A Ride to Kaffe 1668 for Los Volcanes

One July weekend, I had the opportunity to combine two of my favorite activities -- riding my bike through Manhattan and visiting new coffee shops. My family was traveling elsewhere, and New York had not yet fallen into the drippy hot torpor that has marked recent days. I rode down the west side a bit, diverted to to the Hudson River trail, then passed through TriBeCa, Chinatown, SoHo and my old East Village stomping grounds before chugging up the East Side -- a loop of sorts.

I made a pass by La Colombe Torrefaction, but I had already tried beans from there via B. Koffie, so I decided to check out Kaffe 1668, one of the shops highlighted in The Times a couple of months ago. Coffee Guatemala Antigua Los Volcanes

Purchased July 3 at Kaffe 1668, 275 Greenwich St., TriBeCa.

Roasted on June 27 by Plowshares Coffee Roasters of Hillburn, N.Y.

Description Creamy body; delicate, clean acidity; milk chocolate and orange citrus; smooth, sweet, dry finish.

In the cup I picked out this particular coffee because I had not tried anything from this roaster before. In the shop, I had a coffee brewed expertly by the cup in a Clover press. That was a Panama variety from Denver-based Novo. Full bodied, and smooth, with a milk chocolate flavor, this coffee was delicious, as anything brewed in an $11,000 machine should be. I drank it hot, because that's how I like coffee, though it would have been a good day for cold brew, which was also available.

The shop, located across from a Whole Foods, adds some style and ambiance to an otherwise mall-like block of sterility downtown. The front opens out on the street, and there are interesting light fixtures and a communal wood table, where I sat. I was able to lock my bike within view on a low fence around a tree, and there was more ample bike parking across the street near the Whole Foods.

There's free WiFi with your purchase, which I used to browse the shop's Web site, with its entertaining cartoons. As best I can tell, Kaffe 1668 doesn't have its own roaster, but features beans from Intelligentsia and other high-end roasters like Novo.

I left with a bag of this Guatemalan strapped to my bike. The bag itself is an impressive bit of green-ish technology, made from paper with a ziplock that can be resealed.

Plowshares, which has an excellent Web site, gives this description: "Los Volcanes coffee is grown in the valley's rich volcanic soils that were formed by the three volcanoes (Agua, Acatenango, Fuego)... Most of the coffee here is cultivated at 1,500 - 1,700 meters above sea level which helps gives this coffee a pronounced acidity that is clean but not overpowering." The Antigua valley is a prime coffee growing region about 40 kilometers from the city of that name in Guatemala, according to Plowshares. The beans with this name come from 34 growers who banded together in a cooperative in 2000.

I have been drinking a regular cup or two brewed at home every morning for the last couple of weeks. I don't have any complaint about it, but it hasn't been bowling me over. It does pass my no-milk test, which means it is not overly acidic to my taste. The citrus didn't overwhelm me, which is sometimes a complaint I have with the single-origin coffees promoted by many coffee aficionados. It is remarkably light-bodied and smooth, which is good on these sweltering days, though I tend to prefer a fuller flavor and more than a trace of chocolate.

Still, it was well worth the ride.

Since I am still dabbling with social media, I also documented this trip on Foursquare and Posterous. And now I am promoting this Wordpress blog post on Facebook and Twitter. On some level, I suppose this is a longer, multi-platform version of the classic Twitter update, "I am eating a sandwich."

(Yes, I am drinking a cup of coffee.)

A Couple of Shots of Soma by Barismo

It was a beautiful Memorial Day in New York, and I was getting down to the dregs of the bowl where I throw the leftover beans from my coffee experiments. It was starting to taste a little too much like the bitter Starbucks mistake from quite a while back. I took a bike ride down to my favorite indie coffee shop, Café Grumpy, using the newish Ninth Avenue lane, encountering just one illegally parked delivery truck that forced me to divert awkwardly into the street. On the way back, up the older Sixth Avenue lane, it was a nightmare of hazards -- cabs veering into the lane to get fares, jaywalkers, wrong-way cyclists and bladers, and, incredibly, a row of half a dozen police squad cars parked neatly in the lane in Herald Square. The N.Y.P.D. does what it pleases.

I'll note that 21st Street also has a great bike lane, except on Grumpy's block, where the police personal vehicles are parked at a slant. There's also a lack of good places to lock a bike. But I managed. There was quite a selection of beans waiting for me, including a big supply of Intelligentsia's delicious Micay Finca Santuario, but the white bag of this guest espresso from Barismo caught my eye. Name: Soma espresso

Origin: A blend: 75% Guatemala Finca Cardenas, 10% Guatemela Nimac Kapeh, 15% Kenya Kiandu.

Roasted: May 20 by Barismo of Arlington, Ma.

Purchased: May 25 at Café Grumpy, 224 W. 20th St., Manhattan, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

Description: According to Barismo's site: "Syrupy body and silky mature fruits. Thick and complex yet balanced. An espresso that exemplifies the character of its components but melds in harmony. From a light cask conditioned wine note to a syrupy body with a dash of mellow cocoa."

