New Hours in May

In an effort to better serve our customers we recently extended open hours to 5 days a week from 8 to 12. We realize now that while adding minimal convenience for our customers (you can already find our coffee for sale in 2 other establishments on Main Street, and there are already 3 coffee shops), we have stretched ourselves pretty thin as far as maintaining the open hours while also trying to keep up with our coffee education efforts, customer service, roasting, etc.

 

Starting in May, we will be reassigning our open hours to 2 days a week: 10 – 6 on Fridays, and 11 – 3 on Saturdays (with classes from 10-11). Our goal with the new hours is to be available for folks to catch us either on their lunch break or when they get off work, or on the weekend. We are also refocusing our open hours to highlight coffee equipment that we offer in store that is only otherwise available online.

 

We apologize for the inconsistency of our open hours lately; it has not been our intention to come across inconsistent or unprofessional. We would still love to serve you coffee on Friday or Saturday, and stay tuned for more updates and reviews on coffee paraphernalia that we get into the shop!

Clever Dripper

One of the newest pour over designs to surface recently is the Clever Dripper. This device is innovative in a few ways: because it is a hybrid of two brewing methods, because it requires minimal equipment, and mostly because it is inexpensive.

This is a good device for someone new to pour overs because it pretty much requires no other equipment and it is hard to mess up. You simply prewet the filter in the Clever with hot water and drain it, add your grounds to the Clever, and add your hot water. After it is finished steeping, the Clever is outfitted with a stopper that is released once the device is placed on a cup.

There are only a few drawbacks. The plastic design doesn’t retain heat very well (Clever koozie, anyone?), although the lid does help. Also, there is an issue with how fast the coffee drains through the Clever, which should be factored into the total contact time of the brew. The problem is counter-productive in the sense that if you make the grind finer to allow for a short brew time, the drawdown is even longer, and vice versa for a coarser grind.

We’ve taken steps to achieve that window of grind size and brew time that allows for a tasty brew, and included a couple steps to help the process:

1) Prewet the Clever Dripper and filter with hot water. Drain.
2) Grind and add your predetermined amount of coffee.
3) Add 10 – 15% of the water for the bloom.
4) After 30 seconds, add the rest of your water, pouring aggressively in concentric circles to agitate the grounds, then add the lid.
5) After 3:30 contact time, place the Clever on your cup, and give a couple circular stirs.
6) Replace the lid. The drawdown shouldn’t take much more than a minute (at a 19g dose).

Clever Dripper Brew Video from Velo Coffee on Vimeo.

The bloom ensures that all the grounds are extracting, leaving no dry grounds on the top. Also, the stirs cause the grounds at the bottom to become separated, which helps water move through them faster.

We’ll be offering a Clever Dripper brew class this Saturday at 10 AM if anyone is interested. The cost is $7, which gets you a half-pound of coffee. We’ll have the refractometer ready for some TDS testing if you’d like to see how well your method is extracting.

Bonavita Automatic Coffee Brewer

We recently received the first couple Bonavita electric automatic drip brewers for resale. We are excited to be able to offer these exceptional brewers. Bonavita has created quit the buzz within the specialty coffee world with a small line of great coffee equpiment at very affordable prices. In fact, one of the main reasons we are so excited about the Bonavita brewers is the price. We are able to sell them for $130 ($150 for the thermal carafe version coming soon to Velo Coffee) which makes this machine excessible to a wide range of coffee lovers looking for convenience or for a larger brewing capacity solution.

What makes the Bonavita automatic brewer great?

The 1400 watt heating element produces and maintains optimal water temerature for the entire brew cycle. In fact, the heater is capable of heating room temperature water to 205 degrees within about 40 seconds! One of the most glaring flaws with many non-commercial automatic brewers is the inability to effectively heat water to an optimal temperature. The ones that can heat water to over 200 degrees often cannot do it within an optimal time and are often unable to maintain that optimal brew temperature throughout the entire brew cycle.

The shower head on the bonavita also outperforms many non-commercial brewers. The Bonavita is able to effectively saturate the entire bed of grounds, and it does so evenly. Most automatic brewers dispense water only into the middle of the bed of grounds leading to uneven extraction.

