Stumptown Office Coffee (1 of 1)
August has Stumptown releasing it's newest crop of Direct Trade Coffee. Needless to say, we were excited to try and find a new Stumptown Office Coffee.
This particular role out leans heavily toward the Latins with Three Guatemalans, two Hondurans an an El Salvadorian offering. Particularly noticeable was that all three Guatemalan offerings were single varietal. It seems like the move toward single-varietal coffees among the highest quality beans is inexorable. As beans are increasingly divided into smaller and smaller lots, all this level of differentiation has becoming increasingly prominent. Even our most affordable offering, the Dallis Bros. Fazenda Sertao, is composed exclusively of Yellow Bourbon. While certain varietals have established themselves, namely the Geisha so famous for the outrageous prices it can pull in, it seems like many of these varietals are still looking for their own voices, and point of view. I'm sure that as coffee becomes ever more stratified, we'll find plenty of distinction between them, and find that certain varietals work better with certain teroir.
But enough of my musings about varietals. Lets talk about the coffees.
In Office Tasting
We conducted our tastings in two steps. Two Fridays ago, my brother and I sat down and made a Chemex of each (look here for a brew guide). 43g Coffee, 700g water. We took tasting notes and tried the coffee first hot, and then again about an hour later, at room temperature. The Kenyan Peaberry didn't make it to this stage. We had already brewed an airpot of it on our fetco and drank it while making deliveries the day before. While it is the most expensive offering from the new role out, for the quality of coffee it is, we found it a bargin. It has a huge flavor and I think is best enjoyed in small quantities, at 90-100 farenheit.
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (1 of 12)
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (11 of 12)
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (12 of 12)
Stumptown Office Coffee (1 of 1)-3
Stumptown Cupping at One Girl Cookies, Dumbo
The other part of our sampling was a proper cupping at One Girl Cookies, in Dumbo. It was organized by Jamie and Jules of Stumptown. Jules was actually the lady who trained me to make espresso about three years back, when we were starting up the mobile cafe that turned into Joyride Coffee. What stood out in our minds was the breadth of the Latins. Of course, the Nano Challa (a returning favorite, for all of you Ethiopian lovers) was great, but the Latins portrayed a wildly varied cup, from the timid and fragile tea like El Salvadorian Los Caleros, to the syrupy and almost Indonesian Guatemala Finca Semillero - Caturra. I guess I sort of associated Latins with lighter body, chocolatey notes and some spices.
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (1 of 6)
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (4 of 6)
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (2 of 6)
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (5 of 6)
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (6 of 6)
And the Coffees:
We will be trying out the Latins as Stumptown Office coffee, and as our Office Coffee Cold-brew. We'll let you know when we find out what we think works best.
Stumptown Office Coffee (1 of 1)-2
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (10 of 12)
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (9 of 12)
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (7 of 12)
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (6 of 12)
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (5 of 12)
August 2012 Stumptown Samples (2 of 12)
Stumptown Releases by Chart
We received our August, 2012 Stumptown new release samples today! But before we present them with our thoughts, I thought I might do something of a retrospective on Stumptown releases for as long as I have data: 7 releases between March 2011 thru August 2012. Note that the charts exclude Grand Cru and Decaf:
Origin Breakdown of Stumptown Releases
Africans by Country and Number
Latins by Country and Number
Stumptown-Releases-by-Avg
Release pricing over time is interesting, especially when compared to the spot price of Arabica coffee as traded on the NYMEX. As you can see below, the direction of prices per pound are opposites, with Stumptown increasing gradually from March 2011 thru August 2012 and the spot price of coffee falling over that same period. The opposite price trends highlight what Third Wave Coffee is all about, the decommoditization of the coffee. Stumptown Coffee is not just coffee as the price increases in a period of coffee prices declines demonstrates. We'll that's all for now.
Spot Coffee Prices ($/100lbs) 03.2012-08.2012
Joyride Coffee: HackNY Fellows Event
Last Friday, HackNY* had their Summer HackNY Fellows Project Presentation and Joyride was happy to sponsor the event by brewing us some chemexs and dishing some cold brew to the attendees. Many of these talented college students were actually working at Some of Joyride Coffee's office coffee customers including Tumblr, Birchbox, Buzzfeed and Boxee and we were thrilled to see how some of their side projects turned out. A few presentations stand out in my head: 1) Price is right for Etsy- This is a website that lets you play the price is right for random items off of Etsy, and it keep track of how accurate you are.
