Coffee aficionados have been asking the question over and over again: Is Stumptown Coffee Roasters of Portland, Ore. — the most conspicuous exponent of coffee’s “third wave” — the new Starbucks?

Um, no. Coffee aficionados *haven’t* been asking that question. Coffee aficionados are pretty well versed in the routinely awesome coffee that Stumpies has been cranking out year after year after year. Coffee aficionados don’t have to question Stumptowns’ authenticity, or transparency, either. Coffee aficionados have probably noticed, too, that Stumptown Coffee Roasters hasn’t had to cover up its logo like a scarlet letter when it opens a new storefront like, well… You Know Who.

Wait, you haven’t heard of the third wave? Get with the program! In cities across America, a fervid generation of caffeine evangelists are changing the way we drink coffee. They tend to be male, heavily bearded, zealous and meticulous in what they do.

Hey, lookit that! It’s another funny stereotype. We’re only just two graphs in and we’re two for two, already. And gosh, it’s pretty much true, too, save for James Hoffman who really should consider sporting a soul-patch at the very least. (He’d banish the Harry Potter look thataway, I’m certain.) And pity the non-hirsute women of coffee who — apparently by way of not being zealous enough to grow a beard — are missing the boat. Er, wave.

I’m certain that Ozersky isn’t leaning on the whole Starbucks lever merely for his own sake… his article suggests familiarity enough with the specialty coffee scene. Maybe it’s a sure way to get eyeballs, or to get his article batted round the Internet like kitty’s new play toy. But does he have so little respect for Time’s audience that he needs to beat them over the head with it?

Coffee. Meh? Thug does not grok.

Starbucks. Oh! Thug likes. Puts hair on chin.

Stumptown — unlike Josh Ozersky – doesn’t need Starbucks for a stalking horse. Stumpies’ collective attention appears to be in the right place. On the farm. In the cup. Good on them.

I savor roasting and tasting Yemeni coffees for the same reasons that commercial roasters despise them — they’re a complete crap-shoot. Yemen coffees are either left to dry on the tree, or dried — whole, cherry and all — on flat, sun-drenched rooftops. Dried coffees are stored in the husk and traded through a seemingly endless series of middlemen, mixing crops from untold numbers of family coffee gardens. The resulting beans tend toward the misshapen and bent, and are — by the standards of clean-as-a-whistle wet processors the world over — an unseemly mess.

Oh, but what a lovely-tasting mess these coffees can be.

Got goat?

I recently completed three roasts of a single lot of Yemen Mokha — back-to-back — making every reasonable effort to eliminate stray roast variables. Regardless, the results of each of those roasts is unique. Each cup is arguably unique.

All are to one degree or another earthy, with notes of leather and dust; richly hued with wine-toned fruit, or tawny port, or sour strawberries, or apricots. This one has aromas of pitch pine and cherries; that one’s all peat moss and smoke and that one yonder, it’s got a bit of musty goat-skin in it. (Yeah… I skipped that cup, too.)

And the final cup on the table? Butterscotch and sweet chocolate with a creamy body and a technicolor cherry on top. I swear… a sundae straight outta your best blue-skied childhood memory of summers past.

Which is all to say… next time someone asks you what coffee you want with you onna desert island, you could do worse than to say, “I’d like to make that Yemen Mokha, please.” ‘Cause chances are, you’ll never have the same cup twice.

Meanwhile…

At the moment, I’m saddled up in the Explorations coffee lounge aboard the Ms Volendam, steaming north to Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park by way of Juneau while an extremely versatile string quartet plays Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Yes, Toto, we’re not in Kansas, anymore.

Alaskan Inside Passage Cruise

We made way from Vancouver at a pretty good clip last night to catch the tide; the narrows around Vancouver apparently can’t be sailed in a big ship if the tide’s too low, and so our captain put the screws to it. Er, literally, I guess.

