Neveria Roxy

Tutti Frutti, Coconut and Strawberry ice creams.

What's missing in Baltimore is an old school soda fountain kind of joint. Not so in Mexico City where Neveria Roxy still maintains the flavors of the past. Inside you'll find a nice selection of ice creams and sorbets, along with milkshakes, malts, sodas and more. All of this in the kind of retro-1950s soda fountain looking place.

The thing is, it's doesn't seem like it was made to look 1950s. It looks like it was actually built in the 1950s.


Ana Claudia sells mas agua.



A Roxy Favorite: Coca-Cola with a scoop of lime sorbet.



A bit more refreshing than a root beer float.

Handmade Totalmente

Two bottles of Gahara Vanilla Syrup starting their journey.

So far, 2011 has been a busy year. I've been back and forth to Central and South America, as well as southern North America several times. My times at home have been short and it wasn't until last month when I actually had time to slow down and return to my roots, so to speak.

In May, I was home for 22 days. Time to slow down. Time to focus. Time to work. Time to re-connect with my baristas and get back to what we do best. People think I'm lucky because I am given the opportunity to travel. I think I'm lucky because I return to a great team focused on making fantastic products for our guests.

For the past couple of days, after recovering from the haze that was the World Barista Championship in Bogota, Colombia, I've been working in the bowels of Spro working with ingredients, tasting coffees and whipping up new batches of handmade this and that. I've been back on the farmers market circuit seeing what's new and available, and planning new menu items for the heat of summer.

It brings me back to the aspect of barista that I like the most: preparing everything handmade. I'm happy to say that nothing at Spro is commercially processed. We prepare everything in-house or work with purveyors who share our same passion for doing things "the hard way." From making the coffees individually to order to the handmade syrups to the traditionally made agua fresca to the quirky take on classic sorbets whipped up in the PacoJet. Everything is sourced thoughtfully and carefully. Everything is tasted and vetted before we present it to our guests.

I'm fortunate to have the opportunity to travel the world, work with baristas and judge barista competitions. I meet wonderful people and make incredible friends. But at the end of the day, I find myself inspired most by the very people I work day in and day out - the team at Spro.

The Trouble With V60s

Rebecca through the lens of the V60.

This is something I've been pondering for several months now.

Spro Hampden opened on March 18, 2010 for Friends & Family. The next day, it opened for normal service and has been going non-stop ever since. Since the fall of 2009, we've been working with the Beehouse pourover drip brewer and sometime in April 2010, I bought a couple of Hario V60 pourovers for testing in our labs.

Somehow over the next month, those two V60s made their way into service on the brew bar. My merry band of baristas had been playing with them, liked them and started using them in service. I personally was skeptical.

For two months, the V60 remained quite popular amongst the Spro baristas, outpacing its use over the Beehouse. Why? Much of it seemed to center around the notion that the Beehouse was kinda slow.

By July, our baristas started to swing the other way. After nearly two full months of regular V60 service, the little Hario brewer started to fall out of favor and the Beehouse returned to more and more cups.

Within the rest of the "3W" Coffee World, the Hario V60 seems to reign supreme. From shop to shop, all across the nation, everyone and their coffee mother is clamoring to add a V60 brew bar to their shops, or even replace their other brew methods completely.

And I'm really thinking that just about everyone is purporting a sham.

No doubt about it, the V60 is wildly popular. And why shouldn't it be? It's relatively cheap to buy. Cheap to operate. Cheap to replace. Comes in a variety of style and colors. Has a cool design. But most importantly in a production environment: you can brew a cup of coffee in a minute and thirty seconds. Flat.

Add to the speed issue that by doing a V60 brew, you're able to give the customer the impression that you're doing something special, something unique, something cool just for them, when really you're actually just passing off a sham. A fast-brewed, underextracted and not so great cup of coffee that they think is better because it came with a better show.