2) Web design style detector and analyzer. Basically this lets you look at any website and see what the style (i.e. how do you determine header, etc etc) is and where there are, if any, problems. I think going forward I could see this integrated both in webdesign software, such as Dreamweaver as well as into search engines to allow for a more accurate determination of how the content is intended to be layed out.
3) Don't you have work to do? - This is a MUST for any procrastinator such as myself. It is a Chrome plugin that limits Facebook, rather than cutting it off. If you are a company that tries to manage an active web presence, then you need to use Facebook, so completely blocking it isn't effective. Basically this app allows you to respond to other people, post things and deal with notifications, but times you out if you start faffing about on the web (like everybody does). Although the timing as it stands is a bit cruel, with tweaking, I could see this be a mandatory part of any company's browser.
Anyhow, Here are some pictures from the event. And hey, we got our logo on the big board!
Hack NY Summer Event (1 of 5)
Hack NY Summer Event (5 of 5)
Hack NY Summer Event (4 of 5)
Hack NY Summer Event (3 of 5)
*(A really cool Non-for-profit that places younger people interested in Tech in internships at NY Startups)
Joyride goes to the Queens Tech Meetup
Last night, as part of our sponsorship for Coalition for Queens, we went to Long Island City for the Queens tech meetup. First off I apologize, but the camera ran out of batteries, so I could only snap off a few shots. Now I love Queens: both my parents lived here, I live in Astoria, the food is phenomenal and rent isn't stupidly expensive. So maybe I'm a bit biased, but I found it exciting to see Queens moving into its own and developing in a hub for some really damn cool stuff. With the Cornell Applied Sciences School coming to Roosevelt Island, its hard to see how the tech scene in Queens can do anything BUT expand. But on to the event. The space was great (a huge rooftop right off the Pulowski Bridge) and included a Q&A with a dude from VC, a Skillshare (Joyride Customer) presentation, and a look at an underground advertising campaign by OKFOC.US that tells you if there is a cat in the picture. It was a good time with some beers, and of course our cold-brew (of the available brews, negro-modelo came out as the favorite to mix), even if the weather looked like the end of the world was imminent and lightening kept flashing for the full two hours.
We got to see some familiar faces. Barrel, the team that designed our new website and a Joyride drinker, had a few faces present, while Jessica, a key force behind the 25,000 strong New York tech meetup stopped by. We also got to chat cold-brew with a member of the Meetup team, to see how our cold-brew there stacked up against the stuff we bring to their office. We also met some really cool new people, including the team at Monseuir Igloo, a startup digital agency working out of Forest Hills (again, because Queens is awesome).
Anyhow, here are a few photos.
Queens Tech Meetup (1 of 3)
Queens Tech Meetup (2 of 3)
Queens Tech Meetup (3 of 3)
Rise Up Coffee in St. Michaels, Maryland
So while I spend most of my time dealing with good office coffee, I also like to travel. But I have a hard time forgetting about coffee, even if its just for a weekend. By Adam Belanich
This past weekend I went down to Maryland with a few friends of mine to take advantage of Blue Crab and Soft-shelled Crab season. While the focus of the trip was on eating an unhealthy volume of shellfish, we happened to pass a coffee shop, and were so interested we ended up going back to see what it was about. I was surprised to find only organic coffees, on-site roasting and a pour-over bar.
Rise Up Coffee
The shop is Rise Up Coffee, and they do in house, small batch roasting of organic single-origin coffees. I went on a Sunday, so they hadn't roasted in a bit, but I was able to purchase a 1lb of Indonesia Single Origin for $15, and they were happy to brew me a cup in a Pour-over. The beans were a little bit old at that point (07.06.12) roast date, so some of the brighter notes were gone, but all in all it was a decent in unremarkable cup. My friend got one of their blends and I have to say that it was significantly better. It had a rather strange flavor profile with a good bit of acidity up front and an abruptly clean aftertaste. It was a very interesting, if not terribly balanced cup. I have some photos below for your viewing pleasure.