Timing is often a major pitfall of many automatic brewers. The Bonavita is capable of brewing 40 ounces of coffee within 5 minutes. Bitter, over extracted coffee is often the result of a slow brew cycle, and the Bonavita combats this with great design.

The Bonavita carries a two year warranty, is BPA free and looks pretty darn nice too. Bonavita’s products have attracted, not only our attention, but the attention of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. The SCAA has awarded Bonavita’s auto brewers its coveted seal of approval- a nod only a couple of brewers have received for anywhere near this price.

Needless to say, we recommend the Bonavita automatic drippers if you’re in the market for a new/better coffee maker. We even know where you can get one in Chattanooga. But don’t take our word for it. Come by the roastery and check one out for yourself.

,Andrew Gage

Does Chattanooga Care About Coffee Education?

As a general rule, it seems whenever a new trend emerges in the food industry or any other industry, it arrives in smaller towns later. Chattanooga seems to be breaking the mold for the most part as far as smaller sized towns go, but does this translate into the coffee community?

Whenever people from out of town ask what the most popular coffee shop in town is, I immediately know the answer is Starbucks. Not that Starbucks is evil (another conversation…), but this represents Chattanooga’s inclination toward an earlier trend in coffee; one that undoubtedly did a lot for the industry as a whole, yet is a less than true-to-form representation of coffee.

In the specialty coffee industry, the trend for several years now has been toward experiencing the natural characteristics of coffee and discovering ways to maximize them and away from added flavors. With this approach, you get coffee growers, roasters, and coffee shops that are more intentional and literally more careful about coffee. This is good, because there are such vast natural variations in beans that come from different coffee regions before adding alterations from processing, roasting, and brewing philosophies. In larger cities, you can usually find a myriad of coffee shops that adopt this approach and are very deliberate about the coffee they produce (which can be perceived as affectation), and their coffee is very, very good. So is Chattanooga interested in this approach to coffee?

This trend can come across as high and lofty, and getting on board with it can seem unappealing because of all the confusing jargon and snobby baristas. But if you enjoy coffee, wouldn’t you want to enjoy it more? There are some unique opportunities being offered around town right now that can give you direct (and judgment-free) access to understanding coffee more, and some of it is even free. We offer free cuppings every other week for this purpose, and any event that the Chattanooga Coffee Club does will be very interesting and informative.

Coffee is an enigma as far as food goes because it is so steeped in tradition, yet so little is known about it. Once you mix tradition with scientific breakthroughs, you end up with several schools of thought, which can be beneficial in any industry. But right now it seems like only one inclination toward coffee has overwhelming appeal in Chattanooga. Hopefully with Chattanooga’s ideas of sustainability and intentional living it will not be a stretch to apply the same mentality towards coffee.

Boneshaker Shirts, new hours, and Freedom presses

We’ve noticed that most of the traffic that we get through the shop are people who just happen to be passing by and see that the sign by the door says open. It’s almost become a guessing game as to whether or not the shop is open, so in response to this we have extended hours to weekdays from 8 AM to 12 PM. There’s just way too much inconsistency in the world today as it is without us having random shop hours.

Also, we finally got some Boneshaker shirts in. They’re printed on a super comfy Tultex blended shirt, and would make a great present to yourself. We have those and a reprint of the Velo shirt on a red, just to add some variety.

Over the past week, our friend Jonny Ginese has been in and out with his fancy camera, patiently working with us to create some of our very own brew videos. Our plan is to release one of these videos every other week in conjunction with our brew workshops. That’s right, brew workshops. The first one will be this Saturday, March 10.

French Press Brew Video from Andrew Gage on Vimeo.

Finally, in these troubling times of political uncertainty, we think it’s important that we get back to the basics with our shop lingo: no longer will we refer to a press pot as a “French” press; henceforth it will be referred to as a Freedom press. So watch our Freedom press brew video, and try to come out to the Freedom press brew class this Saturday, starting at 10 AM.

