Welcome Spyhouse Coffee!

Spyhouse Coffee Roasters now on the bar!

We’re welcoming Spyhouse Coffee as our guest roaster for this cycle! They are an up-and-coming roaster from Minnesota and with 5 shops already in the Minneapolis area. And being from the northern US, they are as familiar as we are with harsh winters and keeping their passions alive no matter what the conditions are outdoors. As an established farm-to-cup operation with their own roasting facility in Northeast Minneapolis, Spyhouse has developed strong relationships with farmers in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Columbia, Kenya, and Brazil. What we have on our menu at Ride Studio Cafe currently are two delicious pourovers (and these will rotate!): the Chelbassa from Ethiopia and Finca Angelina (or ‘Fangelina’ as our coffee guru Ike likes to call it) from Costa Rica. The Chelbassa is an exhilarating cup that brings forth notes of apricot, elderflower, and if you look for it a little bit of lemonade. The Finca Angelina is a soft cup with a tea-like body. Notes of elderberry and aged rum are present with a lingering grapefruit zest to balance it out. We will also be featuring Orion, their signature blend, in our espresso drinks. Come in and enjoy any one (or all!) of these delicious drinks.

Welcome Kuma Coffee as our next guest roaster

Welcome Kuma Coffee as our next guest roaster!

By US measures, Seattle has a long, rich history with coffee. If it isn't the birthplace of what we call Specialty Coffee in the US (along with the Bay Area), it's certainly a founding father, particularly when it comes to espresso and café culture. Influenced by Italy in the late 1970s early 80s, you can hardly walk a block in the Emerald City, even in residential neighborhoods, without passing a cafe.

In a market as mature as Seattle’s, launching a successful roastery is no easy endeavor. In less than 10 years, founder Mark Barany has grown Kuma from a small hobby business to an award winning microroaster. Like our house roaster, George Howell Coffee, Kuma is dedicated to supporting coffee farmers, generally paying above Fair Trade rates and developing Direct Trade relationships with most.

Unlike many of their brethren in the Pacifice NW, Kuma roasts on the lighter side, highlighting and honoring the terroir and intrinsic flavors of the beans rather than covering them up with a dark roast. We’ve just finished our first batch of their ‘Fresh Crop - Balanced’ espresso and were blown away by its complexity (see our Instagram posts for our gushings). Next up is their ‘Bright’ blend of Ethiopian espressos before we venture into their drip coffees.

These next few weeks are sure to bring some delicious and exciting coffees from Kuma (the 2016 Guatemala crop is about to drop!) and we’re looking forward to enjoying them with you at RSC!

Welcome, Cafe Grumpy!

Welcome, Cafe Grumpy!

Ride Studio Cafe is incredibly excited to welcome Cafe Grumpy as our new guest roaster. Grumpy is a small-batch roaster out of Brooklyn, NY. Starting as a cafe in 2006, founder Caroline Bell has noted that roasting was naturally the next step for her passionate team to make. Already a local favorite in New York, Cafe Grumpy became renowned throughout the coffee industry for their expertly roasted coffee, orange color scheme, and trademark grumpy face logo. We are especially pleased to have them in the cafe since they were one of the first guest roasters that RSC ever hosted years ago, and their coffee is just as great as we remember!

Lauren Rothman from FoodandWine.com writes that Grumpy is "one of the first coffee companies to bring serious, thoughtfully produced joe to Brooklyn." This is the ultimate goal of Grumpy; to educate and involve their customers in the world of quality coffee. The coffee buyers and roasters at Grumpy, who all started out as baristas, are thoughtful in both the creation of their product and in the sourcing of their beans. They maintain close relationships with farmers in many different countries around the world, and want their consumers to know the farm that their coffee came from as intimately as the roasters do.

The staff at Cafe Grumpy are undoubtedly passionate about their product, but the quality of the coffee is not their sole focus. They also boast a great reputation for humanitarianism and social responsibility. They work closely with farms in many impoverished areas, and so they do their part to help the citizens of the countries where the coffee is grown. Most recently, they have formed a partnership with Action Against Hunger. Action Against Hunger is a nonprofit organization that provides aid to impoverished areas in need of safe water and good nutrition. Cafe Grumpy donates $1 from every bag of their Los Santos Guatemalan coffee to Action Against Hunger, in order to help those in need in the region that the coffee is grown along with many other areas in need.

Here in the Cafe, we are kicking things off with Grumpy on the pourover bar this weekend. Selections include Las Flores from Honduras and Kiamabara from Kenya. The Las Flores is a full-bodied coffee with notes of golden raisin, praline, brown sugar, apricot, and plum. The Kiamabara is a delicious Kenyan with notes of cranberry, vanilla, bergamot, and graham cracker. Both selections are available on Kalita, Chemex, and Aeropress.

To celebrate the arrival of Cafe Grumpy coffee on our shelves, we are offering a limited time promotion: if you buy two bags of Grumpy coffee, then you receive an orange Grumpy logo mug free of charge! The shelves are fully stocked with a great variety of offerings from Grumpy, so come in any time and bring home a taste of Brooklyn.

