RoastMonkey

Oooooh.  I'll be on the lookout.  I used to save my last Bolivares to buy El Rey in the airport on my way out of Caracas.  I'm curious how they compare.

It's hard to argue "local" with chocolate unless you are in Central or South America (in this hemisphere), so someone came up with "bean-to-bar." 

Can't disagree more. Traditionally, chocolate makers bought processed cocoa butter and made their bars from that. The amount of complexity you lose in that drawn-out production chain is huge. A bean-to-bar chocolate maker has to roast the cocao, crack it, winnow it, then turn into cocao butter before mixing it with sugar and form it into bars. Try a fresh, bean-to-bar chocolate bar and I defy you not to notice an immediate difference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO22DScPvTs

Potomac Chocolate is a local (Woodbridge, VA), artisan bean-to-bar chocolate maker that receives national accolades. We sell them through the Winter and the bars are available at most of DC chocolate shops.

The coffee brewing class is set for January 11 and will be at CulinAerie. If interested in attending, you can sign up here:

https://www.culinaerie.com/reserve.php?type=m&machid=&start_date=&resid=sc15283c8ac41795&scheduleid=sc14873d577f22a7&is_blackout=0&read_only=&pending=&starttime=&endtime=&showReserve=1&seatsAvail=16

Thanks

Joel

Psst - Very Old Barton is readily available at Magruder's in Chevy Chase as well. Easily my favorite bargain bourbon.

Thanks for the info. It really is a great bargain whiskey. I still prefer a bottle of Eagle Rare or Evan Williams Single Barrel, the latter when I can find it, but both of those are twice the price of VOB.

I want to put in a kind word for our own Joe Riley of Ace Beverage (Joe, I'm sorry, I don't know what your official title is).

A couple weeks ago, I wrote Joe and asked him to assemble me a case of various upscale liquors, two of each so I could try one, and "bunker" the other; along with a few bottles of bitters for me to have just in case I ever decide to start making cocktails.

I named an approximate total price I wanted to spend, and he came up with what I believe is the finest selection of liquors in that price range that anyone could have concocted. If you want to begin (or supplement) a "home liquor cabinet," I would start by writing Joe Riley. While I picked up my goodies from him yesterday, we both agreed that we're a couple of grumps, basically misanthropes, but if everyone in the world was like Joe, there would be no need - he's one of the good ones, and I feel lucky to know him.

Cheers,

Rocks

I concur. I was in a week or two ago and got some great whiskey recommendations, including Very Old Barton (a bargain bottle I had stopped looking for after not being able to find it anywhere in the area) and Ouroboros, an American peated single malt whiskey.

On previous visits I have also been pointed to great selections like Four Roses single barrel and Henry McKenna single barrel.

By far the best selection and most knowledge in DC Metro.

Riffing on the "what is good coffee" notion, it occurs to me how subjective taste really is. For those of who don't already know this, "qualia" is a philosophical concept that, to sum it up as succinctly as possible, refers to the indescribable experience of the senses.

I can appreciate a good dark roasted coffee, but generally prefer something lighter due to the fact that you taste more of the coffee and less of the roast. Coffee beans have more than 400 flavor compounds, and in my opinion, a good roast highlights that complexity instead of masking it.

Again as a matter of taste, I don't really enjoy much of the light-roasted coffee from specialty wholesale roasters who, in my professional opinion, roast their coffee too fast. While this enhances the acidity or brightness of the coffee, in my experience, it doesn't allow for full flavor development while again imparting a flavor from the roasting process. The cynic in me believes that some roasters have actively cultivated a taste for this flavor profile because it gives the beans more shelf life than coffee roasted to bring out a fuller profile. But ultimately, I just don't enjoy that taste, and it a wholly subjective assessment based on my own palate. I know many other people do like it.

I think good coffee is in the taste buds of the drinker, to paraphrase an old saying. But I will happy cede consistency to the chains. When coffee is good, it is really fucking good. If the coffee you are drinking doesn't, even occasionally, blow you away, you need to drink different coffee.

I really want to do another coffee classes, this time focused more on better brewing at home. The last one I did, with Living Social, went fairly well, but LS is laser targeted on a very specific demographic and I was hoping to hit a wider mark with the next one. Does anyone know of a similar service that hosts cooking classes I could approach? I'd like to do it in a demo kitchen to make it as practical as possible.

