Seattle Coffee Works

A quick alert about and an invitation to our event on Wednesday May 12 at 4:30 pm at Seattle Coffee Works (107 Pike Street, Seattle, WA, 206.340.8867)

The event is open to the interested public. There is a suggested cash donation of $10 to participate.

If you’re planning on coming, just so we know how many to expect, please sign up in the comments for this blog. Or send us an email. Or both. Otherwise just show up. We’ll have a good time either way!

Here is the skinny:

+ Ahead of the May 18 Hacienda La Esmeralda auction (which last year saw prices of more than $100 per pound for green coffee), we’ll be tasting samples for the seven lots this coming Wed. The format will be part traditional cupping part samples made through another contraption (either the Trifecta or Hario filter)

+ The event is a fundraiser for Facing the Future, a local Seattle nonprofit currently reaching 1.25 million students nationwide each year. Facing the Future develops curricula for all grade levels to help teach about issues of sustainability, global inter-connectedness, North-South issues — all topics critical for the future of the enjoyment of coffee.

+ The event kick starts Seattle Coffee Works beer & wine offering and showcases various coffee making contraptions including the brand new Trifecta.

Tentative Program:
4:30-5:30 Hors d’oeuvres (appetizers, $3 beer & wine cash bar, free coffee)
5:30-5:45 Introduction to Facing the Future and why sustainability matters in an increasingly interconnected world. A short introduction of Hacienda La Esmeralda and why we believe this coffee farm can show the way to more sustainable coffee consumption
Speaker: Pipo Bui, Director of Development Earthcorps; Member Board of Directors, Facing the Future
5:45-6:00 Cupping and Tasting.
6:00-7:00 Raffle for top coffees; cash bar.

We hope you can make it.

For quite some time, we have wanted to know how to best package our freshly roasted coffee. Currently, we’re using multi-ply bags consisting of lots of petroleum derivatives and aluminum foil. Without actually having researched the matter, we have thought it better to have a one-way degassing valve in our bags. We pack all of our coffees within minutes of roasting. Unless we’re mailing the coffee we do not heat seal our bags.

Yesterday, we started a six-week test: we put our beloved Colombia Huila Monserrate in six different kinds of packaging:

1. Multi-ply plastic/aluminum bag with one-way degassing valve; rolled closed but not sealed;
2. Same as 1.; heat sealed;
3. Low barrier, bio-degradable paper / corn-based plastic liner bag; rolled closed but not sealed;
4. Tin with degassing valve;
5. Tin without degassing valve;
6. A Mazzer Mini standard bean hopper.

We’ll be doing regular blind tastings of 1. and 3. through 6. during our Monday 3pm conventional cuppings and our *new* Thursday 3pm vertical tastings. We’ll be taking notes on cup quality and anything we notice. We’ll throw Packaging 2. into the tasting mix only after three weeks so we can see what difference it makes when we heat seal our regular bags.

Feel free to join the tasting fun and weigh in with your opinion, or, just follow the experiment here on the blog. We’ll be appending our results to this blog post.

Update 1 - six days (cupping on April 5, 2010), Sebastian updating:
I only had a few moments at the cupping table this Monday. Katie had put coffee from five of the six packages on the cupping table. (No. 2, the heat sealed multi-ply bag, is remaining sealed until day 10 or so.) The tasting was blind, i.e. none of us cuppers knew which coffee was which. For, No. 1 (multi-ply, no sealed) won the tasting by a far shot: the coffee tasted brighter and was simply a lot more exciting than the other coffees. It seems, the other cuppers agreed. The experiment continues. Next tasting is on Thursday April 8, 2010 at Ryan’s Vertical Tasting.

Update 2 (cupping on April 12, 2010), Katie updating:

Nice cozy cupping with plenty of time to taste and chat. I mixed up the order of packages from last time to make sure any repeat tasters started with a clean palate. Coffees 3 (tin w/valve) and 4 (multi-ply bag w/valve) garnered the most positive comments–3 seemed the most balanced with enough body and strong, sweet caramel notes. Coffee 4 offered tangy notes with milk chocolate body. I also offered a control coffee: the same coffee, same roast date, packaged in our standard multi-ply bag w/valve for use in the cafe. I wanted to see if there were any strong differences in the experiment coffee and our Slow Bar coffee, since we continuously open and close the bags to brew single origin cups. Coffees 1 (tin w/o valve) and 2 (bag w/o valve) offered similar notes but were lacking the bounce and body of the others.

Thursday’s Vertical Tasting (@3pm) will feature Colombian again, with a few other coffees in various brewing methods. Join us next week and give us your own tasting notes!

