Since 2006 (if not earlier), this hole-in-the-wall café has served the Brazilian expatriate community through juices (sucos — e.g., cajá, cajú), savory pastries (salgados), and desserts (sobremesa). The non-expat patrons seem to come here to get their açai bowl freak on, which means somebody is reading all those spam e-mails. All of which puts into doubt whether Western Civilization has evolved any since Juan Ponce de León’s belief in exotic sources of eternal life. (Thank you, Oprah.)

Inside this tight space there are three café tables with stools and authentic Brazilian Portuguese speakers and soccer (futebol) on Brazilian TV. There’s a single, tiny sidewalk café table in front.

Using a rather dingy-looking two-group La Pavoni, they pull “cafe expresso” (sic) shots with a pale, thin crema. The staff is rather clueless about the origins of their coffee beans other than that they’re “Brazilian.” The shots are ridiculously tall — to the rim of the cup — so it’s surprising there’s much of a body at all given its watery nature. Flavorwise, their espresso tastes of muted and diluted mild spice.

Stick to the cafezinho (Brazilian coffee) instead — but even that isn’t very good. Which is too bad, because there’s a lot here to like: from the Brazilian expatriate vibe to the coxinhas. For a country that provides the world with so much coffee — and a culture that gave us arguably the greatest movie of the past decade — the coffee here is a major disappointment.

Read the review of Sun Stream Coffee.

A couple months ago, we kicked up a bit of dust when we dressed down the Gibraltar, an espresso beverage created by accident when Blue Bottle Coffee Co. was opening their first SF café in 2005. We called it the fool’s cappuccino — essentially the same beverage, but poured in a cheap restaurant supply glass and gushed over by those who questionably valued faddishness and faux exclusivity over beverage quality. Blue Bottle’s follow-up act in the restaurant-supply-glassware-as-drink-name category is the SG-120, and we put it to the CoffeeRatings.com sensory test.

As many a curious customer asks, what is an SG-120? And why does an espresso drink have a name that sounds more like a license plate number, a Soviet rocket launcher, or a brand of synthetic motor oil? Searching for “SG-120″ on Google, we found that it is also the name of a single door steam jacketed gravity sterilizer and a rotation mill for “viscous or sticky products”. More to the point, as with the Gibraltar, the SG-120 is named after a restaurant supply glass the beverage is served in — this time a shotglass from Japanese glass maker, Hairo.

The SG-120 sensory test

Unlike the Gibraltar, Blue Bottle Cafe actually lists the SG-120 on their coffee menu. They typically offer it for about $3.50 from their single origin Bosco machine — along with the options of the less-milk macchiato ($3.25) and a straight double shot ($3).

Blue Bottle Cafe had been producing SG-120s from their Misty Valley Ethiopia beans until their Bosco had to be sent out for repairs. The machine returned from the shop this week — along with their Chapada Diamantina Brasil as the featured single origin coffee (which shares its name with a national park in Brasil’s state of Bahia). On Wednesday they served us an SG-120 with a smooth, integrated, and well-blended emulsion of coffee and frothed milk. Oddly, it was so smooth it almost didn’t taste much like coffee — more akin to a liquid candy bar.

Despite its non-coffee-like qualities, it was an impressive beverage. But given the SG-120 it came in, it begged the obvious question: would we have enjoyed it more if it were served in a demitasse? Our answer was a definitive “absolutely”. The SG-120 detracted from the experience with some poor glass aesthetics: the SG-120 is thin-lipped, much flimsier than the Gibraltar, it felt “cheap” and almost disposable, and its thinness and materials added no real thermal properties. So once again, we were convinced by the beverage — but not the suboptimal serving format.

(As an aside, Ben, an Apple employee from Vancouver who was visiting the nearby Apple developer’s conference, showed me photos of Chapada Diamantina national park on his iPhone while sampling the same coffee in a siphon pot. His take was that it was very clean, bright, and straightforward — lacking any buttery characteristics, etc. We picked up some beans to test the home version ourselves.)

