Daniel of Arabica
brew, drink, repeat
Archive for June 2009
First Impressions: Haus
It’s another day in The Mission. There must be another café opening. To the long list of “coffee v3.0″ (aka CV3) cafés in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco, you can add one more: Haus.
Haus opened just last month and, as far as San Francisco café concepts go, it’s definitely on the novel side. Most cafés that have opened up recently here in San Francisco, it seems, have a roaster attached to them – they roast in-house and sell their own beans – but there’s another model for the CV3 café that hasn’t been put into practice as much here as it has on our other coast’s nascent coffee mecca, New York City. That model presents the same care and respect for the bean as the in-house roasting group but features coffee from either respected local roasters or from roasters with a solid reputation from all over the country. Haus veers more toward the former by featuring coffees from two highly respected local roasters: Ritual and De La Paz. Haus offers espresso and press-pot coffee. When I came in, they were offering Ritual’s Hopscotch on the espresso machine and De La Paz (a Costa Rica…whose name escapes me and which I can’t find any reference to on their website) from the press. I’m not sure weather that lineup will change – I’d love it if there was some variety – and I’m also unsure weather Ritual will exclusively preside over the espresso side while De La Paz takes the press-pot. I’ll need to look into this a bit more.
This scrap is a preliminary look – I’ll have a more detailed exploration after I’ve given Haus a few good tries – so I won’t go into excruciating details at this point. But, a few points:
What I liked:
- I found the decor to be quite pleasant. All “bare” unfinished wood cool and stark. I found the vibe (if you will) to be relaxed.
- They have a back patio and bench seating out front. Hopefully The Mission will serve up some of it’s trademark weather so both can be put to good use.
- Wi-fi. I like it. Yeah, I’m one of those people.
- The multi-roaster concept is a good one and I think could stand better representation within the raft of cafés popping up in SF. A small selection of De La Paz and Ritual beans are available for sale. I bought a bag of the Sumatra Gayoland from De La Paz – which is also curiously absent from the De la Paz site) and will review it shortly.
What I didn’t care for as much:
- The shot of Ritual’s “Hopscotch” espresso that was pulled for me could have used a little more TLC. The crema was thin and broke apart at the first slosh of the cup. It was thin tasting as well. To Ritual’s credit, it wasn’t horrible, but greater attention could have been paid, I think. Maybe it’s a training issue, maybe it’s just inconsistency. Time will tell.
- This isn’t necessarily a knock on Haus but the Costa Rica from De La Paz was nothing extraordinary. It was the classic C.R.: lemony acidity, light body. Good, solid but not great. Maybe I’m just spoiled now, though.
Like I said, preliminary. Gotta give a café a chance, after all. In the meantime, check out Man Seeking Coffee’s take on Haus. I’ll be back.
Surprise, surprise and surprise…and surprise…
Have you ever had sour worms? They’re a type of candy (not a stomach ailment). They’re like gummy bears only in worm shape. They’re also like other gummy worms but have ascorbic acid added to them. You can tell the difference between the two just by looking at them. The regular gummy worms are slick, shiny and colorful. The sour worms, on the other hand, are matte, the bright colors of the normal worms being muted by a thick coat of ascorbic acid powder. You know ascorbic acid as Vitamin C but you also know it as the tartness in orange juice. And, oh yeah, I hear it also has antioxidant powers.
Kids love ‘em. Why worms? I dunnow. Probably the gross-out factor in part but it’s also, in the case of the sour version, a test of fortitude. Because they are sour. They pucker the mouth. They’re incredibly sharp on the tongue. They’re food as physical experience in much the same way that hot, spicy food is. Spicy burns. Sour almost tingles. It’s actually quite fun for a time. But, as with all things, excessive consumption of the sour worm only leads to harm. I know. It happened to me. At a movie theatre. Sour worms from the bulk candy bin. Soooo goooood but what at first was a pleasant experience ended up costing me dearly. Its as if someone had taken a little Dremel tool with a sander tip to my tongue. It literally took me days to recover as my taste buds regenerated themselves out of the wasteland that all of that ascorbic acid had created.
Worms…and coffee?
Why, you might be asking, am I bringing up a terrible candy experience on a blog devoted to coffee? Well, for one, because this, my friends is a tasting note on a Costa Rican coffee and, because my unfortunate experience with sour worms is good analog for my past experience with the coffees of Costa Rica. In my experience, Costa Rica is the sour worm of the coffee world: pleasurable at first, tongue destroying in the end. Even in milk, once, in a takeaway au lait from the Blue Bottle Kiosk in Hayes Valley, that Costa Rica acidity reared its ugly head. Traveling through San Francisco on foot, cup in hand, I only got as far as Market Street before my tongue was begging me to stop. Add to Costa Rica’s brutal acidity, a lack of anything else of much interest – at least anything else of much interest that has the power to shine in the face of such an overpowering flavor component – and, yeah, you could say that my experiences with Costa Rican coffees have been a tad negative.
