Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Today the SF Chronicle posted an impressively long article on the state of quality coffee roasting in the Bay Area: ROAST WITH THE MOST / A new generation of Bay Area coffee roasters pushes the perfect cup to the next level. It’s a remarkable piece, given its breadth. It lightly touches on everything from the roasting process, roasting trends, more meticulate coffee sourcing, and restaurants taking notice in better quality coffee. It also includes interviews with a good number of quality coffee luminaries in the area — and not just the usual, overexposed suspects.

On the topic of overexposure, it’s also good to see focus on advancements in the quality of the coffee — and not just an emphasis on machinery (and their escalating price tags), which has been something of a media trend of late. Equipment advances such as the Clover brewer would be amount to little more than a curiously expensive robotics grad student project if not for the improvements in coffee sourcing, roasting, and freshness.

Today’s geography lesson: Rome is not a U.S. city

As much as Coffeeratings.com was born five years ago out of frustration with the lack of quality standards and their awareness in the Bay Area specialty coffee scene, we actually take a bit of exception with some of the suggestions in the article — for example, “While the Bay Area is considered the birthplace of premium coffee, many say the quality of its coffee has lagged behind that of other U.S. cities in the past 10 or 15 years.”

In the past few years the Bay Area has arguably established itself as a national coffee leader, second only to perhaps Portland and Seattle. (And even at that, Seattle and Portland — like SF — are equally rife with median-quality coffeehouses that make poor espresso.) But go back a decade ago, and the coffee quality in the great majority of other U.S. cities was hurting far worse than SF.

Only hipster dufuses who use the word “’spro” need apply

The article also unfortunately feeds this terrible misconception going around that better coffee can only come from a “new generation” of coffee professionals — an attitude that if you haven’t been making coffee for less than three years, you are irrelevant to good quality coffee today. Call it specialty coffee’s take on Jerry Rubin’s “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” (It’s also one of many reasons why we ridicule the term “Third Wave.” Although the phrase’s originators coined it more to describe coffee consumption rather than coffee purveyors, today it is most commonly used to describe the latter.)

But the media will always focus on the new. And what’s old often becomes new again. (See: siphon coffee.) We read stories that suggest single origin coffees will bring about the (greatly exaggerated) death of the blend, or that lighter roasts will universally trump all those “horrible, traditional darker roasts.” But we see each of these as consumer fads that are merely highlighting the less explored dimensions of the overall coffee enjoyment experience. When the novelty of the new wears off, single origin or blend, light or dark roast, there will always be something to be enjoyed in the full variety of experiences coffee has to offer.

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We’re more than a bit late with the news here, but a hearty and well-deserved congratulations to Kyle Glanville of LA’s Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea for winning the 2008 U.S. Barista Championship (USBC): 2008 US Barista Champion « The Official 2008 SCAA Conference Blog.

Proving the West is Best, and giving us some minor trash-talking rights, five of the six finalists all hailed from our own backyard Western Regional Barista Competition. Booyah.

Could we get any further away from Minneapolis? Please?

We weren’t exactly glued to our monitors for the blow-by-blow updates of the USBC as some have. Part of that is being in India, where everything is 12½-hours ahead of Pacific Time (yes, there is an extra 30 minutes in there). But a bigger part reflects the forced spectacle of barista competitions in addition to the overall SCAA conference spectacle itself.

The redeeming qualities of the SCAA conference include a number of interesting presentations and topics of discussion, elements the USBC, and the Roasters Guild Coffee of the Year Competition. But there are also big sponsorships by the irrelevant likes of Krups and Da Vinci Gourmet syrups (never trust a product that has “gourmet” in its name), soapbox political causes that have been uniquely attracted to coffee like flies to a bug lamp, and featured or “award-winning” irrelevant products — such as java jackets (just say no to paper cups), the 2008 PR onslaught of the Handpresso (wow, now we can drink crap pod coffee on the go!), and the exhumed resurgence of a PR onslaught for “Red Espresso” (which is no more “espresso” than if I put orange pulp in my espresso machine and called it “Orange Espresso”) after a two year hiatus.

