Aldo Coffee Company

Gunnery Sgt. Randy Update - More Than $500 Raised to Date

We're getting ready to send out a second shipment of goods to Gunnery Sergeant Randy Morrow's unit stationed "outside of Fallujah".

To date we've raised more than $250 in cash which we've used to buy snack foods, wetnaps, used CDs/DVDs, batteries and portable CD/DVD players.  We've also sent around $100 of coffee, a couple dozen travel mugs, and covered shipping costs to Iraq.  This time out we've also got a couple of boxes of new and used goods that customers have added to our collection box.

We appreciate the generosity our customers show in support of Randy's unit.  We'll keep collecting until Randy asks us to stop or his unit ships home, whichever comes first.  If it's the latter, maybe we'll just "adopt" another unit.

Best we know everyone in the Randy's unit is still safe and secure, albeit wishing it was cooler at the very least - it's been around 115F all month, with lows of 85F.

Alterra Coffee Keeps Milwaukee Buzzed

Today Rich visited two of the most amazing cafes he's ever seen.  Both of them were in the same city:  Milwaukee.

Alterra Coffee Roasters have been around since 1993 (you were correct, Chris).  The company started with a mission (and motto) to "Serve Strong Coffee" to folks in Milwaukee.  That grew to include espresso bars, food operations with in-house baking and a roastery that now roasts about 1.5 million lbs. of coffee annually.

That that amount of coffee is actually roasted INSIDE one of the cafes (the Prospect St. location) is something to behold.  In addition, Rich visited Alterra's Lakefront location, which is a converted pumphouse previously owned by the city with cafe seating on three levels - and where you can still see the original pumphouse machinery. 

Rich's tourguide, überbarista Scott Lucey, noted that Alterra beat out Starbucks for the pumphouse building because the city wanted to promote local business.  A nice thing for the city to do not just for Alterra, but for all coffee-drinking Milwaukeeans. 

Playing With The Schectermatic

Warning, this post is for the geeks...

Andy Schecter is a legend in the coffee industry.  A mix of equal parts engineer, coffee geek and mad scientist, Andy has a reputation for trying to identify and measure anything and everything that might affect the taste of a given espresso shot.

One of his latest tools is a plastic tray that holds six shot glasses lip to lip, enabling the barista to explore the various components of their shots.  It's sort of like playing a harmonica scale - the shot starts and you move the plastic tray from left to right (or vice verse) capturing, say, four or five seconds of pour in each of the six shot glass (or a longer interval in fewer glasses).

It's alternatively called the "Schecter EvaluSproMatic Shot Stand" (coined by Coffee Geek's Mark Prince) or, as we prefer, the shorter "Schectermatic".

The exercise of breaking shots down into components has been around for a long time, but the Schectermatic makes the exercise less messy and allows for up to six segments (traditionally the exercise has been dividing a shot into thirds).

You can see in the second photo the progression from thicker, syrupy goodness (drinkable, but rough) toward the virtual blond shot at the bottom (undrinkable on its own but probably necessary for balance).

Anyway, we were playing with ours today and we noted that right between the third and fourth shot glass from the top in the second photo was right where just about all the decent Italian espressos we had on vacation were - thin but tasty.  In other words, they seemed to be missing the top end and bottom end components of our Black Cat.  Doesn't make them any less worthy, just different.

We're going to try the same on the Oke Caffe we brought home from Florence.  Will let you know.

Genuine Italian Espresso Here This Week

Remember last week when we wrote from Florence about our visit to Oke Caffe?

Well, we're back from our trip and we've got a kilo of Oke Caffe's Orientale Blend that was roasted in Florence on Wednesday morning, so it's a tasty five days off roast. 

This is the coffee that La Marzocco uses to calibrate their equipment at the factory - and what their staff drinks.  Can't get a better testimonial than that.

Sonja dialed it in early this afternoon and Belle's been playing with it since then.  The Orientale as a different flavor than our usual Black Cat espresso - an orange citrus instead of lemon, well-rounded with a distinctive mouthfeel and a long baker's chocolate finish.

Oke's roaster, Simone, told us the blend is primarily Brazilian and Colombian arabicas, but also has Costa Rican, Nicaraguan, Honduran and Guatemalan arabicas in the mix. 