Hey All,

I am just catching up on this thread. My only comment would be that while we believe our espresso program is very competitive with other top coffee shops in the city, our focus is and always has been on brewed coffee. I feel that this is the best way to highlight both the natural product and the wide spectrum of flavors it exhibits. I think I can safely say we are the only shop in the DC Metro area that offers twelve different origins all of which have been roasted within a week of when we serve it (we sell all our beans within three days of roasting them or take them off the shelf).

I enjoy a good latte as much as the next guy, but the real joy for me is savoring a good cup of black coffee.

From a professional perspective, I wish more customers would complain when they get a bad cup of coffee rather than just fixing it with lots of cream and sugar. I know that we work really hard to produce a consistently good product, but there are too many variables for us to hit 100%. As nicely as possible, I try to tell other coffee shops when I have a bad experience. If they quality control in place, it can only help them improve. I rarely order coffee at restaurants because I know all the red flags. I am always tempted to order one anyway, but I am usually dining with the GF and she gets a bit upset with me for ordering something I know is going to be bad.

BTW, I recently had a cup at the end of my meal at Woodberry Kitchen and found it pretty underwhelming, not bad, just largely flavorless. I don't think it is a problem with the preparation, just that I find Counter Culture's roasting style to emphasize acidity over depth and body. As I have told darkstar before, my belief is that this is more designed to impart consistency and shelf life than to explore the natural flavor of the coffee. I have unfortunately heard too many CC clients tell me they want their coffee to taste "tea like" (I have to wonder what they expect their tea to taste like, maybe water). In my opinion, many of the wholesale specialty roasters lean this way, including Ceremony, which I find a little more palatable than CC, but often with an unevenly balanced flavor profile.

This is all, of course, in reference to black coffee. I am guessing WK does a brisk business in espresso based milk drinks (they had an extensive list of latte variants, but only one caffeinated single-origin brewed coffee option) to support their coffee program, but I don't really consider 2ozs of espresso drowned in milk, no matter how pretty the latte art is, the mark of quality coffee (pardon the pun).

Second, of course, is the coffee.  I love the places in town we now have that are really coffee forward. By that I mean spots owned and operated by coffee obsessives who care intensely about their equipment, technique and, of course, their beans.  But, alas, an achilles heel of such places is they tend not to emphasize food very much, if at all.  Filter, Peregrine and Qualia are good examples.  All top of the heap in terms of the very best, painstakingly-made cups you'll find around here but, if you want a truly great muffin or scone to go with it, well, have to go elsewhere for that.

I have to disagree with you here. We source our baked goods from some of the city's top talent including Paisley Fig, Whisked and Thunder Pig. We bake it on site, throughout the day as needed for optimum freshness. Don't know when the last time you had a scone here, but I think our baked goods are very competitive and a great complement to our coffee.

We are happy to report that, thanks to this posting, Adam Litchfield has signed on as our new roaster-in-training. Adam comes to us with an impressive list of accomplishments, most recently creating a menu for Cause philanthropub. He also developed a bread program for Green Pig Bistro's launch and flipped pizzas beside Edan MacQuaid.  Beyond his clear appreciation for food and cooking, Adam has a voracious curiosity for knowledge and understanding about the elements of flavor. We know that Adam will make a valuable contribution to our roasting program.

Many people know Qualia Coffee as one of the best coffee shops in DC, but it is also the home of Fresh Off the Roast, a boutique-scale roasting label with ambitions of national stature. At Fresh Off the Roast, we have one of the most technically advanced store-front roasting operations in the country with a laser focus on the quality and freshness of our beans. We also source distinctive single-origin coffees from around the world, offering a dozen or more varieties at a time. We sell all of our beans within three days of roast and all our brewed coffee within one week of roast.

We are looking for a roasting apprentice who will be able to work 4-5 days a week to learn the art and science of roasting. Candidates should have a passion for their work, the curiosity to learn new things, the malleability to take direction and the attention span to focus on one task at a time. Formal coffee experience is not necessary, but a love of coffee is.

The Details:

• This is a salaried position with room for advancement as our company grows.
• We roast 7 days a week, 364 days a year, so weekday and weekend shifts will be required.
• To apply, please email joel-at-freshofftheroast.com, including a brief description of yourself, your experience or background, your availability and any other information you deem relevant.
• We ask that you make at least a one-year commitment to work for us.