In short: many of the things about the coffee industry I really don’t like and wish would go away. If this is the promise of the so-called “Third Wave” as advertised on the SCAA conference Web site, please drown me now in the undertow.

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As we hinted in a previous post, San Francisco magazine just published Josh Sens’ story on the more recent evolution of San Francisco’s local coffee scene in its most recent issue: A new buzz | San Francisco online. (There’s even an article featuring CoffeeRatings.com: The coffee bard | San Francisco online.)

The article features Coffee Bar, Blue Bottle Cafe, Ritual Coffee Roasters (including some great quotes from one of our favorite area baristas and coffee writers, Gabe Boscana), and Trouble Coffee. A couple of interesting points Mr. Sens raises in his article include:

• “It’s just coffee” — Running a business that really cares about the details involved with good coffee often requires a thick skin — especially in the face of the many knee-jerk reactionaries who ridicule what they see as coffee elitism. (I.e., “Folgers’ Crystals was good enough for my parents, and it should be good enough for you too.”)
• The Caffeine Factor — Trouble Coffee’s Giulietta Carrelli directly addressed the role caffeine plays in good coffee, which Mr. Sens found unorthodox and refreshing. In many ways, we appreciate the decaffeinated coffee drinker as a sort of “true” lover of coffee, independent of its psycho-chemical effects (i.e., its about “enjoyment” rather than “usage”). But there’s a reason why Duncan Hines is the #3 consumer of purified caffeine: the caffeine enhances the “mouth-watering taste” (OK, that’s a bit subjective) of their brownie mixes.

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Last week, the Contra Costa Times published an article announcing the Bay Area arrival of McDonald’s specialty coffee drinks: McDonald’s new coffee drinks ignite breakfast wars - ContraCostaTimes.com. Of course, none of this info is really new, so we’re a bit perplexed over how someone can “ignite” something with a two-year-long fuse. But the article cites some local coffee lovers who didn’t find McDonald’s specialty coffee drinks up to the task.

Is anyone surprised? We already have the McDonald’s of specialty coffee: it’s called Starbucks.

The article also highlighted one of the more ridiculous aspects of the consumer marketing industry: the art of packaging everything as a “solution”. Quoting Matthew Ramerman, principal of HL2, a Seattle-based advertising agency that focuses on restaurant chains: “Consumers have been saying ‘I’m looking for a breakfast solution.’” Huh?!

Perhaps CoffeeRatings.com has missed this all along: all we’re really looking for is an espresso solution. It reminds me of an old joke I used to tell my marketing friends: “It’s not a chair, it’s a seating solution.”

The reporter also interviewed Michaele Weissman, author of a forthcoming book called God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee. Which, curiously enough, sounds a lot like like last month’s release of Instaurator’s The Espresso Quest, proving just how difficult it is to come up with an original idea.

We received our copy of The Espresso Quest in the mail from Australia a couple weeks back and are still well behind posting a book review here any time soon. But stay tuned… Miracles can happen.

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When it comes to coffeehouses in San Francisco, few are worth writing home about. This isn’t one of them. But then the Castro Cheesery exemplifies what you most commonly find in the city’s murky midrange of espresso bars.

Contrary to its name, cheese plays second fiddle to the vast array of roasted coffee available for purchase in this tiny storefront — not to mention the coffee makers, filters, and related accessories. This dark, tiny place has no seating for customers, however.

They serve and sell Caffen coffee from Naples (i.e., Napes, Italy — and not that abomination in Florida that goes by the same name, even if the latter has adequate landfills for garbage collection). Using an older two-group Rancilio at the back (it used to be a La Pavoni), they serve espresso with a thin, pale crema and an average body. It has a woody, mostly herbal flavor that borders on ashy and bitter without jumping over the line too strongly.

With no seating area, everything is “to go” — which means paper cup purgatory.

Read the updated review of The Castro Cheesery.