This is my first cruise so I don’t have much reference on what’s a good ship and what’s not… aside from the essentials like, a good ship is one that doesn’t sink. (By that token, we’re ship-shape thus far.) There’s lots of wood, and lots of glass, and water, water everywhere.

Tomorrow, there will be glaciers.

Seattle remains a guiding star for coffee. From Vivace to Zoka, Trabant to Victrola, Tully’s to Caffe Vita, and — of course — the omnipresent Starbucks and hundreds of happy, independent retailers, coffee houses, espresso carts and hole-in-the-wall walk-ups, the city teems with caffeinated masses, most of ‘em tanked up on some damn fine coffees served by folks who know their way round the business end of a portafilter. I’m impressed as I can be with places like Stumptown that hold daily cupping events so folks just walkin’ in off the street can sample a flight of coffees from all over the world, and compare and contrast flavors and aromas, body and balance, while elbow to elbow with the pros.

I hope I can stay longer next time… provided the place doesn’t kill me, first.

As always, there’s more coffee reviews coming… and at least some of them will be covering coffees you wouldn’t want to give to your worst enemy. Yes, once again I will drink bad coffee so you don’t have to. Here’s the new twist: why don’t you tell me what coffees I should taste and review for your warped, twisted and not at all spirit-of-the-season type pleasure? Leave your ideas in the comments, below. And think evil thoughts. I dare you.

Also, while we’re at the height of that gifting season, I have a bunch of new hardware to try… in particular, several single-cup coffee machines. New to the Bloggle coffee labs are the completely revamped Tassimo by Bosch, the extraordinarily odd-looking NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto by Krups, and the new “Mini” B30 brewer by Keurig, dressed in a sassy new holiday red (which may not help it brew a better cup of coffee, but delivers lots of eye-candy appeal.)

Finally, Bloggle is now iPhone friendly! Which is damned ironic, given that’s its still near impossible to own an iPhone in Vermont. Is it frustrating to test your own web site on an emulator for a device that you can’t own? Why, yes. Yes it is.

(Word on the street is that’s soon to change. I’ll believe it when I have one in my own grubby, little fingers…)

When’s the last time you had a blonde coffee? What’s that, you say? Never? Well it’s about time that changes…

Okay, so maybe it’s not really a blonde roast… that stuff’s most often halted before first crack (and the ginger-colored grounds brewed with sugar and cardamom; it tastes like chai.) No matter what you call this extraordinary light-roasted, natural process Sidamo — cinnamon roast, New England roast, maybe — it’s spectacular.

Special Prep = Joy

Fresh from the grinder this coffee will fill your kitchen with the aromas of fresh strawberries and blueberries. Its flavors are a tremendous expression of fruit — sweet strawberry, blueberry and tart cherry — with an undercurrent of Cavendish tobacco. It’s body is mild (a fair trade-off what with that roast and all) and its finish is long, graciously tart and a teensy bit dry.

All in all it’s one remarkable coffee, and, I think, a testament to the  skills on display at the roaster. A coffee this light could be a disaster! But this one’s a dream.

Highly recommended and a steal at under $17.00 a pound. So go get some while the gettin’s good.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

A parcel from Jeff Taylor at PT’s Coffee in Topeka (you probably remember Jeff; his crew were recently awarded Roast Magazine’s Roaster of the Year) was sitting on my doorstep and — while I wouldn’t have time to do any serious tasting today — I had to take a peek to see what was inside.

Long story short — ’cause I don’t have a lot of time, really — just opening the box I was wowed with the aroma. Sweet, very sweet aromas; think rich molasses, or dark maple syrup. The culprit — the bean responsible for this just outrageous aroma — was PT’s Reserva del Mandador – Finca Los Planes Pacamara, a Direct Trade bean from the Ticas family’s Los Planes farm in El Salvador. All peaberry. All Pacamara.

Again, not time enough for full-on sensorial effort here, but this bean is sweet, warm and juicy. Very clean, nicely balanced. Did I mention sweet? Caramel, maple sugar… a bit of mandarin orange. Nice. Very nice.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Go get you some now… I’ll have more — and write more — when I get a chance.

