Coffee, It's a Helluva Drug

Game changer

Sorry I’ve been silent for so long. No special reason, just been busy.

On a recent trip to Oregon I was visiting one of Coava Coffee‘s Portland cafés, and while waiting for my drink I noticed a display of instant coffee. I’ve been aware of the effort the last few years to make high quality coffee available in instant form, but hadn’t tried it yet. Probably too biased against freeze dried coffee, including memories of having Nescafé as the only option far too often. Figured I’d give it a try, so I grabbed a box.

Verdict: spectacular. Coava and their partner Swift Cup Coffee have managed to keep the great flavor you expect from craft coffee. It’s also the easiest way to get your fix, even more so than the single serve coffee bags from Counter Culture and others – no need for steeping time, no bag to dispose of. A real game changer if, like me, you don’t have many (or any) good coffee options near work. They also make decaf offerings, for all you latent Sanka fans out there.

Swift Cup, from Lancaster, PA, produces instant coffee for a number of specialty roasters in addition to Coava, including their own label. So if you see instant from a roaster you trust, shake off any freeze dried crystals prejudices and give it a try. You can also buy Coava’s instant from their website, sold in boxes of six for $16-$17, or in bulk pouches which deliver 25 servings for around $40.

update on D Light Café

An arrest has been made for the recent arson attack on D Light Café.

Here’s hoping they get up and running again soon. Can’t wait to enjoy another capuorange.

ETA: Huzzah! It looks there’s a capuorange in my near future

a heartbreaking update

Following up on a couple of recent posts on D Light Café and Bakery, home of the capuorange:

I stopped there this morning on my way to work, only to find this:

The door was open so I popped in. Anastasia and Vira Derun, the owners, were inside and looked absolutely devastated. They told me someone had set fire to the entrance at 5:00 am. Thankfully no one was hurt.

Here’s hoping the perpetrator is caught. You can help support the Deruns as they build the business back, through their GoFundMe drive.

Salt & Pepper Diner Essential Song of the Day for 1/26

I thought I would fight off my usual instincts and pick a song that was made in this century. So what if it’s 17 years old.

Some music resonates with you back to a certain point in your life. The album this came off was a staple at the time for me, and got worn out in the car during hellacious commutes. Our then-young kids actually liked it, so I think of driving around with them and also long drives with a close friend who enjoys great music and a lot of talking and a lot of laughter. Good times! Enjoy this one 21x in a row.

fussy & pretentious man, myth, legend

The New York Times‘ occasional Culinary Arts animated feature recently took on British coffee genius and YouTube star James Hoffmann. It was an interesting and visually arresting look into Hoffmann’s appeal and his path to coffee stardom.

One panel caught my eye, as it included Hoffmann’s French press recipe.

the easiest way to sample great coffee

Not too long ago a friend turned me on to a text subscription service for buying wine. You sign up with your credit card, address and phone number, and every day you get a text offering a quality wine for sale at a steep discount. If you want to buy it, all you do is answer the text with the number of bottles you want. As in sending a text that only says “2.” No minimum purchases, you can just lurk and never order or go nuts building a wine library as you go broke. I’ve enjoyed it, even if at times I’ve gotten a little side eye at home for buying too often. In my defense, whomever is writing the daily texts is one of the finest marketing writers I’ve ever encountered, the fact I’m not buying every day is an achievement.

It turns out that Fellow Products, the retailer of achingly beautiful consumer coffee equipment, has started a very similar service for coffee beans. Fellow Drops is a very similar no-commitment coffee subscription service run by text message. The difference from the wine text service is the tempting messages come once a week, rather than daily, and while the writing is still enticing it may not take the same strength of will as the wine texts to avoid ordering every single time.

I’ve ordered a few times, and been very pleased with the results. The offerings are always interesting and focus on high-quality growers and roasters, with attention paid to different coffee varietals and unique finishing processes. You’ll need a grinder or access to one, as it’s whole beans only.

I’ve covered earlier my first order, which was from Onyx Labs. Among the other orders I’ve made was one of three different varietals from Red Rooster Coffee, a notable roaster based in Floyd, VA that I’ve been meaning to try. So far every order has been absolutely exceptional.

So if you like trying new and exciting coffee at home, and the use of the term ‘curated’ outside of a museum doesn’t bother you, give it a shot. It’s great access to rarely available quality beans without having to hunt them down and check the roast date on the bag. You can sign up at the Fellow Products website.

Capuorange, the Update

Following up on my recent report about finding a unique beverage combining orange juice and espresso, I returned to D Light Café and ordered another Capuorange, this time to go. Being able to linger at the counter gave me a line of sight to how the drink is made.

The barista made a shot of espresso, poured it into a cup…… and then poured orange juice into a milk pitcher and steamed it with the espresso machine’s steam wand. Once the o.j. was hot and frothy, it was poured into the espresso. The ratio looked to be something like 10:1 juice to coffee.

Now things made a little more sense. Cuporange as in a cappuccino, with the milk replaced by orange juice. I hadn’t thought things through and assumed the juice was warmed on a cooktop or in a microwave. And I hadn’t realized just how much more juice there was than espresso.

I’m not saying this is right….

…but I’m not saying it’s wrong, either, know what I mean?

stepping outside the comfort zone

We went out for brunch this morning to D Light Café and Bakery, a new place we had read about which looked promising. It was indeed a delight (no pun intended), everything was delicious and the owners and their staff couldn’t have been nicer.

This bit in the article caught my eye:

And then there’s the Capuorange, a double shot of espresso mixed with orange juice. “It sounds strange,” admits Vira, who says the unusual wake-up concoction has earned a dedicated following.

Well that’s…. different. Sounded like it could be really interesting, really disgusting, or anywhere in between. The description brought back an unhappy childhood memory of the time I got the brilliant idea that if my orange juice and my bowl of Cheerios each tasted good, they would taste even better together! Spoiler: they did not. At all.

Past experience be damned, I figured I had to find out how this combination tasted.

say hello to my little friend

This is Eddie.

I’d been thinking about finding an affordable way to improve my home gear to make better coffee. For me, ‘affordable’ would not mean splashing out north of $1,700 for a Rocket Appartamento, even if it’s gorgeous and Gail from Seattle Coffee and my buddy Dillon each have one.

I was browsing through the Fellow Products website with that idea in the back of my mind when I came across the Eddie pitcher. Hmm, maybe it wouldn’t make a big difference in taste, but it would be nice to up my milk art game. Also very convenient to have a bigger pitcher than my stock Breville, for those times I make two or three coffees at a time for me and the fam.