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.)
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.
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreThat 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.
Read MoreHere's a great New York Times article last week by Oliver Strand about the growth of the culinary coffee scene in New York City. Check out the map of New York coffee bars that "not only produce extraordinary coffee at the highest standards, but also do so with consistency, day after day."
Read MoreBefore 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.
Read MoreA 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.
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreInteresting 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.
Read MoreI'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.)
Read MoreI found myself on a fool's errand trying to research this coffee, suggesting that it has already sold out. And, as so often happens, I got distracted wandering the Internet. The seller, Ritual Roasters has a great video tutorial about espresso, using a French press, the Clover and other topics. I was hooked after the first one, in which the barista explains the wide variety in espresso flavors, even with the same beans, and he compares the intensity of espresso to the slap in the face of whiskey. I never thought I'd have this much fun watching videos of coffee geeks do their thing.
Read MoreThis direct-trade variety from Nicaragua was one of the earliest culinary coffees I wrote about on this blog, back in November 2008, when I first started to systematically evaluate the beans I was trying. Back then, I thought I knew a fair amount about coffee, but I really didn't know anything. My knowledge was limited to some basic presumptions I had about the geographic origins of various coffees. I didn't know much about individual growers or roasters. That level of detail was not readily available on the Web or on packaging until this third-wave era of coffee geekery with its focus on elevations, how beans are grown, dried and roasted, and the precise temperature settings on super-expensive coffee-making equipment. It used to be the specifics of coffee bean origins were known only to buyers, tasters and really obsessed fans.
Read MoreA coffee-obsessed blogger bought three bags of beans at once, one sunny day in August. One of those bags is still nearly full. One is about half-full. And one is completely empty. This is the story of that one, which sits next to my computer, taunting me with a rich, thick aroma of beans that are no more. A couple of weeks ago, I asked what would happen if someone on the quest for a perfect shot of espresso coffee found what he was looking for? The prize-winning Black Cat from Bolivia roasted by Intelligentsia came close. And there have been a few others that I would put on that list. The sweet-tooth yellow Icatu comes to mind. When you can still remember a coffee you had six months ago, either it was good coffee, or you have an uncontrolled obsession. Maybe both.
Read MoreWhen it comes to coffee quests, vacations and traveling pose both opportunities and challenges. On the West Coast, where I am visiting friends and relatives this month, it is a chance for me to sample selections from Peet's Coffee and Teas. In December, I enjoyed the Sumatra and Aged Sumatra. This week, upon arriving in Los Angeles, I bought what was billed as a high-end blend -- JR Reserve -- and a heavily promoted single-source bean from Costa Rica. More on that one later.
Read MoreI bought this coffee on Father's Day, before my daughter and her friends cooked the dads a delicious dinner of salmon, salad, fruit salad and other good stuff. It had been raining in New York City for days, but the sun came out briefly. I bought this instead of the first place winner in the Cup of Excellence, the Fazenda Kaquend, from Brazil, roasted by Ritual Roasters in San Francisco, which my favorite Chelsea cafe was offering for an astounding but perhaps understandable $35 per bag. Instead, I bought a bag of these less expensive beans from Costa Rica for about half that. I ordered a cup of the Brazilian to go, and it was delicious. But as I walked, about half way up the block to the friends' apartment where we were having dinner, I was drenched in a sudden downpour, so I don't remember much more about that cup. Oh, well.
Read MoreIt has been a week for obsessions, from Twitter to a new addiction, Plants vs. Zombies. The first was the subject of a two-day conference where I was a panelist, even as social media played a role in the Iranian election unrest. The other is the latest computer game that has consumed too much time of the 9-year-old and, um, others, in our household. It is amusing and addictive. If you play it you will never look at mushrooms or vegetable gardening in quite the same way again.
Read MoreSo by the time I went back for more of the sweet-tooth yellow icatu, it was sold out, alas. I am tempted to order some directly in bulk from the roaster, Ritual of San Francisco. I may yet, though that would be admitting my quest was at an end, and, of course, given the ephemeral and perishable nature of coffee beans, not to mention existence itself, that is not likely. I could have bought more of the oddly tea-flavored selection from Guatemala, or even the standard Heartbreaker espresso I started all this with, but I'm not ready to repeat myself yet. Onward to the new, this time a direct-trade bean from Colombia.
Read MoreIn my seemingly never-ending quest for the perfect home-made espresso, I was stopped short last weekend by a bean that came incredibly close. I just didn't have time to write about it, so I've been drinking it all week, alternating with this oddly tea-like but delicious coffee from Barismo that seems better suited to what the non-Americans call a cup of American coffee. Which can be a lovely beverage, no matter what the snobs say. Anyway, I bought these espresso beans at the same time, and have been enjoying that Brazilian flavor that took Frank Sinatra to no. 6 on the charts in 1946.Name: Fazenda Esperança Sweet Tooth Espresso Yellow Icatu
Read MoreI'm in Los Angeles with the family this week, visiting the in-laws. I booked the flight kind of late and decided to try Virgin America, which had been getting a lot of hype for its geeky amenities and Jetblue-style business model. The only way I could get three seats together on Virgin was to pay extra for the roomier bulkhead seats, the so-called Main Cabin Select, which came with "unlimited" food and media, a sort of discount business class. The flight was pleasant and as enjoyable as JetBlue, but the geek reality has not yet caught up with the hype.
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