RSC Welcomes our next guest coffee: Heart Roasters

RSC Welcomes our next guest coffee: Heart Roasters

by Ariela Rose, RSC Barista, coffee and food aficionado

It’s a rainy day here in Boston, which makes me think of Portland, which makes my mind wander to thoughts of coffee...as most things do. There’s no denying that the north west has a reputation for churning out great beans and our latest guest roaster, Heart, is certainly a contributor to that. Some of you may remember Heart when we featured them as a guest roaster a little over two years ago. We’ve decided to rekindle our love, and get to know the plethora of new coffees that Heart is roasting up these days.

For those not familiar with this roaster and its poetic name, Heart is a cafe and roastery located on the eastside of Portland and owned by Scandinavian-born Wille Yli-Luoma. The operation has been up and running for the past four years, managed by Yi-Luoma, his wife Rebekah and a team of baristas, roasters, and multi-hat-wearing assistants.

We like Heart and chose to serve their coffee to you for a variety of reasons. For one, we love the taste of their coffee. Each of the samples that were sent to the Cafe, carefully wrapped in pristine, white, biodegradable bags left us lingering over the smooth, but complex cups. We tasted them as pourovers and Chemex, pulled shots of the Stereo espresso, and even smuggled our favorites home for day-off cups made via Aeropress. Simply put, these coffees went through the ringer and we really enjoyed each Colombian, Ethiopian, Guatemalan, and blend.

Another reason we like Heart is because of their dedication to conscious, responsible sourcing. In fact, Heart recently posted a short video on their blog that highlights just this. The video, Here is Your Cup of Coffee, is a lovely look at the farm to cup process via El Diamante, a coffee farm in Guatemala. It truly captures the entire process from picking to washing, sorting to drying, roasting to cupping...a careful step by step system that demonstrates Heart’s commitment to quality.

We’re excited to give you the chance to taste what Heart has to offer. Stop by the cafe this Monday, June 10th for your first taste, and make sure to come by often as our offerings from Heart will change frequently throughout their four month guest spot.

For more on Heart, visit their website, where you can browse the blog to learn more about their seasonal offerings, and farm-to-cup relationships.

Guest Coffee Roaster Program Update: Sightglass' La Loja Coffee

Since announcing our latest guest coffee roasters, Sightglass Coffee of San Francisco we haven't brought you much coffee news. Over the next couple of weeks expect a few blog postings discussing our offerings and brew methods at the Studio. But for this week, we'll stick to the subject of Sightglass Coffee. Every 4 months we rotate our guest coffee roaster to a new one of the many great roasters across the country. Within that 4 month period we like to bring in a few different coffees from each roaster. So, not only do you get a chance to try each roaster, but you also get the opportunity to taste a variety of coffees sourced from farms all across the world.  We hope that this gives you the chance to:

1. Learn more about coffee - it's production, taste, origin, and more

2. Get an idea of the roast style you love (more on this in an upcoming posting)

3. Learn the flavor profile of coffees from a number of different origins and get an idea of what countries, or even farms you prefer.

We couldn't be happier with having Sightglass participate in our guest coffee roaster program.  We have enjoyed their coffee as a V60 Pour Over, Chemex, and Cold Brew and they were all delicious. I won't give away any names, but we actually had not one, but two customers call to reserve their bag of Altico the day it arrived fresh at the Studio. We're thrilled that we can be bringing our customers such a great tasting coffee.

After a month of enjoying the Sightglass Columbian El Altico coffee it's already time to rotate our offering. Don't worry, we won't be leaving Sightglass, starting today we will be bringing you a new offering from this great roaster. We'll be moving from Columbia to Ecuador for this coffee. Ecuadorian coffee is known for having a medium body and sharp acidity. The particular variety of this coffee grows at 1600-2000 masl and is called Coffee Arabica Typica. According to information provided by our friends at Stumptown, Typica  was one of the first varietal species found in Ethiopia and the "cup quality is generally excellent demonstrating outstanding sweetness, cleanilness, and body." On my first tasting of the Ecuador, La Loja from Sightglass I would have to agree. Sightglass describes the flavor of La Loja as dark honey and root beer cola, which I found to be a peculiar description for the flavor of a coffee, but I can see what they are getting at. The finishing notes of the coffee have a wonderful sweet tanginess to it that is definitely reminiscent of a root beer.

Monthly, Sightglass sends us updates on their coffee, changes to their lineup, and general information about their offerings (another reason they make a great partner for us at RSC). Here is what they have to say about La Loja, "La Loja represents the combined efforts of producers who work with the PROCAFEQ farmer's association in Ecuador's Loja province. PROCAFEQ producers tend to small parcels of land and wash their coffee in their own on-site beneficios. This style and quality of production seems to be a rarity in the Loja province. This coffee includes washed lots from a handful of PROCAFEQ producers, some who individually contributed less than one bag of coffee. La Loja is solely comprised of the Typica variety, whose character makes a strong showing in a cup that is both refined and structured. Vanilla, caramel, and brown sugar aromatics are layered alongside soft, sweet flavors of dark honey and root beer cola."

 As always, we will be preparing this coffee by hand in the Studio and will have 12 oz bags available for sale. We're looking forward to sharing this new coffee with you and getting your thoughts on it!