East Bay Espresso

Today, we finally made it to Blue Bottle Coffee Co., the roastery in Oakland, that is. We met James and Jan and another cool cat, who's name escapes me, who plumbed an Astra one group into his home kitchen.


Coincidently, one of James' friends had just brought him a bag of the "Alphabet City" blend from Ninth Street Espresso, my Alma Mater of sorts.


Ahhh, sweet memories. This stuff rocks. for descriptors, click the photo and read the label.

We drank a few of those lovelies then sampled Blue Bottle's "3 Africans" espresso blend ; a bold, syrupy bodied, well balanced shot that's both fruity and spicy and has a rich, deeply hued crema.

James is obviously an exceptional barista himself but is very humble, praising his baristas over the bridge as being the real experts behind the machine. Nice.

When it comes to drip coffee, the Blue Bottle, and it's Kiosk in Hayes Valley, San Francisco, don't mess around with commercial coffee brewers... Each coffee is ground per request and brewed individually using the chemex / melita pour-over technique on a cool little multi-melita, stainless steel cozy that they had custom made, like the one pictured below...



Afterwards, we still hadn't had enough coffee, so we stopped at Cole Coffee, pictured above... Formerly Royal Grounds, as in Royal, the green bean importers.

Apparently retail wasn't their passion, so they sold it to the former manager and he changed the name, Royal still does the roasting though.

Like Blue Bottle, they grind and brew drip coffee in the coffee cozy or french press per order and offer a wide selection of coffees to choose from.