Returning to Stumptown

September 29, 2012 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!

Last Sunday, I rode my bike up to Stumptown in Manhattan to pick up some beans. Stumptown's coffee selections are the most consistently good -- and expensive -- around. The vibe in the place is a wee bit hipster-precious.

The baristas wear old timey hats. There are no chairs. It's cash-only, and the lines are frequently trailing out into the Ace Hotel lobby (above).

But if you can get past all that, you're in for a treat. I've been drinking these two all week; the descriptions are on the mark. Personally, I give the edge to the Guatemala Bella Vista.

An Update on the Coffee Situation

September 22, 2012 by Patrick LaForge

The Krups Espressaria full automatic espresso machine.

Earlier this year, we moved to Chelsea, and now live I within in a couple of blocks of Cafe Grumpy. It is among the best, if not the best, place for coffee in Manhattan. That has made me exceptionally lazy about seeking out new coffee shops. When I lived in Midtown, I had no choice but to hop on my bike or the subway to get good beans and a cafe vibe.

A couple of months before we moved, my refurbished Jura machine jammed up in some way, and I didn't have time to deal with it. Half of our stuff was in storage while the real estate agents, lawyers, condo boards and bankers toyed with us.

When the dust settled, I decided to treat myself to a Christmas present, this Krups machine. I like some things about it more than the Jura, but it requires a lot more regular attention and cleaning. The bean and water containers seem smaller.

But the more pressing matter right now is that I am almost out of Heartbreaker. It's time to head to Grumpy.

Quick Coffee Notes From Around Town

November 14, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

It was a busy summer and autumn, both personally and professionally, so I suspended my coffee blogging -- but not my coffee drinking. The best bean by far was the (expensive) Honduras Cup of Excellence Lot #4 from Fernández Farm in El Cielito, Santa Bárbara, Honduras, as roasted by Cafe Grumpy. (It's still available: I picked up some today.) The tasting notes: "Red currant aroma. Floral brightness. Sweet notes of aged bourbon & molasses." The Cup of Excellence rewards barista skill, of course, but you have to start with a good bean, and this far exceeded my expectations. I was parceling out beans like bits of gold on mornings with important business. I also returned to a couple of standbys -- Grumpy's Heartbreaker espresso, always right on the money, and the house espresso at Joe the Art of Coffee. In my office, I used the Aeropress to make cups of another Honduran bean, Finca La Tina from Joe, with good results.

I have noticed a few new coffee shops opening their doors around Manhattan, so I hope to try a few new places. Alas, B. Koffie, home of the French press in a cup, closed its doors a while back, so Hell's Kitchen again lacks a boutique coffee experience. (The beans came from La Columbe.)

A Ride to Kaffe 1668 for Los Volcanes

July 18, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York, Social Media

One July weekend, I had the opportunity to combine two of my favorite activities -- riding my bike through Manhattan and visiting new coffee shops. My family was traveling elsewhere, and New York had not yet fallen into the drippy hot torpor that has marked recent days. I rode down the west side a bit, diverted to to the Hudson River trail, then passed through TriBeCa, Chinatown, SoHo and my old East Village stomping grounds before chugging up the East Side -- a loop of sorts.

That Old Time Coffee on Christopher Street

July 03, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

When you step into McNulty's Tea & Coffee in the West Village, you feel as though you are stepping into another era of coffee, when specialty shops like this were the main purveyors of gourmet beans from around the world. In that respect, it reminds me of Empire Coffee or Porto Rico Importing Co. These business date to a time before the Web and radical transparency about everything from the type of bean to the name of the farmer to the altitude to the date and location of the roasting. The newest culinary coffee shops have fed the obsessiveness of many coffee fans, the type of people who want to know the precise temperature and pressure used to brew a cup of espresso.

Coffee, Hot and Cold

June 12, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

This is a quickie coffee post, dashed off while watching the U.S.-England World Cup match and discussing the propriety of promiscuously using "tweet" in news articles. First, a word about B. Koffie's Yirgacheffe and Kenya French Mission offerings. Kudos to La Columbe, the roaster. I sampled the latter and refilled my Mason jar with the former on a May 29 visit. Both were tasty and in line with the descriptions on the boards.

In the Blend at Birch Coffee

June 05, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

It was painful to pass so close to Stumptown at the Ace Hotel without stopping, but I was glad I did, finding myself off the lobby of another boutique hotel, the Gershwin, in a different temple to caffeine -- Birch Coffee. I had been wanting to visit after noticing it on The Times's list of the best of the new coffee cafes. It was love at first visit. The decor gave me a warm feeling right away. True, you're not going to find a half-dozen varieties of obscure single origin coffees from as many countries, as you would a couple of blocks away, but there are chairs and stools, something Stumptown eschews. And food. And wine. And beer. And a lending library upstairs.

Tastes of Africa in Mason Jars at B. Koffie

May 29, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!

Bad news: Now closed. For the longest time, lovers of single-origin high-end culinary coffee in the upper Hell's Kitchen neighborhood have had to travel downtown for beans. Even this place is a bit far from the West 50s.

Return to Brazil, via Joe the Art of Coffee

May 16, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

A good coffee shop is all about atmosphere. And the atmosphere is one reason that I've tried to like the Joe Art of Coffee chain. They really make an effort.

