Cafe Profile: Bloc 11 in Somerville, MA

Bloc 11 Cafe

Cafe Profile:  Bloc 11 in Somerville, MA.  I had the pleasure to stop in at a great cafe on a recent trip to Somerville, MA.  

Bloc 11

11 Bow Street

Somerville, MA 02143:

Bloc 11 is a massive cafe set up in what looks to be in an old bank with a Yoga studio on top.  The space is open, and bright, with nice, roomy outdoor seating.  Even with two cash registers, there is always a line.   With good reason.  It seems that this cafe often switches between roasters.   I ordered a double espresso (i use the double as a yard-stick by which to measure cafes).  It was balanced, and neat, with a pleasant acidity.  They also carry a hefty number of retail bags by Stumptown, Intellegensia and Counter Culture.  The food was also very good (Sandwiches and the like) and their baked goods were fresh and rich.  A word of warning:  all of their coffees have to be shipped in, so if you are buying a retail bag, make sure to check the date.  Some of it is very fresh, but some of it is a bit past prime.  In either case, the baristas are skilled, the beans are great and the equipment is quality, so what's not to like?  Here are the pics:

Bloc 11 Cafe

Bloc 11

Bloc 11 Cafe

Bloc 11 Cafe

Bloc 11 Cafe

Bloc 11 Cafe

Corgi!

Stumptown Releases by Chart

We received our August, 2012 Stumptown new release samples today! But before we present them with our thoughts, I thought I might do something of a retrospective on Stumptown releases for as long as I have data: 7 releases between March 2011 thru August 2012. Note that the charts exclude Grand Cru and Decaf:

Origin Breakdown of Stumptown Releases

Africans by Country and Number

Latins by Country and Number

Stumptown-Releases-by-Avg

Release pricing over time is interesting, especially when compared to the spot price of Arabica coffee as traded on the NYMEX. As you can see below, the direction of prices per pound are opposites, with Stumptown increasing gradually from March 2011 thru August 2012 and the spot price of coffee falling over that same period. The opposite price trends highlight what Third Wave Coffee is all about, the decommoditization of the coffee. Stumptown Coffee is not just coffee as the price increases in a period of coffee prices declines demonstrates. We'll that's all for now.

Spot Coffee Prices ($/100lbs) 03.2012-08.2012

Rise Up Coffee in St. Michaels, Maryland

So while I spend most of my time dealing with good office coffee, I also like to travel.  But I have a hard time forgetting about coffee, even if its just for a weekend. By Adam Belanich

This past weekend I went down to Maryland with a few friends of mine to take advantage of Blue Crab and Soft-shelled Crab season.  While the focus of the trip was on eating an unhealthy volume of shellfish, we happened to pass a coffee shop, and were so interested we ended up going back to see what it was about.  I was surprised to find only organic coffees, on-site roasting and a pour-over bar.

Rise Up Coffee

The shop is Rise Up Coffee, and they do in house, small batch roasting of organic single-origin coffees.  I went on a Sunday, so they hadn't roasted in a bit, but I was able to purchase a 1lb of Indonesia Single Origin for $15, and they were happy to brew me a cup in a Pour-over.  The beans were a little bit old at that point (07.06.12) roast date, so some of the brighter notes were gone, but all in all it was a decent in unremarkable cup.  My friend got one of their blends and I have to say that it was significantly better.  It had a rather strange flavor profile with a good bit of acidity up front and an abruptly clean aftertaste.  It was a very interesting, if not terribly balanced cup.  I have some photos below for your viewing pleasure.

Rise Up Coffee (1 of 7)

Rise Up Coffee (2 of 7)

Rise Up Coffee (3 of 7)

Rise Up Coffee (4 of 7)

Rise Up Coffee (5 of 7)

Rise Up Coffee (6 of 7)

Rise Up Coffee (7 of 7)

I would recommend this place to anybody who was heading down to the Chesapeake to ingest unhealthy quantities of shellfish.  To be honest, I don't think this would be my favorite cafe if it were in Brooklyn.  The beans were a bit old and the selection small at that time.  But at the same time, it doesn't really have a fair view of the place.  I tend not to like Indonesians, so it shouldn't really be surprising that I didn't like this one.  Their brew technique was quite good though, their branding was slicky and I think, pretty cool (even if it does look a bit like Irving Farms), the staff kind.  I like being able to brew a batch and I support local roasting efforts.  To be honest, little places like this are spreading the good word and even if they don't have the infrastructure of say Stumptown to go and work directly with farmers, by having a good quality roast and single-origin beans, they are already expanding good coffee into places where you wouldn't expect it.