Watch most of these V60 baristas and what are they doing? They're putting ground coffee into the V60 and then gunning it full of water and letting the stuff flow out. One point Five minutes later, you're coffee is ready. Add a little sugar and cream and most of the people really won't notice the difference.

Some of you are probably wondering: "what's with the 1.5 minute thing?" Well, it's mainly because most standard practices for drip brew coffee calls for an extraction time of 3-5 minutes. That gives the coffee enough interaction time with the water to pull out all of those essential oils and solids that make coffee into coffee. It's not something that you normally rush unless you're using some sort of pressurized extraction, like the vac pot, espresso machine or Aeropress.

Defenders of this practice are sure to whip out their meters and tell you that yes, their meter readings demonstrate that this 1.5 minute coffee registers at 19%, but what they're not telling you is that they've just used two to three times the average amount of coffee to achieve this. Reminds me of the kind of thinking that went along with that automated brewer a few years back where baristas were using 44grams of coffee per serving (when 24 grams would normally have sufficed).

Quite simply: Don't Believe The Hype.

I battled with the V60 myself. Early on, in our lab tests, I noticed that the V60 was fast. Extremely fast. Those vortex channels, paired with that large, gaping hole meant that the V60 was all about the Path Of Least Resistance and that liquid would flow through at a high rate. Pour water into an empty V60 and it's gone. Pour water into an empty Beehouse and it takes a bit of time for the liquid to pass through the three small holes in the brewer.

It is those reduced orifice holes that restrict the flow of water causing pooling in the brewer that aid in infusing the coffee. It is an absolute essential part of brewing and one that you, as the barista, must ensure to create. This means that you either use a more restricted flow brewer (like the Beehouse and subequently, the BonMac) or that you control the flow of water carefully with the V60.

Running and Gunning the V60 makes sense for a variety of reasons:

1 - It gives customers the impression that you're doing something special.
2 - It is fast and allows you to process a line quickly.
3 - It looks personal for the customer.
4 - It allows you to make yourself look better and more "craft."
5 - It allows you to charge much more for the coffee.

However, what Running and Gunning doesn't do is: ensure a quality cup that is superior to other brewing methods, or at the very least, equivalent in quality to a properly calibrated and set Fetco Extractor Brewer.

Sadly, most of the V60 coffee served in America is of lower quality than that of a properly set up Fetco.

And they're charging more.

Recently, a world famous barista was listening to me casually mention that I push my baristas to time out their V60 brews with a target of 3:30 to 4:00 total brew time. The reaction he gave me indicated that he disagreed and that my approach was probably overkill. Of course, I disagree with his disagreement, but I wasn't interested in discussing brewing standards so I left it alone.

Of course, I could be wrong. I doubt it. But I could be wrong. Next time you're out there buying a cup of V60 brewed coffee, watch how they brew and see if they're doing the Run & Gun approach to your coffee. It probably isn't as good as it could be.

Spro Report, October 2010

Sales numbers are in for October 2010 and I thought I would share some statistics with the readership. Since Spro Hampden's coffee program is unique in the industry I was wondering how it might compare to other coffee programs out there.

The first two numbers comprise total coffee sales for October and the breakdown between brew bar and espresso-based beverages. Brewed Coffee totals include all coffees brewed via Vac Pot, Chemex, Pour Over, Eva Solo, Abid Clever, Aeropress, French Press and Cold Drip Tower for iced coffee.

TOTAL COFFEE SALES
Brewed Coffee - 44.3%
Espresso Drinks - 55.6%

These next figures are a breakdown of the various beverages made on the espresso bar with espresso coffee as a base component. These figures are the percentages of the 55.6% that comprises part of the Total Coffee Sales for October.

