12th Fan Coffee - Seattle, WA

Superbowl is over, but the heat from the Superbowl is still not gone when visiting Seattle. Seattle is the city of coffee, and the home to the Seahawks; there is no doubt that "12th Fan Coffee" is a big hit.

When you walk in the town of Seattle, you see the number 12 in color of blue and green all over. For people who are not familiar with football, you might wonder what this means. The number 12 represents 11+1 where 11 is the number of the players in the team and 12 represents the "fan" supporting the 11 men on the field.  Seattle is known to be one of the most passionate NFL fan base, and hence you see 12 all over the city using color of blue and green representing that they support the team. Coffee is no exception.

12th Fan Coffee, Blue Thunder Blend

Seattle Gourmet Coffee now sells 12th Fan Coffee which they label as Blue Thunder Blend.   It is six bean blend that is roasted quite dark. People from Seattle have tendency to prefer darker coffee, and this surely is a very well roasted coffee that attracts local fans.   

Seattle Gourmet Coffee is a family owned business from Kirkland (city within Greater Seattle Area) started out as espresso stand and now a large wholesale distributor.  If you are in Seattle, you do often see the name, and they do roast fine coffee.   12th Fan Coffee is also a very nicely blended dark roasted coffee which I would love to have in the morning after a nice heated game.

Mr. Greenbean, Portland - Buying Green Beans from Local

Finding green beans, un-roasted coffee beans, is harder than I thought.  Even we see roasted coffees everywhere, we don't see green beans in grocery stores.  My first roasting experience used green beans I got from Amazon called Costa Rica Dota Estate, Green Unroasted Coffee Beans (1 LB Nectar).  It was very good, and I loved the convenience of buying online, but I wanted to see if I can find them local.   So I looked up, and realize how great I am to be in Portland area where there is a DIY Coffee Roastring Equipment Store around the corner: Mr. Greenbeans (3932 N. Mississippi Ave Portland, Oregon 97227 Link).

Mr. Greenbeans

Mr. Greenbeans is located on busy pedestrian street of Mississippi Ave.

Mr. Greenbeans is located on a busy pedestrian street of Mississippi Ave. in North Portland where there are many "mom and pop" shops, bars and restaurants are.  You see people walking all the time around here, and there are some great food carts like Tiffin Asha (my favorite Indian fusion -- if you haven't tried it, I recommend)  make it a very vibrant area to hang out day or night.

Coffee lover's heaven inside.

Once you go inside, you notice that this is a heaven for coffee lovers.  It is not a large shop, but nice ambiance with hardwood floor make the entire place look very bright, and each items presented in the store are all about coffee. Yes, coffee!  They have different home coffee rosters and have a dedicated shelf just for coffee filter.  

In front of the store, there is a nice display of greens, and they display different package with different roast level from green to brown; they are artistically presented and you immediately see visual of how roasting change the color of beans.

All the way back the store, shelves of green beans reside. Three shelves  are dedicated just for green beans (wow).  They color-code the region so that you see beans grown in similar regions to have the same color; South America is orange and Asia is green and so on.    The person at the shop was expert in coffee roasting, and I had a very nice chat with him.   He says that there are different taste trend based on region where African coffees usually have high fruity taste.  I have purchased couple of ones from his suggestion; one from South Africa (the fruity one) and one from South America (the other end of spectrum of fruitiness).

I will be writing about my experience of roasting these coffee soon, but meanwhile if you are lucky to be in Portland and you are home roasting, checkout Mr. Greenbeans you are going to simply love it.

Teavana Bar, New York - New Starbucks Venture Coming to Tokyo

I heard today from news in Japan that Starbucks is opening their new venture of Teavana Bar in Tokyo soon. This reminded me of my visit in New York last summer (2014) when I visited their first concept store in New York.  I think this is another brilliant new idea Starbucks is coming up like their Starbucks Reserve venture (see my previous post about Starbucks Reserve.)

Teavana Bar is first opened in the upper east side of Manhattan in October of 2013. (see news about their opening)  The concept is that they make specialized tea drinks (like Chai Tea Latte) based on the selections of wide variety of teas from Teavana.  Teavana is a Georgia base tea company started in 1997 and bought by Starbucks in December of 2012; they have more than 400 stores mostly in US and Canada as of now(2015). If you have lived in US, you must have seen them in many of shopping malls where they sell selections of tea, and they serve the samples in extremely heavy teapot that breaks the arm by holding them.  I always enjoyed to have a bit of sample each time I walk by their shop. After Starbucks purchased Teavana, they have started a new venture to bring the tea industry and tea drinkers into specialized drinks.   I am a big coffee fan, and not too much of tea drinker; however, knowing what Starbucks have done to change the coffee industry, if there is someone who can change the tea industry would be them I think.

