Yesterday I went to an event at JP's Java, a celebration for the arrival of their new Clover coffee brewer. Anyone who has seen the "sewing machine" scene in Fiddler on the Roof will understand the level importance of this event.
The Clover is a super high-end coffee machine made in Washington (at least that's where the company's based). It is sort of a high tech french press/vacuum machine in which hot water and grounds are poured into a chamber on top of the machine, then a piston pushes upward at the programmed time, creating a vacuum and sucking the nectar through the filter, and piping the coffee, one cup at a time, into the waiting vessel. In theory, the high customability of the Clover allows roasters and baristas to tailor water/coffee ratio and time and temperature to create the perfect cup, specific to each bean's characteristics. The cafes that are using the Clover so far are for the most part using it to showcase their rarest beans, generally Cup of Excellence winners--highly valued coffees that one would not dump into a giant batch brewer.

The Clover at JP's is the only one in Texas, and there are only a hundred-something of them in the world.

The coffee is carefully measured by weight, ground to order on a sexy Mahlkonig grinder, and poured in the top of the machine

As the water pours into the chamber, the coffee is stirred with a wooden spoon

As the piston moves up the chamber, it extracts the liquid coffee while it pushes the "puck" to the top, where it is scraped away by the spatula to the right

Barista babe pouring samples of Clover-brewed coffee into cute collectible cups. When compared to the sexy Clover in the background, the burly urn brewer in the back right looks like a gnarly beast.

I suppose all of this begs the question: Is it worth it? The machine costs the coffee shop owner upwards of $11,000. (To put it in perspective, a righteous top quality espresso machine is several thousand dollars cheaper than that.) The cups of coffee brewed on the Clover cost $6-$9 each. Some places are charging up to $20 for a cup of clover coffee. I think the answer to "is it worth it?" is "Yes, within reason." The Clover is exciting because it is the first major innovation in coffee brewing in a long time. It is exciting because it gives schmucks like me an opportunity to taste some of the best coffees in the world, which we would never be able to afford to buy a pound of and brew at home, even if we could track them down. By the cup, even a $10 sample seems like a bargain for the rarity of the experience. I think the Clover will be a great and welcome addition to the very high-end coffee bar experience, but it will be a long time before they become commonplace, due to the high price tag.

The one day of the week when I am most likely to look at the paper is not Sunday, although we do have a ritual of spending a couple of hours drinking coffee, eating breakfast, and reading the Sunday Times (which the cat will inevitably sit on).

Wednesday is the day that I most eagerly await, to see what the Times has published in the Dining section. Today's section was a superlative specimen. To begin with, there was a 2/3 page cover shot of fondue, with is like a sexy centerfold if you appreciate cheese-as-porn, as I do. Then below the fold there was the headline "At Last, A $20,000 Cup of Coffee." Since I work in coffee, and appreciate coffee as cheese, that is, as porn, I was intrigued by this article. It seems that a Japanese company has created a high-tech siphon machine called the "Siphon Bar" which they sold to a San Francisco cafe for an astonishing $20k. For those fortunate few who have tried coffee from the Clover, which I wrote about here last summer, this is an interesting development.

The Clover was the first revolutionary coffee brewing system in a long time. I actually couldn't think of a technological development as unique as the Clover, except for perhaps pulse brewing, by which coffee brewers meter out water in "pulses", or mini batches--allowing the coffee to "bloom"--instead of dumping the water on top all at once. It is interesting that the Siphon Bar is bringing a unique machine to market so quickly after the Clover. (Of course, the NYT is a year or two late in reporting the arrival of the Clover, so I don't actually know how timely their reportage of the Siphon Bar is...).

Photo by Peter DaSilva for the NY Times (Used without permission. Thanks NYT!)

The Siphon Bar works as halogen lamps heat water in a globe; gas expansion forces steam into the upper chamber where water and coffee grounds are stirred with a bamboo paddle, creating a vortex (this is apparently the step that most challenges the barista's skills); when the carafes are removed from the heat, gas contraction creates a vacuum in the bottom globe, drawing the coffee back through, leaving the grounds and sediment behind. This method of brewing is common in its variations (coffee aficionados will recognize the globes as being similar to the Bodum "Santos"), though it seems this machine is the first to do it so scientifically, with heat provided by halogen lamps, and meters to measure time and temperature. I suspect that the Siphon Bar, while being an exciting and flashy addition to barista's tool shed, will not become exceptionally widespread unless the cost comes down considerably. What is most significant about the arrival of machines such as the Clover and the Siphon Bar is not that you will see them any time soon at your neighborhood coffee bar, but that they signify (one may infer) that brewed coffee is on the rise again. That is to say that coffee in one of its purest forms is taking a stand for itself in a market that has been dominated by the postmodern percs characteristic of the Starbuckian Era: oversized, oversweet, overmilky, overpriced 'coffees' that have nothing to do with coffee.

If you search "siphon bar" you will find many posts at tech and coffee sites, with the commentors wildly praising and criticizing this new device.
Click here for the NY Times article

Good Lord I had a fright this weekend. I was dining at a restaurant in a small Texas town and was presented with a bouquet of portion cups full of two substances that are foreign to me in my adult life: Country Crock and Koffee Buddy.