ESPRESSO DRINKS
Latte - 31.5%
Cappuccino - 22.2%
Americano - 13%
Mocha - 9%
Espresso - 7.3%
Macchiato - 3.9%

As a side note, during the month of October 2010, these are the coffees that we served on the brew bar:

Amaro Gayo, Ethiopia, custom roast - 14.9%
Benavente, Guatemala, Stumptown NYC - 13.3%
Finca El Injerto, Stumptown - 1.0%
Finca La Tinta, Honduras, Ecco Caffe - 5.7%
Finca Lerida, Panama, Origins Organic - 4.4%
Finca Mauritania, El Salvador, Counter Culture - 1.4%
Karumandi Peaberry, Kenya, Barefoot Coffee - 10.2%
La Laguna - 1.6%
La Pira Dry Cherry, Costa Rica, Barefoot Coffee - 5.9%
Mordecofe, Ethiopia, Stumptown - 0.7%
Ruvuma, Tanzania, Callao Coffee - 1.9%
Santa Barbara Estates, Brazil, Tim Wendelboe - 0.9%
Sidama Silcho, Ethiopia, Intelligentsia - 1.2%
Thiriku, Kenya, Counter Culture - 2.3%
Yirgacheffe Natural, Ethiopia, Origins Organic - 15.1%
Decaf Valle del Santuario, Peru, Counter Culture - 4.4%

Throughout October, seventeen coffees (one missed inclusion in these stats) were offered to our guests in addition to our standard Hines Espresso from Origins Organic Coffee of Vancouver, BC. Guest espressos finding their way into our hoppers during the month of October included E-27, Apollo and Toscano from Counter Culture and the single origin El Tambor Guatemala from Ecco Caffe.

Paper or Cloth?

The untouched virgin.

Last month, I picked up a couple of Hario cloth filters for the V60 pourover brewer. The idea is that the cloth will reduce our brew paper waste. They're nice looking and come with 1, 2 and 3 cup embroidered markings.

It's still early in the testing phase and I'm not sure if the cloth will actually make it to production but I'd be interested to hear test results from the rest of you out there.



Head to head brew testing.

Not The Baltimore I Know

National Bohemian beer for $4.75 at Dick's Last Resort Inner Harbor Baltimore.

Strawberry Affo-Paco

Strawberry Ice cream straight from the Paco Jet.

Opening a new shop and trying to find the time to cram everything that you want to do into it is proving to be a challenge. Coffees need to be cupped, selected and approved for service. New baristas need to be sorted, interviewed, trailed and trained. Signature drinks are begging for development. Alternative beverages are screaming for attention. Makes me wonder how one is supposed to develop a menu?

It's summer and ice cream is on the mind. We have PacoJet. We have a hardening freezer. What we don't have is a service freezer. Turns out that I over-estimated one undercounter space and underestimated the depth of another refrigerator, leaving us with a space that's too small to fit the intended freezer. Screwed.

In-between scouring the internet for suitable workaround freezers, it's time to do something with the stacks of strawberry flats sitting in the lab. Strawberry ice cream and strawberry lemonade come to mind. Heck, come to think of it, how about strawberry lemon sorbet???

But first with the ice cream. Found a good starting point from The Cooking of Joy. No additives or stabilizers, just simple and natural ingredients.

One of the problems with doing multiple tasks is that you get distracted and instead of macerating the one pound of strawberries with 1/4 cup of sugar, I ended up macerating it with 395 grams of sugar - a bit too much...


Strawberry Affogato.

In the end, the mix was a bit on the sugary side and I think the excess sugar gave it what Ilenia describes as a "yogurt like" texture. For the next batch, I'll have to pay closer attention to the sugar.

As an affogato, the strawberry performed very well. It lended notes of butterscotch and candy to the Hines espresso. Burnt caramel and other pleasant notes rounded out the finish. That one might actually make the menu when we get the service freezer in place.

Intelli Venice Again

Back in line like the regular people.

After too much to eat at 26 Beach, Anna wanted an affogato from Intelligentsia. It's times like these that I ponder how nice it is to have nice coffee shops to visit in your city - meaning, one that you don't own. Just cruise in, have a coffee and take off. No dealing with shop issues, customer issues, supply issues, etc. When you have your own coffee spot, you never, ever are able to come in, have a coffee and just "hang."

