News and Notes from around PDX

[As the café scene is always changing here in Portland, one of my goals is to keep you up to date with what is going on.  Here are a couple quick café notes from today's adventures.]

Bikes and Brew at See See Coffee and Motorcycles

If you’re into motorcycles, you have a new place to drink coffee that is geared toward you. If you’re not into motorcycles, well, you still have a new place to drink coffee. See See Coffee and Motorcycles just opened at the intersection of Northeast Sandy and 17^th.

 

The café’s name comes from the motorcycle theme. The engine displacement of a motorcycle is measured in cubic centimeters (cc – sounds like “see-see”).

The shop is spacious and airy, with a polished concrete floor and an abundance of natural light pouring in through the large skylight and the large front windows. The coffee bar in the center of the room is sheathed with plate steel, giving it a shop-like toughness that you would expect in a motorcycle bar. The bar’s freshly-lacquered hardwood gleams under incandescent lights. Hovering on the western wall, a winding rattlesnake mural warns customers against taking more than their fair share of sugar or napkins.

The café is not just for motorcycle enthusiasts. See See is a full-service coffee bar, offering Stumptown coffee, Townshend’s tea and Crema pastries. Gabriel’s provides the bagels. You can order a pourover or grab a quick cup of French press coffee from the air pot. Each table has an outlet next to it, making See See a suitable location for spending time working on your computer.

The café has only been open for a few weeks, and it still smells new.  The adjoining motorcycle shop is scheduled to open in the next week, so if you want to check out the motorcycle shop too, wait a couple days before heading in.

Vitals
Address: 1642 NE Sandy (map)
Phone: 503-894-9566
Hours: Monday-Friday 7am-8pm
            Saturday-Sunday 8am-6pm
Coffee: Stumptown
Free Wi-Fi? Yes
Recommendations? Go there on your Harley, if you have one
Website: seeseemotorcycles.com

Trailhead Coffee opens its first cafe

Just a few blocks from See See Motorcycles, Trailhead Coffee Roasters has also opened a small café in the last couple weeks. Sharing a space with the roasting machine and coffee warehouse, the café area is very small. It is geared more toward giving the public an opportunity to sample Trailhead coffees than to give them a place to sit down.

One thing that makes Trailhead unique is the company’s strong association with bicycles. A couple years ago, Trailhead Coffee was featured in The Oregonian for supplying coffee for Cycle Oregon. Owner Charlie Wicker rode his 110-lb. cargo bike more than 300 miles, over a course with 6000 feet of elevation change, rising early each day to supply fellow riders with coffee.  Trailhead also delivers all its coffee to the urban core of Portland via bicycle. The goal is to reduce the environmental footprint of the coffee.

Most of Trailhead’s coffee comes from Café Femenino, a non-profit cooperative of women coffee farmers. The company also supports KIVA microfinance through the sales of some of its coffees. Wicker said he was inspired to support women coffee producers by the book Banker to the Poor, by Muhamad Yunus. The programs help grow the economies of villages in developing countries by providing loans and business help to the women.

In addition to selling fresh-roasted coffees, Wicker also sells some of his older inventory at a discount.   If you don’t mind drinking coffee that is a month old, you can pick up a 12-oz. bag of beans for $5. Fresh coffee is better, but I understand that sometimes price matters more than freshness. 

The shop’s featured brew method is the “dual pourover,” a side-by-side comparison of two different coffees brewed fresh at the same time using Hario V60 glass drippers.  You can expand your coffee palate and learn more about the regional differences between coffees. I tried the Colombia Los Naranjos and the Ethiopia Sidama. The Colombia stood out for its cherry and orange flavors and the Ethiopia for its complex, wine-like flavors (it’s a natural-processed coffee).

Vitals
Address: 1847 E Burnside, Portland, OR (map)
Hours: Monday-Friday 9am-2pm
Wi-Fi? No
Recommendations? Side by side pourovers
Website: http://www.trailheadcoffeeroasters.com/

Aliviar Coffee moves to Sandy Boulevard

Aliviar Coffee has a new location. The café, serving Batdorf and Bronson coffee, moved from Northeast 42nd to 41^st and Sandy, in a space adjacent to the Hollywood Theater.  The new spot has more space (seating approximately 25 people) and a more visible location. The hours have changed some too. The café now stays open until 9pm on Friday and Saturday evenings to catch Portlanders who come to the Hollywood District for the nightlife.

