After a decent “real” Macchiato at Pacific Bay in Walnut Creek, back home for the Four Barrel  pour over; Burundi Kinyovu. A May 5th Roast. Plum notes.

The Skerton raised my cardio to 110 BPM. Someone should design a cafe cardio workout.

Great things are coming up this week. The Giro begins, and Bike To Work Day on May 13th!

Also a big shout out to my friend and loyal blog follower Jessica L. who is having fun in New Zealand. She promised to pack her grinder and french press.

Cheers!

Pat

Just as Bud Fox in the movie Wall Street was the, “twelfth man on the deal team and last to know,” I had no idea that Naia, my gelato hang out, had partnered up with James Freeman at Blue Bottle to create some Blue Bottle espresso. Such ignorance is a sure sign that I have been working way too much to enjoy my favorite addictions. Imagine my surprise when my wife comes back from a gelato run and asks, “guess what flavor they have? Blue Bottle!”

I was so shocked I quit watching T.V.  I looked in amazement. This is big. Just like the real thing, the creamy mixture has caffeine,  as the basis of this great treat is cold-brewed Hayes Valley espresso blend.

Let it rest just under the tongue, and dissolve into espresso delight. Please note that the photo below is half Blue Bottle, and half TCHO chocolate -the other new flavor at Naia. If you don’t know about TCHO, then you don’t know! However, that is a post unto itself.

Let’s hope a single origin spro is on the way!

Cheers!

Pat

When it comes to preparing coffee I have never been much of a believer in the deification of those who prepare it for a living, nor have I advocated the labeling of certain coffee “destinations” as temples of worship. Now, please don’t mistake me for a coffee heathen.  I have my favorite places in  San Francisco, and just returned from a trip to Portland for coffee (and Voodoo Doughnuts as well as micro brews from Amnesia Brewing), but the great thing about this complicated beverage is that once you learn to do it yourself, and do it well, any place in the world becomes your cafe.  So, after this long and chilly winter, I welcomed the first day of global warming. I set off into the hills to bike, to brew, and to drink one of my favorite beans.

Single Speed Mountain Biking and Coffee Make a Winning Combination

Beside coffee, my other passion is bikes.  This outing provided an opportunity to experience both together.  Bike or hike, either is effective to break out of the city grind for a more mindful approach to your coffee day. A single speed bike keeps the transportation simple and maintenance free.

The Line Up

My present line up of coffee tools for outdoor fun:

1. Snow Peak GS-100 A Gigapower Stove with Auto Lite
2. Snow Peak ProIso Fuel Canister
3. Snow Peak Titanium Cafe Press (AKA French Press) CS-111
4. Snow Peak Mini Solo Cook Set Ti SCS-004T
5. Hario Ceramic Coffee Mill Skerton MSCS-2
6. Blue Bottle bonmac One Hole Ceramic Dripper with #4 paper filters
7. Blue Bottle “Chiapas”–Freshly Roasted Of Course!

I prefer Snow Peak for several reasons. It’s quality gear, and innovative. They place a priority on preparing coffee in the out-of-doors with their Titanium Cafe Press and their other coffee products. In addition, the equipment is made in Japan, where a lot of good design originates. Also, I don’t have to struggle with buying goods from a country where I have differing views on human rights (enough said).  The Snow Peak Cafe Press performs well, and there is an extra little skirt on the plunger to reduce chalk and grit in your cup.

The Hario Grind

The Hario Skerton Coffee Mill is a must have for any coffee lover. I bought it for the office or hiking or backpacking, and now I use it all the time at home. The ceramic burr design is appreciated (no flimsy blade knock off here). You can also field strip it in seconds-for cleaning, and every part is dishwasher safe. If you don’t have one of these grinders, the only thing I can say is, shame on you. They are so much fun, and grinding your own beans in any remote location is so nice. The Hario is one of those possessions that I would retrieve from my burning house, that’s how much I like it.  The directions are entirely in Japanese, but the unit is intuitive and therefore easy to use, adjust, and clean. Who reads directions anyway? Buy it now. Everything Hario makes is fantastic.

The ceramic dripper by Bonmac is also from Japan, and although it is a little heavy for packing, you can pound tent stakes with it all day, and then drip a great cup. This baby won’t break; unless you get angry, and smash it against a boulder.  However, that will never happen when your having so much fun, relaxing under the spell of caffeine.  Sure, there are lighter drippers (AKA pour overs) for backpacking.  I have a plastic frame weight weeny pour over with a nylon filter that fits in the bottom of the fuel canister, but it doesn’t compare to the Bonmac in aesthetics or taste. When ever I use this light weight contraption, I feel like I am brewing the grind in a bra from Victoria Secret.  So, don’t hassle me about weight. I love the Bonmac as an outdoor brewing method, it’s faster than Chemex, and certainly not as fragile.  Most important to me is the fact that the taste results are tip top.