And here is my experience when I visited the first Teavana Bar.

Teavana Bar is located 2 blocks from Lexington Avenue/63rd. St. Station in upper east side of Manhattan.  It takes about 20 minutes via Subway from Times Square where most of the tourists visit, so I was surprised that they built their first concept store outside of busy location. (That was back in 2014, now there is another shop on Broadway.) I guess they wanted to test out their concept to see how the upper middle class people react.  As you get out of the subway station, you notice that the area is for wealthy city living; all the shops around the area are targeting high-end residential shoppers in the area, no hotdog stands.

Outside First Teavana Bar, NYC

Once you go inside, the shop is not big but you see the clean simple modern design with tea cans stacked up to the ceiling like their Teavana shops in the mall.

The look inside is somewhat similar to Starbucks

They let you smell their teas that is stacked up to the wall.

I was surprised to see that there are very few people in the shop.  When I visited last summer (2014), the shop has only been open for half an year, and this was the only Teavana Shop available anywhere back then.  I heard the news, and I even come all the way from Portland to visit. I expected some more people to be in the shop.

Less people helped me to enjoy more though.  I had a very nice chat with Barista and she has helped me to pick the right tea that I liked.  She asked me what kind of teas I like, I told her that I like coffee but that didn't help. I honestly don't know much about tea so I told her that I like Ooolong tea, and she let me select ones from the line of Oolong. I had a nice time chatting with Barista, and that selection process took me 10 minutes or so.  I thank that there were less people in the shop, if there are miles of people waiting behind me, I wouldn't have enjoyed this 10 minutes with the Barista.  I guarantee you that the experience will not be the same in Tokyo!

I have different options for how the tea is to be prepared for me. Sounds familiar, isn't it?

Barista asks me how I want the tea to be prepared, I decided to go with latte style.  She tells me that the selection of the tea that I selected goes very well with milk.  That is great.  She is now preparing the tea for me.  The process looked pretty similar to how espresso is being made.  I wonder if "Barista" is a good word for them serving tea, but with the effort of making the perfect cup, I would think a word "Barista" surely fits what they are doing.

The cup is nicely designed.

They have printed label like Starbucks

Now I have my drink ready.  The first thing I notice when I hold the cup is the texture of the cup.  It has the embedded design which has very nice feeling in hand.  There is a printed label sticker with the information about the order; we are all pretty familiar with this concept from espresso coffee by now, but first time I see on tea. 

As I said earlier, I am not too much of a tea drinker, but I truly did enjoy the fresh experience of Starbucks Teavana Bar. I hope this soon becomes a norm of choice when we look for a place to sit down for a nice afternoon tea in each city.

Starbucks Reserve, Seattle WA - A New Tourist Spot for Coffee Lovers

I admit; I do like Starbucks.
Portland where I live has a very local-oriented environment where the whole community supports local businesses, and big corporate names like Starbucks in such communities are almost taboo to talk about.  I visit different local coffee roasters (like ones from my previous blogs about Roasters in Salem and Portland), and I should almost even never mention the "S" words (I mean Starbucks) in those shops.

But I have to admit that I like coffee from Starbucks, and how they have changed the entire industry of drinking coffee around the world is absolutely amazing and I admire.  Their new venture of Starbucks Reserve is surely something more than worth a mention as a coffee lover.

The first Starbucks Reserve store opened in 2011 in UK; the concept of the store is a place where you get to visit the actual roasting facility of Starbucks where you can try their premium coffee roasted right there in front of you.  They just opened one in Seattle, WA in December 2014 where their headquarter and the first store is located. I had to visit, and so I did.

Starbucks Reserve, looks like some jewelry store from outside

Starbucks Reserve is located near Seattle's First Starbucks at Pike Place Market. On their website, they make it sounds like it is just blocks from the First Starbucks, but it does take about 15 minutes to walk between; and in the rainy city of Seattle, cab or Uber might be a better options when visiting both (both areas are not an easy spot to find parking lot).

