Coffee tree tap handles!

Keep it local Camberville, MA: barismo's founder, Jaime van Schyndel gives a run down on some cool new tap handles at dwelltime.

Coldbrew on tap is the new big thing right now.  Cafes, offices, and restaurants are picking this as a new option for quick serve coffee.  There are pre-designed 'javarator' setups you can buy and even a reddit section dedicated to the kegging of iced coffee setups.  This is the next big thing in coffee!  

To celebrate the last two years of serving coldbrew on tap at dwelltime, I came up with a fun idea back in the spring:

While visiting El Bosque de Parramos in Guatemala this spring, I picked up a section of a coffee tree stump from a plot of the farm that had older plantings.  This was one of 5 branches coming off the main stump and was still alive.  Avelino himself cut the stump off and chose this particular piece of wood.

I brought the wood back and left it with our friends and Somerville neighbors at DGF.  After some curing and resting time, the wood was cut into three sections, sanded and prepped as tap handles for a kegged coldbrew setup.

One of the cool aspects of this old stump is that is was right along the pathway.  It has several scars along it's backside that came over the years.  Over time, different farm workers would sit roadside and have their lunch.  They would invariably leave their machete in the closest stump, to which this little tree was the victim a few times.  Kind of cool to think about how over the years, the scars tell a story.  

Coffee wood grows fast and is typically not good quality.  The older varietals that are less dwarfed can get to 20ft tall and this is the type of heirloom bourbon we ended up sawing off to make our handles.  This particular stump may have had 20 years on this branch to get to this size.  It's color is a bit like poplar but it has a slight tint of green to the bark and wood.  Needless to say, I am excited to see how it ages and colors with time.

While we can't guarantee coffee wood tap handles for your setup, we can help you with a no fuss install and consistent quality product if you are in the Boston/Cambridge area.  If you are interested in serving coldbrew on tap locally or having this in your office, let us know.  We have been refining the process and have a separate division dedicated to expanding this.  We already have offices and clients across the spectrum setup for coldbrew coffee and tea on tap but are looking for some exciting new places to get this concept into while it's still hot outside. 

  

NOW Roasted In Somerville

After some hurdles, we are now roasting in our new space! Our first full day of production roasting was on Monday. While we weren't planning on a few of the hurdles that set back the move until the last few days of June, the silver lining was that the majority of our 2014 crop coffees are just getting to port in the next 2 weeks, so we had to move just a quarter of the amount of coffee from 171 Mass Ave, Arlington to our new home at 14 Tyler Street, Somerville.

We took last Thursday to move over, and brought over some extra hands to help with moving bags of coffee. Among the many positives to our new roastery is the addition of a loading dock; many of our long time customers have seen us in the past having pallets of coffee dropped off on the sidewalk, then carrying them one at a time through the roastery and downstairs to our basement storage. Pallet jacks and forklifts are lightening the load quite a bit.

Along with the change in location, we've switched the actual roaster we use. Our trusty pair of 4 kilo roasters has served us well, but we had reached near maximum roasting capacity. Late last year we purchased a 12 kilo Probat coffee roaster and have been refurbishing it inside & out. We've been happy with the results so far, and you should expect a positive difference in our coffees going forward.

We're spending most of this week and next working out some of the logistics of our wholesale operation here. By the middle of the month we'll have updates with events & classes at the new space. While it's not a retail store or coffeebar, there'll be plenty of opportunity through the rest of the summer to get to see our new home.

Coffee Updates

We've released some new coffees over the past few weeks from this years crop of coffees out of Kenya & Ethiopia; in addition to Doppleganger (on our last blog update), we've released Homunculus (a 50/50 blend of coffees from two different mills in the same region of Ethiopia), and Kochere Grade 1 (one of the components of Homunculus). We have a second wave of coffees from Ethiopia & Kenya already lined up for later this summer.

We're expecting the boat carrying our coffees from Costa Rica to arrive at port in New Jersey on July 8th. It should take another week upon arrival to clear customs, then we'll be able to bring these coffees -- Jardin de Aromas & Bandera de Dota -- up to Somerville!
Confirming more good news & arrival details from Guatemala today; we'll have a further update for you next week!

Local innovation needs coffee, local coffee needs a little innovation: @Clypd #Somerville

Keep it local Somerville, MA: barismo's founder, Jaime van Schyndel gives a shout out to a local tech company that brought support for a local roasting company.

