Bottled Up

Every so often, this Bay Area baby needs his Bottle.

I speak, of course, of Blue Bottle Coffee Company, the apotheosized Mission District java mecca—and subject of a September 2011 Fortune feature—that, much to my delight, recently reached the Right Coast.  A cleverly re-purposed Berry St. industrial space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has become their base of East Coast operations, housing a full-fledged roastery, baking facilities and a coffee bar earning instant respect from resident neighborhood hipsters (and they're a very discriminating crowd).  Word on the street has founder James Freeman frequenting the site on a bi-monthly if not more basis, ensuring the same San Francisco treat caffeine connoisseurs have come to expect from the Blue Bottle brand.

Even in a town so stubbornly stuck on its Starbucks, Blue Bottle's refreshingly unconventional dogma has earned it a fast following in Gotham, spreading by word of mouth and slipping into conversations lubricated by lead-ins like, "There's a place in Brooklyn with s'mores made from moonshine-laced marshmallows," or "Have you heard of the place with these crazy $20-grand Japanese coffee brewers?"  The company recently dropped pop-up perk points at such trafficked sites as High Line Park and Milk Studios, and will debut its second brick-and-mortar bar at Rockefeller Center this November. Not bad for a company humbly launched in 1999 as a bean counter in a Hayes Valley garage, and has barely been here a year and a half (the Berry Street roastcafé only opened in Spring 2010).

The entire roastery operation in Williamsburg, though partitioned,
is plainly visible to perking patrons in the building's cafe section,
offering an insider's look at what it takes to keep Blue Bottle brewing.

 My waits between fixes here are far too long—some more than others, but every one worth it. To get there takes being sardined onto any Bedford Ave.-bound cattle car L train, where fresh air is a premium, space is a luxury and comfort zones are too often nonexistent.  This was all too exacerbated during my first visit, when full service on the line was temporarily discontinued and Bedford became the transfer between two Manhattan and Canarsie-bound shuttle trains, creating a nightmarish scenario for anyone first boarding there on account of having to constantly compete with connecting passengers to plunge through the closing doors (which, despite pleas from increasingly irate MTA employees, few who missed three trains already seemed patient to stand clear of).  Subsequent trips have thankfully been more bearable.  Plus, even the slowest hop skip into the BK beats six hours in an airborne aluminum can back for a fix where Tony Bennett left his heart.

Lost in Nom: Blue Bottle's signature Stout
Coffee Cake w/Caraway Streusel

Today's trip involved finally trying Blue Bottle's much mentioned stout coffee cake, which after attending the Village Voice Brooklyn Pour the previous two weekends ago put the idea fresh in mind.  While the original secret to the revered recipe, developed by pastry chef Caitlin Williams Freeman (the founding Freeman's wife), was said to be Stout of Circumstance from Haight-Ashbury's Magnolia Gastropub, the Eastern equivalent substitutes Brooklyn Brewery's Black Chocolate Stout—true to their mantra of sourcing only local and sustainable ingredients.  Whatever the case, the resulting crisp but doughy delectable is, at least as far as I'm concerned, the chef-d'oeuvre of perk-paired pastries.  The caraway streusel crumble, grazing the pleasant of rolled oats and currant nuances,  complements the pecan flavors of moister inner contents that, with a swig of your latte, seems so sinful it should be banned in six southern states.

From its avant-garde business model to delivery of a consistently perfect product, Blue Bottle has proven itself the fresh, exciting force of positive energy in the coffee industry New York, New York needed.  To evoke some Sinatra, you've made it here—you'll make it anywhere.

Fact: You won't find a Kyoto brewer more stoke anywhere else in the five boroughs.
(Or in Connecticut, Long Island, Rhode Island, and definitely not...New Jersey).

Dark Roast

In our modern, high voltage times, there's few perks to being powerless.  The only thing worse than waking up to no power is not having the coffee to cope with it.  It's bad enough being deprived on a good day, let alone one where your house is 48º and you can't even shower because your well pump is as functional as the IRS.  Thanks to the cooperative incompetence of monopoly-holding utility companies with our collective proverbial balls in a vice grip and the "crisis management" politicians who afford them the disincentive for bringing their grid into the 21st century (or even the 20th), this is becoming an increasing problem in places like Upstate New York and Southern New England, where trees abound and the hilariously archaic Teddy Roosevelt-era technology of wire on ceramic insulator on rotting wooden poles are perpetual targets of deep-rooted assassins.  What also makes these areas so incredibly great is that, aside from being some of the highest taxed in the nation, residents receive virtually no basic services, are reliant entirely upon well water (needs power), septic (needs water), and also facing frigid temperatures (needs coffee, which needs water and, for most people, power).  So when the power goes in these places, you're pretty, well, boned.