Huge roaster is being displayed nicely inside

Once I step inside, I notice that there are so many... people. I visited right after they opened for the public for the first time, so their entry way was a long line of people waiting to get their coffee.
The store does look amazing; their decor is just nicely and pleasingly done; they have left the rustic taste of old roaster "look" and yet they manage to have a touch of modern feel with shiny pipes running around in the huge open space of 15000 square feet (Their tasting room is 6654 square feet).

They give out freshly roasted beans to customers where we get to smell and touch the warm bean right out of the roaster.

Tank that holds the bean, but it is really a piece of beautiful art.

The whole experience of being right at the roasting process is a visit to remember, and I can assure that many of travel guidebooks will add color pages of this place for Seattle visitors. I can think of many of my coffee freak friends back in Japan who would love to visit this place.
Well, I have to say that they should have thought better for the system for people lining up to get the coffee though.  People are just lining up in an open area; it is nice that once in a while a barista brings sample coffee to try out, but that gets quite annoying after waiting for 30 minutes just for a cup of coffee.  They should have thought of some system like Disneyland where people can come back in time to ride rather than just standing and waiting.

During the 30 minutes wait, you are presented with "menu" of today's coffee choices where you get to choose which bean you want in your Latte or their selected drinks.   Their already heavy labor intensive espresso making is being accented by yet another complex process to add more values and obviously more cost. My premium latte now costs me $7 with 30 minutes wait.

The result? Yes, it does taste wonderful.   I felt that the coffee aroma is augmented a lot, and yet has that distinct Starbucks dark roast touch that I like.

Worth the 30 minutes wait?  The cup does look premium and nice!

When you are in Seattle, WA, I do recommend a visit to the new Starbucks Reserve, and my only suggestion is that you make sure you have enough time to enjoy the whole experience.

Salem, OR : French Press, Governor's Cup Coffee Roasters and Cherry

It is the season of cherry blossom, and Salem Oregon is a place to be.  I am from Japan so cherry blossom means a lot to me; I grew up biking under a long street of cherry blossom.  When there are winds, the view is amazing you can't even see feet away from you.

Salem, OR in front of the Capital is my favorite spot to see cherry around here. The park overlooks the Capital building with a golden man, and the cherry filled on both sides of the park looks amazing with full bloom of cherry. (Did you know that the capital building has solar panel system which lights up the golden man?)

Beautiful cherry of Salem

I was able to hit the right sunny day for the Coffee Spying activities in Salem OR.  I used to live in Salem, and I know that there are two coffee roasters I like in town; French Press and Governor's Cup Coffee.  I was able to hit both in one nice day.

I have been traveling coffee roasters with my favorite book  "Left Coast Roast: A Guide to the Best Coffee and Roasters from San Francisco to Seattle".  It is too bad that they skipped Salem all together, they really missed these two great roasters. 

French Press Coffee and Crepes
2725 Commercial St SE, Salem, OR 97302 Link

If you like darker side of coffee, this is a shop for you.  To me, their coffee tastes similar to Starbucks but a bit more elegant. Elegant is probably a good way to describe their shop as well.

The Seating outside French Press on Sunny day

 The outside has nice patio area where people can sit enjoy the coffee and chat.  Though too bad, it is on noisy Commercial street, it is great feeling to be outside.

The inside is very neat and you can see their proud roaster in the front

You can order their coffee online which is nice.

When I say darker or milder, I actually didn't know until recent that there is difference between darker vs bold.  My favorite blog talks the difference on their site but in summary darker means they roast longer, and bolder means it has more of coffee taste. French Press is more on the "darker" end, and the milder would be the coffee served at Governor's Cup Coffee in Downtown. 

Governor's Cup Coffee Roasters
471 Court St. NE, Salem OR 97301

This was my favorite shop to be on Saturday morning with a book.  The shop is in downtown, and nice cozy space I like. I think they upgraded the floor since I was there long ago.  But the cozy feeling of the coffee shop with some couches and desks make it a nice spot to be with a good cup of coffee.  Unlike other most roasters where they display the roasting machine, this shop doesn't.  I kind of like that; it is not showing off; if you know it is good;  you don't have to show off. 

The shop is very friendly and a lot of local repeaters hang out.

I really like the personal touch

It is only few blocks from the Capital, so you can walk out from here with a cup of coffee in hand to see the cherry at Capital. It is difficult to time the timing because cherry usually blooms only for a week a year; but it is a great feeling to hang out with coffee in hand and look up some beautiful cherry. I recommend.