When traveling to coffee places, I prefer to remain incognito. I like being served like the regular customers and since I didn't notice my usual friends here today, I figured today would be a good day to remain inconspicuous.


Phil prepares our beverages.

Of course, when you're ordering three affogatos, a macchiato, cappuccino, iced mocha, a brewed coffee and taking pictures of them along the way, that kind of gives you away. Especially when our barista asked me if I was in the coffee business - what am I going to do? Lie?

How nice it is to stop in and just have a coffee.


Pouring my Serra do Bone capp.



Latte art for Kimmy and Bex.



Iced Mocha



Affogato



Nicole pours over an Escuela Vieja, Colombia



The Damage



Bob and Polly



Anna, Gerry and Christian



Baby you'll be famous, chase you down until you love me, Pappa-papparazzi.



Al and Polly

Tea Station

Polly, Lucy and my Tung Ting Oolong.


Taro Milk Drink with Vanilla Pudding


Sweet Butter Toast


Facing Future


Boba Milk Tea for the road


Tea Station
1610 West Redondo Beach Blvd
Gardena, CA 90247
310-515-2989
www.teastation.us

ph: Beck's Birthday

Jeremy, Ilenia and Becks enjoy baguette, camembert and sopressata.

After a long winter of sub-zero temperatures and six feet of snow, today was the first really nice day in Baltimore. And what better way to celebrate Rebecca's birthday than with a little al fresco drinking and dining?

Some Hitachino White Ale and Diet Coke for toasting and baguette, camembert and sopressata for noshing. It was a nice way to spend a couple of hours with the baristas of Spro.

I'm looking forward to more afternoons just like it.


Drinks of Choice: Hitachino White Ale and Diet Coke


Can Jeremy open the Hitachino with the Diet Coke? No!


Jess, Devlin, Ilenia and Kimmy.

ph: Drinking And Fire

A cornucopia of ingredients

It's another day at project hampden and time to start talking about so-called "signature drinks." In the world of barista competitions, signature drinks are a bit of a dark horse. Talk to many competition baristas and it's the one category they want to eliminate. It's a myopic viewpoint that wants to eliminate the most interesting category for the general public. Already thinking that someone should shove a shiv in your neck while watching a barista competition? Eliminate the one category that had the potential to be exciting and it's a living hell.

I think many baristas want to get rid of the signature drink not because they truly care about the "purity" of coffee, but rather because they're lazy and incompetent. Crafting a true signature drink means that one must plan, one must understand their craft, one must nurture an understanding of cuisine, one must actually do some work.

Instead, most baristas are content being shot monkeys simply standing there pulling shots of coffee with mise that consisted little more than pouring the beans out of the bag into the hopper and pulling the gallon jug of milk from the refrigerator: professional laziness.


Ilenia prepares french toast.

To my mind, signature drinks is a path towards capturing the minds of your audience (customers). While most of us like comfort foods like steak frites or mac 'n cheese, we're also captivated by creations that are a bit more exploratory. And even those who aren't quite adventurous are reassured because they at least know that they can "go wild" should they desire.

With than in mind, we spent the day preparing various components of the signature drinks we've developed over the years:

2004 - Haupia Macchiato
2005 - Spro Shake
2006 - Coffee and a Cigarette
2007 - Gin 'N Juice
2008 - Breakfast In Bed
2008 - "PBJ"
2009 - "LobSpro"
2010 - Oyster in the Half Shell


While Joy and Rebecca attempt to quelch the fire alarm, I keep on truckin'.

As we spritely march towards a new season of barista competitions, I will be stepping back from them and making way for a new generation of barista to take the stage. For the Mid-Atlantic Regionals, we'll be sending Lindsay to give a try at the competition and it's time to do some development.

Something we've been thinking of has been Pop Tarts. Is there a way to create a drink that suggests Heavily Toasted Pop Tarts? Maybe with some espresso or a marshmallow foam? Carmelized? Ah, who knows?