How Better Coffee Tastes: Stumptown Latins Visualized

We love infographics/data-visualizations here at Joyrideas you might have noticed from past blog posts such as Coffee and the Economy, Tracking Caffeine with Style, and Coffee Export Data Visualization.  And while we normally share work by others that we find interesting, from time to time, we roll up our sleeves, compile our own data sets, and generate our own visualizations, made possible by some very cool (and free) online resources, such as Many Eyes. Why data visualization, why infographics?  Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and an infographic is a picture on steroids!  In particular we enjoy how data visualization affords us new perspectives on familiar facts and info.  For example, today we decided to see if any trends emerge when we compile several flavor descriptions together and visualize them as a set.  Specifically, we aggregated the flavor profile descriptions of  Stumptown's 2012 Latin America offerings.

We collated the descriptions for all of Stumptown's current Latin offerings, removing articles, prepositions, pronouns, etc., to hone in on the adjectives, adverbs, and verbs.  The infographic that follows spatially represents the frequency with which certain words are used.  As the graphic indicates, the three most common flavors used to describe this year's Latin offerings are Caramel, Apple, and Chocolate:

It will be interesting to see how the Latins compare to the African descriptions or the Indonesian description. It would also be kind of cool to see how the popularity of specific words changes from year to year. After all, it was just two years ago that apparently everything tasted Meyer Lemons. Now that I can finally buy a Meyer Lemon at Fairway, it's use in coffee flavor profiling has all but disappeared.

Tasting with Cafe Integral

One of the things I like most about my job is that I get to meet cool people and, of course, drink great coffee. I want to tell you this guy's story because his passion for the craft of coffee sourcing, roasting and brewing is immediately clear. His name is Cesar. This guy started out doing photography and was way into his coffee.  A Nicaraguan by extraction, he was bothered that while Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama were establishing their chops as serious producers of seriously good coffee, Nicaragua was being left behind.  So he went to Nicaragua and exported a pile of quality green beans.  He then set up a little roastery up on 200th street and started making Cafe Integral.  Now he roasts himself, operates a delivery service for galleries, co-ops and individuals, runs his cafe with his own Strada, and generally hustles like nobody else.

Cafe Integral

Being entrepreneurially minded ourselves, we can appreciate the difficulty of doing everything from packaging to fulfillment and brewing all on your own, and we think that he has a really cool idea.  His coffees are all Nicaraguan (not unusual to have single national origins) but interestingly, he divides and brews them by single varietal.  We took home three varietals to taste and we'll break it down below.

NOTES:  All of our brewing was done on our dinged-up and oft-repaired office chemex, with 42-43g coffee to 700g unfiltered water.  The filter was bleached.  A small sample of each was cupped for the wet-nose.  The chemexed coffee was tasted hot, and again tepid.

The Cattura

Joyride Office Coffee- Cafe Integral

Caturra is a fairly typical varietal, found in many of our current coffees (the Stumptown's Peruvian, for example, has caturra as a component).  I have never really tried this varietal on its own so it is a bit difficult for me to say what is the Farm and roasting vs. what is actually the nature of the varietal.  The dry nose is sharp and acidic with underlying florals.  Wet, it has florals and grains.  The flavors I got from the cup were bittersweet chocolate,  wildflower honey and a sweet and sour berry note.  It has a slight tannins.

The Maracaturra

Joyride Office Coffee- Cafe Integral Maracaturra

The Maracaturra is a hybrid of the Caturra and Maragogype varietals.  The beans are closer to their Maragogype heritage, but lack a certain immensity.  The coffee isn't really what you would expect from a Latin coffee.  The nose is distinctly baking spices.  The cup, by contrast, is pleasantly acidic with a hint of south asian spices and a baking spice finish.  The whole cup is round full.

Maragoype

Joyride Office Coffee- Cafe Integral Maragoype

The beans were like nothing I had ever seen before.  They were large, broad and squared at the edges in a way I normally associate with Indonesian beans, but they are simply put juicy looking; fat and almost bursting.  The cup is equally larger than life.  It has a sweet fruit aroma.  The cup itself is dense but smooth and the flavors are heavily nutty with a molasses finish.

Here is a comparison for the different varietals against a ruler in cm.  These beans are pretty epically large.  You should swing by the cafe if you are in the area; the coffee is good and the location is interesting.

Cafe Integral- Joyride Office Coffee

A big thanks to Cesar for letting us come in and for the espressos!  We had a great time.

Cafe Integral Joyride Office Coffee