Coffee roasters spy attempt - Oblique Coffee Roasters, Portland OR

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles"― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Hence, to roast a good cup of coffee, I need to try out and "know" all the different roasters!  Luckily, I live in Portland, Oregon where there are so many coffee shops and coffee roasters all over the town. I am in the middle of the coffee mania culture where the ocean's caffeine level is even higher!  (This is a fact based on National Geographic - Here is a link.)

I have been sneaking around for the past year in the enemy's nests, those coffee roasters, and I want to share my experience on the spy attempt to steal the best of the best approach to roast best coffee.

 I have been using a book called "Left Coast Roast: A Guide to the Best Coffee and Roasters from San Francisco to Seattle" to navigate around the town to find the best roasters.  This is actually a very fun toilet book for coffee lovers; it has lots of cool trivia about coffee, and the book lists a lot of good roasters on the west coast.  It has been quite fun to visit each of these coffee shops every weekend with a book in hand.   

Oblique Coffee Roasters, Portland OR (3039 SE Stark St, Portland, OR 97214 (503) 228-7883 Link)

I love the Belmont area of Portland.  The neighborhood is so alive with lots of young people hanging around in different coffee shops and food carts. (Portland is listed top 10 cities for food carts based on USA Today - Here is a link.)  Oblique Coffee Roasters is one of those neighborhood coffee shops that is full with energy of youth.  The shop is located in the middle of all the residential houses, and if you do not know that it is coffee shop, you would probably not notice when you pass by.

Oblique Coffee Roaster looks very cozy from outside

The inside is very homy environment with very nicely aged wood floor.   It somehow reminds me back my university library. There are some people having coffee and reading books, or be on their laptops; I think many are students.  Large size tables in the shop offer comfort for those who want to hang around being on laptops.

Inside Oblique Coffee Roaster, feels very homy

 I buy a cup of latte and a bag of their roasted coffee bag. (I love latte, so I want to be able to find and roast coffee that goes well with milk.)

This coffee shop was featured in the TV Show "Portlandia!".

The latte comes with nice art of leaf, and a bag of the coffee smells very mild.  Their coffee to me is lighter side of roast where the aroma is been preserved very well without much of bitterness.

There was only one bag of coffee beans left, and I noticed that the bag has "2/12" mark on the bottom.  It was February of 2015 when I was at the coffee shop.  I told the barista that the bean is too old, and she laughed and said that 2/12 means February 12, and not February 2012. Haha, how stupid of me.
It was in fact, very fresh roast of coffee.  I noticed that it took couple of days to reach the peak of aroma for me after purchasing it. (My earlier experience pays off to make me realize this.)

I had a good afternoon sitting around at the coffee shop being around folks in the shop. I recommend Oblique Coffee Roaster for a good cup of coffee in the afternoon on sunny Saturday to feel and experience the real local life of Portland.

My spy mission was a success! 

My first roasting experience

I love coffee just like any other people especially in the Northwest United States where I live. I've been drinking coffee for more than 30 years and trying out different coffees, but I had never roasted my own coffee before.

That is about to change today as I just roasted my coffee for the first time today!  And the coffee I dreamed for a very long time to roast my own, tastes like burned cardboard.  I found a reason for it later, but let me go back in time for about couple of weeks when I started to read online about different roasters to decide which roaster to buy.

Deciding on Roasting Equipment

By reading for the first time about roasting coffee, I find out that there are variety of roasters available out there. The cheap end can be as simple as a popcorn maker and the high end is what commercial roasteries use.

So what is my options?

Some people say that we should start with simple skillet to get the feel; but I kind of wanted something easier too in the beginning. 

I did not want pop-corn maker or skillet, or too low end of the spectrum.  So if I take the low end out from the list of roasters, basically I am left with two options:  Air Roasting or Drum Roasting.  People claim that drum roasting can bring the better aroma etc etc, but also the price of those ranges higher than the air roasters.  Air roasters sale online on Amazon for about $100 - $300, the drums mostly go above $1000.  So I thought of starting with air roasting first now.  I thought once I start with basic/easy ones, then when I upgrade to more high end in the future, I should be able to tell the difference.

So I limited my search to only air roasters.  I read reviews of different roasters, and I decided to buy
Nesco CR-1010-PRR Coffee Bean Roaster, 800-watt.  In summary this one is one of the best made air roasters in terms of air roasting, and have very good elimination of smoke, so many home roasters use this.  This is also easier to clean; I should be able to rinse by water and dry. With Shipping and Tax etc I paid $150 for this roaster on Amazon.
 