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With Spring upon us, that means it’s time for the 2008 Western Regional Barista Competition (WRBC): ‘Attention to every detail’ at Berkeley barista contest - San Jose Mercury News. Starting this past Friday and ending today (check out their photo album), the 2008 WRBC performs a time-honored ritual to select a barista champ representing our region to send to the nationals, the U.S. Barista Championship (USBC), to be held in Minneapolis this May.

The WRBC is the biggest of the nation’s ten regionals and includes competitive baristas from California and Hawaii. This year they even drew in a couple of competitors from Seattle’s Zoka Coffee.

But the big question was whether Coffee Klatch’s (San Dimas, CA) Heather Perry, the WRBC’s “Iron Barista” of the past several years, could be unseated from her usual first place finish. Last year, Heather defended her WRBC title yet again, went on to win the 2007 U.S. Barista Championship (a feat she also accomplished in 2003), and then placed second in the 2007 World Barista Championship (to the UK’s James Hoffman).

But there was more at stake than just Heather’s streak. After spending a few years in Petaluma (where we reviewed the 2006 WRBC), this year’s WRBC moved to downtown Berkeley. And this year there were more seminars, training opportunities, and awards.

Berkeley, we have a problem…

Many baristas and coffee fanatics in the Bay Area were enthusiastic about the WRBC’s choice of a new location and venue — including us. But when we attended today’s competition finals, we found both negatives as positives with the switch.

The good

• Location, location, location — A block off of BART? In downtown Berkeley? In a town where Alfred Peet started his specialty bean and leaf business back in 1966?
• An upper balcony, for viewing the competition from above — The Gaia Arts Center provided the public with more and better angles to view the competition.
• Video projection — And where Gaia’s upper balcony views weren’t enough, the WRBC used video cameras and two projection screens to zoom in on the action — providing detailed, hands-level views to many attendees.
• The Clover brewer at the 4th Machine — Introduced for the first time at the WRBC, just in time for Starbucks to buy them out, some area roasters featured Cup-of-Excellence-quality coffee. Maybe these machines have little place in a barista competition per se, but they have good company around coffee lovers everywhere.
• Merchandising — Every event planner needs to raise a little cash to keep operations going and improve the event (especially at this price: free). The WRBC seems to have expanded beyond the T-shirt offerings and is now hawking espresso cups, cappuccino cups, tampers, shot glasses, etc. All of which seemed to be doing a brisk business at the entrance.

The bad

• Cramped facilities — Despite the location and the upper balcony, the facilities themselves seemed woefully inadequate. The space was too small, and crowds packed in the main competition area so much that some attendees had to fan themselves from the build-up of body heat. People crowded the stairs leading to the upper balcony just to find space for a better view.
• No barrier between the competition area and the 4th Machine — “Kitchen stadium” (to use an Iron Chef term) was always at the mercy of the noise and distractions coming from all of the socializing by the 4th Machine — where attendees lined up for a free espresso, cappuccino, or Clover-brewed coffee. You couldn’t hear the baristas nor the emcees over the din.
• No press box, no sponsored booths — The WRBC isn’t a conference. Or is it? There already are speakers, trainings, etc. But if this competition expects the media coverage it craves, it needs to think bigger. That will irritate many die-hard, DIY baristas as “too corporate” — the event still has the strong feel of their private, exclusive club or party. But coffee is also a business — it must decide to either continue to play coy with the real world, and favor their own anti-corporate Hipsters in its own private sandbox, or it has to reach out to play with and compete against the big boys in order to be taken more seriously.

The ugly

• Is there a steady cam in the house? — While the use of video projection was a plus, unfortunately very little of it was useful. Perhaps the cameramen had too many espresso shots from the 4th Machine to hold anything still, but we couldn’t help but feel we were watching The Blair Witch Project turned on to coffee.
• The emcee — Maybe it’s just impossible to replicate the coffee street cred, public speaking skills, and infectious enthusiasm of Barefoot’s Andy Newbom as when he emceed the 2006 WRBC. But emcee Sarah Allen was not terribly dynamic nor engaging in her role. Coincidentally, Ms. Allen is the editor of Barista Magazine — a magazine subscription we’ve recently let expire because, well, as much as we like the subject matter, we find the writing to be rather poor at best. (For example, most articles from the far corners of the world are activity logs rather than actual writing. With the exception of Ritual’s Gabe Boscana and a few others, good espresso artists aren’t always good writers. Public speaking isn’t far behind.)
• The other emcee — While we did not have the privilege of hearing the other emcee for the event — Jana Oppenheimer, a regional sales manager for Franke — having a sales rep from Franke emcee a barista competition makes about as much sense as having an SF Muni official emcee a NASCAR event. La Marzocco GS/3 distrubution included. But given that Krups is once again sponsoring the USBC in May, this is one of the prices of going corporate while still keeping the event free to the public.

