by Ariela Rose

We admit it, we have quite the sweet gig here at Ride Studio Cafe. We have the chance to taste some of the best coffees in the world, from some of the best roasters in the world, and most excitingly, to share these coffees and roasters with you. Our guest roaster program allows us to switch the roaster we feature alongside our ever-reliably high quality and flavorful George Howell Coffee offerings every three to six months. This gives us a chance to taste and share a lot of different coffees from a lot of roasters -- an exciting keep-us-on-our-coffee-brewing-toes experience! After all, there are far too many fantastic roasters out there to stick with just one at all times, so we're on a mission to bring you as many excellent roasters and coffees as possible.

Join us on our bean-to-cup adventure!

Our last guest roaster, Ceremony Coffee Roasters hailed from the East Coast, and for our next roaster, we're headed back out West, to San Francisco to be exact. The laid back city by the bay, is where Four Barrel Coffee was born in 2008. The brain child of Jeremy Tooker, who also helped launch Ritual Coffee Roasters in 2005, Four Barrel is a roastery and cafe with three locations throughout the city, each of which treat the preparation and service of coffee as an art form. The company's original Valencia Street location even boasts a weekends-only back alley coffee bar that collaborates with area food businesses to offer a coffee/food experience with a limited time stamp and speakeasy-esque vibe (get a taste of it via the Four Barrel Alley twitter account).

One of the qualities of Four Barrel we at RSC found most intriguing when researching and selecting them as our next guest roaster is the company's contagious enthusiasm and outspoken love of coffee. They literally wax poetic about it. Just take this quote from the company's blog: “...coffee has yet to become the predictable, housecoat wearing type. She is still the sly seductress we're following around the dark corner, always just a few steps behind. Constantly changing, full of intrigue, disgustingly rewarding. The closest we can come to mastery is by association: we've mastered the art of learning about coffee.”

This constant commitment to learn more and more about coffee, and strive to make it better and better is a sentiment that makes working with Four Barrel particularly exciting. In partnering with them we are in a great position to bring in and offer customers new beans that are enticing, flavorful, unusual, and well, just delicious. With a large range of offerings from countries in Africa, and the Americas, we have many, many beans to choose from, and plan on bringing you the full spectrum.

We are kicking things off with the Colombia Andino, a single origin espresso that boasts tasting notes of mango fragrance, orange, strawberry, and caramel sweetness; we feel these take particularly well to low-on-the-milk espresso drinks like macchiatos and cortados. Be sure to also keep your eyes peeled for Four Barrel bags on our retail shelf, because if this past week is any indication (bags of the Rwanda Coproca were here...then gone!), they won't last more than a couple days after their arrival.

As always, we're here to answer any and all questions regarding the roasters we feature and beans we offer, so feel free to ask away! We can't wait to serve you some Four Barrel.