2012 Easter Tofino return to food coffee life and love · Monday April 9, 2012 by colin newell
Andrea and I have been popping into Tofino since the 90’s – we were married there – at the Middle Beach Lodge… and have been eating and drinking everything ever since.
Many things can be said about Tofino: Wild west coast getaway for storm watching… food lovers paradise (largely true)… Rainforest enclave resistant to over development (most definitely)…
What cannot be said about Tofino and the neighboring area is this: It is a coffee destination. And yes, I know, one cannot say that about many places in Canada – One does not expect leading edge coffee in places like Hinton, Alberta or Gravelhurst, Saskatchewan, but one is always pleased when great coffee appears in out of the way places. My supposition is this: Tofino should have great coffee. It needs to have great coffee. Great coffee belongs here.
But on some level, it seems, the community resists change and it rejects trends that, on the outside, would not appear to potentially harm the spirit of the community.
The food marketplace of Tofino is on an upwards spiral in terms of ingenuity and creativity as outlined here in an earlier blog.
How is the coffee doing circa 2012 first quarter?
Well. It has not changed much. There are no Discovery Coffee’s, Habit’s or Cafe Fantastico’s in Tofino. There is no Stick in the Mud in Tofino. There could be and the potential is so great, the opportunity so palpable and right now. If I did not have a day job and I was a little braver, I would drop what I was doing and dive right in.
Few communities are more ripe for a “great cafe” – like the ones we take for granted in Victoria, Sooke, Cobble Hill, Nanaimo, Vancouver, Seattle, etc… than Tofino, British Columbia.
Now do not get me wrong – I have a soft spot for the present and the future – and the future is somewhere where great Tofino coffee exists – because it is not in the here and now. At present, there are cafes and kiosks that attempt to break that greatness barrier – it just has not happened yet. Sure, by all means call out your favorite places and claim that they are dope. I have been there… and they are not.
This weekend it was at the advice of Anya of Discovery Coffee that I swoop into The Tofitian to check out their espresso shots from the Cimbali espresso machine. Out of the gate I ordered a single. It was served at the bottom of a 8 fluid ounce cup… in the form of a 3 1/2 fluid ounce shot. Observation: If you have espresso on the menu (and you are charging $2 for a single shot, serve a single in a 2 fluid ounce espresso cup.)
The shot was fairly balanced but not brewed at the ideal temperature – and, at it turns out was Lavazza espresso – containing around 15% Robusta. Cool shot. Easy to drink but dull as a butter knife. But wait, The Tofitian serves Discovery Coffee – or so I thought – looking around, I did not see it mentioned anywhere.
I asked “Do you serve Discovery Coffee?”
Barista reply: “It’s an option…” (A very pleasant and informed barista BTW)
I ordered a shot of DISCO, a single… because that is why I was there.
This time, another 2+ fluid ounce shot into a 8 fluid ounce cup. Brewed cool and served tepid. Drat.
Here is the thing: I did not see the words “Discovery Coffee” anywhere in the Tofitian – or “Lavazza served here…” I guess I must have missed the secret handshake or something.
Verdict: The espresso machine at the Tofitian needs to be tweaked, calibrated or moderized. Espresso cups need to be purchased. Labeling needs to be fine tuned.
The Tofitian feels a bit like a shack – it is associated with a Surf wear store that is in a different building in a cluster of rag tag buildings that feel somewhat itinerant. Kind of harsh but that is the deal. The parking lot is rough pot filled gravel – would it be outrageous to pave it to level it some?
Once again, I leave Tofino after an awesome weekend confused, befuddled and frustrated. I ask: Can one deploy a great cafe in a place like Tofino? Yes – but it is not going to be a kiosk or cart. It is going to be a newer building with some environmental controls. There is so much going on here – so much potential – so little of it realized. But there is the future.
Do not take my word for it – jump in with your voice. Hey – people are hitting Tofino constantly – I would love to hear their opinion – and your opinion.
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One Spring day in 1995 coffee site is born... · Wednesday March 21, 2012 by colin newell
It was on a warm Spring day in 1995 that I was fooling around with an IBM PS/2 running Windows for Workgroups. On other boxes I would soon install and play with early versions of Slackware Linux, Windows and OS/2 (WARP). And on those boxes I would start out with a gopher server server playing with something that would soon turn the World on its ear — The World Wide Web HTTP protocol.
Working in what is now called “Systems” at UVic, I was lucky enough to be at ground zero when the World Wide Web was first flashed up. I tested GOPHER on several machines before running an HTTPD server on a ethernet enabled PC workstation – that would have been as early as the Spring of 1991.
