The Show And Hassle Is Coming To Town

Snap 1: time to com­bine the upper bowl with the lower one when bub­bles become medium size.

I had plans for what I was going to write here: brew­ing meth­ods 123, elab­o­ra­tion of the pros-and-cons of them, and ulti­mately, help­ing you find the solu­tion to your daily decent cup.

There are meth­ods that I think would be a good start­ing point because of their friend­li­ness: low-cost ini­tial invest­ment and full con­trol over the vari­ables fac­tor­ing in a cup of excellence.

It would be inter­est­ing to talk about them espe­cially since they seem exotic to many peo­ple here. At the same time, it’s kind of chal­leng­ing to explain every­thing since cof­fee lovers have never seen them in person.

For­tu­nately, before got my hands dirty, a show­room of these cof­fee brew­ing meth­ods is arriv­ing to let you take a peek at them and save some work for me. Blue Bot­tle Cof­fee is sched­uled to open today in Williams­burg, New York City. They stock­pile a hoard of 19-century-style cof­fee brew­ing gad­gets: “pour over” and “iced cof­fee drip­per” accord­ing to the pre­view of The New York Times.

Blue Bot­tle Cof­fee was founded by James Free­man. Since 2005, it has grown into a small fleet of four cof­fee shops and two restau­rants in and around the Bay Area.

Snap 2: vapor push­ing the water to upper bowl

The most renowned buzz was their one-cup-a-time siphon bar and the only halogen-powered burner in the coun­try (because its priced 20,000USD). Both siphon and pour-over demand barista to be mas­ter­ful in every labored and man­ual details, no but­ton, no knob, to deliver a del­i­cate cup of cof­fee. There are so much much that it is daunt­ing to many cof­fee novice, even some espresso vet­er­ans. It’s a has­sle to make a cup of cof­fee like that but it’s def­i­nitely a spec­ta­cle worth seeing.

The equip­ment at Blue Bot­tle Cof­fee is all from Japan. Some is made by Hario, the biggest cof­fee equip­ment sup­plier in Japan, and maybe oth­ers to be found out later in store. Those cof­fee brew­ing meth­ods are omnipresent in Japan and some East Asia coun­tries, like Korea and Taiwan.

Snap 3: stir­ring the bam­boo rod to mix the grounds and water evenly

In the midst of the heat of Cof­fee New Wave, it is really intrigu­ing to see the intro­duc­tion of the Japan­ese cof­fee tra­di­tion to New York. These Japan­ese tra­di­tions have been said to extract with more del­i­cacy and flo­ral fla­vors. Con­sid­er­ing the lim­ited access to Clover and the puberty of Tri­fecta, a wide vari­a­tions of brew­ing cof­fee meth­ods are sought after to extract the most from those newly trendy dark-cinnamon skin beans. Cof­fee devo­tees are keen on resort­ing to an inven­tion of new devices or the solu­tions from some cor­ner of the world. Spe­cialty cof­fee is blaz­ing down a new path lead­ing to the cof­fee heaven (acid­ity, flo­ral fla­vors, berry notes… etc.), leav­ing espresso — la grande tradizione Ital­iana — seem­ing out­dated and lack­lus­ter. Could this Japan­ese tra­di­tion lead us to this cof­fee nirvana?

I learned siphon since day one I started brew­ing cof­fee myself. I am a pas­sion­ate cof­fee devo­tee because of a great barista’s guide lead­ing me to the aroma, the fla­vors and phi­los­o­phy of cof­fee. For almost ten years, I am still learn­ing every­thing cof­fee through work­shops and dis­cus­sion. And, most impor­tant, I kept on brew­ing cof­fee myself. Siphon and pour-over are the meth­ods I use every­day and a lot more about them I have to learn.

It takes mas­ter­ful craft to brew a decent cup on siphon and pour-over. In some way, I would say they are among the most rig­or­ous brew­ing meth­ods that reveal mis­steps in roast. The full-city roast beans actu­ally could be thor­oughly exam­ined and appre­ci­ated on siphon. As I said ear­lier, the roast and the brew­ing method are cor­re­lated, then comes the expec­ta­tion and appre­ci­a­tion to bring the whole cof­fee expe­ri­ence altogether.

So, besides pour-over and iced cof­fee drip­per, will there be siphon? And how is Blue Bot­tle Cof­fee doing? Guess only tongues will tell. I will hit Berry Street to expe­ri­ence this new wave from West Coast, or, the other side of the Pacific. Fol­low up, fellows!