And the winner is…

Of the six finalists, half was a posse representing Intelligentsia’s Silverlake (LA) location. But in the end, the “unthinkable” happened. The final results?:

• 1st Place: Chris Baca of Ritual Coffee Roasters, SF
• 2nd Place: Kyle Glanville of Intelligentsia, Silverlake
• 3rd Place: Heather Perry of Coffee Klatch, San Dimas

Congratulations to all winners, all finalists, and all contestants…

UPDATE: April 4, 2008
Today NPR’s The California Report aired a radio segment on the 2008 WRBC, interviewing Kyle Glanville and Chris Baca: KQED | The California Report | Crowning the Best Barista.

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Dealing with the media can often feel like waiting for a Muni bus. Just when it’s been so long that you forgot that they exist, suddenly three pull up in a row over the span of a few minutes. This time the media frenzy surrounded the recent openings of Blue Bottle Cafe and Coffee Bar — with additional curiosity spent on filter coffee from the Clover brewer and James Freeman’s $20,000 siphon bar.

Trouble is that there are a lot of eyes that roll when they see things like $20,000 siphon bars and $11,000 Clover machines. “It’s just coffee!,” they mockingly say. “These pompous coffee snobs are rightfully getting ripped off.”

So we at CoffeeRatings.com wanted to put our 15 minutes of media fame to good use: to help promote better coffee in the Bay Area. (By saying “we” instead of “I”, it at least helps me to believe there’s more than one Bay Area resident who wants better coffee standards in town.)

Coffee Achievers, Coffee Believers, and Coffee Agnostics

Fortunately, I didn’t encounter much “are you out of your caffeinated mind?!” reporting. ABC 7 TV (KGO) Morning News, for example, had a lot of fun doing a recent coffee story — as I did shooting it with them: abc7news.com: San Francisco coffee bars offer unique, expensive brew 2/08/08. This wasn’t entirely surprising, given that Amy Hollyfield and the rest of the morning TV crew has to get out of bed at 3 a.m. every day for the 5 o’clock News. Let’s just say they have developed a deep appreciation for chemical stimulants, yet they’re rather particular about their morning coffee. (Big Peet’s fans — they thumbed their noses at Starbucks.)

Last month they brought me along as their “expert taster” (their words, not mine) for a TV segment ride-along to Blue Bottle Cafe and Coffee Bar to evaluate some of the newer technologies in brewed coffee. (Classically, at Blue Bottle Cafe the next day, James Freeman asked me if I saw the piece that aired on TV that morning — as he doesn’t own a television.)

Then last weekend I hooked up with Josh Sens, a reporter writing a story on Bay Area coffee for San Francisco magazine, and his food-writing/TV-show-producing friend, Sarah Alder, for a coffee-tasting ride-along in San Francisco. Also quite a caffeinated road trip blast, we visited Blue Bottle Cafe, Trouble Coffee, Ritual Roasters, and Caffe Bello. They particularly enjoyed Trouble Coffee for its off-the-wall quirkiness and good macchiati — but they were most impressed with Trouble’s “build your own damn house happy meal” consisting of coffee, toast, and a coconut (the entire shop menu) for $7. (Sarah gets the credit for all of the Trouble Coffee photos, save for the Happy Meal sign, associated with this post below.)

Given their mutual appreciation for good food and wine, my obsessive coffee habits weren’t too off-putting. Josh asked a lot of intelligent, detailed questions about coffee production, preparation, and the industry, and I’ve put him through a bit of my address book for follow-up interviews. It promises to be an interesting piece that should come out in the next 2-3 months.