Unless you live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, you're probably not prepared for two, three, four or more mornings without juice, and if your per diem perk comes from a Keurig or Mr. Coffee, you might not have a backup plan in place for your brewed awakening.  So if the status quo of our crumbling infrastructure chooses to torture you in this way, here's some hints at solving what will certainly be the least of your problems.

Rule 1) Always keep at least a two day supply of pre-ground in a cool, dry place.
Sure it won't be fresh, and you never know when you'll need it—but unless you've got an old school manual grinder handy, it's this or instant.  What's crap coffee on a good day beats nothing on a bad day.  Stocking a stash of pre-ground could save your sanity.

Rule 2) Be ready to fire.
This is when pyromania proves productive.  With wattage-requiring heat sources out, you'll need fuels for open fire.  If you've got a gas stove, fireplace, or BBQ grill, then great, fantastic, you're set!  If you don't, well, crap.  Consider keeping a butane torch, or canisters of chafing fuel like Sterno, in your emergency kit.  Yankee Candles aren't exactly economical, nor put out nearly enough BTUs, but I suppose a bold last resort.

Rule 3) MacGyver.
It's only human to be under prepared, so plan appropriately expecting an inevitable cruise or two on the failboat.  In our recent 6-day episode, I failed to abide by Rule 1 by replacing the pre-ground stash I depleted during the 5-day one preceding it by barely two months.  I solved the problem by bringing the battery backup off my Mac into the kitchen, plugging in the grinder and, in a moment of longing for instant gratification, even tapped in the Keurig for a cuppa.  (The remainder of the charge then replenished my MacBook battery, which was in turn draining to recharge my iPhone).  Best investment ever.

So even if you're stuck opening your garage door by hand and you smell like the sweaty leg of an Occupy Wall Street protester that's been in a cast for two months, you don't have to drive somewhere for overinflated caffeination.  This concludes my potentially pointless post.

Espresso 101

Yes, corporate coffee clowns—it takes more than the press of a button.  At least if it's done right, anyway.  From the famed Ritual Roasters in San Francisco's Mission District (and Octavia; and Jerrold Ave; and the Oxbow Market in Napa; and a roving repurposed 1950s camper trailer affectionately called "Sputnik"):

(Personal note: Having worked with vintage steam locomotives from the earlier part of the last century [and latter part of the previous one—aka, the 19th], I have an above average appreciation not just for any system wherein the human mind is entrusted with exponentially more skill than with the modern, computerized counterpart, but the willingness to practice "old fashioned way" despite the advent of an easier—though not necessarily superior—alternative.  Artisanal baristas of the world, I salute you.)

Me Joulies

First off, props to any Ali G. fans who get this post title.  Booyakasha.

Google is glorious, even if they are plotting to take over the world.   In searching for stoke stocking stuffers of caffeinated relevance, I came across this Kickstarter page pimping a clever new product to prospective bankrollers.

Hypothetical situation.  You're sitting at your desk with freshly poured perk that's too hot to drink.  Far too wee in the work day to sear your tongue like tuna tataki on the grill at Benihana, you set it aside, knowing it will be safely sippable sometime in the next several minutes.  Sometime in this dubious cooling period you've mentally allotted your cuppa, your boss saunters his egregious presence into the cubicle colony, peers downward into your carpet-lined hell cell of corporate conformity and either demands that one task you dread doing without caffeinated armament, or shares stories from his Sandals all-inclusive family getaway on some Caribbean island named for a fake-sounding saint you couldn't care less about.  And when the distraction is done, it's too late!  The warmth window has shut.  The virgin pour cooled into a cold, bitter spinster.  Nevertheless, you'll down it in despair.

It's a status quo we've come to accept.  And seriously, what's more offensive than the thought of microwaving a latte?  There must be something to stop this torture.

...and that's why these guys invented Joulies:

Coffee Joulies from Coffee Joulies on Vimeo.