Aldo Coffee Company

Hope This Works...

We're going to be making some changes to the site - not major ones, but we are adding a couple of new modules that will require us to do some heavy lifting regarding back ups and sordid geek work. 

12:34am Update:  As you can see, some stuff is different.  And some stuff just doesn't look right.  We're still working on it, but for the most part, the clickeys still click and most stuff seems to function. 

1:05pm Update, Nov 1:  We probably won't be able to fix anything else until late tonight.  There are Safari issues that don't exist on Firefox.  We need to rebuild the template from scratch and upload when there's not much traffic.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

9:58am Update, Nov 2: We've fixed the centering and graphics issues, but have pulled down some of the features, notably the email and Google links as well as the RSS feeds icons and the Flickr slideshow.  We will be adding most, if not all, of these features back in over the weekend.

Boo!

Happy Halloween!

We're not sure what's happening this morning, but rumor has it Sonny and Cher might be working the bar this afternoon.  Which is appropriate since the couple originally met at a coffeeshop named Aldo's in Los Angeles (no relation). 

And of course, free candy corn from 10am to close.

Happy trick or treating tonight.  Stay safe!

Pop City Media's Go-To Guide to Mt. Lebanon

Nice write up on the wonders of Mt. Lebanon from the folks over at Pop City.

"Real estate in this community ranges from below $100k for a house or duplex to well over a million. Brick, stone, low, high, it’s quite a range. You can live close to shops with three business districts in the community and you’ll have an elementary school nearby since seven are scattered strategically throughout. No school buses here so yes, many walkers and many carpoolers too. It's not all perfect here in Mt. Lebanon. But for many it's close enough."

The article is a pleasant change as so often the alternative city media portrays Mt. Lebo as a cloistered, snobbish area when it's anything but.  The Uptown and Beverly business districts would be cool additions to any neighborhood in Pittsburgh.

Aiden Adopted

Several customers inquired about Aiden, the Husky/Shepherd mix that Melanie was trying to get adopted. 

Rain Goes Away for Halloween Parade

The forecast was for rain all morning, but between the early morning showers and this afternoon's threatening skies were a couple of hours of "partly sunny" - just enough time for the Mt. Lebo Halloween Parade to go on as scheduled.

I t was all hands on deck here at the shop.  This is one of the top five busiest mornings of the year for us.  In fact, Parade morning is the only shift of the year where we have one person dedicated to hot chocolate.  We were so busy we even recruited barista Michelle's daughter to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters.

The Halloween Parade is one of the major pluses of being in the Uptown business district.  It's a great tradition and lots of fun not just for the kids and families, but for all the businesses on Washington Road.   We're glad we get to be a part of it.

Coffee Is Culinary at ExpoMart

This past Saturday morning, after bringing the weekly coffee urns over to youth soccer, Melanie took a drive out to the ExpoMart in Monroeville for Good Taste Pittsburgh, a one-day consumer-oriented showcase of various foods and services.

The primary reason she was out there was to meet up with Chris DeFerio and Jack Groot, both friends of the shop - Jack has been helpful since before Day One and Chris is widely considered one of the foremost trainers of latte art in the nation, as well as reigning Northeast region barista champion.

The two were at the ExpoMart doing a demonstration on creating textured milk for home baristas who often use equipment that is less than ideal for the task.  Part of their demonstration included showing a local reporter how to create rosettes in her cup - which she was able to do fairly quickly under Chris's tutelage. 

Roasting Smartly

We're trying to cram as much knowledge about roasting as we can into our caffeinated heads.  Start small, work up from there, type stuff.  But occasionally we run into something so obvious, yet often ignored by home and small roasters who think it can't happen to them - the potential for a huge fire.

As deCadmus notes, "Never leave a roast unattended."  Good tips on how to place multiple fire extinguishers around your roaster as well.

Twitter Box to Now Feature Daily Specials

We've been using the Twitter box to the right to tell you about the coffees we get in each week.  But with soup season now in full swing, we've decided to use it to tell you what's on the soup menu each day.  More of you ask about soups than what varietal coffees we're serving anyway, so it seems a better use of the space. 

So look to the box to see what's cooking.  And as we don't offer soup on Sunday, we'll tell you what's in the Sunday quiche.

The $22 Cup of Coffee

There has been an awful lot written about Hacienda La Esmeralda, which this year became the world's most expensive auction lot coffee.

As green coffee, the Esmeralda commanded a price of $130/lb at the 2007 Best of Panama auctions.  This was the fourth year in a row that this particular coffee, a variety of the Gesha cultivar originally from Ethiopia, earned the highest price at the Best of Panama auctions.

You might remember that we offered the 2006 Best of Panama Esmeralda here last summer.  At the time we were afraid to charge more than cost, which was around $5 per press pot.  We did not expect anyone would pay more than that for a cup of coffee (well, 17 ounces, to be exact) but we wanted to offer it to our region's coffee lovers, provide a little bit of education with each sale and, of course, we wanted some for ourselves. 

Exam Week at Tazza d'Oro

This is cool - Amy Enrico is putting her baristas to the test, literally.  Their roaster, Batdorf & Bronson, is coming to down to drill the staff with a full-day exam.

While we've met a bunch of their baristas, we've still managed to miss Amy every time we're up in Highland Park, but this is really good news for Pittsburgh espresso drinkers.  The drinks have been good there for quite some time, so they're aiming pretty high.

Way to go Amy and all the Enrico's Tazza d'Oro baristas!