Rise Up Coffee (1 of 7)
Rise Up Coffee (2 of 7)
Rise Up Coffee (3 of 7)
Rise Up Coffee (4 of 7)
Rise Up Coffee (5 of 7)
Rise Up Coffee (6 of 7)
Rise Up Coffee (7 of 7)
I would recommend this place to anybody who was heading down to the Chesapeake to ingest unhealthy quantities of shellfish. To be honest, I don't think this would be my favorite cafe if it were in Brooklyn. The beans were a bit old and the selection small at that time. But at the same time, it doesn't really have a fair view of the place. I tend not to like Indonesians, so it shouldn't really be surprising that I didn't like this one. Their brew technique was quite good though, their branding was slicky and I think, pretty cool (even if it does look a bit like Irving Farms), the staff kind. I like being able to brew a batch and I support local roasting efforts. To be honest, little places like this are spreading the good word and even if they don't have the infrastructure of say Stumptown to go and work directly with farmers, by having a good quality roast and single-origin beans, they are already expanding good coffee into places where you wouldn't expect it.
How Better Coffee Tastes: Stumptown Latins Visualized
We love infographics/data-visualizations here at Joyrideas you might have noticed from past blog posts such as Coffee and the Economy, Tracking Caffeine with Style, and Coffee Export Data Visualization. And while we normally share work by others that we find interesting, from time to time, we roll up our sleeves, compile our own data sets, and generate our own visualizations, made possible by some very cool (and free) online resources, such as Many Eyes. Why data visualization, why infographics? Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and an infographic is a picture on steroids! In particular we enjoy how data visualization affords us new perspectives on familiar facts and info. For example, today we decided to see if any trends emerge when we compile several flavor descriptions together and visualize them as a set. Specifically, we aggregated the flavor profile descriptions of Stumptown's 2012 Latin America offerings.
We collated the descriptions for all of Stumptown's current Latin offerings, removing articles, prepositions, pronouns, etc., to hone in on the adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. The infographic that follows spatially represents the frequency with which certain words are used. As the graphic indicates, the three most common flavors used to describe this year's Latin offerings are Caramel, Apple, and Chocolate:
It will be interesting to see how the Latins compare to the African descriptions or the Indonesian description. It would also be kind of cool to see how the popularity of specific words changes from year to year. After all, it was just two years ago that apparently everything tasted Meyer Lemons. Now that I can finally buy a Meyer Lemon at Fairway, it's use in coffee flavor profiling has all but disappeared.
Cupping: Summer 2012 Stumptown Office Coffee
Cupping yields two new single-origin Stumptown Office Coffee Offerings.
About a month ago, I (Adam) and our consultant Claudio went down to Red Hook to try out some of the new Stumptown offerings for the summer of 2012. I know the post is late, but our new website, (thanks Barrel for a great job!) has taken quite a bit off effort. I've got some pictures from the cupping as well as two new offerings for our Stumptown Office Coffee menu. Sadly the Ethiopian Yirgacheffee Adado has gone out of season, and we needed to find a new Stumptown Office Coffee African single-origin to replace it. While there were some big shoes to fill, I think we found something that fits the bill.
Cupping-at-Stumptown
Sadly the Ethiopian Yirgacheffee Adado has gone out of season, but we are happy to replace it with:
The Ethiopia Duromina (Direct Trade)
The Duromina comes from the Duromina Cooperative, located just west of Jimma. Made from heirloom varietal beans from relatively high elevations (1900-2200m), like many Africans it has bright acidity and a complex, but clean body. In terms of the taste, it is an incredibly complex cup that we think comes through best when prepared as a chemex. Regardless, we think that in Terms of a Stumptown Office Coffee, it makes a wonderful, if slightly less nuanced preparation on a Fetco. Look for notes of lemon, ginger, sweet hops and nectarine and an accent of jasmine. If you want more info on the farming, sourcing or processing of this particular coffee click on the link above to go directly to the Stumptown page.
Claudio-at-tasting
We have also added a new Latin to the lineup:
The Montes de Oro was actually a coffee we served on the Joyride Truck back in the day. We also carried it as part of the Stumptown Office Coffee lineup last year, so for those of you who were sad to see it go, rejoice in its return. Made from a mix of Bourbon, Catuai, Villasarchi and Caturra varietals, this coffee from four farms in the Tarrazu Valley. As is part of Stumptown Coffee model, the green bean sources have been working with these farmers on best practices in picking, and depulping. The cup has notes of honey and caramel sweetness that is tempered by cleat notes of cherry, milk chocolate, apple fig and vanilla. If you are looking to home-brew cold brew, this would be a good choice for a chocolatey and mild mannered cup.If you want more info on the farming, sourcing or processing of this particular coffee click on the link above.
Elizabeth-Casaus
So a big, if belated, thank you to the team at Stumptown. The cuppings are always fun and I think we got some phenomenal Stumptown Office Coffee offerings out of this particular cupping.