Vitals

Address:  4128 NE Sandy, Portland, OR (map) 
Hours: Monday-Thursday 6:45am-5pm
            Friday 6:45am-9pm
            Saturday 7:45am-9pm
            Sunday 7:45am-5pm
Recommendations? The multi-grain bagel, toasted with cream cheese, if you’re hungry (as I was when I arrived)
Wi-Fi? Yes
Website: http://www.aliviarcoffee.com/

Slugging Espressos

In the last couple days, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting three top Portland cafés: Coffeehouse Northwest, Extracto and Barista Alberta. If we were talking about baseball (and the season is just around the corner), these three cafés would be comparable to the 1927 Yankees (the famed “Murderer’s Row”). In other words, I was expecting a great lineup of espressos.

At Coffeehouse Northwest I ordered both of the espressos on grind (the famous flight), each roasted by Sterling. The first, from Los Piajos de Tolima (from Colombia), was impressive. If I were scoring it for a barista competition, I would give it high marks in many categories. The appearance of the crema was shiny and consistent, the persistence and consistence very good (thick and lasting). The taste was well-balanced—sweet, sour and bitter elements all came through in a way that was pleasant. A sweet plum flavor punctuated the first sip. Its tactile balance, or mouthfeel, was superb. It had lots of body but still fit comfortably inside my mouth.

After enjoying the Colombia, I took the second leg of the flight, to Rwanda. The coffee, grown by the Coko cooperative, was also roasted by Sterling.  The crema had an even color with a light sheen, but it was a little on the thin side. When I sipped it, I immediately noticed the differences in mouthfeel compared to the first. It was very heavy and syrupy. The acidity was the most prominent of the flavor components, although it did not overpower the others. The coffee left an aftertaste of toasted popcorn (where some of the kernels had been on the bottom of the pan too long, adding some caramelized flavors to the mix). Overall, very good but not quite as good as the first.

At Extracto , the single-origin espresso I tried was a Kimel peaberry from Papua New Guinea. Savory, savory, savory—that’s how it tasted. The barista said the earthiness should really stand out. He wasn’t kidding. The thick espresso had the bite of a fresh rosemary leaf or green tomatoes. The bitter element stood out a touch more than the sweet or the sour, but all three were present, so it was fairly balanced.

My second Extracto espresso was the blend on grind (unfortunately, I forgot to ask the name). Like the previous espresso, it was also very thick and syrupy. Cocoa notes came through in the first sip and caramel flavor about halfway down the cup. The espresso left an aftertaste kind of like a Twix candy bar (without adding any sugar).

A couple blocks away, at Barista Alberta, I headed back to South America and ordered a single-origin Peru Cevasa, roasted by Stumptown. A quick visual inspection gave the coffee good marks – it had an even, shiny reddish crema (a small blond stripe in the middle would cost it the “excellent” rating in competition). The first sip was bright, but the brightness quickly backed off. Flavors of green apple washed across my palate. Although the espresso seemed heavy at first, it did not linger, quickly dissipating and leaving a clean mouthfeel behind. 

Looking at the box score, the cafés went 5 for 5 with two home runs (the Colombia and the blend at Extracto).  Not even the most feared lineup in the history of baseball could do that every day. I tip my hat to a job well done. 

Barista Alberta - the great escape

It is easy to argue that Portland’s weather is a big factor in why the city has so many cafés. Drinking copious amounts of coffee is one way to fight the blues that can accompany long stretches of nothing but clouds and rain.

While caffeine will keep you going for a while, relying on a coffee-only strategy to push away the dreariness will only carry you through part of the winter. By the end of February, you need an additional strategy to deal with the grayness. Otherwise, the next three months of clouds and rain will drive you crazy.

My strategy for making it through the early part of spring is to go into denial. After three years in Portland, I still haven’t bought an umbrella. Part of the reason is thrift, part sheer stubbornness, and part is just a way of maintaining a connection with my hometown, where it doesn’t rain enough to warrant buying an umbrella. Living in my own version of reality, I have come to accept that sometimes I will be lucky and stay dry and sometimes I will get soaked.