It’s Just Coffee!

A bit more unusual was my interview with Joe Eskenazi, who wrote a similar story for the SF Weekly a couple weeks ago: San Francisco - News - SF’s $12 Cup of Coffee at Blue Bottle Cafe. (Their Web site even included a brief bio piece: News & Politics: The Snitch - Too-Much-Coffee Man: San Franciscan’s Java Obsession Has Led Him to Rate Every Last Cafe in The City (From 1 to 587).)

From that experience, I learned a little more about the art of the media misquote. In the article, Joe quoted me as saying of Blue Bottle Cafe’s siphon bar coffee, “It’s probably not something I’d pay for more than once a month.” However, just as the article’s title misleadingly mistakes a $12 pot for a $12 cup, I was referring to a personally drinking an entire pot of the stuff by myself. Simple mistakes, or examples of poetic license to amp up a story intended to expose the excess of coffee gluttony? You be the judge.

The question is valid — but more for the line of questioning that (thankfully) never made it in the article. In typical SF Weekly socialist bias fashion, I was asked, “There are a lot of homeless people living around the Blue Bottle Cafe’s neighborhood. How can you justify a $10 cup [sic] of coffee when you have to step over the homeless to get it?”

Champagne ethics on a beer budget

Forget for a moment the illogic of buying a $1 cup of dreck at Lee’s Deli as a cure for homelessness. Some people in this town will whine to no end demanding the purest organics, sustainable farms, and well-paid workers with living wages and health benefits … and yet have a coronary if somebody actually expects them to pay for all of that.

One could argue that you could save the spare change from buying cheaper coffee (though screw the workers exploited to grow, store, ship, and serve it to you) and donate the difference to the needy. But what is it about good coffee that is somehow less ethical than buying your clothes somewhere other than Goodwill or relying on a mode of transit other than a bicycle?

Of course, getting this line of questioning from a publication largely funded by its final few pages loaded weekly with ads for escort services and every other form of female sexploitation imaginable raises a whole other set of ethical questions, but let’s stick to coffee.

Even Dante’s Hell puts good coffee in only the third circle

Is premium coffee at a premium price so self-indulgent as to corrupt the moral fiber of our nation? Every time I think that I’m getting too obsessive, elitist, or pretentious about coffee, all I have to do is look at a site like Chowhound and read users’ “trip reports” of restaurant meals, their price tags, and their insular critiques of citrus foam or xiao long bao. Believe you me — we had better hope One Laptop per Child doesn’t succeed at connecting much of the Third World to the Internet. Otherwise hoards of outraged, starving villagers will want to suicide bomb the living crap out of this country after reading sites like Chowhound.

The critical consumptionism of CoffeeRatings.com is already shaky ground. But when you elevate that to competitive criticism of consumption — while seeming so blissfully unaware of how offensive that might be perceived by anyone else — you may as well hand out duct tape, bags of nails, and explosives.

Yet another reason why CoffeeRatings.com might never solicit open user reviews…

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This just in from Italy: Putting EU Money to Good Use: Italian Scientists Unveil Coffee-Making Robot - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News. “A coffee-making robot?,” you ask? More than the specialized Swiss jobs we’ve talked about, we’re actually talking 1940’s Popular Mechanics/The Jetsons‘ Rosie … that kind of robot. The kind we’ve been promised for generations but only got lousy iPods instead.

OK, so it can only make instant coffee. (What kind of Italians are these people, anyway?!) Meaning: call Howard Schultz and call off next week’s barista retraining! We’ve got a solution for his Starbucks troubles.

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Philz Coffee presents CoffeeRatings.com with something of a dilemma. Things were a little more straightforward when Philz offered espresso — the basic yardstick for all the ratings on this site. And the 18th St. Philz (since closed) rated among the worst 10% espresso purveyors in the entire city. It practically takes effort to be that bad.

