yet another Oregon coffee report

I recently made from my annual trek to the Beaver State, spending time as always in Portland and Eugene.

in the garden area at Equiano Coffee Roasters, Eugene

I’m convinced that Portland is America’s best coffee city, Cofflandia if you will. Why, you ask?

  • large number of quality cafés
  • home to some of the country’s best roasters
  • the city has a large geographic footprint, but the high quality cafes are spread all over
  • Portland is a magnet for coffee talent

Let’s dig into the details. Click to keep reading.

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Matty’s Pacific Northwest Coffee Adventures: Part Two

see Part 1 and Part 3

The second leg of the trip was in Portland, Oregon. The city is still scarred from a year of political violence, and there was a sense of uncertainty of when or if some kind of normal will return, and what it will look like. But the attractions of the Rose City are still clear.

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Power Rankings: August 9

One man’s opinion. Ask me tomorrow and I’m likely to tell you something completely different.

Roasters
1. Onyx
2. Heart
3. Verve
4. Sweet Bloom
5. Counter Culture

DMV Cafés
1. Café Unido
2. The Coffee Bar (Shaw)
3. Baked & Wired
4. Dua Coffee DC
5. Northside Social (Arlington)
HM (alphabetically): Kaldi Social House (Silver Spring), Lost Sock, Maketto, Swings (Alexandria), Takoma Bev Co, Vigilante (Hyattsville)

Matty’s 2019 holiday gift guide

not the author
photo: sprudge.com

Ah, that time of year has come yet again. Kindly consider this an update to my holiday gift guide from 2018; all the items there are still recommended. I’ll try to add a few more suggestions, including add-ons to last year, to help you delight the coffee nerd in your life. Just a disclaimer, I’m not getting any kind of click-through payments or other compensation from anyone on these; just my own opinions, for whatever they are or are not worth.

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mini-review: Colony Club

I ran out of beans for making coffee at home over the Thanksgiving holiday. The last batch I went through was the seasonal Otoño blend from Intelligentsia, a big, bold monster with tons of flavor that produced a lot of crema. This time I wanted to get something from Heart, a terrific roaster from Portland, OR, which has become my favorite.

Not a lot of shops in the DC area carry Heart’s beans, but I knew of one which I had been meaning to try out, Colony Club in the Park View neighborhood in Washington. I had stopped in once before, but if was just after 5pm, when they stop serving coffee for the day and switch over completely to being a bar.

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Matty’s Holiday Coffee Gift Guide

this is the original 2018 version; also see my 2019 holiday gift guide

You can do better than a Starbucks gift card. 

Here are a few suggestions for showing a little holiday love to the coffee drinker in your life.  Prices are as of this date and, like much in life, subject to change. Shop around for best deals.

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