Monthly Schedule

Freedom Press Workshop 3/10
Free Public Cupping 3/17
Clever Dripper Workshop 3/24

- Andrew Bettis

New Year, new projects

I haven’t been on this blog nearly enough over the last couple of months.  We are just coming out of a tornado of a holiday season, and I am personally looking very forward to a slightly slower pace over the next couple of months.  While reflecting on 2011, Velo has its sights set on some very exciting projects for the new year.

Some newly aquired space within the roastery will soon house the beginnings of our offical lab.  The nearly 300 square feet being vacated will easily accomodate an educational cupping lab.  Up until now, public cuppings have been accomodated by a lot of rearranging and moving of equipment.  Now Velo will much more easily be able to host cuppings, as well as, an upcoming schedule of monthly coffee classes aimed at the consumer.  We will begin February 2012 offering free bi-weekly cuppings open to the public.  The approximately one-hour cuppings will be held here at Velo Coffee the first and third Saturdays of each month (beginning in February) at 10am.

Speaking of the new lab, The refractometer purchased with the makework grant money has allowed us incredible opportunity to craft better coffee, better analyze the coffee we produce, assemble more indepth brewing guides, and help with the training of other coffee brewers.  The piece of equipment will undoubtedly be a big part of the lab.  Also, the experience of visiting a couple of labs in Seattle will help us model our facility.  While in Seattle,  I was able to see what works well, what’s necessary, and what I can do here in Chattanooga.

As the educational aspect of Velo Coffee grows, we will also be looking to bring in speakers from the specialty coffee industry to give demos, workshops and the like.  The lab will also eventually see the addition of a sample roaster, allowing us the opportunity to eventually offer home roasting workshops.

With the new year, and nearly two years behind Velo Coffee, I find the upcoming changes exciting.  The coffee lab is something I cannot wait to establish and use.  I believe education is very important to propel the specialty coffee industry, and with this new facility, our opportunity to play a larger role in that will only grow.

Seattle, WA

I feel like I haven’t stopped moving since I returned from Seattle over a month ago.  The trip was successful in many ways- Beautiful weather, the chance to stay with some friends and make many new friends, the opportunity to visit many superb roasteries and shops, and the opportunity to improve my skill as a roaster.

I spent the first three days in Seattle at Atlas Coffee Importers.  There I cupped a number of incredible coffees, each contributing to my palate’s development.  The workshop at Atlas revolved around developing the roaster’s palate.  Every action and technique a roaster employs at his machine must be corroborated by taste.  That being said, everyone has different tastes, and with differences in taste come different roasting practices.  After all, those differences are what set certain coffees and brands apart.

The Atlas workshop was helpful in honing in on how little actions executed during a roast manifest in the finished product.  The course was also heavy on how agricultural practices and processing methods contribute to a coffee’s character.  This later issue, along with further cupping procedures are two issues that are making their way into Velo Coffee’s upcoming information guide/training manual.  The three days spent at Atlas have aided in the direction I take in training others.  The course has also contributed to how I view cupping, both in a general sense and a specific one.

Coffee Fest followed Atlas’s workshop.  This three day industry-wide trade show included a barista competition, a number of vendor booths, and a couple of informative lectures on roaster control devices.  One particular lecture proved to be helpful in my establishing a plan for better roast control as well as the ability to train others on roasting.

The trip to Seattle would not have been complete without visits to many fantastic roasteries and shops.  While biking through the city during my week there I made it a point to visit shops that I have admired for some time.  Places like Stumptown, Vivace, Victrola and Cafe Vita.  and in the process of systematically hitting up these places I would inevitably stumble upon institutions like Lighthouse, Zoka and Herkimer- which, by the way, turned out to be my favorite.  Herkimer’s Hondurus was exceptional- extremely bright but well balanced, peachy and creamy.  It was more akin to drinking a Kenya coffee than a Hondo.  There is much to be coveted and learned from the “standards” in Seattle.

My trip concluded with an affirmation that many ideas and concepts/practices found in the most successful shops and roasteries in Seattle can be executed here in Chattanooga.