NESCO Professional Roaster arrives!

Un-boxed. Looks pretty cool.  I think it goes well with my other kitchen appliances.

Buying Green Coffee

I have not spent too much time on this yet, but I thought I should start from somewhere, I decided to start online on Amazon. On Amazon, I find out that Costa Rica Dota Estate, Green Unroasted Coffee Beans (1 LB Nectar) has the highest number of positive reviews.   With shipping included, it costs $17.19 for 1 lbs bag.  So I bought it.  Their shipping was very fast.  I order often online on Amazon, and you know there is that gap between you buy something and you receive the notification of the item got shipped? I received the notification on the same day I ordered.

COSTA RICA DOTA ESTATE has the highest review on Amazon

I actually do not understand the economics of Green Bean costing more than roasted bean sold at coffee shops and grocery shops.  Coffee is usually between $5 - $15 per pound, but this green bean and many others I see online are more expensive than $15 per pound.  Someone didn't need to roast these so I would think green bean would cost less, but that is not the case here.    Maybe I will find out more about them as I buy different green bean. Let's see.

My First Roasting Experience

So I got coffee roaster and green bean.  As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, this morning I roasted my first coffee and it tasted like burned wood! So here is what happened today.

I rinsed off all the parts last night with water and let it dry.  Roasting is pretty easy with NESCO. I put the green bean in the glass part put the metal couple of pieces on the top of glass: one for catching the chaff (dried skin on coffee bean which comes out during roasting) and one filter. I close the lid and put 25 as 25 minutes for roasting, click Start.

By reading online, I find out that less bean you put, darker the roast will be, and longer the time to roast, darker it becomes there too.  If I think about it now, it makes sense.  I don't really like dark roasted coffee, so I put the bean up until "Full" line and 25 minutes was suggested number for beginner that I read online.   "25" means 20 minutes of roasting, 5 minutes of cooling.

There is a huge sign all over saying never leave the coffee roaster roasting and unattended.  OK, that makes me nervous so I was sticking around the roaster for this 25 minutes. I got bored so I took videos:

This is the regular cycle:

This is the cooling cycle to the last minute.  You notice that cooling cycle speed is faster than the roasting one above.

While roasting, I notice that coffee chaff fly all over inside the glass piece, and little bit of chaff come out of the roaster even the lid is closed.  I thought it is bit annoying as chaff is so light and hard to clean up. I had the roaster at the edge of the counter, next time I will have it in the middle so that the chaff will fall on the counter and not on the floor. 
  
I was expecting that aroma of coffee while roasting, but the actual smell was... not aroma of coffee, it smelled like bread baking.  I didn't expect that either, and so my question is... when do I get to smell that amazing aroma?  I start to wonder if I am doing something wrong.

Cooling starts at 20th minutes.  The rotation of the coffee is faster and noisier during this period and more of those annoying chaff come out.

Done!  The moment of the truth....... I open the lid and carefully try to smell it.   It does not smell like coffee at all, it smells like... burned wood. Sigh.

OK, maybe if I grind it, it will smell better. No...
Maybe I make coffee and it will smell better.

My first pot of coffee... complete failure.  It is one of the worst coffee I ever tasted, I mean it doesn't even taste like coffee.It tastes like cardboard and doesn't smell like coffee...  What did I do wrong?

 

Right out of roaster...

With all the disappointment, I had to leave and I come back.  As I walk into the house, I finally did smell it.  Yes! The whole house smelled that gorgeous aroma of coffee. I was confused because I know what it smelled like when I left the house, it smelled like burned cardboard.  Now I go into the kitchen and smell the coffee. Oh my goodness!  I immediately grind it and make a cup of coffee.... Yes! Success!

I read online now that it takes about 12 - 24 hours for the aroma to appear. My thought of "fresher after roasting the better" was wrong idea to begin with. I read online that some type of coffee does taste better right after roasting, so it seems that it depends also on different coffee which make me excited to try out different coffee.

Here is a quote from Roast Magazine (March/April 2015 edition page 34) which explain the chemical process of roasting: "Prior to roasting, all green coffee has an abundance of amino acids and carbohydrates.  The roasting process starts to convert and break down these components, eliminating some and creating new ones.  In the green state, coffee has the highest amount of soluble material.  As heat is applied, the amount of soluble material decreases until complete pyrolysis occurs."

Well, I will find out more as I try more roasting.  I cannot wait!