mason jar, NYC, Rwanda, XPress Cup
May 16, 2010
A good coffee shop is all about atmosphere. And the atmosphere is one reason that I’ve tried to like the Joe Art of Coffee chain. They really make an effort.
Paintings and other one-of-a-kind art on the wall. Barista classes. Cute little signs describing bits of coffee lore. Cupping notes on the bags. The last time I sampled some beans here, very early in my coffee quest, I was disappointed. Lately Joe has been popping up on best-of lists, so it was long past time to give Joe another chance, and now I’m glad I did.
One important change: Joe has switched to a new roasting partner, Ecco Caffe in California, since my visit last year. A good roast makes all the difference. The retooling landed the shop on this best-of-New-York coffee list by The Times.
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Tags: Aeropress, Brazil, Coffee!, Ecco Caffe, espresso, Joe the Art of Coffee
April 29, 2010
From time to time, I have complained that Midtown lacks any good coffee, apart from the bitter, over-roasted offerings of the many Starbucks outlets. That’s not quite fair.
There is one exception that stands out in this wasteland: Empire Coffee & Tea, on Ninth Avenue, about a block north of the Port Authority.
I wandered over there on my lunch break not too long ago, had a latte and picked up some beans for home and the office.
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Tags: Aeropress, Africa, Barack Obama, Coffee!, Empire Coffee & Tea, espresso, NYC
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
March 21, 2010
That was the first real winter we’ve had in New York City in a while, but I’m still glad to put the days of snow and winter jackets behind us. I’ve been engaged in a bit of apartment-organizing, having finally bit the bullet and paid for some storage space. There is some stuff we didn’t want underfoot but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out. Some old computer equipment, some books, the comic collection from my misspent youth in the 1970s, my complete collection of Spy, furniture that we might put in a big summer house if we ever buy a big summer house. I fueled the weekslong effort with cups and shots of this coffee from Stumptown.
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Tags: Coffee!, drinks, espresso, NYC, Stumptown, Thumpology
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.)
Inside Third Rail Coffee at 240 Sullivan St. in Greenwich Village.
