Moscow Cafe Crawl

I had a business trip last week, which is about the only time I get to travel very far abroad. It was for software training in San Francisco, with a long layover in Seattle. I had often heard and read about some unique coffee these cities offered and decided to take my time between work visit the shrines and pay homage to the espresso saints that have passed on to the great golden carafe in the sky. None of my pictures where very good, so these are all from Flickr.

My first visit was to the Zoka coffee shop next to Greenlake in the north of Seattle. Zoka is a roaster with three shops in the Seattle area. Cafe Silos in Moscow uses their coffee and they are considered to have a really nice product. Also, I had been told their Greenlake shop had a very similar atmosphere to Bucer’s, with a lot of dark wood. It was true! The place was packed out too, but eerily quiet. Why? About 30+ laptop screens glowing. I joined in and made that 31.

I ordered a Macchiato and my first thought was: this tastes exactly like Cafe Silos (on a good day). Whatever blend and roasting technique they are using, it is very distinct. It has a dark, kind of woody aftertaste. Good stuff. Maybe not quite as smooth as Stumptown, but very flavorful. In the back, they had a raised platform with a table for weekly cuppings and coffee tastings. I had hoped to find a Clover machine here to try for the first time, but alas, only espresso was available. Top notch though.

Next, in San Francisco, I finally tracked down the Blue Bottle Coffee Company’s shop in Mint Plaza. It’s right in the heart of downtown and I had to park a looooong way away. Even then, the Barista was amazed I had found a meter. The shop was very small. Now Blue Bottle, besides serving the standard fair, has three seriously unusual things on the menu:

• Single-origin manual-pull espresso
• Coffee brewed in their Kyoto siphon apparatus
• Iced coffee from their super-slow cold brewing chamber.

Behind the counter, it looked like a chemistry lab, with lots of weird glassware, beakers, and burners. When I had heard Blue Bottle mentioned on the internet, it was often in amazement at the fact that their siphon brewing machine cost $20,000 and was custom built by some outfit in Japan. The siphon brewer produces about 2 cups of regular strength coffee that is supposedly better than French press, but not quite as nuanced as the super high-tech Clover machine.

Their iced coffee is brewed in a pillar of glass with a pitcher underneath it to catch the drips. It drips about once every 3 seconds. The fact that hot water never touches the grounds causes a completely different set of flavors to come out in the final brew. It tasted very different then anything I’d ever had. More like some sort of tea. The barrista said bourbon was the right word for it. Having had very little bourbon in my life, I can’t say for sure, but it was quite interesting.

Their single-origin espresso is made from a small batch of beans that come from a particular farm. Most espresso uses a blend of several different kinds of beans and roasts to achieve a more uniform and balanced flavor. In fact, that is what they use for most of their drinks at the cafe. These special shots are made from a batch of one variety of bean from a single farm and roasted in the same batch so the taste is very unique. They also use a manual lever-pull espresso machine for these shots. This may do nothing but add mystique, but some people swear by them. Actually when I ordered it, I had to wait ten minutes since the only barista with the skillz to use the lever-pull was on lunch break at the moment. The shot was very small and incredibly bright and sweet, you almost couldn’t take a small enough sip. Fascinating.

Getting a tip from the barista there, I headed over the the Mission district to a place called Ritual Coffee. The modified hammer and sickle logo on their sign and coffee cups is likely a political statement of sorts. What do you expect? It’s San Francisco! Anyway, inside this shop they had their own roaster in the middle of the floor, surrounded by bags of beans. Apparently, policemen love this joint. About 4 different cops showed up to get a drink in the short time I was there in the evening.

My main reason for coming though was the Clover machine. I’d heard all about these, but never actually had a cup from one. These super high-tech machines cost $11,000 and brew up a single 8 fluid ounces of supposedly the most perfect coffee on earth. A computer controls the water temperature, agitation, and runs it through some kind of centrifuge, um, I think. It’s got lots of sensors on it. And lasers too. On their recommendation I had a cup of Kenyan coffee. How was it? Well, when you get up to this level of gourmet, the differences are really subtle. It was very bright, with a kind of crisp acidic bite. These kids of flavors would be there in a standard pot of drip, but they would be subdued and more bland. The Clover brewer takes all the little nuances that often get lost and turns them up to eleven. It was quite nice, especially after I tempered it with a bit of cream. (Heresy!) I don’t think I’d ever get used to paying $4-10 a cup though. Geesh. It pays to be unique. There are only a few of these in the world, though that will likely changes now that Starbucks bought out the company that makes them.

My travels took me far and wide but I’m glad to be home. What is Moscow missing out on? Not as much as you might think. We are a great place for coffee!

(Photo credits by clicking on images)

Filed under: Out of town on December 10th, 2008