Ecosystem of Good Coffee and Good Food

Good Food and Good Coffee

It is not an uncommon experience to go out for a great meal at a restaurant only to end with a bitter shot of espresso or poor cup of drip coffee. The biggest challenge for restaurants is time. It takes time to make a pour over the way you might see it done at a place like dwelltime.  On top of that, a dedicated cafe takes a considerable amount of time to train staff to make consistently great tasting coffee. There are too many arguments made for having a coffee experience that is not in line with the food. The question we have is why not accept the challenge and make better coffee?

Fortunately there are some great examples locally of establishments we partner with who are taking up the challenge and finding ways to offer coffee that is in line with the rest of their values: fresh product, quality, locally sourced. We hope you have a chance to try them all!

Four Burgers

704 Mass Ave., Cambridge, MA  @fourburgers

That is right, a burger joint doing good coffee. Four Burgers is a local burger restaurant that focuses on well sourced ingredients from local New England farmers, cooked fresh to order. They just launched their new breakfast hours and menu (see menu on right) this month at their Central Square location.  If you haven't been, you should check it out. They are using ceramic beehouse drippers to offer per cup servings of barismo coffee. The bar has just been raised.

Puritan & Co.

1166 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA www.puritancambridge.com

This newly opened restaurant has quickly become a popular dining spot in Inman Square and for good reason. The sourcing of the food they serve is an important aspect of what they do. In addition to well prepared, well sourced food, their Wine and Coffee buyer chose to find a coffee roaster that fit in with their two-fold goals of great tasting and locally sourced. Coffee service at Puritan & Co. is in the process of switching from french press to a stylish filtered Chemex brew. Despite the challenges all restaurants face, they have invested in a creative time saving water dispersion system that will allow them to execute a programmed Chemex recipe that's freshly ground and freshly brewed. Go for great food, but don't miss the great coffee.

Casa B

253 Washington St, Somerville, MA @casabrestaurant

The beautiful space at Casa B is just the first layer of an amazing dining experience focused on small plates and excellent ingredients. After your meal, ask for the coffee, Casa B is perhaps the only restaurant locally doing, not just fresh drip coffee, but cloth filtered woodnecks. You get the rich, clean concentrated flavors of the coffees in a way that is even hard to find from a dedicated coffee shop. Each cup is prepared fresh upon ordering. This is a restaurant that has really taken coffee to the next level and the rewards are very delicious.

Oleana

134 Hampshire St, Cambridge, MA www.oleanarestaurant.com

This Inman Square favorite has excellent food. They asked themselves the question, why not? Why would a restaurant who can talk about their food, not offer a coffee that they can talk about. They came to barismo for two reasons, locally roasted is fresher, and we identify coffees by the producer. Instead of generic regions or fanciful Italian sounding pseudo names, they liked that we give the name of the producer, the varietal, the elevation and processing. Servers who are adept at explaining food, easily transition to coffee expert with the information provided. Coffee service at Oleana is traditional french press prepared fresh by the cup.

Good Coffee and Good Food

All of the noise we make about well sourced, freshly roasted, locally delivered coffee, it might be excusable for an excellent coffee shop to offer lackluster baked goods or food options. But why would we? Or to complete the thought, Why Not offer great food too? 

It is not an easy undertaking to run a food program in what is mostly a coffee focused business.  One main reason is that as coffee people we may not have specific kitchen experience to know where to even begin. With a little bit of kitchen help, and dedication to making it work, it is very possible and in fact works well. Here are some coffee places we work with doing just that.

Dwelltime

364 Broadway, Cambridge, MA @dwelltimecoffee

Almost one year ago dwelltime launched as an example of what a high volume coffeebar can do, fresh to order drip coffees, new pressure profile espresso machine, excellent teas, cold brew on tap, great service and a comfortable spacious place to relax. That in itself was a big undertaking, but once we were on our feet that was not the end of the story. Over the first few months we were quietly figuring out our food program. We launched with baked goods which we have pushed to be better and better. Next came lunch service, internally we have kitchen experience and that was invaluable, but it is never easy figuring these things out. Once we had a handle on our weekday lunch service, we tried something really different, Brunch. And guess what... people who love great coffee, love great food too.