Now owner Phil Jaber may have gotten into a business dispute that shut down this original 18th St. location, but he seemed to get wise in not even attempting to make espresso anymore. Well, legitimate espresso, that is. More on that technicality below. But given the recent attention paid to high-end brewed coffee in S.F., the loyalists of Philz Army whom e-mail us regularly to ask what we think of Philz, and the fact that this site is called CoffeeRatings.com and not EspressoRatings.com, Philz is a local force that cannot be ignored.

Phil and His Philniks

Philz is also a cult. Now we don’t mean to imply that they’re a branch of Scientology, and that S.F. coffee lovers should expect to find Tom Cruise lounging at one of their cafés in a black turtleneck, spouting off how Philz coffee drinkers are the only people capable of saving the world. But it’s a cult in the same vein you’d find for In-N-Out Burger, or even Krispy Kreme donuts a few years back.

For one, wild-eyed people hanging out within 100 feet of a Philz will approach you at random and tell you how you must stop in and have the best coffee you’ve ever had. And once you’re inside, you’ll typically be greeted by extremely friendly staff — so much so, it can be a bit scary and off-putting if you’re not used to total strangers coming on that thick. Phil Jaber himself makes no mistake that he’s out to make a coffee convert of you.

Once inside, at first you might appreciate the wide array of coffee varieties available for you to sample. But upon closer inspection, you’ll discover that all their coffee blends are laden with adjectives and yet lack any descriptive nouns. It’s as if Phil fancies himself as the Willie Wonka of coffee; his blend names have more in common with scented candles than with any recognizable geographic region, bean varietal, farming estate, or roasting style.

But that’s also perhaps some of his appeal to his loyalists: all those nouns represent a bothersome, scientifically-precise pretense about coffee — whereas adjectives are egalitarian, universally approachable, and can be appreciated as art unencumbered by facts. (I once asked Phil’s son and Philz co-owner, Jacob Jaber, if I could “buy a noun”. He had no clue what was in what blend.)

Philz Coffee, China Basin

The Philz location in China Basin (201 Berry St., at 4th St.; 415.975.3847; M-F 6am-9pm; Sa-Su 6am-7pm) opened in early 2007. It’s a large corner space filled with leather sofas and chairs with tall windows facing the new Muni T-line. Besides filter coffee, they also sell pastries, brown paper bags of roasted coffee, and even replicas of Phil’s fedora (that says a lot right there).

To get as close as I could to ordering an espresso here, I ordered #20 on their menu of blends: “Phil’z Handmade Espresso.” It is espresso in name only. Like all the other coffee here, the beans are pulled from plastic bins, ground to order in BUNN equipment, and brewed with hot water passed through a paper filter. Calling that “espresso” is akin to cracking an egg on a plate and calling it an “omelet”. (Never mind that many S.F. establishments serve espresso that poorly looks and tastes like filter coffee.)

Still…it’s some of the best filter coffee in S.F.

However, Philz does produce a very good cup of filter coffee. If I were rating it as an espresso, it would rate about a 4/10. But it’s not espresso. As filter coffee, I’d rate it an 8 — better than all but a few filter coffee options in the city. It had a smooth body and a bit of lively flavor with spices.

So what makes Philz coffee that good? You are paying a serious premium ($2.50 for a small cup of filter coffee). I’ve purchased beans from Philz before (their Heavenly Blend). But when I brewed them at home, I didn’t find them to be any better or worse than most anything you could buy from local roasters in the area. Thus what seems to set Philz apart is that they grind to order, they brew single servings on the spot, and the brewed coffee isn’t left sitting on a burner or even in a thermos.

Another big plus is that they offer a great variety of bean options. With filter coffee, you can get by with carrying a wider inventory of roasted beans. Espresso is far more sensitive to the freshness of the roast and thus inventory turnover is crucial.

Interestingly enough, all their roasts are blends. This in an era where we read about the “death of the coffee blend”. Yet some people go for single malt scotches, some like a blended Johnny Walker; there’s nothing wrong with either one of those choices if done well.

What Would L. Ron Hubbard Drink?

So while we’ve ruled out Philz as an espresso non-starter, and hence inappropriate for the CoffeeRatings.com reviews database, their filter coffee is quite good. But is “quite good” worthy of a cult following?