I am actually pretty excited about this. We put in two sessions picking the pairings for this event, and once I came down from the sugar and caffeine high, I was pleasantly surprised by the interplay of flavors we were able to achieve. Here is the event announcement: https://www.facebook.com/events/159594040901626/

Joel

Sunday, August 25th will be a special tasting featuring coffee from Haiti as well as a question and answer session with the young men who have been working with the farmers to bring this excellent coffee to us. Haitian coffee has the potential to be as good as if not better than some of the more popular and expensive island coffee such as Kona or Jamaica Blue Mountain. In fact, the Blue Mountain varietal that Jamaica is so well known for was originally planted in Haiti before being imported to Jamaica. Unfortunately, the lack of investment and infrastructure in Haiti has meant that not much Haitian coffee makes it out of the country and what little does is funneled through the Dominican Republic, where most of the profit on the beans goes to middle men. Our importer, Cafe Kreyol, is working to change this by ensuring the provinence of the coffee as well as a fair wage for the growers.

No need to register. Just show up with your taste buds ready to be tantalized. We do ask that people come promptly between 2 and 2:30 as the flavor of the coffee starts to fade by thirty minutes after brewing.

I offer twice monthly coffee tastings the second and fourth Sunday of every month starting promptly at 2pm. Just to clarify, these are not cuppings, which are a more specialized procedure used within the industry. Although we apply some of the techniques of a cupping to our tastings, what we offer is more akin to a wine tasting in which you are trying several different coffees at the same time, giving you an opportunity to compare and contrast them. It's also an opportunity to ask any questions you might have about the origin, processing, roasting and brewing of coffee.

There are a few more details on our web site here: http://goo.gl/Mqhfei

Joel

Give me a shout if you would be interested in having some locally roasted coffee represented. Joel

This listing is also available on our web site. I have updated to clarify some confusion about what the internship involved and the paid position we are looking to fill. Here is the updated listing:

Qualia Coffee is home to Fresh Off the Roast, a small-batch coffee roaster with a unique philosophy: that coffee should be treated like fresh produce. When roasted properly, coffee peaks in flavor between three and five days after being roasted. After nine or ten days, the coffee's natural flavors begin to rapidly dissipate. Due to these factors, we sell all our coffee directly to customers to ensure they get it within this short freshness window. Unlike other coffee roasters, we are not forced to compromise the roasting process to extend the shelf life or impose artificial consistency on our coffee. We seek only to bring out the natural complexity and richness of each of our carefully sourced single-origin coffees.

We are currently seeking roasting interns to train under our owner and roastmaster. This is an unpaid internship, but not free labor. The coffee you roast will not be sold customers. You will also have access to a copious amount of free coffee, as well. The purpose of the internship is to both educate participants as well as to serve as a talent search. One or two interns will be offered a part-time roasting position.

Applicants should:

Have a deep and abiding interest in coffee as a natural product.

Be available to work at least 3 days a week. including some weekends.

Be willing to commit at least one year to working for the company.

Be diligent, patient, focused and have an eye for detail.

Please direct message us through DR.com to arrange an interview.

I've been to Qualia many times now since my first visit back in May. I really like the relaxed vibe, outdoor seating areas, and it's only a quick jaunt across the park to get there from my house. Qualia seems to take its coffee seriously and committed to its own roasting program. But, during my last visit there, the coffee was just not good. The taste was so excessively burnt/over roasted, I couldn't drink it. I had ordered a latte with whole milk, and even the milk couldn't cut the burnt taste. (It also didn't taste like whole milk.)

I'm not sure what happened on this last visit. Maybe a bad batch? Barista having an off day? Service was friendly and attentive, but this was clearly not a good pour. The redeeming factor was a good, crusty bagel, ever so slightly toasted. the way i like it. Wonder where they source their bagels from. It was definitely not a "roll with a hole".

Given the quality and growth of the ICH in the DC, I now expect more from my coffeehouse in terms of coffee quality. Hope Qualia's roasting was just having an off day.

We keep a sample and detailed roast log of every batches, so I can state with some certainty that the beans weren't over roasted. It's much likely that the shot was over extracted, which would make it taste very bitter and sour. This can happen pretty easily if the barista is distracted for even a few seconds.