It’s a great time to be a barista. I love transitions. I feel the most alive in them. And coffee culture, to my mind, is evolving right now. Even at premium coffee shops in Seattle, you can pay around $2 for a shot of espresso that will peel the enamel off your teeth, or you could pay $2 for a transcendent elixir that will make you fall in love with the world. I can’t think of another product with such a dramatic difference in quality. It’s a coffee jungle out there.

But lately, people seem to be demanding better. Why? I think it’s the tension between two factors. First, there’s better quality coffee to be had nowadays. Fresher coffee is being served, and you’re more likely to be told where your coffee comes from, and therefore what it really tastes like. “Kenya” or “Guatemala” tells you more than “Breakfast Blend” or “Dark Roast.” And you can order a Kenya coffee made in a variety of ways that will also affect the product, from French-pressed to vacuum pot to espresso.

Second, there’s the pre-existing condition, or the Starbucks effect. It’s easy to take shots at Starbucks when you make espresso at a micro-roaster. But I’m not into that at all. Starbucks as had an enormous impact here and around the world, and a look at coffee culture would be incomplete without considering it. What they do is standardize a product that’s better than terrible and make it so uniform that people always have their expectations filled. And that’s valuable to people. Up to a point.

What’s interesting to me now is that many people seem to have reached that point. We want more than predictability; we want flavor. We want to taste coffee, at long last, after 200 years of drinking it in this country. There are a myriad of flavors available in coffees grown in different countries, different regions, different family farms; all distinct. Also, each method for extracting coffee from beans brings out different characteristics. And each extraction method has a sweet spot where the best intensity and balance of flavors is achieved. This is what we geek out over at work. Sometimes, you get such a perfect coffee that it sends shivers down your body.

And everyone can experience that, not just coffee geeks. It’s a jungle right now. Even I don’t know what to expect half the time I order. But I do know that the more I listen to my palate and to the people serving me, the faster I will learn. I will continue to find new ways and reasons to love coffee.

Photo Credit: Claude@Munich: http://www.flickr.com/photos/c-s-n/79822340/

Last week we had a pleasant surprise when Sebastian Pinzon and Juan Villegas came by the cafe to check out our Colombia Huila Monserrate. In the picture Sebastian (left) and Juan are enjoying a cup made in the Chemex. We were excited to present them with what we thought is the best our Colombia Huila can be.

Sebastian and Juan often travel to the town of Monserrate. They are responsible for the super-premium segment at one of Colombia’s largest (if not THE largest) coffee exporter, Racafe.

While enjoying some coffee - we also sampled a great vacuum pot of our Tanzania Blackburn Estate - we had a great conversation about what has made the brand of Colombian Coffee so strong: a relentless focus on quality by the all powerful Colombian Coffee Growers’ Association.

How to Brew a Good Cup of Coffee from Ben Helfen on Vimeo.

Thanks to our friend Ken Wagner, who likes the burnt stuff, for passing this along!

What a year 2009 has been!

From moving our café to inaugurating our very own roasting operation; from a website re-launch to appearances on many national media outlets including NPR and ABC (and soon, CNN); but mainly from excellent coffee to excellent coffee.

We’ve had a good year. Our team and our business grew more in 2009 than we could have hoped for. While we may have disappointed some who are missing our original concept of having ten different espresso blends “on tap,” we have had quite a few encouraging reviews, including more than one calling us the finest in coffee roasting Seattle has to offer.

We know that it’s a privilege and honor, and an obligation!, to be roasting and making coffee in the epicenter of the coffee world. While we feel flattered by all the wonderful feedback we’ve received, we also have a list of about one million things we’ll work on in 2010. Please stay tuned!

But before we turn the page, a huge thank you to all members of the Seattle Coffee Works crew, past and present, who have worked their hearts out to take us to where we are now. We’re very lucky to have a team of such dedicated and talented people. Thank you!!!

We would have not survived the year without a lot of help! Thank you to all the brilliant people who contributed to our build-out! (The health inspector’s jaw dropped when we turned our new space around even faster than a very well known coffee chain in town which threw an army at the effort.) A million thanks to the good folks at Green Tortoise Hostel who are the best neighbors anyone could wish for.

And, oh man, what would we have done without the indefatigable family members and close friends who were there for us during this past year, at every step of the way??! Thank you!

Happy New Year to all!

Picture Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dancingwithwords/4046704573/

We’re looking for a full-time barista, or someone who’d like to become a full-time barista. If you’re very ambitious (and can imagine training for the next Barista  World Championship); if you’ve gotten up at 4 am because  you were pursuing a project or a life ambition which was so exciting you couldn’t stay in bed; even better (but not necessary) if that life ambition involved coffee; but more importantly if that life ambition *could* involve coffee; if you love people, hundreds of them, every day; if you love to serve; if you have serious stamina and have proven you can outlast everyone around you; in other words, if you’re a super human, then  please consider joining us in our coffee adventure at Seattle Coffee Works. We’re arguably one the most exciting coffee ventures in town, and we have grown a bit.