One last piece of advice, be sure to use your field equipment at home before the trek. It’s good to get acquainted with the gear to eliminate problems before you get to the hills.  If your experience is anything like mine, you may discover that making good coffee doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive, and can compliment your outdoor fun.

Blue Bottle Chiapas Blooming in the Wild

So, put together a coffee kit, grab a day pack, come out of your kitchens, and cafes. Enjoy the wilderness. Enjoy your coffee.

Keep Drinking!

Pat Riggs

Thanks to my son Casey Riggs who took the photos for this post! –Thanks buddy.

© all photographic and literary rights reserved 2010 Pat Riggs

Every once in a while you experience and enjoy something that you could never afford on your own, that is beyond your reach to possess. That experience came to me today at Four Barrel Coffee.

Four Barrel has recently set up an espresso bar exclusively dedicated to single origin espresso, and dedicated space and the best of equipment to the art of Espresso. When I say dedicated I mean the bar is set apart from the rest of the coffee operation in the café. The bar is equipped with a La Marzocco GS/3,the $7K lust machine of the home espresso fanatic. Grinding the bean to an amazing fluff is a Versalab M3 Grinder which is such a true work of art, Versalab should win a prize for their craftsmanship.

Today, Barista Matthew mastered the equipment, producing a shot of Sidamo that, for me at least, produced a nice berry flavor, buttery body / mouthfeel, with a clean aftertaste. A memorable shot to be sure. I thought about the experience for the rest of the day. And, as we say in the legal business, this motion followed.

Stop by Four Barrel, belly up to the bar, drink a shot to the espresso gods, and say thanks to Four Barrel for providing these tremendous resources.

© 2010 all rights reserved Pat Riggs

The first thing I notice is the TV antenna. It’s affixed to that skinny mast. There’s no rotor. Its pointing like a compass toward civilization. This image is testimony that although cable has yet to arrive on scene, drugs have made themselves at home here at 45 Main Street USA where “we never close.”

I snapped the picture via Blackberry while visiting this anonymous hell-hole-of-a-town, out in the Central Valley. I was late for court, representing a drug client. I was on the run, not knowing what kind of justice I was going to receive for being, what was now, ten minutes late. As usual, I was craving coffee.

That craving causes me to day dream. The dream for today was the “what a great place for a cafe fantasy.” A lot of people dream about flying, or dating someone like Heidi Klum. I dream about coffee, and where to start café’s. The mental loop started off with, just call it 45 Main, and keep it cable free. That one antenna lead would bring in a signal displaying a snowy, old school world. The TV would be black and white, strapped to the wall, tuned with a knob, by one of the baristas while standing on a stool. The press would come by and like the fact that we could only pull in one or two channels. And most importantly, we could keep the Drugs We Never Close sign by grand-fathering it via the local zoning ordinance.

I put my dream on hold until I met with the next subliminal coffee cue. I walked through the doors to Department 1.

When you are an attorney who is not a member of the local bar, the protocol is: polite, heads up, keep the hair short, and don’t loose your cool when the judge goes through a sort of scripted hazing ritual where the content is designed to prove that he or she knows more than you do. The drill is not quite a public shaming. You laugh at a few of the jokes pointed your way, and you move on.

My client’s case was on for sentencing. I knew it was going down hill when the judge called my client an addict, maybe even a dealer. He stated on the record, “Mr. so-and-so you could fly into any town in the world, and as soon as you land, you would know exactly where to go. You would go straight to the seedy part of town, and buy what ever you need to satisfy your addictions.”

The court reporters hands were bobbing up and down, next to a tall Starbucks paper cup, next to the pink folding doughnut box, which was next to the empty jury box.

I was thinking to myself, no your honor, no need to fly anywhere, 45 Main is just around the corner. They sell drugs there. It says so on the wall. DRUGS, in white letters, surrounded by a field of robins egg blue against a back drop of this wonderful big sky country of yours.

I then had a coffee epiphany.

The reporter’s bobbing hands and the Starbucks cup beside the doughnut box was the second subliminal coffee cue of the day. It reminded me that addiction is a universal human trait. Addiction is in my genetics, it’s a gene I acquired back in the day. One of my remote coffee ancestors had an error in their DNA replication. They had a DNA strand with a coffee mutation, and not even a repressor protein could cure this defect. I was made as well as I could be made. Maybe addiction, in any of its many forms is the quest for perfection, to become like gods, to find that missing piece that we believe we don’t possess, or missing link that will somehow finally satisfy us. Maybe addiction is the opportunity we take to keep us from who we really are.