Lunch: Tuna Club on baguette with chips.

Meanwhile, as we're saute-ing lobster shells for a LobSpro component, the smoke sets off the fire alarm and a piercing shriek fills the room. As everyone is running around trying to blow the stuff out or simply run away, the mix still needs attention.

From there, it's some sandwich tests on our tuna club idea, a no-go test for poached egg baguette and an afternoon of watching the SouthEast Regional Barista Competition live video stream where we spy a judge who suspiciously looks like Kimmy, who's supposedly "away in New York City" this weekend...


Devlin, Lindsay and Jeremy check out the Hario V60 pour over.


Pop Tarts Consomme base.


Watching the SERBC live video stream.


Poached egg on baguette - meh.

Scale To Measure

The Scales of The Spro: Pelouze Postal Scale, Ohaus CL Scale, CAS digital scale and IKEA scale, along with some of the brewing methods we'll be employing.

I don't know how it is for most of you, but I always seem to find details that I just never gave too much consideration towards giving me serious obstacles. Take scales, for instance.

Scales seem so ubiquitous in what we do that I don't really think too much about them. Yes, they're necessary and yes, we've had all the scales we needed at Towson, so I never really put that much thought into them. But now with the impending opening of project hampden and its' multiple brewing methods, the need for really great scales has suddenly come into focus.

Aside from our main scale in Towson, we've gotten by with small kitchen scales, postal scales and whatever we've had at hand. Now that our brewing is more focused and serious, these stand-by scales have started to show their weaknesses. From the ergonomics to the length of time the scale stays on to the shape and space, all of it takes a toll and needs reckoning.

Where once was a void that I didn't have to worry about suddenly has become a kink in our system that's growing more desperate with each passing day.

This week, a new scale showed up at The Spro, the Ohaus CL Series Scale. It's a laboratory scale that is either battery or wall socket powered. It's small form factor means we can set up several brews side by side and its' design allows the scales to be stacked on top of each other for greater storage capability. Plus, the scale stays active for four minutes, much more generous than the 25 seconds other scales allow during moments of inactivity.

Initial impressions from our baristas has been quite positive for the Ohaus CL and I'm thinking that it might just be the one we're going to go with - thank goodness it doesn't cost an arm and a leg!

Touring The Family Cow Farm

The intrepid barista candidates of project hampden cross the vast expanses on a milkquest.

Crossing the soon-to-be-frozen tundra of the "west 40" pasturelands, I wondered just how we got here. Sure, the jokers of the group will suggest that we got there by car (minivan, to be accurate), but just how did we get here - visiting Edwin Shank and his collection of over two hundred cattle, several cats and an untold number of chickens?

It wasn't too long ago that I didn't even think about the milk we were using. It was whole or skim. Needed more? A quick call before midnight to the local distributor and a shipment would be delivered the next morning. Short by a gallon? No problem, they'll send a big truck to deliver it tomorrow.

Reflecting back it's amazing how little thought we put into what we consume. Whatever is there and readily available will suffice, especially if it's cheap. Cheap is good. Cheap is easy. Cheap leaves me with a little more cash to buy a new iPod.

Trudging across the uneven terrain with the cold, frigid air blasting across my face, I realized that this is where we belonged. Here, visiting the piko, or source of what we do.

I've starting using a phrase to describe what we do: Simple, but not easy.

Making coffee is simple. Very simple. Simply add hot water to ground coffee, wait a few minutes and et voila! It's done. But doing well and doing it thoughtfully is anything but easy. It's still simple, but it's very, very hard. Hence our trekking the two hours by car, into the Mennonite wildlands of Pennsylvania to visit a few cows chomping on grass in the middle of cold field, surrounded by cow pies.