(The line about the super human is a joke. We’re all human around here. But if you made it to the end of that sentence, you probably do have stamina.)

About stamina and passion: what we do is hard, hard work and it can easily turn into a “job” for people who are not completely passionate about our line of work.

To make sure (as best as we can) this would be a fit, we ask that you don’t apply in the traditional ways. Instead, please make your way down to our cafe‚ at 107 Pike Street. Come in, have a cup of coffee and hang out for a  while. Don’t let us know who you are. Just check us out. Find out if you’d like to be a customer. Come back another day.

If you like what you see, and if you could imagine spending your days behind the counter, please introduce yourself. A resume might be helpful. Other hints from your past indicating your excitement about food in general and coffee  in particular definitely help.

Don’t expect us to hire you overnight. It’s helpful if you’re currently holding another job and can start trying out part-time. If joining our team is for you, then we’ll all know in good time. If you’re looking for a generic food-service gig we’re probably not the right place for you. If your first question is “How much per hour?” we’re definitely no match for you. (We pay what most pay in the industry; benefits might be available; but surely there are many other jobs out there which would give you better pay.)

If you dream about the things you do, then we might well make for good dance partners. Partners in the dance of life. The band: all of us here at Seattle Coffee Works. The tune: music from a country between the tropics of cancer and capricorn. The rhythm: coffee grinding and brewing. The smell: coffee coffee coffee.

(If you bring the will, we’ll provide the skill.)

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rojojam/1621836966/

Our good friend and local Coffee Hero, Michael Smith, writes that he’s taken up home roasting because of the rising prices of Espresso blends from Seattle roasters.

The view from beach house number five on my privately owned island in the Carribean.

Even though Michael doesn’t mention names in his post, he could be referring to us when he writes that “one Seattle roaster [which] saw my May 2009 Espresso price list…raised his whole bean price 50 cents a pound, because he was priced lower.”

Michael goes on: “There are two ways to put more cash in the register.  You either increase your customer base through competition and marketing or you squeeze the customers you already have a little bit more.”

He’s right. Seattle’s roasters are overcharging their customers. We’re gouging, we’re greedy, we’ll suck any of those sacred green bills from the living. (In fact, I’ve already applied for a job at a big, sleezy investment bank — I hear they’re always looking for my type.)

While I can’t speak for other roasters, Michael’s conclusion is certainly not true for Seattle Coffee Works.

Before I go on let me state that, yes, we did increase the price of our Seattle Space Espresso Blend by 50 cents to $13.45 per pound (that’s a whopping 3.861%), and, yes, we reduced the price of our Swiss-Water Process Fair-Trade Organic Decaffeinated blend, which we call Our Best Decaf. We also adjusted (up and down) many of our single-origin coffees to better reflect the different cost bases for the different coffees we source. This had nothing to do with Michael’s price list but was a long planned adjustment in our pricing structure. On average, our coffees are probably now cheaper than before.

Michael writes the price of coffee should generally decrease because of coffee futures, oil, commercial real-estate, and because almost everything else in this economy that costs money has gone gotten cheaper.

His observation sounds true at first; yet if you look little more closely you’ll find that price development in a specific industry often has very little to do with price development in the overall economy. Case in point: While many goods and services have gone down in price, some have gone up.  

For instance, softwood lumber has seen a price increase of 6.7% year over year – despite a prolonged decrease in building activity. Pure conjecture doesn’t help explain price increases or decreases; it all depends on the specific economic activity.

The reason we had to increase the price for our signature Espresso blend is very simple: we use a large percentage of coffee from East Africa in this blend, and simply put that coffee has gotten 20-30% more expensive during this past year. Our modest price increase doesn’t go very far to cover that increase.

And our costs also don’t adequately reflect any of the services a roaster provides, namely the work involved in sourcing really high quality beans, the storage—both the quality of storage as well as the space—packaging, the continuing sourcing of new-crop coffee… the list goes on. If our prices were so high as to actually make us some serious money, you would likely find us lounging on the beach rather than in downtown Seattle.

Other than some of the big chains no one has gotten independently wealthy in our industry. The adage: Start with a big fortune to make a small fortune, certainly holds true for most of us in specialty coffee.

There are exceptions. Check out the coffee aisle in any large supermarket. Despite the comparatively low overhead and the less-than super premium coffees on offering, you’ll be hard-pressed to find coffee that’s cheaper than what your local roasters charge. (Trader Joe’s and Costco are an anomaly, and this would warrant another post.) That would explain the nice earnings at some of the large coffee companies. I know that some especially savyy folks have indeed retired to some beach in Central America.