As posted today by the Brazil-Arab News Agency, the Brazilian Coffee Industry Association (ABIC) forecasts that Brazil will unseat the USA as the coffee consumption capital of the world by the year 2010: Brazil to be world’s greatest coffee consumer market, association forecasts – ANBA. According to a report released yesterday, Brazilian coffee consumption is expected to reach 21 million bags in 2010 — over the current 16.33 million recorded in 2006. Brazil is already the world’s greatest exporter of coffee, with sales of 29.2 million bags for the 2006-2007 crop.

The travel section in today’s New York Times featured an article on Rio de Janeiro coffee bars: Coffee Bars in Rio de Janeiro – Travel – New York Times.

Brazilian botequins — sort of café/lunch counter/bistro combinations — can sometimes be pretty awful. Despite Brazil’s esteemed coffee status — this is a nation where the word for “breakfast” is “café da manhã”, or “morning coffee” — they often serve coffee that has sat on burners for far too long. But at these botequins, you can order a traditional cafezinho — a Portuguese diminutive for a “small coffee”. You can order it black, Carioca (“Rio style”: with added water), media (with milk), or pintado (just a few drops of milk). And no matter how you order it, it will come with mandatory sugar: the Brazilians and Portuguese love their coffee sweet.

Espresso made from Italian interlopers, such as Illy and Lavazza, has replaced many of the cafezinhos served to visitors at shops, cafés, and restaurants. But it’s a mandatory tradition; one that I promise to write about whenever I can make it out there.

This week Willamette Week (Portland, OR) reported on a new coffee maker — one that has been getting a ton of buzz in coffee aficionado circles — now in use at Portland’s Stumptown: Willamette Week Online | Post: ‘Holy Platinum Percolators! Stumptown’s $11,000 coffee makers’.

Made by Clover of Seattle, the uniqueness of its design is in providing custom time and temperature control that accentuates the unique properties of origin coffees on a per-customer/on-demand basis — something not easily done in a high volume retail environment. It apparently melds the properties of a French press and a vacuum pot. One of my favorite cafés in the world, Caffè Artigiano of Vancouver, BC, for example, has started using a Clover to brew their record-breaking Brazil Cup of Excellence coffee.

I don’t know of any Clovers in use in the Bay Area yet (the nearest one is currently in Portland), but I’ll report when I do. Many claim them to be the biggest breakthrough for brewed coffee in decades. Non-espresso brewed coffee is becoming interesting again.

An American Revolution

The article also mentioned the high-end espresso machines of Seattle-based Synesso. The article quotes a Synesso owner as saying that now “we’re making American espresso on American machines.” It’s a seemingly trite comment, but there has been something of a Western espresso succession from Italy underfoot for years now. I don’t mean in a Starbucks‘ faux-Italian-café kind of way, but rather in how North America has been creating the occasional superior, and far more obsessive, espresso than can be found as a general rule across Italy.

This month’s issue of Barista Magazine (“From Canada to Italy”, by Stephen Morrisey) underscores this experience — where Italian cafés consistently produce good, but not excellent, espresso, and North American cafés generally produce poor espresso with some stellar exceptions.

UPDATE: February 28, 2007
No surprise, given Ritual Coffee Roasters‘ original Stumptown roots. But word on the street is that Ritual has their Clover up and running today: Metroblogging San Francisco: Ritual & Clover.


UPDATE: March 3, 2007
Ritual has two Clovers set up at their front counter, but they still are not ready for prime-time. I visited this afternoon, and while there were two people on shift who could run the machines, they haven’t perfected the art to “go public” just yet.


UPDATE: Nov. 15, 2007
Proving that some think it is never too late to show up for a party, today The Economist published an article on the Clover machine from SF’s Ritual Coffee Roasters: Coffee | Move over, espresso | Economist.com.

Today Brazzil Magazine posted an article on Brazil’s coffee resurgence in coffee within the past several years: Brazil – Brazzil Magazine – World Rediscovers Joy of Drinking Brazilian Coffee. The author credits this resurgence to quality gains, increases in production, and, oddly enough, positive news regarding health concerns over coffee.