When I was a child my mother was not much of an adventurous cook. A product of the Campbell's Soup Housewife Indoctrination of her era, she cooked a small but reliable arsenal of comfort foods: tuna casserole (with the Ruffles topping, of course), beef stroganoff, enchiladas and tacos (with about as much heat as a candy cane), spaghetti, and a mystery meal that as far as I know is unique to my family, a "hash" made of browned ground beef, diced potatoes, and ketchup cooked at a delicate simmer. One time Dr. Stallworth, our veterinarian, asked my mother, "Are you an adventurous cook, or one of those meat-and-potatoes gals?" Mother indicated that she was a little of both, although even as a child I thought "She's a meat-and-potatoes gal...". Dr. Stallworth gave my mom an opened bottle of Balsamic Vinegar. Growing up in Austin, TX in the 1980's, when Whole Foods was just a little hippie grocery on the edge of downtown, I had never seen these mysterious wrapped bottles before. I don't remember what my mom ever did with the contents, but the bottle sat in my room for years on a shelf of kid's treasures.

Back to my frightful experience at the cafe. The basket of margarine and cream arrives at the table and I politely push it aside, having sworn as an adult that butter would be my butter of choice, in place of the little tubs of Parkay that we had when I was a kid. Besides, I hadn't ordered any coffee because I was drinking beer, not that the two are mutually exclusive. I then noticed something amiss about the other product in the basket, something that I at first mistook for half & half. I was intrigued by the room temperature "cream." It turns out the product is Koffee Buddy, which I assure you is no friend of mine. I would rather exfoliate with sandpaper than hang out with buddies like Koffee Buddy.

I have encountered these fake cream products before--when I was a kid my mother would use Coffee Mate in her coffee. Thankfully she has since seen the light (especially since I work in the coffee business). But Coffee Mate knows it is a fraud. Coffee Mate decorates itself in bright colors to compensate for the fact that it is a non-dairy faker. But Koffee Buddy...Koffee Buddy is a scheister. Koffee Buddy dresses up in the same portion cup that real half & half comes in, at places that care about, you know, flavor. Koffee Buddy does not boldly identify itself as a bullshitter--you have to look closely. I think that's part of Koffee Buddy's nefarious plan, hoping that most people are too weary for not having had coffee yet that they don't even look at the label. By the time they realize "Hey, that cream was awfully light-bodied..." they are already on the road, and Koffee Buddy's evil machinations have triumphed, and the short-cutter of a restaurant operator who purchases such products gives Koffee Buddy a high-five as he stuffs his pockets with ill-gotten lucre. Come to think of it, I wonder if this place actually served Coffee or just Koffee, some kind of brown water coffee substitute made from roasted corn syrup solids. Did you notice that Koffee Buddy has "color added"? It's WHITE. Something has to be really gross if they have to add fake color just to get it to white.

Today there is a cover story about iced coffee in the Austin American Statesman's food section. I guess my years of evangelizing about the merits of cold coffee have finally paid off, since the Statesman's Addie Broyles ran a picture and blurb about the Cappuccello that we serve at the Farmer's Market on Saturday's. I'm glad they properly attributed the origin of the drink to my friend Bobby Heugel of DrinkDogma.com.

I appreciate all of Addie's nice words and thank her for giving me the opportunity to speak about iced coffee, however I do have to make one clarification. She refers to me as a "master mixologist." I appreciate the high praise, and I suppose I am closer to a master mixologist than I am to a master plumber, but I have a ways to go before being a "master" of anything... . I would say I am more of a well-studied cocktail enthusiast. Today, however, we are off to New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail, where the real masters are. Dale DeGroff, Audrey Saunders, and many more, these are the masters of the trade, and they are all at Tales.

There is also a mention on Addie's blog at Austin360.com. The video shows a short demo on how to do cold brew "toddy" process in a French Press, as well as a demo on the "Japanese" method of hot-brewing cold coffee that results in a completely different product than cold brew. Cold brew is super smooth, with almost no acidic bite. The Japanese method yields a cup that tastes like a cold version of hot coffee, though not watered down and bitter as a hot coffee that was just poured over ice would. Both methods have their merits. They edited out the part about Vietnamese iced coffee, but anyone who has ordered that drink around town knows how it is done!

Yesterday in honor of the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death we celebrated with the Elvis Presley Yahrzeit Memorial Coffee Bar at the Sunset Valley Farmer's Market.

Not everybody was as enthusiastic about the King's yahrzeit as we were. But there were still a handful of patrons who eagerly participated in Elvis Trivia, and shared their own stories about how Elvis touched their lives. One man from Memphis couldn't remember the answer to a trivia question about Elvis's parents' names, so he called a friend of his back home who used to fly Elvis's plane for him, and got not just first names but middle names and Gladys Presley's maiden name.

Another woman explained that the night that Elvis played the auditorium in her town, she was grounded and had to miss the show.

One of the highlights of the day was when when this customer stopped by: her name is Lisa Marie, and her birthday is the day that Elvis died.

To honor the King, we served the Burnin' Love Latte, which is based on the grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich that was supposedly one of his favorite things to eat (although in a series about the last day of his life, one of his confidantes said that Elvis liked to eat a mixture of crisp bacon, sliced tomato, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. I don't know how well that would translate to a coffee drink...)

Burnin' Love Latte
1/2 oz. Torani Creme de Banana syrup
1/4 oz. Torani Peanut Butter syrup
1/4 oz. Torani White Chocolate syrup
Top with equal parts cold-brewed coffee concentrate and whole milk (about 4 oz. each). Shake and serve over ice. A surprisingly delicious tribute!