I’m all for surprises though.
The head roaster at Ritual Coffee Roasters recently made a “trip to origin” to Costa Rica1. That Ritual had gone through the effort of sending their head roaster to the country was a strong signal, to me, that there may be some Costa Rican coffees showing up at Ritual in the very near future. I’ve had very good luck with Ritual, especially within the last year. I’ve been impressed with both the variety of coffees – the whole bean coffee shelf at Ritual is an ever changing feast of coffees and countries of origin – and the quality and depth of what’s on offer. And so, I decided I was willing to give Costa Rica another try should the trip result in Costa Rican coffee on the shelves. My tongue was ready. I steeled myself for the pain to come.
And I was right. On my next trip to Ritual Roasters, on the shelf was a Costa Rican – Los Chacónes Organic Costa Rica – challenging me to make good on my promise. There was but one thing to do.
Bringing it home, I subjected the Los Chacónes to the usual round of preparations on hand at the Daniel of Arabica Laboratories© (AKA, the kitchen of our apartment): the press pot and the chemex. I added to that bunch of preparations one more method but I’ll get to that in a bit.
With my nose in the bag, the whole beans had a zesty, spicy fragrance: salt, lime, cayenne. It was the same with the grinds only more intense.
In the press pot
First up “in the lab” was the press pot. There it was. The acidity. But, wait. This isn’t bad. My tongue isn’t threatening to cry for mercy. My mouth isn’t puckering up. This is…nice! Lime, lime, lime in the acidity. That lime-like acidity became more intense as the cup cooled but it was still absolutely pleasurable. In the aroma? Sweet chili. I couldn’t get hot sauce out of my mind. It was the aftertaste. It was the way the spicy and almost savory feeling and flavor stayed in the mouth. And a nice, thick body.
In the Chemex
Next? The Chemex. I think I’ve mentioned before, how my prejudice of the Chemex has given way, of late, to a genuine respect. Paper filters, to me, had always meant a dulling of flavors when compared to the press pot. But the Chemex defies the presumption that it is, in any way, like your everyday, run-of-the-mill paper cone filter preparation. The Chemex can coax flavors out of a coffee that you would never find in the usual paper cone filter method or when solely sticking with the press pot. In fact, I’ve found some coffees that, while certainly good in the press pot, simply come alive in the Chemex. The Chacónes was one of those coffees. Indeed, it didn’t just come alive. It exploded. Mustard seed and dill in the aroma. It was dry. There was a fragrance of fennel that lingered in the mouth; green, vegetal, round and soft. Cranberry and orange peel cropped up in the acidity. There was a certain fresh spiciness to the cup. In fact, in the Chacónes’s characteristics of spice and fruit it reminded me, surprisingly, of some good Belgian White Ales I’ve had, which are traditionally made with coriander and curaçao orange peel.
This time, in the Chemex, the acidity was more persistent, staying on all through the coffee’s time with my pallet. Once again, though I was pleasantly surprised at how the acidity of this Costa Rica was a complete 180° turn from the carnage inducing acidity of the Costa Rican coffees in my past. I was truly surprised at how much I was enjoying this coffee.
Cold brew
There was one more method I added to the mix this time: cold brewed iced coffee. If you are at all interested in cold-brewing iced coffee, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. There are many, many resources to be had on the web so I won’t delve too deeply into the different ways of cold-brewing here. It’s incredibly simple, though. Here’s the short version of the method I used:
- 1 cup of coffee beans, ground coarse, as if for a french press.
- 4½ cups cold water.
- Combine and stir
- Leave in the fridge, covered, for 12 hours.
- Drink.
It’s that simple. I put the Chacónes in the fridge at 10:30 at night and took it out at 10:30 the next morning. And man, was it tasty. Smooth and full-bodied. Fruity (cranberry again). There was this nice hit of acidity right after the brew hit my pallet that welled up and then disapperard as fast as it came, only to be replaced by the body, the subtle sweetness and that intriguing cranberry fruitiness.
Qué sorpresa!
So, what have I learned from this? Second chances can be a good thing. A name is just that: a name. Put the Chacónes and a Costa Rica from my past experience together and I would not have guessed they were of the same origin. Hmmmm…what else? Oh yeah, I actually like a coffee from Costa Rica! Qué sorpresa, indeed.
