#so-espresso

Uppers and Downer 2017 (more photos)

This is a unique festival that celebrate coffee, beer, and coffee beers. It brings together some of the best breweries and coffee roasters to collaborate on new coffee beer combinations.

In terms of coffee, La Marzocco helps to sponsor the event and provided their Linea Minis and GS/3 machines for the coffee roasters to pull shots on. At each of the two sessions, there were six different coffee roasters, from national commercial roasters like Intelligentsia, PT’s, Stumptown, and Counter Culture to regional and local roasters such as Kickapoo, Gaslight, and Onyx.

Of the eight SO-Espressos I tried, my personal favorite pulls were the Ethiopia Sidama by Kindred Coffee Roasters and the Kenya Muthunzuuni Peaberry by Metric Coffee. These were all amazingly complex, bright, and fruit forward offers. The cold brew bar on the top floor hosted by Stumptown also had some interesting and enjoyable nitro and carbonated coffee drinks.

Over all the multi-roaster espresso bar was simply amazing and bye itself made the even well worth attending. My only wish is that they would have had higher end pressure profiling machines, competitions between the roasters, and offered single and double shot SO-Americanos.

Kin Kin Coffee Stand - Madison (more photos)

It is always a pleasure to quality coffee being offered in unexpected places and the Kin Kin Coffee Stand in the Festival Foods build is one such find. All to often the coffee stands at grocery stores are dominated by larger scale commercial coffee companies. The quality of coffee one can expect from such places is at best ho-hum. Sadly this is as true of the mainstream grocery stores, as it is of the specialty and organic type. This is why it was exciting to see Kin Kin Coffee, a relatively new 3rd-Wave Madison area roaster, setting up shop in the Festival Foods building in Madison.

At Kin Kin Coffee Stand one can find an impressive wide range of traditional espresso bar menu options. At the same time, they offer their higher quality lighter roasted single origins as SO-Espresso and Americano, batch brewed, and as Hario v60 pour-over on request. In side there was seating where one could watch the traffic on Washington Ave or sit as the counter to visit with the barista. There was also a walk-up service window to the outside serving those waiting at the bus stop, as well as a covered seating area.

So far I have tried Kin Kin Coffee picked up Johnson’s Public House, at the Kin Kin Coffee booth at the Milwaukee Coffee Fest, and now at their coffee stand at their Festival Foods coffee stand location. Greatly looking forward to doing touring their roastery and interviewing them, as I am finding Kin Kin Coffee to be among the top coffee roasters in Wisconsin.

SO-Espressos and SO-Americanos in Wisconsin

No other brewing method draws out more of the nuanced flavor from high quality Single Origins than the SO-Espresso and single and double shot 8oz Americanos (see Espresso Types). When properly temperature and pressure profiled on a quality espresso machine like a LM Strada MP or EP, Slayer, Synesso, or Modbar the flavor extraction an SO-Espresso is simply amazing.

Espresso can be a strong venue to present a great single-origin coffee, because the concentrated extraction highlights its attributes, emphasizing the lemon acidity and salty tomato notes of a Kenyan or highlighting the balance and chocolate of a good Guatemalan. - Fresh Cup

Yet in Wisconsin they are still a rarity on the coffeehouse drink menus, as most only offer traditional darker roasted espresso blends. To make things even worse, the Espresso and Americano are often obscured on the coffeehouse drink menus, hidden behind the overwhelming among of batch brewed,milk and flavor drinks. Rather than having true espresso bars, its seems like there are more dessert drink bars.

Never the less there are a few places that are breaking out of the chain coffeehouse model and offering some amazing SO-Espressos and SO-Americanos. They are either using their own Omni Roasted single origins or pulling their shots with Kickapoo Coffee, Ruby Colorful Coffee, or coffee roasted out of state. My hope is that in time we start to see more coffeehouses like these, as well as more than one option for SO-Espresso on the drink menus.

