Counter Culture Coffee’s New York Regional Site
Getting presents in the mail is the best — especially when they’re coffee-related AND from Japan!
Check out this sweet little 10g coffee scoop my best friends picked up for me while they were travelling in Tokyo! I love that it’s house-shaped, and I love its tiny handle, and I love … well, everything about it, basically. Too bad I can’t tell you anything else about the company that makes it, because its website is in Japanese.
Hey kids.
So Counter Culture has been testing a new espresso blend idea with some select cafes lately under the secretive moniker “Espresso X”. The idea here is, instead of blending available coffees to meet a pre-determined flavor profile year round, we’re taking select fresh coffees at their peak, and blending them in such a way as to highlight what is special about these particular coffees. This formula and its flavor profile will be constantly changing as coffees fall in and out of season. As of July 5, we’ve rolled out the blend, Apollo, and it is currently available at Bluebird Coffee Shop and Everyman Espresso, and soon at other cafes that serve Counter Culture Coffee.
You can learn more information about Apollo, the coffees its composed of, and how different people are brewing it here. Oliver Strand over at the NY Times coffee blog just had some and shares his thoughts here.
We here at CCC NYC break our long blogging silence to bring you an important public-service announcement, courtesy of a discovery by our own Miss Katie Carguilo:
What began as a routine espresso training turned into a three-day-long excursion into the deep, dark world of disgusting old coffee oils — namely the ones that get gunked up in those hard-to-reach places in your portafilter and mine. Katie was dialing in her coffee, minding her own business, when she realized that no matter how coarse she made the grind, the espresso was pouring strangely: the streams were thin, lacked body, or refused to come out at all. No amount of adjustment seemed to solve the problem.
And then the light bulb went “DING!” She unscrewed one set of spouts (or “took off one pair of pants,” as I’m fond of saying), and gasped, horrified.
Inside a pair of spouts.
So we, having learned our lesson, ask again: When’s the last time you cleaned your spouts, and don’t you think maybe it’s time you did?
There’s been a lot of excitement over this year’s World Barista Championship. Many coffee professionals and enthusiasts are crowding around computers or television screens in coffee shops to watch as barista champions from over 50 countries bring their best game for the chance to win the top spot in London. But let’s face it– these 15 minute presentations, though they fly by for the competitor, can be pretty boring for even the most enthusiastic coffee professional to watch. There are only so many espressos and cappuccinos once can hear about in a given day, you know what I mean? The only things that keep the competiton remotely interesting are: 1. The music (chosen by each competitor, reflecting their personality); 2. The signature beverages (reflecting a competitor’s personal style and palate for creating interesting taste experiences). Admit it, when you watch a competition presentation, the signature beverage is what you most look forward to. Som are really complicated, others shockingly simple. Some flavor combinations might even seem weird or gross, others sound delicious. But no matter what, when you see a polished competitor perform, you think to yourself, “I wish I could try that. I wonder what it tastes like.”
Well, now you can!
A limited number of $20 tickets will be issued to sample a flight of all five drinks. Partial proceeds will be donated to Coffee Kids, a nonprofit organization that provides aid to coffee farming families all over the world.
I’ll be there, bringing back a drink I debuted at the 2008 Northeast Regional Barista Competition. I never did get around to naming the drink, but it will involve a combination of goat’s milk and beets, paired with Counter Culture’s Natural Ethiopian Espresso, Michicha.
In addition, RBC will be streaming the three-day World Barista Competition live on flat screen TVs.
RBC NYC is located at 71 Worth Street in Tribeca. Hope to see you there!
Katie
Please join us Friday, June 18, at our New York Regional Training Center, at 4 p.m. for a very special cupping of new La Golondrina microlots with Giancarlo Ghiretti and Badi Bradley from the Colombian exporter VIRMAX with whom we work to source this coffee!
Let me tell you a little bit about the customer-relations team here at Counter Culture Coffee: We’ve all got our own “certain something.”
Brent can basically build his own training center, for instance. Katie is both fashionable and don’t take no lip. Lem knows from sexy foam. David is an extraction genius — in Japanese! Lydia can probably make all kinds of things out of glitter, felt and yarn. Alex can juggle tech and training and he taught me how to eat a grapefruit. Mary could probably survive longer in the woods than anybody else at Counter Culture.
And Phil? Phil is the man when it comes to milk chemistry.
Counter Culture NYC had the privilege of hosting a Phil Proteau-taught Milk Chemistry Lab yesterday, and boy, did we all learn something about bubble matrices or what?? This guy knows his casein from his lactose; his hydrophilic from his hydrophobic protein ends. And he obviously can draw his way onto a chalkboard full of helpful diagrams.
If you’ve ever thought about taking our Milk Chemistry Lab but wasn’t sure whether or not you’d enjoy it, trust us — find out when this guy is teaching and you won’t be sorry (neither will your cappuccinos, ever again).
Katie, Jessica, Tommy and Danielle join NYC forces at the NERBC
Everybody at CCC — nay, coffee lovers all over the Northeast and all over the US of A! — were glued to their seats and their Web browsers this past weekend to watch the excitement of the Northeast Regional Barista Championship unfold.
Congratulations to all the finalists, especially Counter Culture’s own amazing Katie Carguilo with her awesome signature drink “More Orange Than an Orange,” Stumptown’s delightful Danielle Glasky (who took home 1st place) and Cafe Grumpy’s charming Jordan Barber (awarded 3rd). Way to give it to ‘em from New York, you guys!
Mucho kudos also to 2nd place winner Niki Krankl from Newtonville, MA’s Taste Coffee House, and to everybody else who stood up and competed over the weekend. You represent your coffee and your region well, professionals!
Didn’t get to watch the competition on the live stream? You can catch some of the fun in this actually pretty good iCNN report from the weekend:
the 2010 Aurelia Competizione
The NY Training Center will be home to a WBC-spec Nuova Simonelli Aurelia for the next few weeks. Katie will be using it to sharpen up for the upcoming NERBC. If you’re interested, come by and check it out at a Friday Cupping.
We’ve never really posted anything about this before, but cuppings at CCC’s NY Training Center can be interpreted in ASL for the Deaf.
I’ve had a couple inquiries lately, so I wanted to make this information as accessible as possible. Tommy (me) is on hand at most every cupping and can interpret all the wonderful things you taste in our coffee.
Pinch-throat? Interested? Come by Fridays at noon!
Edible Manhattan’s Amber Benham attended Dean & Deluca’s first-ever intra-company Latte Art Throwdown last week and posted a recap on the EM site. She also produced a sweet slideshow of Counter Culture’s own Ms. Meister (Just Meister!) whipping up some perfectly steamed milk. (Btw, have you seen this?!?)
“If there’s one thing we learned,” noted Benham in her article,” it’s that latte art is a lot harder than baristas make it look.”
No doubt.
Thanks,
Nathan
