Location: Empire Espresso
Roaster: Kuma
Price incl. tax: $3.00
Taste: sweet acidity + tobacco
C&P: tasty crema on the first sip
Personality and atmosphere score: 2
Coffee
This year consolidated the trend away from espresso towards manually brewed coffee. The portafilter.net podcast explains that this is a way to make specialty coffee more accessible to the general public. Whereas last year Chemex and Hario were the favorites, what Seattle baristas are really excited about now is Clever, aeropress and siphon.
Fortunately there are still plenty of opportunities for different kinds of espresso in Seattle, like those offered by Milstead and Co. since it’s opening in September:
Like the opening of Analog Coffee in 2011, I’ll be looking forward to Ballard Coffee Works in 2012.
Music
This shows how much I have not listened to KEXP this year: from the 91 Top Listener Voted Albums of 2011, I had never heard the name of 44 of the bands and only know how 31 of them sound like.
Celebrating the 200th espresso since the beginning of the year.
- What can I get started for you today?
- I would like to have an espresso for here?
- Just the espresso? Just a single shot?
- Yes, please.
- Would you like to have some whipped cream on top?
———-
- What can I do for you today?
- I’m thinking …
- Something delicious?
- Yeah! I’ll have a vanilla latte. Which pastries do you have?
The Beginning of the End of Facebook?
A 15 year old agrees:
“When I logged in, there used to be 200 notifications, now there is none. I have 500 friends, nobody can keep up with that and in fact I don’t care what most of them are doing anyway, they were just acquaintances. I don’t go there that often anymore.”
Outstanding Stumptown Guatemala El Injerto!
In musical notation, a cesura, represented by a pair of forward slashes, is an interruption during which time is not counted.
The Stumptown Guatemala Finca El Injerto was one of the coffees used at the NWRBC 2011.
Although by-the-cup pour over brew methods have replaced the pressure profiling trend this year, the Seattle espresso scene is still alive and changing for the better. The variety of amazing flavors being extracted is increasing mainly, but not only, due to the introduction of new roasters.
Besides being the official representative of Handsome in town, Tougo offers occasionally Intelligentsia and Oslo. Aster changed to Olympia Coffee Roasters and Empire Espresso to Kuma. Milstead just introduced Coava. Analog Coffee elevated Herkimer to formerly unknown heights and Urban Coffee Lounge never disappoints on the allegedly unforgiving Stumptown. Although Neptune and Tougo sometimes have Velton, I’m still hoping to see a coffee shop that has it as standard offering.
All of them achieved the magical combination of excellent coffee + roaster + equipment + barista. Adding to the Seattle incumbents, there is now almost 20 great roasters to chose from. In alphabetical order:
Take that, Portland!