Brazilian crop yields have improved in recent years. And while many specialty — and home — roasters dismiss espresso blends with a Brazilian base as “boring”, Brazil is producing some great quality beans lately … Cup of Excellence aside.

The article also goes on to discuss coffee consumption trends within Brazil and a bit of Brazil’s coffee history. Of course, no historical article would be complete without mentioning Brazilian inventor and aviator, Alberto Santos-Dumont — whom all Brazilian school children learn as the father of aviation. (Wright Brothers who?)

Today the Associated Press reported that Starbucks entered the Brazilian market with two cafés in São Paulo: Starbucks enters competitive Brazilian coffee market with 2 Sao Paulo stores – Business – International Herald Tribune.

Starbucks demonstrated success at establishing over 100 cafés in Mexico, which is generally not known as a coffee-drinking (let alone espresso-drinking) nation. However, Brazil, second only to the U.S. in the sheer number of regular coffee drinkers, is an entirely different story. As with their compatriots in the sibling nation of Portugal, Brazilians participate in a ritualistic, daily regimen of espresso shots as part of the culture. Also as in Portugal, the average cost of an espresso in Brazil is around 60-70¢ (U.S.) per cup. Starbucks plans to charge its new Brazilian customers almost twice that.

Brazil represents a huge, youthful new market for Starbucks. And to a degree, the extra costs might not deter some aspirational Brazilians seeking a more cosmopolitan image (yes, I hate to use such inane marketingspeak, but your café can be an expression of your lifestyle). But knowing the quality of the espresso in Brazil — unlike many Mexicans who had no prior comparisons — Starbucks has their work cut out for them.

As Frank Sinatra once sang, “They got a lot of coffee in Brazil”. However, the driest winter in two decades is threatening to drop next year’s crop yield by almost a third: Brazilian drought leaves coffee crop high and dry | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle.

As the reality of global climate change sinks in, one also has to wonder if shifting weather patterns might result in worse and more frequent droughts — steering coffee farmers to produce more heat- and drought-resistant robusta beans. Not that I would call arabica beans an endangered species, but I can’t bear the thought of a post-apocalyptic world where the only coffee available is Yuban-in-a-can.

UPDATE: December 7, 2006
According to a Reuters story published today, supplies have apparently gotten so bad that Brazil is now planning to sell 30-year-old green coffee beans: Brazil plans to sell 30-year-old coffee beans | Oddly Enough | Reuters.co.uk. But don’t listen to what the Brazilian officials might say in the article — green coffee beans remain fresh for no more than 12-24 months when properly stored. Unless, of course, you’re roasting for Yuban-in-a-can.

UPDATE: April 11, 2007
Sure enough, more sources are noting how global warming will have seriously damaging impacts on the world’s coffee supplies: Global warming seen threat to coffee production | Environment | Reuters.

A Reuters poll expects coffee prices to remain elevated over worldwide supply concerns. Supplies are generally expected to rebound in the next crop year as regional markets recover from hurricanes and drought and Brazil eases the throttle on production: POLL-Funds, supply worries seen buoying coffee in 2006.

But to give you a sense of just how crude robusta coffee is, note that the industry tracks the price of robusta by the ton … not by the pound, as is the case for arabica.

As Frank Sinatra used to swing it, “They’ve got an awful lot of coffee in Brazil.” But despite the disdain many coffee snobs have for boring old Brazilian beans, a lot a this year’s Cup of Excellence coffee auction netted almost $50/lb for some of Brazil’s finest: Brazil coffee fetches record $US49.75/lb.

Me? I love a good Brazilian base for an espresso blend — made with Cup-of-Excellence-quality stuff. But the Fazenda Santa Ines crop may be a bit over the top for even me… and perhaps even for Sweet Maria’s.

UPDATE: And who bought these beans? Noneother than one of my all-time favorite cafés in North America, Caffè Artigiano in Vancouver, B.C. Co-owner, Vince Piccolo (brother of three-time Canadian barista champion, Sammy — and maker of one of the best espressos I’ve ever had), describes why he paid top dollar for such beans in today’s Globe and Mail: Five bucks for a cup of coffee? Lineup starts here