What is a coffee shop?

Last week a customer asked this question. I wrestled to find a defined answer. "A coffee shop serves coffee." The conversation continued:

"So is XXX a coffee shop?"
"Well they are more of a bakery who also serve coffee beverages."

"So is XXX a coffee shop?"
"They serve lots of food, and have coffee. Probably not a coffee shop."

Barista Saturdays

Barista Satrudays: the day my wife and I fill in barista shifts at Cafe Verde. After working many years on the back side of coffee (green coffee development and export), it's refreshing to finally be working at the moment that all the back side becomes specialty coffee.

Our specialty coffee industry has many of interpretations of the definition of "specialty coffee", but I think the barista experience reminds me of the truth: it's only a specialty coffee if the consumer encounters an extraordinary cup of coffee. The years of work on cooperative development, farming techniques and quality selection is meaningless if the barista brews the coffee wrong.

Otto up and running

Cafe Verde's new roaster is now up and running, and today is the first day of the espresso off the new machine! Cafe Verde green and black were the colors of choice. The paint is almost fully curred after a week of heating the machine while experimenting.

Besides the paint job we've re-worked the gas and increased the airflow. It took some searching but we located the gas gage we were looking for and improved the gas line.

The first batch of espresso was a pre-blend, roasted in just over 16 minutes and today has 6 days rest. This 100% Peruvian espresso has a light chocolate initial flavor profile, and ends with sweet bright raisin notes.

The experiments will continue, but were off to a good start. Hopefully in a week the roaster will be fully installed in the shop!

Enjoy