An Empire of Coffee in Midtown

April 29, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!

From time to time, I have complained that Midtown lacks any good coffee, apart from the bitter, over-roasted offerings of the many Starbucks outlets. That's not quite fair. There is one exception that stands out in this wasteland: Empire Coffee & Tea, on Ninth Avenue, about a block north of the Port Authority.

Aeroccino Brings On the Foam (Soy, Too)

April 04, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!

I have a new device. No, not that device. Or that one. No, this is a Nespresso Aerocinno. I saw one at a friend's house on a trip to Los Angeles last winter. This thing is amazing. Usually I'm content to take my espresso or coffee straight, but every once in a while I want some foam and froth.

A Grumpy Brazilian in an Aeropress

March 26, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in New York, Blogging, Coffee!

I don't remember how I first came across the Aeropress, but as soon as I saw it, I wanted it. I had been looking for a way to make coffee -- espresso in particular -- in my office without creating a lot of mess. For the past few weeks, I have discovered that something like this is possible. No longer am I the slave to the stale, vaguely machine-flavored Illy served upstairs in the cafeteria or the over-roasted swill found in the Starbucks shops of Midtown Manhattan.

Springtime With Burundi Bwayi

March 21, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

That was the first real winter we've had in New York City in a while, but I'm still glad to put the days of snow and winter jackets behind us. I've been engaged in a bit of apartment-organizing, having finally bit the bullet and paid for some storage space. There is some stuff we didn't want underfoot but I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. Some old computer equipment, some books, the comic collection from my misspent youth in the 1970s, my complete collection of Spy, furniture that we might put in a big summer house if we ever buy a big summer house. I fueled the weekslong effort with cups and shots of this coffee from Stumptown.

A Lost Twitter List, Beans From Kenya

March 06, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

Before I get to the latest installment of my endless coffee quest, I must mourn the end of my brief reign as a Twitter list maven. At the start of this week, I made the mistake of using the latest crashy build of Firefox while playing around on the Tlists site with my lists.

From the Coopac Cooperative in Rwanda

February 16, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

A sign of a good coffee, I think, is that you can drink a full cup readily without any added dairy, soy or other coolants and flavorings. Most of the time I drink espresso, which generally works as a concentrated shot to the stomach and central nervous system, but on a crazy snowy day -- we've had a lot of them in New York lately -- I like to linger over over a regular mug made with the refurbished Jura, which is still going strong nearly two years later.

Fazenda Sertaozinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil!

January 30, 2010 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

I've tried a few of the winter selections at Café Grumpy -- the El Salvadoran, the Rwandan, and of course the only espresso standby Heartbreaker -- and they were all good, but I can't really recall with any clarity their individual qualities. Let's pronounce them good and move on. But with the start of my kid's second semester drawing me back down into the Chelsea neighborhood more regularly, I picked up this Grumpy roast with the Tolkienesque name, and it's getting me through the dark days.

Catching Up on Coffee: Helsar de Zarcero

December 20, 2009 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!

I was too busy for blogging these many weeks, but I was drinking coffee, and so my record here will have a gap. There was a roast from Verve that was quite tasty but is no longer available, and I made it through a couple of rough weeks with the delicious Peet's Holiday Blend, which my wife carried back from Los Angeles. She was spending some time there with her mother, who was ill but recovering, Then Nancy died unexpectedly from a stroke just before Thanksgiving. With that and all the other troubles this year, 2009 will not go down in our memory as a good year.

A Guatemalan Roast From Grumpy

November 15, 2009 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

Interesting things seem to be happening at one of my favorite New York coffee haunts, Café Grumpy. For one thing, the shop's official blog is looking flashier and busier. And Grumpy -- which turned me on to many of the best roasters in the country (Intelligentsia, Verve, Barismo, and Ritual) -- is now roasting selected coffees of its own at its Brooklyn location. I missed the Kenyan roast, but there still seemed to be an ample supply of this Finca Chichupac selection from Guatemala as well as a Finca Carmen from PanamaEl Salvador at the locally owned chain's Chelsea shop.

Direct From Panama Carmen Estate

October 25, 2009 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

I haven't had much time to find new coffees lately. It has been a rather busy few weeks, with a trip to Cleveland related to "After Voices," my wife's new poetry chapbook from Burning River, a local press. We've also had illness in her family, grim news in the journalism world, birthday gatherings and more happenings than I can count. On the Cleveland trip, we hit the highlights, with readings and a visit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. We also stopped in at the local indie coffee chain, Phoenix Coffee, which also roasts its own beans. I'm kicking myself for not picking some up on the way out of town. Luckily, I still had this (shrinking) bag of beans from Stumptown.

A Return to Guatemala via Stumptown

October 11, 2009 by Patrick LaForge in Coffee!, New York

I've enjoyed a number of Guatemalan coffees -- the Finca La Folie from Ritual Roasters, Itzamna from Intelligentsia, the Nimac Kapeh and the Soma blend from Barismo -- so I picked up these beans on another side trip to Stumptown's Manhattan location at the Ace Hotel in the 20s. As always, the service was fast and pleasant, and I received a complimentary coffee because I was buying beans. (I was also playing around with Foursquare and its iPhone app, and discovered that there's a fierce battle to become "mayor" of this location.)