On a recent trip to visit Barista Alberta (a.k.a. Barista II), I started out with fortune on my side, narrowly escaping a good drenching as I walked to the bus stop. As I stepped into the shelter, the skies cut loose. By the time I reached Northeast PDX, though, the rain had stopped and the ground was dry. I stepped off the bus at 42^nd and Alberta, thinking I could quickly walk the ten blocks or so to the café, safe from the whims of the weather. 

My luck did not hold, however. By the time I reached the café, twenty-five blocks later (travel tip: always check the address of where you’re going before you get off the bus), the rain had returned and I was sopping wet.  The walk was worth it though, for Barista Alberta is a café unlike others in Portland.

Approaching the front door of the café, I was somewhat wistful. Barista Alberta represented a sort of milestone in my coffee journey. There are other cafés in PDX that I have yet to visit, but of the top-tier, coffee-centered cafés, Barista Alberta was the last one I had to visit. I have known about the café for the last year and a half, but for one reason or another, had not yet made it there. I’m glad I saved it until last. I would not have appreciated it as much had I visited a year earlier.

One of the few cafés in town to carry the Financial Times, Barista Alberta caters to the artsy crowd as well as the banker crowd. With its dark wood paneling, the café feels like the study of a distinguished 19^th century aristocrat. Stuffed antelopes, pheasants and ducks stare down at you from the walls with suspended indifference. If you visited the café in another era, you would expect to see men in tweed suits sitting around the tables, smoking cigars with each other, planning mergers and acquisitions or complaining about the current political landscape. In the current age, however, you see people enjoying finely-crafted coffees and staring intently at their laptops.

As expected, Barista’s espresso menu featured multiple roasters’ coffees. There were three espressos available on grind—Stumptown’s Ethiopia Yurga, Heart’s latest from Guatemala, and the Honduran Esmerín Enamorado from 49^th Parallel in Vancouver, B.C. I didn’t check what was available as brewed coffee—why bother?

After a moment’s deliberation, I chose the Honduras Esmerín Enamorado. The barista pulled a nice, smooth shot that was rich and creamy. The flavors reminded me of buttered popcorn, with a sweet hint of prunes at the finish.

Sentiment permeated the air and my spirits were lifted as I sat at a corner table. Over the speakers, Toto sang about “blessing the rains down in Africa” (how could I curse the rains in Portland while listening to that song?). When Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” came on, I was transported back to my days in elementary school (it’s weird how music does that to you—every time I hear  a Journey song, I think of the 1980’s Journey video game we played at the local pizza parlor. If you don’t remember it, here’s a humorous YouTube review of the game to rekindle some memories).

With some of the finest baristas in town, Barista Alberta is creating a new, 21^st-century aristocracy—that of quality coffee. The café stands out for the uniqueness of its form and the quality of its substance. It can be hard for cafés  to distinguish themselves in this town, but Barista II clearly succeeds. You can visit the cafe to explore espressos or to escape the melancholy of spring. You could even try to hide in there until the rains go away and summer arrives. Just be sure to save me a table. I hope to return soon.

Vitals
Address: 1725 NE Alberta, Portland OR 97211 (map)
Phone: No
Hours: Monday-Friday 6am-6pm
            Saturday-Sunday 7am-6pm
Wi-Fi? Yes
Recommendations? Sit at the bar and watch the baristas in action
Website: baristapdx.com

Ristretto Nicolai

Tweet

If you are someone who really likes coffee, the opening of a new specialty café in town is big news. On a quiet Sunday morning, Jinsu Lee (who shares a passion for good coffee and café experiences) and I went on a mission to find the new Ristretto Roasters café. Having not spent much time in that part of Northwest PDX, we were unsure about where to go, especially when we arrived at a large brick building with “Schoolhouse Electric Company” painted on the side. The multi-story brick structure looked like an old factory. It was surrounded by industrial and commercial buildings, with no houses or condos in sight. A freight train grumbled heavily by as we pulled up to park.

At first, we saw no indications of the café. After a bit of hesitation and wandering around in the street, though, we noticed the RR sign on the sidewalk. We were at the right spot after all.

