Pittsburgh >> The Strip District | The Frick Building
You may have noticed some changes to the website over the past couple of weeks- new photos, updated layout, new organization. Anyway, take a look at the new “Menu” page where we’ll be posting the latest coffee and tea menus as well as a snapshot of our menu board at the shop. More intra web goodness is on the way.
Lots of media coverage lately. The Pittsburgh coffee scene, as one of my younger employees would say, is “blowin’ up”.
Pop City visits us, Tazza D’Oro, Aldo, Simpatico, and The Vault and details it all in a well written article about some of the great local shops we have here in the Pittsburgh area. If you haven’t visited them yet, you should, and if you haven’t visited us yet, well shame on you for six weeks (have to get in a Mike Lange reference as the Pens open their playoff series tonight against the gutless Senators).
We’re in today’s Sunday Post Gazette giving our thoughts on Starbucks’ buyout of the Coffee Equipment Company- makers of the Clover 1s coffee brewer. Quite a few people came in today for the first time, mentioned the article, and teased me about my dark roast comments.
A lot of folks have come into the shop lately and asked us about our feelings on the issue, and I think this article sums it up nicely. What we want to make clear is that to make great brewed coffee you have to have great (and fresh) beans. It really depends on what you put into your brewer, and then everything that happens next depends on your gear and your preparation. Just as you can ruin great coffee by brewing it incorrectly or by using a machine that doesn’t get the water hot enough, you can’t get a great cup on the best equipment with the best trained baristas if you’re starting with stale, defect ridden, over-roasted coffee.
At our shop, we try to bring all of these elements together- the best and freshest beans, a high level of training, and top end equipment that gives us a greater degree of control and accuracy in the brewing process.
To give an example, we have a great espresso machine that gives us control over the brew water temperature to within half a degree Fahrenheit. Yesterday we finished off one espresso blend (Kid-O) and put the new batch (Black Cat) in the hopper. To get the new coffee (also a more recent roast date) ready to go we needed to adjust our grind as well as drop the temperature down about 5 degrees (as the coffee was almost “too fresh”). We then made finer grind adjustments until the coffee tasted the way we wanted it to- good fruit, but balanced acidity, chocolaty finish, syrupy body. The reason I go into all of this is because even with great coffee and great equipment, you still need a trained palate to taste these coffees throughout the day and have baristas that care enough to make the adjustments necessary to bring out the best in those beans.
We care, and we try to improve our game incrementally each day. I’ve been playing around with my Chemex a lot lately because it’s just a great way to make coffee- if you prepare it carefully. The Clover makes a lot of sense for us because it allows us to deliver great quality repeatably and quickly. We believe in the saying “put your money where your mouth is”. We have never been about doing things purely for show (the wow factor as I alluded in the article)- and that’s why we’re happy with our Clover and will continue to tweak it and learn more about what we’re brewing.
Long overdue menu update.
El Cuervo (Guatemala) is nearly sold out. It’s not on the menu but if you request it we still have a little left.
Cruz del Sur (Peru) is also out of season and nearly sold out, but we can still make a few cups of it by request.
In the next few weeks we’ll probably also be saying goodby to the Tres Santos and the Kenya, but those stay on the menu for now.
So in comes the new El Salvador- Finca Matalapa. Dialed it in this morning and by the third try I think we nailed it. My thoughts? It’s medium bodied, has a light but round acidity to it and a nice sweetness. It finishes pretty cleanly, and is very smooth and pure. It’s a tasty coffee and I would agree with Intelligentsia that the sweetness is pretty apple-like. We settled on a little bit of a lower dose on the coffee than where we initially started out and as a result the sweetness became more apparent. It’s now on the menu and we have a functional recipe on the Clover- so come on down and try some.
What’s that? You wanted a “regular coffee”? That’s what this is- it’s a coffee, from one farm, in one country. It’s not a blend, it hasn’t been sitting on your grocer’s shelf getting stale, and it’s not an roasted too darkly that you can’t taste the natural flavor of the coffee. It’s a fresh crop that arrived pretty early to our roaster. We get it days out of the roaster when it’s at it’s peak, and then we grind and brew it by the cup. It sounds complicated how we explain this stuff sometimes but understand that this is fresh coffee at it’s best. It’s all the “regular” stuff that people have been drinking that’s too complicated.
