On this cold and gray winter day in Milwaukee I am dreamin’ I was back in California. While I did like the climate there, the beaches, chill culture, and the more omni present ethnic diversity, it is the coffee-culture I am missing the most.
The coffee roasters focused on high quality single origins, roasted lighter and brighter to let the nuanced flavor of the bean shine through. The coffeehouse moved well beyond a menu loaded batch brewed and milk+flavor drinks, towards offering a wide range of SO-Espresso and Brew Bar options. Most of all the baristas where not only knowledgeable about coffee, but passionate about their craft.
Most of all I miss the many Siphon Vac-Pot Bars in coffeehouses in Little Tokyo, Koreatown, and beyond, as when brew correctly the flavor extraction is amazing.
Places like Verve, Portola, Ritual, Blue Bottle, Four Barrel, Insight, Temple, Demitasse, Handsome (R.I.P.) and Caffe Luxxe come to mind as places we visited often and loved the 3rd-Wave coffee they were serving. There were also many multi-roasting coffeehouses shattered thought Californian using beans from the best roasters local roasters (roasting mainly on Probat and Deidrich) and grinding on the Mazzer and Mahlkonig grinders and pulling shots on their pressure profiling LM Strada MP, Synesso, and Slayer machines. The result of all of this was that it was easy to find amazing world class coffee in almost any corner of LA, San Fran, and SAC, as well as somewhat easy in the smaller cities in between.
It's a bit depressing knowing that there are only two places in the city of Milwaukee I can go to find lighter and brighter SO-Espresso and three to find decent brew bar options with baristas that know what they are doing and care about how they are pouring it.
Compared to metro-Milwaukee, the state of Wisconsin, or even the Midwest as a whole, the coffee-culture in California was light years a head of us. While in Wisconsin we do have some notable exceptions like Kickapoo, Ruby, and JBC, these roasters have had too little influence on coffee-culture in Milwaukee. While I am grateful for Alderaan Coffee, Hawthorne Coffee, and the Kickapoo Coffeehouse for providing Milwaukee with 3rd-Wave quality coffee, having only three coffeehouse to choose from in the city is a major downer.
Not sure why this is, but the national coffeehouse chain (Starbucks, etc.) habits of dark roasted coffee, loaded with milk and flavors seems to still be in vogue among most of the cities local chain coffeehouses. -- This is my everyday lament.
While I LOVE Milwaukee’s hip-and-trendy Eastside, East Town, 3rd-Ward, Riverwest, and Bay View knighthoods, but I really wish the coffee-culture would catch up with whats taking place on the West Coast.
In any cases, on this cold and gray Milwaukee winter day I am dreamin’ I was back in LA chillin at one of the many amazing coffeehouses with a double shot 8zo SO-Americano. The 3rd-Wave is grossly underrepresented here and oh how I wish the California coffee-culture would come to Milwaukee. -- This is my everyday dream.
Visit my Southwest Coffee-Culture Project to learn more about the many months I spent exploring the coffee-culture in California, Arizona, and Utah, as well as my Wisconsin Coffee-Culture Project to see who I think is providing the state with the best 3rd-Wave Coffee.