But here’s the deal, Michael. In addition to roasted, we’ll also sell you green coffee for your home roasting. It’s cheap. It’s straight from our roastery with the added services (minus the actual roasting) provided by the roaster.  And by the way, if you order online with the code: STORE, we’ll package your coffee, ready to go for you to pick up in the café, with no additional shipping costs.

So check out some of the new, outstanding coffees we’ve recently received: Sulawesi Toraja Sapan Minanga; Sidamo Moredocofe; Tanzania Blackburn Estate; El Salvador Capitales Unidos; Honduras Las Capucas. We look forward to seeing you back for your green (or roasted) beans sometime soon! Or, just for a chat over an expertly pulled double espresso ($1.82 + tax.)

Picture credit/source:  http://www.flickr.com/people/18220192@N04/ / http://www.flickr.com/photos/18220192@N04/2053190004/

We get asked about Starbucks all the time. Questions range from “Where is the ‘Original Starbucks?’” to “Can I please have a ‘Caramel Macchiato’?” We can only answer the questions as they are posed and to the best of our knowledge.

The other day when I was chatting with Melissa Allison of the Seattle Times, she told me that I talked about Starbucks a lot more often than most other folks in Seattle’s independent-coffee scene.

The truth is, here at Seattle Coffee Works we do talk about Starbucks a lot. Not only do our customers ask us how we’re doing amid the 99+ Starbucks within three blocks of our store but we also actively study our big corporate neighbor. We often buy coffee from our neighboring stores and check out their operations. We figure there’s a lot we can learn from Starbucks (as well as other cafes and roasters).

In today’s Seattle Times article, I mentioned Starbucks’ somewhat unnerving visits to our tiny hole-in-the-wall café. Here’s the story: last winter, three separate delegations of Starbucks folks came by. Each time they filled our little store so that no one else could fit in. Usually they didn’t introduce themselves, and one delegation even lied, saying they were just a group of Japanese tourists. They didn’t buy a single drink. When we offered to make them an espresso for free, they didn’t care for it. That was really strange, for a company that says they like coffee. Plenty of other roasters, café owners and baristas stop by our store all the time for coffee. We love exchanging ideas, opinions, samples, techniques.

That’s what makes us Seattle Coffee WORKS, emphasis on the WORKS. Coffee is a work in progress, and we’re an experience coffee project, a place to explore, communicate, share our passion and fascination for coffee. Even a lot of Starbucks baristas come by. After all, many of them are curious about coffee too. Coffee is a deep subject, with so much to learn. (Did you know it’s the world’s second most traded commodity, after oil?) Starbucks corporate reps checking out the café décor but not the coffee? Go figure.

That misdirected interest among Starbucks higher-ups is one of the reasons why Starbucks will have a hard time creating a “neighborhood” store as reported in The Times.

Here are some other principal differences between a Starbucks store and an independent coffee roaster like us:

• We’re not profitable and we never expect to be profitable. If our little coffee business can pay a living wage to everyone working here, including the folks who own and operate it, we’ll call it a success. Starbucks has to pay the baristas, the store managers, a regional manager, all the way up to the COO & CEO and a bunch of creative types doing all kinds of corporate rethinking. I do believe small businesses have the opportunity to provide better value for this reason alone. (Weighing the economies of scale versus passionate investing and re-investing into a product and an experience you love would warrant another blog post.)
• We have a much easier time connecting personally and directly with our customers. No one’s speech is scripted or otherwise limited by corporate speak.
• Our interior design is conceived by real people for real people; we’re not pursuing a hidden agenda of pushing more product or cutting down on our customers’ “dwell time.”
• We love coffee, and (did I say that already?) we always want to learn more about coffee, even when that means buying a cup of it from one of our competitors.

We study and admire Starbucks for some things we have a harder time getting right:

• Speed of service; few companies have spent as many resources on figuring out the best and most speed-inducing bar setup
• Merchandising and labeling; Starbucks design is often really well done and it’s made to sell
• Location location location; man, all of us indies would die to know the SBUX formula for choosing a successful location.

At the end, all of us Seattle coffee creators know that things would have been very different without Starbucks here. It created a market of people who appreciate making coffee a part of their daily routine and cafes a desirable destination. Face it, Starbucks stores are almost a neighborhood fixture, like public libraries, schools or community centers. Without Starbucks, there would be far fewer coffee places here, and we would probably sell a lot more drip coffee rather than the lucrative tall latte. Without Starbucks, Melissa Allison would probably have to write about airplanes or Microsoft Windows, and I’d be working deep in the belly of a well-known Internet retailer. So thank you Starbucks. You’ve liberated me.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisdag/, the original resides here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisdag/3398960788/

Tuesday, July 14 marked the birthday of our new Coffee Drinking Man. The 14+ foot sign arrived early morning, ready to be hoisted into his new position atop our cafe and roastery.