If someone has a bad experience at Qualia, I would love to hear about it then and there, when we have the opportunity to fix it. We do make mistakes and coffee is a fickle mistress.

Joel

Joel, explain a bit how you source your coffee. Through a wholesaler, right? I've come across some shops around the US who, though small, source directly but that seems much more the exception than the norm. Too expensive for a small business to do that. The regular travel alone--to develop and deepen relationships with farmers, check crops and cherries, consult on processing etc.--isn't affordable for most or can break the back of a shop trying to differentiate itself that way.

We get all our coffee from importers, although some of our importers are the growers themselves. There are wholesalers, but that would just add another layer of middlemen. We do lean on our importers to develop good relationships in the countries. The logistics of importing coffee are enormously cumbersome and not something I would look to wade into any time soon.

Joel

Ah, I finally score some cool points -- I like lighter roasts as well. Glad to hear your thoughts as a roaster. But I guess what I'm asking when I say "baseline": is there a particular bean (i.e. varietal, origin, harvest in your words) that is readily available to most roasters, that is best-suited somehow to evaluate the roaster's style? Or to evaluate a brewer's style? When you walk into an unfamiliar craft coffeeshop, is there a particular v/o/h that you choose just to use as a baseline of evaluation? If not, how do you evaluate them?

I actually have two very different answers to this.

If you want a coffee that will be commonly available across different roasters, your best bet is an Ethiopian, a Yirgacheffe or Sidamo, or a Brazil Mogiana or Cerrado. Those would offer a nice generic basis for comparison and are often available year round.

But, if I want to really know how good a roasters is, I would probably look for the coffee they offer with the most biographic information. The more specific details you have about where the beans come from and how it is processed, the more origin character or unique terrior it should have. If they offer a coffee from a specific small farm that has been lovingly cultivated by a dedicated and experienced grower, the coffee should be bursting with flavor and complexity.

Joel

So, what are your baseline roasts/beans for coffee brewing? What do you look for in them? I need to rethink how I evaluate/brew my cups.

Although I will keep an open mind to many of your coffee suggestions, I absolutely refuse to part with my Winnie the Pooh ceramic mug--some rituals are too sacred.

Strictly speaking, espresso is a brewing method and does not refer to any specific bean or roast. Any coffee can be brewed on an espresso machine, whether it works palate wise is another matter.

My preferred brewing method for judging coffee is the hand-poured drip method. I think there is a strong argument as well for French press. A vacpot is absolutely the best, but even I have a hard time pulling that one off on a regular basis.

I know a lot of people like a dark roast, but for me, you lose too much of the natural flavor of the coffee. I think a good roast is invisible, that is to say you taste the coffee not the roasting process. I roast as light as a bean will allow. Unfortunately I think some people may have been turned off by light roasts that were handled poorly and ended up tasting overly woody, astringent or sour.

I will definitely take a drive up to Petworth and your shop the next time I'm down in DC with my car.

Qualia is two blocks from Petworth-GA Ave Metro station and on two bus lines. No need to drive. Petworth is also home to the only Scandanavian restaurant in DC, as well as Chez Billy, which has recently received a very favorable review from Tom Siestma.

Good stuff, Joel. I should correct a misstatement I made, which was to say "beyond varietal..." where I meant to say origin, and by terroir I mean micro-lot or single-estate. Obviously there's far more going on than whether the bean is Arabica or Robusta.

Arabica and Robusta are different species. Within Arabica, there are dozens of different varietals, including Bourbon, Caturra, Maragogype, SL28, etc. Most farms cultivate several different varietals of coffee trees, although you will find many examples of single-varietal beans which may or may not be from a single farm. This is where things get really interesting. We currently feature two micro-lots from Nicaragua, one is from a small farm that has 12 different varietals of coffee tree growing on it and the other is a single varietal (Java varietal imported from Indonesia) from several different farms. Each is distinctive.

In terms of espresso being an indicator of good coffee, that has not been my experience. I have been to plenty of good coffee shops that could make a mean espresso, but couldn't produce a decent cup of coffee. Unfortunately, I have found that much of the barista culture revolves more around the ability to make a pretty latte than knowing much about the beans themselves or about brewing methods than espresso.

Joel