It's too easy for a "barista" to sit at home and memorize details about the products they use. Grass-fed, hormone free, antibiotic free, organic, free-range, jersey, holstein, guernsey - blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Any monkey can sit around the house reciting spoon-fed information about anything. It's a whole 'nother thing to experience it and see it firsthand. It's how I learned about the products we use and it's how I want to impart our crew with their knowledge.

Having visited the farm, met the farmer, frolicked with the cows, toured the creamery and tasted the milks, I think it gives our crew a depth and understanding greater than merely reciting the label on a box of Horizon Organic Milk.

Trick Or Treat, Hon

Joy pours the first press of coffee brewed at project hampden while Jeremy, Rebecca and Kimmy wait to start the vacuum pot and Chemex brews.

Tonight, the very first cup of coffee was brewed at project hampden. A milestone.

With neighbors Ma Petite Shoe hosting the annual Hampden Halloween Costume Contest across the street, what better way to introduce ourselves to the neighborhood than by passing out candies for the children and coffee for the parents? With a bag of the Fazenda San Antonio Brazil from Hines/Origins Organic Coffee in tow, we lugged down to Hampden a setup to brew French Press, Chemex and Vac Pot for our soon-to-be customers.

Truth be told, I originally was only going to do french press at the event. It was our baristas who pushed for multiple brew methods to show off what we were going to be doing when we open. So, along came the Chemex and Vac Pot.


This Is It - Live.

As our team has been getting more comfortable with our methods and practices, I've been stepping back a little to let them run with things. They decided the equipment to bring, they setup and tore down and they did all the brewing and all of the talking. I just kinda hovered in the background in my Wranglers and cowboy boots doing my best Garth Brooks impression.

I have to say: I'm impressed. And proud. Our team greeted the people, talked with them about the coffee and the brew methods and were generally engaging. In essence, they were the kind of baristas that I hoped they would be - and not the typical, chip on the shoulder, pretentious, arrogant, hipster barista you typically find in the "Third Wave."

To be expected, there were a couple of missteps. Maybe a miscue in the brew or a lazy comment, but those were quickly corrected and we soldiered on. It was their first time in the field and I was impressed with their ability to engage the customer and really surprised at how passionately they spoke about the coffee and the brew methods.


More brewing coffee at dusk.

Their choice to bring the additional brew methods was colossal. One coffee three different ways. Now the future customer could taste the difference between methods. No place in Baltimore affords this luxury. Some took the coffee to go. Others stayed and lingered to chat. Some stayed and tried all three brews. Kids came and went. Spiderman, Batman, Scooby, Velma, Parrots, Michael Jackson, Butchers and more. Only two people asked for sugar and cream. Two. Out of maybe a hundred or so served? Not bad.

Most people tried the coffee as is, meaning black. In Towson, perhaps 25% of our customers drink coffee black. Tonight, about 98% of those who came to see us drank it black. I can only guess that it's due to their seeing our crew brewing the coffees, talking about the coffees, engaging the people and developing rapport. Developing comfort and trust with the customer, leading them to giving it a try without sugar and cream.

It's something that I stressed early on. Getting the customer to relax and trust us is key. With that trust, they'll give it a try. That's when we have to deliver - to bolster that trust given us.

It was just a tiny, first step tonight in front of project hampden. But I think it was a great step forward.

Congratulations to Kimmy, Jeremy, Rebecca, Joy and Stephanie for a job well done.

Cupping The Barefoot

Jeremy, Ilenia, Lamarie and Nikki cup samples from Barefoot Coffee.

As we grind closer to the opening of project hampden, the crazies at Barefoot Coffee were excited to send us some samples. I've known Andy Newbom, owner of Barefooot, since I really started getting into the business in 2004. He's a crazy guy with whom I haven't always seen eye-to-eye with (mainly when we served on the Barista Guild of America's Executive Council). Regardless I've always liked the guy and have always respected his passion and the company he's worked so hard to create, which is why it's now an honor to work with Barefoot for project hampden.