Known places in Wisconsin offering lighter and brighter SO-Espresso and SO-Americano:

Milwaukee

Kickapoo Coffeehouse in the 3rd-Ward neighborhood

Alderaan Coffee in the Lower Eastside neighborhood

Madison

5th Element Coffee in the Regent neighborhood

Sí Café in the Capital neighborhood

Bradbury‘s Coffee in the Capital neighborhood

Johnson’s Public House in the Tenney-Lapham neighborhood

Kin Kin Coffee Stand in the Tenney-Lapham neighborhood 

Appleton and Green Bay Area

TImshel Cafe in Neenah

La Esperanza Farm, El Salvador - 5th Element Coffee (more photos)

This is a unique coffee being offered by the 5th Element Coffee in Madison. The variety is Bourdon, grown at an altitude of 1,500 meter, honey processed grown on the Raul Rivera plantation. It was roasted to a medium-light level (SCA Agtron classification title 65), which draws out many of the natural flavors of the bean, with brighter yet balanced fruit forward cup.

I was able to try this La Esperanza as an SO-Espresso, Areopress, and Hario V60, In each case the end cup was a pure delight to drink.

SO-Espresso Test - Was able to taste test the Ethiopian, Kenyan, and Columbia we roasted in the SCA Coffee Roaster Level 1 class as SO-Espressos and SO-Americanos on a friends Rocket Espresso machine. The results were AMAZING, with each origin showing a wildly different flavor profile. Bright, yet balanced and sweet cups.

Kenya Rukira - Ruby Colorful Coffee (more photos)

This is one of the most fruit forward Kenyans I have ever had to date. It comes from a small lot in southern Kenya, from the Othaya farmers cooperative society in Nyeri. It was grown at 1800+meters. At a medium-light roast, the nuanced flavors are able to shine through brightly. Ruby Coffee did a wonderful job in sourcing and roasting this Kenyan.

Was able to try this on the cupping table, as an SO-Espresso, and as a Kalita Wave pourover at Ruby’s roastery, as an Areopress at home. Regardless of the brewing method, the Rukira as a pure delight to drink.

Rwanda - Coffeeville (more photos)

This is medium roast fair trade from a new coffee roaster in Wisconsin called Coffeeville, which I was recently able to visit. It has are deep villain and brown sugar notes from start to finish, with fruit forward orange notes in between. There is an overall sweet gentle complexity to this cup, which is enjoyable at any time of the day.

Coffeeville Company - Jackson, WI (more photos)

While at the Milwaukee Coffee Festival I met Josh from Coffeeville in Jackson. As they are only located 45 minutes out from downtown I deiced to go and visit this 4 month old coffeehouse and coffee roaster. Let me just say I was impressed with their equipment choices, bean menu philosophy, and employ skills at delivering qaulity coffee. 

For their lab coffee roaster Coffeeville is using the 500g North Coffee Roaster and for their production roaster the Probat P12/2 12kg roaster, which is the Mercedes Benz of specialty coffee roasters. For their espresso grinders they are using Mahlkonig K30s and for their coffeehouse espresso machine they are using a 3 group Rancilio Classe 11. This is an impressive machine as it allows for advanced temperature profile, including change the temperature during the extraction. This is ideal for 3rd-Wave and New-Wave coffeehouses that are pulling SO-Espresso shots, which Coffeeville is offering.

Besides offering some truly amazing coffee, Coffeeville is also a full-on teahouse, hand blending their teas in-house. They also offer high quality baked goods, soups, and hoagies which all made from scratch on-site as well. All of these being served in a log house built 1848 and surrounded by a large collection on historic coffee grinders.

The best way to describe Coffeeville is Old World charm and craftsmanship meets 3rd-Wave coffee values. Jack, the owner, has put a lot of care into building destination coffee roastery and coffeehouse. For those living in Milwaukee, this place makes for an ideal date day away from the city.