Where can I get me some Chacónes?
Places I know you can get some:
You can also try their other retail locations in Napa, at The Oxbow Market and their other San Francisco inside Flora Grub Gardens.
Footnotes
- A “trip to origin” is a trip to a country – and many times, more specifically, a farm – that produces green coffee. When I hear it mentioned it is, many times, spoken of in tones normally reserved for a sort of pilgrimage. For those that really care about coffee it is that important. I understand that the sheer volume of information gained by traveling to origin can be mind-boggling. [↩]
Shine, Kenya, shine
Kenyan coffee is under-appreciated. Or at least under-represented. Ethiopia is the darling of African coffees these days, to wit, the crazy-quilt-like ubiquity of “Wondos” and “Misty Valleys”. Look on the shelves – literal or virtual – of your favorite “coffee 3.0″1 roaster and chances are the African category is going to be dominated by one Ethiopian after another. I’m scratching my head on this one. Why is it, I wonder, that Kenyan coffee is so underrepresented?2 It’s certainly not an issue of quality. Kenya produces some of the finest beans on the market and has a highly sophisticated and well developed system for getting its beans out to that market3.
Given this imbalanced situation, it’s nice to see one of Kenya’s quality products get some time in the spotlight for once: Ritual Roasters in San Francisco has but one African coffee on their menu at the moment. And it’s a Kenya. Not only that but, as a part of their “Sweet Tooth” single-origin espresso program, they are offering it up by the shot as well as by the bag.
In the spotlight
The Kenya Karindundu on offer at Ritual was the “mystery coffee” I mentioned was present at the Friday cupping in which m’lady and I participated. At the time, the “mystery” designation was warranted, not by the lack of knowledge of the coffee’s name or place of origin, but by the lack of knowledge of how it was processed and what its growing conditions were. That shortfall has been somewhat cleared up, it seems, as Ritual’s page for the Karindundu illustrates; that this is a coffee grown at high altitudes – 2000m above sea level – and that its refined acidity and “exotic flavors” are a direct result of this4. I, myself – as did m’lady (no coffee slouch is she) – thought that this was one of finer Kenyas we have ever had the pleasure of tasting.
From the notes (in the press pot):
- sweet, syrupy, molasses fragrance
- gingerbread aroma
- dark berry
- “zingy” lemon acidity
- slight floral
- full body
The gingerbread aroma was the most surprising aspect of the cup but this may need a bit of an explanation: I’m not talking about an intense hit of crystallized ginger (although, wow, wouldn’t that have been interesting) but a more general flavor – that dovetails with the molasses – of a dark, sweet bread. The dark berry flavors were reminiscent of ripe Bing cherries.
The flavors are concentrated. That was another trademark of this coffee: intensity. The sweetness of this cup was not of the cloying, candy-like variety but tipped more toward the dark sweetness of molasses and raw sugar. Let’s call it a “mature” sweetness.
The acidity was wonderful. Kenyan coffees are known for their brightness, especially when compared to coffee from Ethiopia. I have tasted Kenyans that, after a few sips, were fatiguing for my tongue. Think sour worm candies – or many Costa Rican coffees, for that matter – and that cotton-mouth feeling you get after too much acid has taken its toll on your tongue. The acidity of the Karindundu, though, was well developed and incredibly enjoyable. Its presence was marked at every sip but was well integrated into the cup. No fatigue here. Lemony too. Yumm5.
Gimmee a “K”!…
It’s nice to see Kenya getting some attention. I am curious why Ethiopia is so dominant on the shelves of many of the 3.0 roasters especially considering Kenya’s reputation for quality but I will take what I can get. It’s wonderful, though, that, at least in the case of Ritual Roaster’s Kenya Karindundu, what I can get is such a unique and enjoyable cup.
Where to get it
The usual suspects:
- In the mission at 1026 Valencia St in San Francisco.
- In the Bayview in Flora Grubb Gardens at 1634 Jerrold Ave in San Francisco.
- In Napa at The Oxbow Public Market.
- Online.
Footnotes
- Quick, somebody get my lawyer on the phone. I smell a trademark. [↩]
- Sounds like a subject in need of further study…and possibly a good idea for another post… [↩]
- Thompson Owen, of Sweet Maria’s, penned a rich and descriptive travelogue of his recent buying trip to Kenya. Combined with their Kenya page they offer a wealth of information about Kenya, its quality and well developed auction system. [↩]
- I imagine more general information about how Kenyan coffees are processed can be found at Sweet Maria’s but my curiosity is piqued about Karindundu’s specific processing [↩]
- Official tasting term [↩]
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