Allongé Roast, S.O. Espresso, Tea Socials and Website(…?).

Holy consecutive day updates man.  I guess I’m getting ready for the new website where I’ll want to contribute regular blogs to glorify our new online home.   Anyway, today we received a dozen pounds of our Kenya AA Mount Kenya roasted to be extracted for allongé.  We’ve had many different coffees in the allongé grinder the last few weeks and I imagine this will bring a little consistency in that respect.

Speaking of espresso, we also recieved a single-origin espresso this week for the first time since we opened.  The Brazil Fazenda Apucarana won’t last long this week, but if received well we’ll be sure to bring in more.  Watch for the Kanya AA Ruera and Colombia Timana as new daily drip offerings as well.

Also, we plan to have a Tea Social next Monday around 4:30 in the afternoon.  What’s a Tea Social, you ask?  Essentially, we’ll be brewing three or four pots of tea for sampling pleasure and providing information and discourse about the teas in question.  We hope to make it a weekly occurence and grow the event to bring together new and seasoned tea lovers.  We’ll charge a nominal fee ($4.o0?) and keep brewing until everyone’s social’ed out.

Lastly, I’m aware that the website is not online.  We’ll see what comes first, the website or the terrasse.

Terrasse! Website!

We’ve been approved for a patio by the city of Montreal, hopefully by month’s end we’ll have outdoor seating in keeping with the ambiance of the inside of the cafe.  Also, I’ve been informed that at long last, our website is ready for launch and should be functional very shortly.   Thanks for your patience.

Also, it’s worth noting that home-appliance company Krups is sponsoring an effort to determine Canada’s best independant coffee shops.  Head to www.krupskupofexcellence.com and cast your vote, we appreciate your support.  If we somehow manage to get the most votes overall, I suppose we’d have to have some kind of pancake breakfast by way of thanks.

Lastly, our current hours of operation are as follows:

Mon – Friday: 8AM – 8PM

Saturday: 9AM – 8PM

Sunday: 10AM – 6PM

Tastings Update & Pursuit of the Cappuccino

I thought it might be worth mentioning again that our tastings still occur every Sunday at 11, I haven’t been posting about them online as they’ve been fully reserved in advance through the store, but we still accept reservations via email (or by commenting on the blog) as long as the deposit is paid by the Friday morning prior to the tasting.  This week we did a reprise of brewing one coffee several ways, taking the Kenya AA Nyanja from 49th Parallel and using it to demonstrate the correlation between flavour clarity and body.  It was highlighted by the presence of my parents, visiting the cafe for the first time, and their first experience trying different ways of making coffee side by side.  This week the theme is still up in the air, and it’s possible we’ll respond to the requests for another espresso-based tasting.

Now. The cappuccino is probably the most difficult espresso-based beverage to prepare well.  Texturing the milk in such a way to maintain its froth throughout the experience of the drink while also negotiating a harmonious relationship between milk and espresso proves to be the ultimate challenge for many cafes.  In Vancouver, the norm is for cafes to offer a capp more akin to a latte and then have an option for a traditional cappuccino, usually 5 – 6 ounces in volume.  Even the trad capps often lack the silky texture that seems to have fallen by the wayside in lieu of better-deliniated latte art, making the whole effort moot on some level.  On the other hand, it makes getting a really good cappuccino memorable and for me is one of the few solid indicators that a barista cares and knows what he or she is doing.

So with that in mind, Myriade will attempt to fulfill my perceived void of well-executed traditional cappuccinos.  I think we’ve earned the trust of our clientele enough to change the construction and presentation of a cornerstone beverage, and in the vein of offering what we feel is the “best,” there’s no other option.  These are the things we think about between the night and the day.

Oh You Know.