In the cup: My coffee quest was derailed in recent weeks by a variety of things -- work obligations, mainly, and no time to pick up some quality beans.

I've enjoyed every coffee I've had from Barismo, and this was no exception. When I got home and finished showering, I made a fresh shot of this (I had bought another coffee, but stuck that in storage for now). I should note that I did not replicate the precise instructions on the bag: "Pull 19 grams in a double basket for 26 to 28 seconds at 198 degrees Fahrenheit totaling 1.25 ounces." Basically, a smaller volume shot and a high temperature. I used my lazy Barista method, which is dictated by the lazy automated Jura machine that I own. It does the job, but I could be accused of "noodling around" in a manner that compromises quality for convenience. Guilty as charged.

The shot had a foamy creme -- almost like a head on beer. It was definitely syrupy and silky, and I'll have to take a rain check. I couldn't pick them up. Not that I cared much. Barismo's blog says there should be "deep red flecking and a heavy mouth feel." I didn't really see the flecking, but it was definitely a heavy espresso, which I like. It was a good espresso, and the components do blend together nicely. I made a second shot and definitely picked up the wine note and mellow cocoa. Barismo selections tend to grow on me as I drink them, and I think this one will follow the same pattern.

It certainly erased my irritation with some of the cycling obstacles on the trip down to Chelsea.

This was a good ending for a beautiful sunny weekend of cycling solo and with my daughter and some romping about with friends. As I was writing the date above, I was reminded that this was my mother's birthday. It had somehow slipped by me. I guess it was fitting to mark it with two of my favorite rituals, a ride through the city and shots of espresso from her native state of Massachusetts (born and raised in North Cambridge). Rest in peace, Catherine Gallagher LaForge, May 25, 1924 to March 26, 1985.

Blogs I Actually Enjoy Reading

I read blogs for my job. I used to read them for fun. There was a certain satisfaction circa 2002 in answering the question, "where did you hear that?" with the name of a blog the other person had never heard of, which by now is a blog that person is sick of reading. Of course, now dogs have blogs. Dogs. Have blogs. This is deplorable. One good thing about the old Internet was that we didn't know they were dogs. And we thought they were fascinating. Good blogs have a few things in common. They are the often the product of an obsession, or a collection of obsessions. They are reported. And, yes -- well-curated links count as reporting. Good blogs are surprising. They are fresh. They break news. They are visually interesting. They make us laugh. They make us email our friends. They are sometimes deep. They update frequently. In other words, they are nothing like the lame personal blog you are reading.

The true test is whether you return. Here are 10 blogs that get my repeat business. That means their feeds are in my top folder in Google Reader, and I scroll through the headlines every day, even if I don't read every post. They are not, generally, mean-spirited or political or full of opinion.

• BoingBoing I used to read BoingBoing when it was a print zine. By many measures, this group blog is consistently ranked at the top. Mark Fraunfelder, Corey Doctorow and Xeni Jardin, among other writers here, are some of the clearest thinkers about the Web and digital media. Obsessions include gadgets, steampunk, comics, copyright, robots, still and moving images, games, puzzles, madness, art. Chances are, if you come across something fresh and wild online, if it didn't originate on BoingBoing, it will be posted there within the next 10 minutes. If I could read just one blog, this is the one.
• Cool Tools One new tool recommendation a day. I have bought utensils, eco-friendly shoes, toys and gadgets recommended here. The blog was started by Kevin Kelly, former editor of the Whole Earth Review, Wired and the subject of one of the most interesting interviews ever to be broadcast on "This American Life," in 1995. Go listen to it.
• kottke.org Jason Kottke has been serving up fine hypertext products at his blog about the liberal arts since March 1998. He has his finger on the pulse of the Internet. Chances are, if you are about to blog it, Kottke has already blogged it. He has a nose for online innovation, curiosities, important trends and goofball concepts.
• Metafliter A community site started by Matt Haughey when blogs were still called weblogs. It is still going strong. It's hard to define what makes a good FPP, and I haven't tried in ages, but skip the newsfilter; the real action is in the comments, which are witty, intelligent and only sometimes brutal. And if you have a question about anything -- anything -- Ask Metafilter, and get multiple answers, in a feature badly copied by Yahoo, Google and others.
• Fimoculous Rex Sorgatz reads the Web so I don't have to, then he links to the best stuff. Short, to the point, prolific, on hot topics. He makes it look easy, but -- it isn't.
• Streetsblog If you don't ride a bike or walk on sidewalks in New York City, you may not want to read this blog, but I do and I do, so I do.
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog There must be 10,000 Apple and Mac news/rumor blogs, and I've read them all, but in the end you only need one, and this is the one I picked, because it taught me how to jailbreak my iPhone.
• Ephemeral New York "Chronicling an ever-changing city through fading and forgotten artifacts." I don't know how she finds this stuff, but it's all cool.
• Dvorak Uncensored Weird crime. Bizarre health claims. Why read it in tomorrow's Post or Daily News when you can read it at John C. Dvorak's WTF-news site first?

O.K., that's only 9. There are several tied for 10th place. I'll save them for another post.