Voltage Coffee & Art

295 Third St, Cambridge, MA @voltagecoffee

Voltage Coffee & Art added something exceptional to the Kendall neighborhood in Cambridge when it opened almost two years ago, and like dwelltime it is not content to settle with just good coffee. People are confident in the quality of coffee at Voltage and we expect that to continue, but there is more in the works.  Voltage's owner Lucy Valena has been quietly crafting a lunch program that recently launched as part of an expanding lineup soon to include beer/wine. Voltage is on the verge of installing its beer tap system and putting in a brand new wine selection. We are looking forward to expanded seating as well which will mean patio seats outdoors!  Voltage is one of those spaces where the best is yet to come but knowing the staff and owner, we get that quality, community, fresh, and local are going to be the highlights.

Why Not?

Why would a really great restaurant offer poorly roasted, stale coffee? Or why would a "local" coffeeshop ship roasted coffee in from across the country? We don't have the answers to the various hybids of inconsistency found in the food and beverage industry. For restaurants and cafes that over look one or the other, the question is not why, but why not just get it right? The demand for quality is rising on both ends.

Luckily for customers there are places that understand that quality local food and quality local roasted coffee are part of a mutually sustaining ecosystem. Hopefully there will be more establishments who ask themselves, why not source everything fresh and local?

Snow update

We've mostly dug out and are looking to reopen Sunday morning.  Living right around the corner means we are some of the first to be able to dig out.  Expect normal Sunday hours.  We hope you are able to dig out as well and drop by for a coffee.

The value of transparency

A bag of coffee should answer the 3 W's: Who, what, and when?

Who produced this coffee? The land owner and the mill that had a hand in creating this product should be identified (when known).  There must be as much information as is needed to begin to build a relevant understanding of the production chain in growing/picking/milling a coffee.  Who is the starting point of a long chain of questions to ask about what makes a coffee unique.

What makes this coffee special? Elevation, processing at the farm/wet mill/dry mill, regional location, and special packaging of the unroasted coffee for transport.  Things that can impart or change/preserve the flavor of a coffee add to the knowledge base a consumer builds over time of what they prefer while trying different coffees.  Do I prefer bourbon or caturra more? Am I more interested in higher elevation coffees?  The list goes on but how can you build those preferences without knowledge of them existing as a contributing factor to a coffee.

When was this coffee harvested/roasted?  Knowing the crop year is a nice item but it's often too rare an addition.  Knowing the roast date is one of the most basic and fundamental tenets of good coffee.  The nicest production with the best terroir roasted to perfection will be wasted by staling.  A clearly labeled and recent roast date is the first real indicator you will get your money's worth or have a chance at a better coffee experience.

"If coffee is truly to learn something from the wine model, it is that brand identity for farms (even in a blend) adds value for both the producers and their consumers."

Identity is a powerful thing.  Prominently displaying the producer information gives the farm a brand with a sense of the components that go into creating the flavors of that coffee.  This is so valuable that even larger roasters borrow this identity and sense of place by naming some of their large mill and co-op blends with farm style or estate-like sounding (although slightly misleading) names.  

