Goodbye Conti. Hello La Marzocco.

Though I wouldn't put the art of espresso on quite the same level as that of music performance, there are some similarities. One is in the area of equipment. I can be an accomplished pianist, but if I'm playing on an out of tune spinet piano, there's only so much I can do. I'd like to think that after close to a decade of experience I'm a fairly accomplished barista. The old Conti espresso machine I've been playing on for the last six years (never a Steinway in the first place) has gone very out of tune lately. It was loosing steaming pressure big time and my drinks were coming out flat no matter what I did...

Enough with the musical puns. This week Amore acquired the real Steinway of the espresso machines: a La Marzocco. Ours is a refurbished 3 grouphead Linea, which was the flagship machine of just a few years ago.
Here are Blair and I the day it arrived. We carried it across Grand Ave. with the help of a few regular customers. Waiting for the installation was grueling.
Here's our old Conti about to be carted away.
A look under the hood.
Here are the Roastery 7 guys finishing the installation.
The Amore employees decided that I should get to make the first drink.
I guess it was also my job to drink the first drink.
Here's the first shot served to a customer. He's gotten an American double espresso practically every day since I've been around. I'm glad he was served the first shot.

Do-It-Yourself Naked Portafilter

*Warning: This is a very coffee-geeky post. I've tried to supply term-defining links for those of you who don't know the lingo.*

I've been dreaming of having a Naked Portafilter at Amore Coffee for quite some time now. I've used them on La Marzocco espresso machines at the SCAA convention last spring and also while playing with machines at Roastery 7, but as far as day to day shot pulling goes - all the action has been hidden behind the two little spouts. One of the problems has been that, as far as we can tell, naked portafilters aren't available for old Conti espresso machines like ours. We'd have to send ours in to get modified, and who's ever going to get around to doing that?

The day before yesterday Blair and I were working and for some reason discussing our portafilter with our friend Justin from Black Sheep. He considered the brass bottom of our portafilter and said, "You know, my drummel tool could cut that." So we decided to go for it.
The initial cut.
Justin considers the first draft.
He polishes off the sharp edges.
Here's a "before and after" shot.
Finally, we get to pull shots naked!

Emergency Espresso Blend

We ran out of espresso at the shop this morning. Before when this has happened we've used some of the dark roasted Guatemalan that we always have on hand for cold press. It's kind of icky as a shot, but it's dark enough to cut through 14oz of milk in a latte and still taste like something. This morning though, I just didn't want to do that to my customers.

We've been pulling some lighter roasted Costa Rica as a single origin espresso lately. It has some nice flavor complexity after the initial brightness wears off. It's good as a shot, but doesn't stand up to a lot of milk so I couldn't just start using it as our main espresso.

So... what if I mix them? I tried blending equal parts Guatemalan and Costa Rica and threw in some Kenya we had on hand for extra sweetness. Instantly I had an emergency espresso blend to take us through the morning until our bean delivery arrived!

It's not what I would ever choose to drink as an espresso, but I'm pretty pleased with how well it worked considering what I had to work with. (For what it's worth, Michelle preferred it in Americano form over brewed coffee.)

Published Latte Art

The current issue of Lavender Magazine has an article on Amore Coffee (containing some correct and some incorrect information!) I was working when the photographer was shooting for the article, and made this latte. It's on page 85 of the July 20 - Aug2 2007 issue.

The Rosetta Quest

I first started drinking coffee in the summer of 1999 when I worked at the Acoustic Cafe in Eau Claire, WI. At that point I drank flavored brews ("highlander grog" being one of my favorites, partly for the name's sake). My introduction to the espresso machine for that job lasted less than five minutes and consisted mostly of, "warm the milk here and press this button for the shots." I cringe when I think of the hideous drinks I served people back then simply because, like so many baristas, I didn't know any better.

That summer I visited Libby in St. Paul. (We were decidedly "just friends" then!). She took me to a small, dark, somewhat pretentious coffee shop called Amore. I remember I ordered a short vanilla latte. After just a couple of sips, I realized that the drink I had in my hand was far more delicious than anything I knew how to make. I had encountered a whole new level, and it was exciting.

Three years later, after graduating from college and moving to St. Paul, I started working at Amore Coffee. Chip, who owned Amore at that time, took a much more studied approach to barista training. He spoke of quality, consistency, and hinted of his own past studying with some guru in Seattle. I learned how to make drinks as good as the latte that amazed me a few years ago.

Things stayed the same for a long time after that. I thought we had the best coffee in town, and we very well might have. I knew other good baristas, but nobody that knocked my socks off. Then one day we hired a cocky post-modern preppy kid named Billy. I made him a latte. He wasn't impressed. He made me one. I was impressed. He could steam milk finer than I could. He could free-pour perfect, pretty lattes with just the right amount of milk and no spoon. He left town within a few weeks, but he'd made his mark. Again, I'd encountered a new level.

After that, I started running into others whom I thought of as "rock star" baristas. On a return trip to Eau Clarie I had an amazingly beautiful latte at my old favorite place, Racy D' Lenes Very Coffee Lounge. It turns out that while I'd been living in St. Paul the business had been bought by someone who'd spent time in Seattle.

The biggest encounter for me, though, came at Kopplin's Coffee, where I got to know two guys named Andrew who could pour the prettiest lattes I'd ever seen. I got particularly hooked on a video my buddy Pat took of one of the Andrews pouring a leafy design called a rosetta. I watched it over and over again. I wanted to be able to do that! I looked at instructions online and chatted with both Andrews. Within a couple of weeks and a lot of reworking of my espresso machine techniques I started pouring a few sickly little rosettas and serving them to costumers. They were impressed because they'd never seen anything like it before, but I just wanted to make them look more like the amazing ones I'd seen examples of!

So here I am, just barely stepping up into my latte art adventure. The picture on top of this post I took yesterday. It's currently got four stars on ratemyrosetta.com. I want to get better. Maybe I'll even compete some day. Does it really matter? I'm not sure, but I'm having a lot of fun.