Caffeinate and innovate.  One of the great things about being nestled into this area is that we are surrounded by great ideas and forward thinking companies.  There are some seriously cool people doing the next big thing.  Sometimes, we get to play a tiny role in fueling that!

Over at Clypd in Somerville's Davis Sq., they have a full tap setup of Cambridge Coldbrew.  They started with cold coffee and quickly moved into adding our direct trade coldbrew tea as well.  We were surprised with how easy it was to install as they already had a small kegerator for beer.  The second surprise is how much they go through!  They were up and running in no time, we just had to put an extra keg out there for them.

We want to give a shout out to those folks for being the spark to get us moving on this project.  A big thanks to the folks over at Clypd for bringing us into their family and for tuning us into the ideas driven culture around us.

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NEW COFFEE!!!  

Our much beloved and adored doppelganger espresso is back and fittingly it's to be one of our first Somerville production roasts.  It will appear online and on retail shelves this weekend!

A pairing of two Kenyas, this coffee is lightly roasted to get it to sing some delicious notes of fruit and floral.  It's juicy and sweet, great as espresso, coldbrew, or as a drip coffee.

TEDxCambridge : June 5th 5pm, 

We are a coffee sponsor!   If you were one of the lucky ones to have booked a ticket, we will be right there with you keeping your energy up with great coffee!  (Check out our new espresso cart at this event).

A huge thanks to the organizers of TEDxCambridge for letting us be there to support!  See TEDxCambridge for more details on their spring event.

Do you know #Cambridge #Coldbrew?

Keep it local 'Camberville': barismo's founder, Jaime van Schyndel updates you on our most popular side project, Cambridge Coldbrew.  As we enter iced coffee season, here's our preferred cold coffee.

Some of our local industry old timers complain about the obsession with cold brew (toddy) coffee and complain about it's many faults.   They protest that cold brew is a place to hide low quality blends that are often darkly roasted.  They gripe that cold brew is brewed at room temp to very strong strengths yet often tastes very under extracted.  They grumble that cold brew tasted oxidized, flat, and a bit off (like a merlot left out overnight).  Instead of joining the complaining about how it is, we decided to refine the method and search out what it could be.  We then set out to reinvent cold brew coffee. We sought something different, possibly better, more innovative, a new idea for brewing cold coffee.  We took the first step by bringing it back to the fundamental ideas of what makes quality coffee.  Then we brewed it again, from the beginning.

Enter the Cambridge Coldbrew

After a lot of refinement and what can only be described as a few years of distilling the process, we latched onto a method that delivered the farm flavors we wanted.  We began beta test serving in Cambridge where it then picked up steam and even got some national press mentions.  It was not until it was on tap a few years ago at dwelltime that we started to really get some clarity to our new method.  The Cambridge customers supported us and pressed us both into bottling growlers and scaling up our brewing to meet the demands.  The rapid volumes from the get go kept us busy but made us fixate on how to scale up with the quality we were chasing.  As of now, we have been scaling into some seriously large batch sizes we never could have imagined when this was merely a trending topic of summer coverage a few years back.  It has been the big challenge refining a better idea for cold brewed coffee. Brewed cold and clean filtered, this is no longer that same old tepid toddy!

Here's what makes it Cambridge Coldbrew:

• Stored cold and brewed cold - It's the only iced coffee locally you can buy that's cold all the way through. We keep it at the best temps to preserve it's flavors.
• Clean filtered - Cambridge Coldbrew goes through a multiple pass filtration to get a crisp and full taste.  Because we don't have the sediment, this allows us to avoid the under/over extraction and focus on the right extraction.
• Quality direct trade coffee - We use only quality traceable coffees from farms we have sourced directly.  You will not receive a low quality over roasted blend, you will get a single coffee estate with a distinct flavor and unique story.
• A different approach - We don't updose and under extract, this is not a 'concentrate', it's ready to drink and dialed in like a great hot coffee would be.

 How can you get Cambridge Coldbrew by the bottle (and by the keg)?

• We offer our single estate growlers for office and take home at dwelltime as well as our coffee bar 171 Mass ave, Arlington, MA.
• We now offer a 5 and 15 gallon keg service for offices, restaurants, and specialty stores (local delivery only).
• Join our waiting list for bottles in your store's cold case.