As a culture we migrate from one drug to the next. My Coffee ancestor would never have left the cradle of mankind in the Olduvai Gorge, if a good espresso machine capable of producing god shots would have been available. They had to keep moving, they had to keep evolving because they only had basalt and chips of stone to tamp and grind their coffee.

So the dealer of addiction, who never closes, is going to go far in this world. This place, 45 Main, was just a block from Highway 5. It is the methamphetamine highway which begins in Mexico and links many of the small cities up and down the Central Valley of California.

The bailiff was circling to remand my client, whose last words to me before they whisked him away, “I can do the time. That’s not it, I just wanted a rehab. Jail won’t do me any good. I am an addict and need help.”

Maybe this post has taken a turn down a very dark alley about an unpopular subject. I need coffee every morning. I suffer withdrawal if I don’t get it. It seems to improve my life. I enjoy it in a big way. Right now I am enjoying some Mexican Zaragoza. from my Chemex.

I’ll drive to any part of town to satisfy my addiction, but make mine legal.

What about you?

Pat

all material on this site is property of and copyrighted ©2009 by Patrick Riggs

Brewing coffee is a four minute novel.

Pulling a shot of espresso is a mere fraction of that.

You grind, you heat, coffee blooms, and then it dies. The novel, the ceremony, takes on the seriousness of a game.

For example, coffee is like a game of pinball. Pinball, like brewing coffee, is random, encased in glass, and an event, once the ball is launched, almost entirely beyond the player’s control. We have this human desire to beat the odds by telepathically imposing our will on the ball or shaking the machine. In coffee, especially, espresso we are all players. We have a history of loss, and the occasional high score.

Daily, every morning in fact, the thrill comes from not knowing whether your efforts will produce a good cup, a good shot, or something destined for the sink. As people, our strong suit is reflection rather than prediction. We are better at mourning than prophesying. Since we seldom see the end result in our mind’s eye, we have this deficit that gives us hope. We hope to just keep the ball in play, hope to brew the cup, and hope to extract the perfect shot.

Pat

© all photographic and literary rights reserved 2009 Pat Riggs

My Bodum 3 cup primed with Ritual Snow Cone Seasonal Espresso

Coffee is best served small.

Although this is a contrarian position in today’s holiday market, it’s a bet you can lay down on your kitchen or holiday dinning table. If you place this bet, you will cup a winner every time.

My small brewer of choice is the Bodum Chambord French Press 3 cup model. It sells retail for $29.95, and brews coffee with taste. If you see it, you should buy it. Maybe that command is a little two much in the imperative grammatical mood, but seriously, the 3 cup will not disappoint. I already have one, our kitchen has had as many as two at any given time to prevent divorce. I buy these to give away to family and friends, especially for Christmas gifts.

When you take this small Bodum out of the box, and see how small it really is, you will think that it’s small, you will think small is bad, but you’re wrong . This post is an encouragement that small is good. This negative first impression forming in your mind is only evidence that you have been brain washed by the culture to think BIG. The personal growth seminar you attended last year, the no-money-down real estate tapes and books you purchased, the buy 2 get 1 free offer, the trips to Costco to buy pallets of food and drink—put those thoughts out of your mind, relax, and enjoy a little cup of coffee.

The Bodum 3 cup is a 12 oz. instrument. The simple math is you will be able to brew three 4 oz. cups. The reality however, is that with the grind absorption and expansion one 4 oz. cup fits nicely within the Bodum power band for best results. Downsizing to a 4 oz. coffee serving will change your world. Downsizing in general will change your world, and for the better. Regarding downsizing, I noted recently that when Gandhi died his last possessions were his famous round-rimmed spectacles, one pair of leather sandals, one silver pocket watch, and a brass bowl and plate for meals. My list for life’s important possessions would include my Bodum 3 cup, a conical burr grinder, a 4 oz. ceramic mug. Nothing else.

The Bodum 3 cup is the IPod in a coffee lover’s life. It allows you to brew the beans you enjoy with ease, little hassle; all in 4 minutes. The drawback to the Bodum is, just as the IPod has changed the way we relate to the world around us—everybody off in their own musical world—you will enjoy retreating to your own personal coffee world. You may begin to withdraw from that popular coffee destination and loose some skills of socialization. More importantly, though, you will loose the self loathing about your own brewing abilities. You will loose the delusional thoughts that brewing coffee can only be performed by those in flannels with tattoos and piercings. A thirty dollar Bodum and a thirteen dollar bag of Micro lot co-op beans will rank you in the NBA of brewing.

Finally, resist the desire to buy the bigger Bodum models until you have purchased this personal work horse. My own experimentation during a side by side comparison of the 12 cup vs. 3 cup concludes that flavor, acidity, body, etc. are lost in the bigger presses. Please don’t interpret this as an indictment against any of the other Bodum Models, just make sure you keep the 3 cup cleaned and ready to go any time of the day.