Walking in, my first impression of the café was Wow – beautiful! Who would have thought a great café would exist here?

According to Ryan Cross, distribution manager for Ristretto (who happened to be working as a barista that day), the Schoolhouse Electric building was indeed an old factory, but it had served as an office building for several years, stuffed full of low ceilings and claustrophobic cubicles. No longer. The developer completely gutted the building for the renovation, throwing out the cubicles, getting rid of the false ceilings, and pulling plaster off the walls to expose the brick underneath. The space now has the feel of a cathedral, a cathedral of coffee.

The large windows that used to provide light for factory workers’ days now gives the café a light, open feel. The bright, airy feel of the café is juxtaposed against the imposing power of the massive wood pillars and beams that give strength to the space.

Accelerated Development, the same company that designed Coava’s Grand Avenue café space, also designed the new Ristretto Roasters café. You can see some similarities in the modern-retro-industrial chic design. It is an example of industrial elegance.

A shiny new La Marzocco Strada espresso machine sits on the  gracefully curved coffee bar, gleaming under the warm lights hanging overhead. Behind the bar, a legion of six(!!!) grinders stood ready to grind. Three were dedicated to coffees for pourovers, three were for espressos – one blend, one single-origin, and one decaf. A plethora of choices for most coffee drinkers, but a coffee wonderland for a pursuer of great coffee.

I tried two different coffees. The first was a pourover of a natural-processed coffee from El Salvador. The deep, fruity aroma preceded the sweet, medium-bodied coffee. The second coffee was an espresso of an East Timorese coffee. It was rather savory.

In addition to drinking coffee, we also got a lesson on some of the finer points of barista know-how. Cross gave us a close-up view of how the Strada works. The Strada is a high-tech machine with accurate temperature and pressure controls. The variable control paddles on the Strada are very sensitive, allowing the barista to precisely control the pressure, speed and intensity of the extraction. Cross showed us how he was pulling the espresso shots using a bottomless portafilter (no pour spouts). By taking off the spouts, he made it easier to spot any “channeling” through the filter.

Channeling is the phenomenon where water passes through the puck in small “channels” instead of filtering evenly through the coffee. One way to envision channeling is to think of the ground espresso as if it were the soil in a garden. When you water a garden, you want the water to sink evenly into the soil. Otherwise, the water will run together and form a trench (channel) in one part of the garden. The excess water washes the soil away and you lose both water and nutrients when this happens.  

Baristas want the water to evenly pass through all of the ground espresso in order to produce an extraction that pulls out the best flavors inside the coffee. When coffee channels, too much water passes through the grounds too quickly, causing overextraction in that part of the puck. Pulling a shot with a bottomless filter gives the barista a quick visual check on the evenness of the grind and the tamp. He or she can see if the coffee is coming out from one part of the bottom of the filter or if it is coming out evenly.

The new café shares a space with the Schoolhouse Lighting Company, a home décor store that takes used industrial equipment and gives it a new twist, fashioning it into usable home décor. Ristretto’s décor blends seamlessly into the space.

The café seemed isolated from any residential neighborhoods, farther away from houses than cafés usually are. Cross explained that when the building’s developer held an event to celebrate the renovation, Ristretto ran a pourover bar to serve coffee for the event. The developer was impressed, and he encouraged Ristretto’s owners to set up a café there, setting the wheels in motion. Northwest Portland residents should be glad they did.

Is that a card catalog over there under the bench?

Ristretto on Nicolai would make a great stop for coffee if you are in the Northwest area. The space is beautiful and the coffee, some of Portland’s finest. Not everyone who goes in will want to learn about the intricacies of the espresso extraction process, but everyone who visits the newest Ristretto will be able to sit and enjoy great coffee in a beautiful space. 

Vitals
Address: 2181 NW Nicolai, Portland, OR  97210 (map)
Phone: 503-227-2866
Hours: Monday-Friday 6am-6pm
            Saturday 8am-6pm
            Sunday 8am-4pm
Coffee: Ristretto
Wi-Fi? Yes, I believe so.
Recommendations? Ask what’s on grind…
Website: www.ristrettoroasters.com