Once again, I don’t see Phil Jaber as any more notable than his Sunset roasting contemporaries: legendary, friendly neighborhood “loners” such as Alvin Azadkhanian of Alvin’s and Henry Kalebjian of House of Coffee. Phil does a bit more to ensure the freshness and variety of his filter coffee, but with Alvin and Henry you at least have the opportunity to learn something about coffee — and your own likes and dislikes. Yet even the most rabid Blue Bottle addicts we know don’t prowl the streets like zombies after fresh brains, uncontrollably frothing at the mouth about how Philz must infect you too. (Though many Blue Bottleheads do seem to have an unhealthy, singular fixation with their stuff — and are incapable of considering other great area roasters.)

Perhaps a number of Philz loyalists don’t like espresso (or, as is often the case, never had someone make them a proper one). When it comes to quality coffee, espresso drinks — and their profit margins — still dominate the retail coffee landscape. Even some of the best espresso bars in the city give short shrift to their filter coffee. (And all those espresso drinks/milkshakes have names that are just too damn prissy.)

Or perhaps it’s a revelation coffee — the analogue to the revelation espresso we often talk about. Through Philz, many customers first realize what flavor and freshness can do when your coffee isn’t left burning on a BUNN warmer for hours after being made with stale, pre-ground coffee. Date abusive boyfriends or girlfriends all your life, and you too might be ready to marry the first person who doesn’t take a swing at you on the first date.

And there is a reactionary element, where Philz appeals as a sort of anti-Starbucks or anti-Tully’s: local, with a local personality, and not mass produced. But perhaps most of all, it comes down to Phil Jaber himself: a uniquely qualified coffee showman and huckster. A cult of personality.

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This espresso bar is a landmark DIY (i.e., Do It Yourself) oddity of San Francisco, making it something of a cultural institution in the short time it’s been in business (since Summer 2007). The closest (inadequate) comparison we can think of is Portland’s surreal Rimsky-Korsakoffee House — a fun house of a coffee place complete with slowly spinning motorized tables, an “underwater” bathroom, and abrasive wait staff armed with squirt guns that we first stumbled into a decade ago.

But whatever Trouble Coffee is, it makes the likes of Ritual Roasters seem button-down corporate by comparison. (Coffee posers/haters of Blue Bottle’s new upscale digs rejoice.)

Run by the tattooed, oddly accessorized young eccentric, Giulietta (formerly of Athens, GA’s Jittery Joe’s and with connections to SF’s Farley’s Coffeehouse), they serve only coffee, coconut, and toast — each of which are standouts. (She attributes the start of the place to a coconut and a tattoo. Technically, this place is called the “Trouble Coffee and Coconut Club”.)

Otherwise, the tiny space near the beach end of the N Judah line has a “Fellini’s garage sale” theme: rare indie LPs, date signs from 1982, signs requesting customers to not wear masks, etc. In front there are three minichairs camped out on the sidewalk. Inside there’s a wooden counter of planks and a few mismatched stools in a cramped space. And it’s a real hangout for the locals: teens and slackers in particular.

Founded by people with an abundance of skills and energy but little money, their equipment is all hot rod/DIY: the machine, grinder, etc., are all items they assembled from parts. But they use Ecco beans and try to optimize their rotation for serving between 4 and 8 days after roasting.

On our visit, we caught them dipping into their future supply — which meant an espresso made from a three-day-old roast of their single origin Brazilian. The coffee was still gassing out a little and tasted a bit gassy (before enough CO₂ has been released), which was still a little surprising after three days. Even so, it had a rich, textured dark-to-medium brown crema and a rather full flavor for a single bean varietal. With a flavor of pungent (cloves, thyme) goodness.

Giulietta may have been apologetic about the beans being too fresh (we love that concept, btw), but the quality was still there. She also recommended the macchiato for the newer raost: americanos and macchiati are quite popular with the locals. As much an experience, with Giulietta’s great storytelling, as it is great espresso.

Read the review of Trouble Coffee.

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