company - education - coffee

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Round 10

I had a solid shot of PF at Taste in the AM, headed back to the shop after a brief stop at Simon's to drop off some Nimac Kapeh.

It was one of those days where I decided, again, I needed a hammock at the shop.

Then the snow came.

I ended up calling it a day and wanted to try to get some rest because it's been a long week. A lot of long hours to get roasts out ahead of Christmas. That means a few long days but in the end, so be it. We didn't get into coffee to be romantics, we knew it was work.

Retail sales have been solid but we do have a little extra espresso at the shop this week. If nobody braves the snow to get them, we'll just drink it ourselves. That reminds me, we are working on two new espresso projects.

One project is to rebuild Rudiments. Our initial vision is a roast of 70% Brasil and 30% Guatemala Atitlan, Nimac Kapeh. We finally found the espresso profile for Nimac and it's a hell of a straight shot. I wish some shop would just pick thtat coffee up and serve it as both house espresso and drip. But then... The idea for Rudiments is to be almost a classic North Italian profile done to our tastes. The Brasil is the base and the Nimac is the 'Yirg' profile that sweetens and adds aroma. In barismo fashion, it's clean, but this would be very mellow fruit compared to some of our other versions of Rudiments.

The final espresso is a work in progress called Soma. I am still trying to finesse a third component so it probably won't be finished until post Christmas. More on that later.