I’m distressed at the moment after reading a discussion on coffeed started by Scott about the flaws of Chemex brewing, and how they can be mitigated (the latter of which was altogether ignored).  With the exception of Andy Schecter, who is perhaps my favourite person I’ve never met, the general theme of the postings shows why results based analysis is detrimental to the development of any product really, coffee being no exception.   The argument “well it tastes good” isn’t an argument at all, yet functions in lieu of understanding why a method does or doesn’t work.  The process, not the outcome, determines repeatability and functions to reveal WHY something happens.  Doesn’t anyone want to know how to make something taste better?  Isn’t anyone interested in consistency of results?  I enjoy the company of the personal friends I’ve made in coffee, but for the most part I don’t like being associated with the vast majority of people in this industry.  Specifically, the arrogance and smugness of Nick Cho who presumes to suggest a personal agenda within Scott’s critique of Chemex brewing is so fucked up it irritates me past the point of agitation.  Today’s flag-bearers of specialty coffee in Canada and America are the people that have the biggest mouths; the de-facto ambassadors of specialty coffee to the public at large.  Awesome.

Andy, on the other hand, can represent me and my peers to anyone who’ll listen as far as I’m concerned.  Maybe he’ll teach us all how to make a Chemex.

Cafe Myriade Invades the Small Screen

More at 11.

click here

I Can Feel It Coming Back Again

My mother always used to say if I don’t have anything nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all.  In kind, Scott always tells me that if I don’t have anything intelligent to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all.

I can feel the smart things coming back, and predict a return to semi-daily updates.  And I don’t think my mom ever said that anyway, so the nice might be occasionally absent.  I have to shake this Miss Congeniality tag somehow.

Updates on Cafe Myriade are many and varied.  Separation anxiety abounds as Scott is en route elsewhere for a while, leaving me to calibrate the new Raomatics all by my lonesome.  I’ve been terrorizing my new staff members by forcing them to re-learn to brew coffee a completely new way every shift, much to my increased satisfaction with the coffee.

The tastings are still in full effect, however unpromoted they are on the internet these days.  Usually we’re booked so quickly that I don’t make it to the internet to recruit new attendees, so interested parties should present themselves in the cafe on Mondays or Tuesdays to reserve for the following Sunday.

Sorry for the layoff in posting.  Sometimes I need to recalibrate.  Coming soon: adventures in overcaffeination (a reprise).  Thanks for sticking with me.

PS:  For those in Montreal, watch CTV News tonight between 6:00 and 6:30 to see what we look like under bright lights without makeup. Well, Chris was wearing makeup.

Uninteresting Post in Uninteresting Font

Sorry for a few days without updates, it’s been busy and I’ve had limited access to my computer the last couple days.  We were lucky enough to be featured in a nice review by Maeve Haldane of the Montreal Gazette, and suddenly we were exposed and introduced to many new friends.  The tasting today was a huge success and by tomorrow I’ll have news on another coffee tasting for next Sunday.  We tasted 49th Parallel’s El Salvador Miralvalle brewed six different ways.

I honestly have nothing interesting to write tonight, I’m tired and my brain is functioning at half speed.  Tonight’s a night for a movie and maybe a glass of wine, tomorrow’s a better day for coffee discussion.   So until then, my final note of the weekend is one of congratulations to a barista I’ve never met; Alex Pond is the 2009 winner of the Northwest Regional Barista Championship, the first of the regionals to determine who will represent the US in Atlanta this Spring.   Congratulations, though I’ve never met you I imagine it feels the same to have all the hard work and practice pay off.  Good night!

Class is in Session

I need another day to finalize the details of our Sunday tasting, but it will definitely be a coffee event and, as usual, limited to ten to twelve people.  As it stands it will either be an experiment with temperature or a reprise of a single coffee brewed multiple ways.  Fun starts at 11AM Sunday January 11th, reserve your space in the cafe with $10 buy in, fun will be had and coffee will be tasted.

Today was a lot of fun and a lot of stress.  Given that Myriade is situated across the street from Concordia, the return en masse to school instigated a flurry of activity from morning until close during which our cash register misbehaved, water pressure to the sink was lethargic for an hour or so, and I exploded a bag of tea.  It’s always fun seeing people for the first time after time apart, and it’s good to be reminded of how much I enjoy our clientele.  On that sycophantic note, I’m off to bed to brace myself for a tomorrow like today.

