Finally

Went to the Venice Intelli today. Totally overdone and insane. Damn good coffee though!

David Lovercheck
Tel.: 917.743.2114

The Cafe Superba is open!

Even slightly hungover the barista comes through.

Cafe Calabria

Down in San Diego on vacation we hit Cafe Calabria in North Park.  Beautiful space, very, very good coffee. Jen enjoyed her excellent latte and I had an outstanding cappuccino. Check it out.

Cold brew

Made cold brew yesterday for the first time. 12 hours in the French press, coffee updosed to about double what is normal, and now I have a jar of cold brew that will last for two weeks! And it is tasty!!

Still got it

Yummy!!

What a difference a day makes

I spent some time on my Mazzer Major doing maintenance, cleaning, and (most importantly) changing out the blades. I had inherited this Major from Epicenter in some sort of swap, but it came with dull blades. After all was said and done, I dialed it in and had a delightful macchiato. The espresso was significantly improved over what I've been pulling the last few weeks. It had more body, more flavor, and less annoying tanginess. This proves to me how important it is to have good, sharp burrs on the blades of your grinder. Of course, the reason these blades were so dull is that they came off the cafe main grinder, with very high usage. With my (relatively) light usage, I suspect the new blades will last several years.

heavy cupping

So I bumble into Intelligentsia yesterday afternoon and it is packed.
I say 'what the hell is going on at 4pm on a monday?' I leave and
return later so I dont have to deal with the line.

I later realize there are all these heavy coffee people in town for
the big SCAA expo and the barista championship (btw our boy from
Intelli chicago won.. again.) green buyers, cafe owners, all sorts.

so what i saw were a bunch of geeks setting up coffees for a cupping..
and I realized I was out of my league. 3 coffees I'd never heard of
showed up and I was blown away.

I was rapping with a cool guy named Tony (spelled Tonx i think..
Tonx? really nice guy-- look for him to roll through epicenter in the
coming weeks.. i found his substantial blog tonx.org). he was walking
me through some of the stuff.

Square Mile from UK-- fucking incredible. I'd never heard of it- they
were surprised. phil Kohler should track them down.

Coava from Portland-- Best coffee I've tasted in LONG time. made the
blue bottle taste like shoe suede. former ecco roasters I think..
nutty. a must on the next portland tour. we cupped the ARDI--
Ethiopia Sidama. blue berry and strawberry for days. I wanted to
take a bath in it.

then the some usuals-- Blue Bottle, Intelligentsia, Four Barrel,
Grumpy.. BB, 4 barrel and grumpy seemed mediocre. the intelli held
up..

then the last one was another unusual roaster-- Phil & Sebastian from
Calgary. it was a blend designed for espresso so it was more
complicated, but unexpectedly amazing. we pulled a shot after the
cupping and there was a cinnamon nose that was unreal.

anyways, a pretty random and fortuitous afternoon.

peace from Intellivenice
k