We're pulling espressos and capps with it on request.  When it's gone it's gone.

Coffee of the Week, June 24-30: Ethiopia Yirgacheffe

This week, Belle has selected Yirgacheffe as coffee of the week.  "Yirg" is favored worldwide by coffee aficianados for its flavor and consistency as well as for its tradition.

ORIGIN:
Location: Yergacheffe
Varietal: Indigenous
Altitude: 1650-2100 meters

PROFILE:
Acidity: lively, intense, lemony
Flavor: lemon peel, jasmine, earl grey tea
Finish: clean, sweet herbs, citric

TASTING NOTES:
Spicy and deep, with a bakers chocolate and an intriguing sweetness reminiscent of honeydew and caramelized honey.  A silky body gives the cup an enjoyable heft, and there is a pleasing resonance in the finish—a quiet echo of melon rind that fades quickly and smoothly into the background.

Also, this from Intelligentsia's resident poet/green coffee buyer, Geoff Watts:

There are certain things in the world that seem to make perfect sense, that somehow just feel right; coffee in Yergacheffe is one of them. Never before have I been struck with such a powerful sense of coffee clarity and purpose, as if coffee’s value in this world and its reason for being were not to be questioned but were simply intuitive, absolute.  Yergacheffe is one of those places that make one feel nourished, as if perhaps just standing there could somehow lead to better health.  It breathes life, and you get the feeling that were you to toss a few seeds up in the air they would land and become trees in a day.

Coffee was born in Ethiopia, and it clearly belongs there. The trees we saw looked so full of vitality, almost happy.  Being there solved a mystery that had been dogging me for years: How can the coffees from this area be so incredibly intoxicating?  The phrase ‘taste of place’ has meaning that I never fully understood until now. A masterpiece of any kind comes together almost magnetically, the pieces all fit together just right in a way that seems supernatural and inspires awe.  The coffee here is a perpetually regenerating masterpiece and the land the tireless artist.

Works for us.

Heading Home

We're on our way to the airport in a few minutes, sad to leave Rome and Italy behind.  We get back to Pittsburgh this evening and we'll see you all tomorrow.

Although... the staff has handled things so well while we've been gone, we might have a change of heart and just stay awhile longer ;-)

Ruthie in Rome

We met up with Ruthie and her traveling companion at Sant' Eustachio for croissant and cappuccinos.  We wish them safe travels.

Our La Marzocco Tour, Part 3

We're down to one computer here - for some reason Rich's Macbook will no longer synch with the wireless.  So posts are few and late at night.  We're trying to get to it all, but it's overwhelming - for photos of the trip so far, visit our Flickr sets for this trip:  the La Marzocco Tour, the Food and Drink Tour and the Historical Stuff Tour.

Anyway, to continue the La Marzocco trip story (and this was but one afternoon of an event filled week)...

We ended the tour with another longer chat with Piero Bambi while discussing the merits of different machine designs his company has produced over the past 70 years (we have some video of him discussing some of this in his native Italian as well as in English that we hope to upload to YouTube once we get back to a decent connection).

For instance, until we saw it ourselves, we would have never considered the existence of a hand pumped espresso machine (similar to the pushbutton action you'd make on the primer of a lawnmower - it's the machine on the left in the photo to the left).  But there it was - and that's what they made prior to lever machines, which later gave way to electric motors and electronics.  Fascinating stuff if you're into it.

The machine next to it is one of the original designs from the late 30s - a machine Piero considers so valuable he may not ever display them at any trade show for fear of theft or breakage.  We also saw early prototypes of the GS series (note the similarities in the one pictured to the current GS3).

After about 90 minutes of wonderful hospitality and patience with our questions, we were ready to head back.  So we said goodbye - or thought so.  The taxi we called didn't come to pick us up, then additional calls brought no results and a number of hangups (apparently Florentine taxi dispatchers are reluctant to send cabs out 20 miles, even though the fare charged covers both ways.)

But that was actually a lucky break because our new ride home was none other than Ron Cook, La Marzocco's president.  During the 20 minutes back to town, we touched on a number of subjects - Starbucks, the USBC controversy, the upcoming WBCs and the state of espresso in Italy, in the US and worldwide, including a significant educational project LM is involved with in Tanzania.  Very interesting and enlightening conversation that we'll elaborate on in person if you're in the shop - too long to get into here.