With single estate coffees, this process of identifying the producer and micro lot name is becoming more main stream every year.  For espresso, it is clearly not the case as we are sliding backwards locally.  (A recent cafe crawl of what are supposed to be top shops in town found that almost all not serving barismo were serving a blend with unknown -to the barista- components.  Seeing great gear with talented barista precisely executing mediocre dark roasted blends was a let down.  That disappointment inspired this post.)  The long known secret with roasters is that you can mix together lesser quality components, roast it darker, and charge a better markup if the mystery inside is not revealed (as long as it says espresso on the bag).  Identifying the constantly changing mix of coffees in a blend and having cafes/consumers look up the components could cause problems by revealing the secrets of the blend.  Those secrets may not be glorious  and the previous perception of a good deal could easily turn around with a little more delving into the ingredients.  High end micro roasters working with estates are more likely to abandon the faceless blends identified with mass produced roasting outfits and more have been opting for complete transparency.  If coffee is truly to learn something from the wine model, it is that brand identity for farms (even in a blend) adds value for both the producers and their consumers.

The basic question: Is the roaster proud enough of the product to show what's in it?  Transparency is that affirmation.  Labeling with confidence speaks to knowledge of the coffee and what makes it special. That, in turn, can infer there is knowledge of how to continue to make it better.

What local can do

Follow this bike to good coffee

You'll see our new and improved bicycle cart touring greater Cambridge loaded up with coffees for locals.  Fresh coffee delivered within hours of roasting has been a fun thing to be a part of.  It just made sense to launch this given how bike friendly Cambridge and Somerville are.  After seeing how supportive the feedback has been as shop owners and more customers take notice of the bike in town, we are glad we did it.

Track it through bike.barismo.com where we are testing out using a foursquare script to locate where the freshest retail shows up.  We are also updating our stops on twitter so that you can get yourself over there for some bags.

Relationship coffee delivered the same day it's roasted or the next morning is kind of a cool thing.  Since fresh roast is such a key component to great coffee, we consider this a bit of a quality assurance project!

We're having fun with it and hope you can support this project by picking up a bag of coffee at one of our stops.

Ethiopian coffees are back!

Some of you may have noticed a decline in our Ethiopian coffee offerings over the last couple of years. Ethiopia is in fact one of the countries in our logo, so you would think we would pay extra attention to those coffees. While Ethiopians tend to be some of our favorite coffees, there are a few reasons why we have chosen to buy very few over the last couple of years.

The first, and biggest reason is the Homogenizing of Ethiopian coffee by the Ethiopian Coffee Exchange. The ECX separated coffee into regions as opposed to farms, and prohibited all direct farm-to-buyer sales (other than coops and ECX lots). What this did was cut off access to the tracking and sale of small excellent unblended lots and commoditize the uniqueness of these small lots into large lots of average specialty quality.

The second reason we avoided buying Ethiopians was the ‘C’ market price jump of 2 years ago. This made coffee that was normally in the mid $3 range cost over $5 in some cases. Coffee that is both more expensive and of lower quality is never a good combination. These factors made us put our resources and time into Central America.  

The good news is both of these things are no longer issues. The quality and availability of farm direct Ethiopian coffee is now better than ever. We are seeing new regions like Western Ethiopia, Jimma, Kaffa, and new varieties (actually very old) like Abyssinia. Abyssinia is an old typica variety that was brought to Indonesia in the 1920’s. Expect to see a great increase in the number of offerings from Ethiopia roasted by us, and a greater range in flavor in those offerings than ever before. We have started you off with a classic Sidama that is bursting with florals, with a nice underlying meyer lemon and touch of berry. The sorting is exceptionally clean on this coffee so for once you shouldn’t have to worry about too many defects.

One interesting thing about this coffee is the fermentation. It is given a 72 hour soak for fermentation then vigorously agitated to remove the mucilage. Finally, the coffee is soaked overnight in clean water, washed, then dried on raised beds. This is the classic method in Sidama and Yirgacheffe but contrary to the way fermentation and drying is done in Central America. For example, at Hacienda Santa Rosa coffee is depulped then dry fermented for 48 hours then washed and dried on a concrete patio.

We wanted to explain some of the reasoning behind our buying decisions since washed Ethiopias are some of the most interesting coffees you can taste and we had all but phased them out. Enjoy the Deri Kochoha and look forward to even more really great Ethiopian coffees.