The original domain name, espresso.ts.uvic.ca (which I used for some work related stuff, electronics, radio and so on…) would briefly be the platform for the first version of “The Coffee Experts Group…” (on or about 1994) and this would soon depart for an ISP downtown called Octonet as well as a relative newcomer to Victoria, Islandnet.com
The coffee themed pages become so popular so quickly that I hastily moved it all onto Octonet.com and mirrored it at Islandnet.com where it lives to this very day.
The coffee websites first official domain name was coffee.bc.ca (which is this blog you see today!) The coffeecrew.com (Coffeecrew) [a more modest moniker than “Experts”] was adopted in the late nineties.
17 years on. Happy Birthday to us! Click on the photo below for the bigger view.
Thanks to our our readers for hanging in all these years…
2012 We review David Lynch coffee and Ridgelyne Jamaica Blue Mountain · Monday February 20, 2012 by colin newell
I get lots of coffees to sample in the course of a year – a lot of it I buy myself… some of it makes its way here after an offer to taste is received in the e-mail.
In 2012 I hope to write up more of the beans that I have been sampling.
So let’s jump in with David Lynch’s Signature coffee; his house coffee and his espresso.
Not going to call them a blend because I believe that they are single origin Oaxacan coffees from a single farm in Mexico.
I brewed David Lynch’s signature coffee – seemingly sourced and roasted for drip coffee. Like most of Lynch’s work, the coffee, brewed as drip, is immediately challenging – This is not your average single origin Mexican coffee and it has some odd flavors in the cup that are off putting but at the same time kind of persuasive.
There is a lot of chocolate in the cup but also subtle hints of rubber, resin and pine solvent… deep, deep in the mix.
Thankfully, my brain tuned most of the nasty stuff (which was way down in the mix – playing it honest here…) the chocolate and sugar came through.
A second brew cycle came through a little better (ran a Hario paper filter on the 2nd brew) and it offered a little bit more clarity with less “industry” in the cup.
It is said that Mister Lynch drinks upwards of 15 cups of this brew a day.
I could do two. It is not a bad coffee. Is moderately interesting and upon closer inspection is roasted by Allegro coffee. The one problem with branding coffee in this way is that most people are more surprised that an edgy movie director would put his name on a bag of coffee. It’s an odd juxtaposition.
From our new friends at Simple Industries Inc. in Ottawa, Ontario comes a couple of bags of their 100% Ridgelyne Jamaica Blue Mountain.
Now this is something I can relate to: A cup of coffee that is all fruit, a bit of chocolate and not a hint of bitter or imbalance.
One of the minor challenges of sourcing JBM is (and I am going to get spam comments in no time…) is getting it fresh (meaning out of the roaster and to my door within a week or so…) – for most of us, it is almost impossible UNLESS it is bought green and roasted locally or regionally. Ridgelyne is roasted in Jamaica and shipped to Ottawa and then shipped from there. Risky. That said, my samples had only hints of staling – likely out of the roaster 2 or 3 weeks. For most people (normal folks that do not obsess about subtlety in the cup), this is not that much of a problem.
The Ridgelyne JBM has lots of fruit in the cup; plum by and large, a mild side that Andrea thought was “Kona like” – I did not taste that. I got lots of balance, no bitterness and a very full body that was all fruit and flowers with few chocolate or cocoa notes in the cup. The website offers it for around $35/pound (down from $50/pound elsewhere…) and refers to it as the most coveted cup of coffee on the Planet. Yes, for most people, JBM is associated as old school luxury coffee – and for good reason. It tastes great.
In the rest if this blog (tomorrow likely…) I will go over some more of the details of the JBM (all good) and get back to the David Lynch coffee to talk about his signature espresso.
2012 In the belly of the brewing beast Bonavita blog chapter 1 · Sunday February 12, 2012 by colin newell
The Bonavita drip brewer – lucky to have one to play with. Thanks to Theresa at Supramatic in Ontario and Todd Larrabee for being part in dreaming up this thing.
The Bonavita is something of a “port” on the Dutch made coffee wunderkind, the Technivorm – as much great coffee maker as it is Rube Goldberg brewing machine – for my taste, spot on brewing numbers but one too many moving parts.
The Bonavita strips away all the nonsense and leaves us with a 1400 watt engine and a sound and righteous water heating tower, a Melitta #4 filter holder and a volume rich glass carafe. The on/off switch pretty completes the complement. Shuts itself off in 15 minutes if you forget. Brews a full pot of perfectly hewn joe java in less than 6 minutes – all at the unflinchingly perfect brew temp. of 197 degrees (F)
Going to do a full review on this great, and affordable brewer in a day or two!
Click on any of the three pictures for a larger view – Picture a: Temperature observations of the carafe and brew basket
Picture b: Keeping time with the triple glass timer from Silk Road Tea
Picture c: The Bonavita tower mated with a Hario V64 ceramic holder and a Hario glass carafe.