As promised, the next morning we sought out Oke Caffe, the roaster that La Marzocco uses for testing and for their employees drinks.  The roastery is quite small, really no more than the size of a garage, and is attached to what can best be described as a candy/sweets store - the store front sells chocolates and confections, some teas, preground coffee and also has several bins of freshly roasted coffee.  But they don't make espresso there - at least not for public consumption.

However, once we introduced ourselves, Simone, Oke's roaster, took us into the roasting area and pulled us some shots of his Orientale blend from his personal one-group machine.  What we noticed was that Simone paid a great deal of attention to distribution over actual tamping (which was light).  It makes sense as Simone only has a bulk grinder and a small burr machine for cupping, neither of which will take a portafilter, so he measures out some beans, grinds 'em up and carefully handfills the baskets with a spoon before tamping.

The coffee was extremely bright as would be expected with a blend that uses Brazil, Colombian and four Centrals.  Perhaps because Simone dosed and pulled two singles instead of splitting a double, the cups gave off different tastes:  Rich tasted thick peanut butter, Melanie's experience was more citrusy.  We got a kilo of the Orientale Blend to go - roasted Wednesday morning - so it should be good to go once we're back in the shop on Monday if anyone is interested in tasting (come in the afternoon so we have an opportunity to dial it in correctly).

Because our Philly airport issues from Tuesday caused us to lose a day of vacation to facilitate rebooking, we had thought about spending less time in Florence, or perhaps skipping it altogether this trip.  Thankfully we kept to our original plans as this was an entirely exhilarating two days - and we could spend more time here easily.

Stay tuned for visits to local shops in Rome and Florence (looks like we'll have to skip Naples this trip - something had to give).  Also, breakfast with Ruthie...

Our La Marzocco Trip, Part 2

After our initial drinks, Mary Diamond (US-born, but married a Florentine and stayed there) led us through the technical center, the machine testing rooms and the parts warehouse.

We met Ettore, who runs the QC area and who was a wealth of information on dosing and distribution - anything you ever wanted to know about baskets, Ettero is your guy.  He also showed us prototypes of a new pre-infusion machine as well as a Swift grinder that can do both double and single baskets on the fly without adjustments (due to the design of dual impellers).  That last bit was for the geekier folks reading this blog.

We even picked up a drip tray stand while we were at the factory.  This tray is designed to reduce the distance the coffee "falls" between the bottom of the portafilter and the demitasse or shot glass.  This tray will give us more control over where the "stream" hits the cup (you may be surprised to learn that the stream hitting the edge vs. the stream hitting the middle produce different tastes and mouthfeels.  And the tray will also reduce splashing.

Still more to come...

Our La Marzocco Tour, Part 1

La Marzocco's handmade espresso machines have long been considered the choice for top cafes - they've been about the only machines used at SCAA-sanctioned competitions the past few years. 

As we have both a La Marzocco Linea for making espresso and a Swift grinder (in addition to the Mazzers) and were going to be in Italy, we inquired about taking a tour of the factory.  A few contacts and calls later and we were given an appointment for a brief tour.  That brief tour stretched into more than 150 minutes with some of the most knowledgeable coffee people in the world.

The cab ride from Firenze to the La Marzocco factory in Piel di San Bartolo is about 20 minutes.  But it passes much more quickly when you're riding with an opinionated young Florentine cabbie who spent six months as a waiter in San Francisco and got fired for arguing about the pronunciation of "Parmigiano" with a customer from Saudi Arabia.

Suffice it to say our driver was hugely entertaining.  We gave him our card and hope he passes through Pittsburgh some day.  His story on ordering espresso from Starbucks is a comedy routine that alone is worth buying him a free drink.

 On most trips that would have been the highlight.  But there were too many good things happening in San Bartolo to keep count, starting with macchiatos poured by the man himself, Piero Bambi, son of the company's founder.  Piero has lived his entire life around these machines and is justifiably proud of the company his family began building back in the late 1920s.  (Melanie is certain Piero really likes her because we must have bumped into him four or five times and each time he took her aside to tell a different story about the company and his/its philosophy, sometimes in English, sometimes in Italian.)

To be continued...