Why Cambridge Coldbrew?

• We want to fuel your ideas.  Most of our first keg customers were amazing tech companies that already have kegerator setups for beer.  Cambridge Coldbrew is innovative coffee for innovative companies.
• We hope to change restaurant coffee to be something truly special, not an afterthought.  Imagine fine dining and ending the meal with a single estate Cambridge Coldbrew off a nitrogen tap.  It's the exclamation point on a great meal!
• Most cold brewed blends are generic and lack identity.  We want to bring it back to focusing on what makes great individual coffees by highlighting the unique farms that produced them.  That means it tastes like great coffees should taste.

What's new with Cambridge Coldbrew?

Clypd's tap setup (art by Olya Rosenberg)

• Our direct trade Fulu Red Tea is now available iced and by the Coldbrew keg (currently only as 5 gal kegs).  
• dwelltime has Fulu Red iced tea on tap and is testing our new carbonated version!  (frequently available in seasonal mocktails that pair well with an espresso)
• We have partnered to offer kegerator installations for 'Coldbrew on Tap' setups, let's talk!

We set out to make Cambridge Coldbrew a product that speaks to our values of letting the coffee be the good it can be.  Transparent, directly sourced, quality brewed, and freshly roasted 'cold' coffee.  It took a little help from our friends, and major support from our amazing customers for this new idea about iced coffee to become a big favorite locally but it's definitely catching on.  For that, we thank the loyal support of our customers that allowed us to stay true to our brew!  We look forward to bringing these farms we love to new friends, restaurants, and even those innovative companies that inspire us!

Dialing in a #Somerville roaster

Keep it local Somerville, MA: barismo's founder, Jaime van Schyndel updates you on our new roasting home in the Aeronaut.

Loading our first Somerville batch

At our new Somerville location, we've had a chance to fire up the roaster and begin some batch testing.  There are a few little details we've been working on to have some more fun.  We got some cool logging software that still needs to be adapted but the basic probes and gas gauges have been installed allowing us to get some test batches out.  (Yes, there are still roasters out there who do not use gas gauges or digital temperature probes.)

We have fired up the roaster and dialed in a few batches.  We went through this exercise when I first opened barismo, but instead of six months, we are going to get comfortable over six weeks.  It only took a couple batches to get a general feel for what this machine does including it's gas limits for the batch size.  I have no perspective for how others approach a new install, but we took a medium gas setting and watched the delta between specific observable color points.  Basically, we went and 'let it rip' all the way into second crack while we logged sight, sound, and smell markers.  (This was initially a shock to The Aeronauts who were concerned by the noise and smoke!) We worked backwards based on our experiences and expectations of what was supposed to be happening and at what rates.  We all felt very comfortable as we were able to dial in our first coffee very quickly for a reasonable batch size.

Even Pete Likes! Picture by @AeronautBrewing 

Over the next few weeks, we will see how the test coffees rest and age, through cupping and more profiling.  We'll also fidget with tinier adjustments, tweaks on the roaster mechanics to account for potential problems, and also do repairs on small issues that pop up.  There is definitely work to be done.

With our operational model, the issues emerging are around our just in time freshly roasted inventory and how it shifts to Somerville, MA.  Basically, we not only have to dial in to a quality level, we have a lot of logistics to figure out.  As a roaster that bikes an extraordinary amount of its volumes around on cargo bikes, there is a logistical challenge that we have in going to bigger capacity, changing storage methods, and addressing a space that will have a lot of other businesses in it.  Luckily, we have been trolling a lot of our tech friends and are adapting different apps/management pieces to upgrade how we work as well.  These are not huge hurdles but we are taking our time to move over slowly rather than rushing and we thank our loyal customers for being so patient.

We have been quiet with events and with classes lately, but that is temporary as well.  Once we get up and running, we intend to be doing constant classes, education events, fun collaborations, and outreach to the neighborhood.  Mid June into July will be a busy time and you'll have lot's of chances to see the new space and will hear a lot about the hub.

We will be hammering home some really important beliefs we have about what makes good coffee great.  Brew methods, storage, roasting techniques, farm and mill improvements, and of course a lot of tasting to share those ideas!  Same old barismo, but this year we are going to work to make the case:

There is great roasted coffee locally and you don't need to go out of New England looking for it.