If you ever have the chance to visit their original cafe in Santa Clarita, I think you'll find a remarkable place. Dab smack in the middle of a very suburban strip mall is Barefoot - an urban oasis of bohemian coffee amongst soccer moms and technology wizards. The first time I visited in 2004, Andy was just getting started and it wasn't too radically different than most Third Wave shops at the time. When I stopped by again last December, I was amazed at the transformation. That it was possible to create an urban oasis in the middle of suburban hell.

When I went to visit Barefoot again during my brief four-hour stopover in San Francisco this past August (on the way home from the Western Canadian Regionals), I found Andy and company in a mission-style mansion not too far from downtown Santa Clara where everything was churning along. Since it's forty minutes each way, I only had about fifteen minutes to stop in for a chat and a quick tour. After meeting much of the crew and chilling with Andy, I was on my way back to SFO.

Like I said, Andy is a crazy guy. To my mind, there is no one coffee professional in our generation crazier than Andy Newbom. The guy is completely psycho about coffee and creating a rock culture of passionate coffee people. Which should have prepared me for the day that our Barefoot account rep Tony Serrano came-a-calling.

There was Tony, on the phone and just as crazy passionate about coffee as Andy. He was hyper excited about coffee and working with us, which in turn made me even more excited about working with them. Speaking through the phone, across America, in a high-speed, rapid-fire staccato about sending us an assortment of coffees to try. I was so swept up in his enthusiasm, how could anyone say no?

Not that I wanted to say "no" but I wasn't sure if now was the right time to start bringing in coffees for operational evaluation. We don't have a firm opening day yet.

Needless to say, the coffees started arriving and we started cupping. Many of the roasters we work with provide tasting notes with their coffees and Barefoot does the same. However, I think it's important for our baristas to know the coffees so, instead of memorizing the note cards and giving rote recitations of the descriptions, I have them cup the coffees, identify the characteristics and develop a description of the coffee based on their own tasting notes.

I tend to withhold the roasters' tasting notes until they are finished with the descriptions so as not to color their interpretations of the coffees. And while the differences can be starkly different, the commonalities are what I find most interesting. Here's Ilenia's description of Barefoot's Sumatra Gayoland Water Processed Decaf Coffee:

Barefoot Coffee's Sumatra Gayoland Decaf delivers a delicious cup of coffee with milk chocolate flavors and hints of fresh-cut honeysuckle. This crisp, yet thick but never heavy cup leaves a lasting aftertaste that will leave a spritely punch of rich, dark chocolate notes."

Now, here's Barefoot's description:

"Deep and earthy, heavy body and low bass notes heavy chocolate, rich nuttiness, loamy power creamy cherimoya and hints of tropicals."

Pouting Over PourOver

Flight of the Beehouse at Spro.

There's a whole cabal out there that thinks I'm some sort of hot aired, blowhard stalwart and while I won't say that they're 100 percent wrong, I do, from time to time, rethink my stance and make a course change.

I'm a fallible human with my own set of whacked preferences. I like grass fed steaks, younger women and I really haven't been paying attention to decaf coffee. Decaf coffee really has been like that scratch in the middle of your back that you just can't reach - an irritation that must be dealt with. At The Spro, we might serve four decaf coffees in a day. FOUR, I'm not kidding.

Because of this, it really hasn't been a high priority for me, even though it's probably the one coffee that we're losing the most money on. Pots of decaf are brewed only to be thrown away. It's the ultimate in waste and it's time to stop.

Okay, I'll be honest. The diaphragm on the decaf airpot finally broke and since I'm too cheap to replace it, it was time to make a change...


Drip, dripping away.

Readers of this blog will know that I haven't been the biggest fan of pourovers, mainly because I think all the hoopla about it being the "next thing" is just lame bullshit - especially since those cats at Royal Coffee in Berkeley had been doing it for years when Dismas Smith, Sandy Hon and myself stopped there in January 2005 for a cup. But there's a new enthusiasm for pourover, as well as some new consciousness about it and some new engineering.