RIP: Intelligentsia’s Urn Coffee

So after some deliberation and a relatively bad day, I planned to abandon writing any more about Vancouver’s limited options in filtered coffee. Then I come home and discover an article I’d missed for the last week or so about Intelligentsia axing their coffee urns in their Lakeview store. It’s an interesting reference point, given that in a way they appear to be doing exactly what I found the cafes in Vancouver were doing – relying on a sole brew method that skews to an extreme in terms of cup characteristics. But then, the article also includes a quote about how Intelly plans to introduce Vac Pots, which are a great addition to any coffee service when done effectively. I don’t know what other brew methods aside from the Clover are available at Intelligentsia stores, but I think progressive change to serve everything fresh can only be a good thing. If they offer an immersion brew and a variety of beans from differing origins, what more could you ask for in terms of choice?

But if I’m all for serving fresh, why (one might ask, as my peers did) call-out the proliferation of the Clover in Vancouver? This is where some confusion arose as baristas from my hometown cafes texted me to insist they do serve other brew methods and that the Clover provides many advantages I ignored. I should make clear, it was less the machine I was commenting on and more the trend towards a singular brewing method serving the needs of a variety of tastes in a clientele. If everyone was only serving drip, or french press, or siphon, or whatever, my reaction would have been in kind. As prices paid for green coffee rise as quality rises, and as these costs translate to higher prices on the menu, we who offer these coffees run the risk of offending our clientele who may not perceive value as being added. The luxury of choice can go a long way to piquing and engaging the interest of somebody who may otherwise not be interested in paying $3.50 for what is, more often than not, a less than perfect cup.

Also as an aside, it’s worth reading the comments posted by readers after the conclusion of the article. While by no means an 100% accurate insight into the minds of an average consumer, this is the kind of debate generated when change is instigated and routines are broken. There’s always something to be learned, and in this case I discovered there exists a type of person that harbours inspired, passionate, and unadulterated hatred towards urn coffee. That, to me, is awesome in its own right.

Tomorrow I will post information about the first tasting event of 2009 at Myriade. Goodnight.

Vancouver and the Dearth of Drip Coffee

New Year’s Day is one of those emotionally charged days that is suggestive by the very nature of its context. The first day of the year, new beginnings, fresh starts, etc. all entwine to create a day where most of us immediately lose our renewed resolve in the throes of a hangover.

So which is this new blog borne of, the former or the latter? Or just maybe in response to a guilty conscience inspired by angry Chowhounders chiding me for my lack of website?

Without further ado, this is the official blog of Montreal’s Cafe Myriade, which is not to suggest that an unofficial blog lurks somewere within the unfriendly confines of the internet. I’ll use this platform to inform of new coffees and teas at the cafe, tastings and events we host on Sundays, and to engage with myths and issues that confound the everyday barista.

Such as (just for instance) why is it really hard to find drip coffee in Vancouver, one of our country’s leading coffee markets? During my recent five day holiday in my hometown, I was able to make about ten visits spanning six of the more reputable cafes the city has to offer. Having slowly been weaned away from milk and espresso drinks over the last two months, my focus was primarily on filtered coffee. On each of the ten visits, Clover coffee was available every time which is a feat considering that there are fewer units in Montreal, Toronto, and Halifiax combined than the half dozen shops I patronized in BC. There were, however, no other options on eight of the other visits. No french press, no urn, not even drip. When I would quiz the baristas working about this, asking them why there were no other options when sometimes there were Press Pots visible behind the counter, I was met with varying degrees of confusion. Perhaps due to my bias, or perhaps to good fortune, the best coffee I had in Vancouver came from a fresh batch out of an urn, followed by an expensive French Press service where the coffee in question was simply referred to as “the $10 one” by the cashier. That would be the one with subtle notes of dollar signs with hints of buyers’ remorse as it cools. I kid, it was after all one of the better coffees I had while there. Options are our friends, with no disrespect to the Clover why is it dominating Vancouver to the degree that it is?

Lastly with regard to Myriade, I’m looking forward to an exciting 2009. We’ll resume our Sunday tastings on January 11th with an event I’ve yet to finalize, and will re-introduce Pour-Your-Own-Latte days on Saturdays beginning soon again as well. As always, we continue to challenge ourselves to find improved ways to serve you tea and coffee and will be switching our existing manual pour-over stations to newly developed Rao-matics (patent pending). But as I begin to fear that I’m saying too much, I’ll conclude this inaugural entry with best wishes for you and yours in 2009. Thank you for reading!