Good on them.

For what it’s worth, I’d be delighted to see every indy shop in the country follow suit. You voted? Have a cup of our best… no matter *who* you voted for, no questions asked. Yes… even if you voted for Ron Paul. (In Montana, *especially* if you voted for Ron Paul!)

Vote!

‘Cause it’s our democracy, after all… and it’s about time we took some ownership of it. Don’t ya think?

By measuring it, of course. Let’s face it: you can tweak your coffee-to-water ratio, temperature and grind ’til you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t know the total dissolved solids of your final brew you’re pretty much driving without a map. And there’s a lot of unmapped territory out there.

Andy Shecter has posted a tantalizing first look at George Howell’s ExtractMojo system — and even given that he’s an espresso-hound and not a brewed coffee fiend, he likes what he sees:

I’ve recently been a beta tester for a nifty system that gives direct and immediate feedback on your brewed coffee technique. It’s called “ExtractMoJo” from the George Howell Coffee Company, and it has helped me to brew the best non-espresso coffee I’ve ever made.

The software is available now as a free trial (yeah!) but the hardware — a pocket refractometer — will set you back a cool $339 beans, and may prove a little hard to swallow if you’re looking to calibrate your brew at home.

Congrats to Jeff Taylor and the gang at PT’s Coffee and the Perry clan at CoffeeKlatch for winning Roast Magazine’s 2009 Roaster(s) of the Year!

Each year Roast makes two awards, one for a large (macro) roaster and one for a small (micro) roaster. And each year I think the competition gets steeper. There have been some seriously great coffees “discovered” in the past year, a direct result of countless trips to origin, conversations with growers, and canvassing the auction lots. Both of these coffee roasters are helping to lead the way forward with their sourcing and roasting of premium small-lot coffee offerings.

While I haven’t sampled any Coffee Klatch offerings — at all! I think I need to fix that — I tasted some of PT’s Kenya AA Kieni Auction Lot last year and found it pretty darn wonderful. It looks like they’ve got a stable full of still more exciting beans even now, so I expect I’ll have more on that front soon, too. 

Ah… so much coffee, so little time.

Happily, our world champion baristas and coffee tasters are doing no such thing. They’re sourcing coffees of great character — juried award winners and coffees from small, family-run farms — roasting them light to remain faithful to the beans’ origins, and letting the coffee speak for itself. Well done.

Costa Rica El Portillo C.O.E.

I admit to having a love / hate affair with Costa Rican coffee the last year or two. From where I sit, Costas have lurched in one of two directions, each at opposite ends of my bell curve of happiness: at the one end, bright, shrill, efferfrickinvescant acidity at the expense of all other character; at the other extreme, big, beefy and dumb-as-a-cow bullion flavors with no dynamic to the cup at all. The exceptions to these extremes can be found far from the big coffee estates on small, family farms… and — happily enough — the Square Mile El Portillo is just such an exception.

Balanced and round, with flavors of honeysuckle and buttery caramel. I find a burst of citrus on the front, and a dark cocoa surprise as the cup cools, and that honeyed sweetness and syrupy body throughout. This is a complex, many-layered cup, and immensely rewarding.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Kenya Muchoki Peaberry

Tremendously bright, crisp, and dry with flavors of tart cherry, and strawberries with fresh-ground black pepper.  Its finish is dry, somewhat distilled and yet — somehow — suggests a candied sweetness. I’m reminded of a top-quality Muscato D’Asti.

The very light roast on this coffee makes for a cup that’s faithful to its origins, but the roaster in me can’t help but wonder if a bit more fire wouldn’t further develop the sweetness that dwells in this bean.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Both of these coffees are highly recommended, and available now, at Square Mile Coffee Roasters.

P.S. It’s worth noting… this is two coffees down, and two to go. More soon.

P.P.S. Sorry about the marginal photography. It was a bit of a rush job.