Mark Inman, guru of Taylor Maid Farms in Sebastopol, California has come out with the Tru Bru pourover system with Beehouse porcelain filter holders from Japan and made out of stainless steel. There are other makes on the market but they're tall an ugly. At least the Tru Bru is low-profile and rather handsome to boot. But the real selling point for me is that they make a two cup model, not just the four cup model that I see everywhere else and is a monster on your counter.

For a program like ours where pourover is not our primary brewing method, the two cup model fits the bill just right.


Brew samples and the french press control (second from left).

So I mock others and their pourovers only to find a really concentrated level of attention to get a nice brew out of the thing. I'm surprised to find that there really is a lot more to pourover than simply pouring the hot water over the coffee. Timing of the water stream is critical. If you dump it in and let it flow, it flows too fast and you get underextracted coffee.

We're just beginning our exploration with pourover, but the initial parameters we are starting from are as follows:

8z cup - 16 grams coffee
12z cup - 24 grams coffee
16z cup - 32 grams coffee

I've been playing around with the circle in the center pouring technique that Aaron Ultimo showed me and we're getting interesting results. So far, the coffee has been nice but lacking the qualities that I love in a French Pressed coffee, namely that rich body. We're getting similar flavor notes from the pourover but that body and complexity of pressed coffee is missing, but I think that's just part of the game.

If you come by The Spro in the coming weeks, you'll find the pourover working its' way into our lineup.

Steamed Milk in Your Iced Latte

I've been openly critical about Baltimore Sun food critic Elizabeth Large. Even though I find her taste in cuisine to be vastly different than my own (and of a completely divergent agenda), I still take a moment now and then to read her blog - if only to practice the exercise of bashing my head against the wall in frustration.

In fact, I've been so openly critical of Liz Large that I've been effectively banned from posting comments to her blog. Long ago, she stopped "allowing" my comments because they tended to be highly critical of her position in the food chain - how anyone makes the claim that kale soup tastes too much of kale and retains credibility is beyond me.

In today's blog entry, she writes about iced coffee and how it's surpassing iced tea as a restaurant breakfast drink. Now, I don't know if that's true but consumption of iced coffee from the Brew Tower of Power at The Spro has been on a sharp rise. Anyway, the point is that she writes:

"My favorite version of iced coffee is an iced latte, but the milk has to be steamed first or it doesn't taste right. You can't just put espresso and cold milk together and call it an iced latte."

Which makes me go: "Hmmmm..."

Lots of places in Baltimore serve something resembling iced coffee or espresso with cold milk aka "iced latte" but no other shop that I know of steams their iced latte milk other than The Spro. Has the kale-handicapped Liz Large made clandestine visits to The Spro under the guise of a regular customer? Could I, God Forbid, have actually served the mysterious Lady Large myself? Maybe even treated her with our usual blend of friendly hospitality? I wonder.

I'm guessing that because of our history, she won't acknowledge this but I wanted to put out a message to Mrs. Large:

"Come visit and enjoy our iced lattes. We welcome all at The Spro."

Iced Espresso

Many of us have heard the old monniker that iced espresso tastes nasty. Nasty and metallic. Years ago, I tried pulling a shot of espresso over ice and it was nasty and metallic. Sometimes one never learns...

The other day, as I was wandering around a local store, I spied a cool silicone ice mold to make ice shot glasses. I had to have it and brought it back to The Spro for a little informal testing. Filled the mold and into the freezer it went. Six hours later, the water had frozen and the ice shot glasses were ready so i popped one out.

What to do, what to do? Sure, I could have planned it out better and made up some nice coffee concoction to play around with, but I didn't. I was too busy working and making drinks for customers. instead, I decided to pull a double shot into the ice shot glass. Maybe the shape and the ice would do something wondrous.

Or maybe not.

While it looked very cool - especially if you let the ice warm up until it becomes clear, the espresso was just as nasty and metallic as I remember. Ugh.

But at least I've got some cool ice molds for future experiments.