Or if you really want to go all out for your holiday guests, buy a Bodum 3 cup for every place setting. Offer a variety of beans. Let your guests experiment with personal choice. Convert them to the world of real coffee. They will love it.

Happy Holidays and Keep Drinking!

Pat

Copyright © 2009 all graphic and literary rights reserved Pat Riggs

Java Kai Hanalei HI Photo Courtesy of the Internet

A subscriber to this coffee blog writes:
Just though I’d drop a line to Mr Coffee for no particular reason other than I just got back from Hanalei, Kauai, perhaps the happiest place on earth. That’s right, it ain’t Disneyland.

My all time favorite coffee shop is Java Kai. Love this place. Blair Estate Kona is out of this world. Coconut milk instead of cream. If ya ever hit the neighborhood…..

Daniel

Editor’s Note:

Daniel is an attorney who is a certified specialist in family law and one of the best attorneys I know of. His area of expertise is fraught with emotion, and strife. Any rest this guy takes is more than well deserved. I am glad to see he was taking a break…a coffee break. His unsolicited weekend report from Java Kai is a great reminder that vacation and coffee are a great combination.

Four Barrel Kenya Catugi

Four Barrel Kenya Catugi

kenya Catugi Zen Ponding in the Chemex

Bloom Coffee and Tea Roseville

When I have court in Sacramento, or visit clients at Folsom State Prison, I make the usual SF to Sacramento pilgrimage to Temple Coffee and Tea over on 10th Street in downtown Sacramento. Today, however, an old buddy gave me a call and encouraged me to meet him at a place he was raving about called, Bloom. I took him up on his offer.

By the way, this is how the majority of reviews begin of Bloom Coffee and Tea. Such testimonial word of mouth is the order of the day, and it’s all good.

I had done my homework on Bloom before my patronage. I was already familiar with the fact that their beans originate from Verve Coffee Roasters in Santa Cruz. This fact, in and of itself, was motivation enough to make the trip, and make the choice for something new. So leaving those gloomy granite walls of Old Folsom Prison, my trusty Honda Accord headed for 100 Eureka Road in Roseville, California which is a very short hop off of Interstate 80 (for you Tahoe ski types).

I was introduced to Luke and Jacob, the two brothers who created the place. These guys are young, but don’t let that fool you. Watching them reminded me of those Russian gymnasts you know…those young kids, but they take on the world. They were beyond their years when it comes to creating a place where coffee comes first. Their demeanor was definitely all about coffee, and tea. I say coffee and tea because they are knowledgeable about both, and behind the bar they could walk the walk, and talk the talk.

Brothers Luke and Jacob Creators of Bloom

In my typical addictive approach I usually drink alone, especially when I am reviewing a café. However, at the invitation of my friend, we bought lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant, and brought the food into Bloom to eat. That seemed pretty casual and my buddy is a local so when in Roseville… Eating, drinking, and relaxing with friends is all a part of the Bloom vibe. The outside design is what I would call Mediterranean, and the inside is well apportioned with casual sofas, and hardwood tables and floors. They are committed to local artists and display exhibits which rotate through out the year. I was told that in the past the décor had included an old school phonograph, and that friends would bring personal vinyl to play on the old set. I am sorry I missed that.

Analog Coffee Timing is next to everything

Bloom has a unique way of offering water to their friends. Water is stored in wine bottles with wire tops. It is cold, and the bottles are clean. You take a bottle to your table or couch and enjoy it at your leisure. It is a great aid to the palette. There is a raging debate in the world of specialty coffee about the presence of water when drinking espresso. Some say offering water with your drink is offensive, and can list their reasons accordingly. Others appreciate water with shots and I happen to be one of them. I believe water is a great compliment to espresso, especially after the shot, because with water you can extend the taste experience well past the brief moments in time of consuming the shot.

Elida Estate Panama Shot

Immediately after introductions, I wanted to see if they were pulling shots with mere blends or did they have what it takes to create with something more complex. They easily passed my single origin test. Luke piloted the La Marzocco Linea pulling shots of Elida Estate Panama from the Alto Quel, Boquete region. This is the natural process Elida Estate from Verve, and it was a pleasure to order not just one but several doubles, even late in the afternoon. The dried fruit notes were present in spades (strawberries). Jacob and Luke are artists with their Linea, and they use an old analog stop watch in the creative coffee process. Art was served in black ACF espresso ceramic. Enough said.

I thoroughly enjoyed Bloom and highly recommend it.

Keep Drinking!

Pat

Copyright all rights reserved 2009 Pat Riggs