The last blog entry was all about cupping and conveniently there is an awesome event happening on April 25^th featuring a blind cupping with 10 different roasters from Chicago including us. The Chicago Roaster Jam is being held at Counter Culture Coffee Chicago and hosted by Halfwit Coffee, New Gotham coffee community, and Passion House Coffee Roasters. This event is open to the public and starts with a panel discussion at 5:30PM about green coffee buying and storage. Green coffee being raw coffee removed from the coffee cherry and processed but not yet roasted. The blind cupping begins at 7PM.
            This is a great opportunity to cup and try some new roasters you may not be familiar with. The fact that it is blind makes it even more interesting. The Pepsi challenge being put into effect, there will be no signage anywhere saying where the coffee was grown or which roaster is responsible for the roast. Although Passion House is one of the hosts, I have no real idea what to expect which is actually really exciting. It will be really interesting to allow the coffee do the talking with no reputations or expectations getting in the way. This is the first of hopefully many events the will bring Chicago area roasters together to help further embolden Chicago’s specialty coffee scene. Here is a link to the facebook event page. Add yourself to the “going” list.

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            Cupping may be unfamiliar to some readers as it was to me half a year ago. It’s the practice used to observe the flavors, the aromas, and the mouthfeel of coffee. The process is done in steps. First, the coffee is weighed out as water is brought to proper brewing temperature. Next, the coffee is ground and the aromas of the dry particles are noted. After that, near boiling water is added to start the brew process as a timer is started; again the aromas of the now wet grounds are observed. At four minutes the brewing process is stopped with “the break,” the crust that has formed on the top of the cup is broken with a cupping spoon; the aromas of the oils released and left on the spoon are noted. The cups are skimmed, the grounds that have risen to the top are removed, and the coffee is allowed to cool. Finally, the coffee is slurped, sipped forcefully with the bottom lip and the spoon parallel to one another like hot soup.
            This process is both fun and informative but can also be daunting at first. Smelling and tasting coffee is hopefully always enjoyable, and the attention to detail allows a person to better understand the coffee, but the procedure and the pressure caused by inexperience can make newcomers feel out of place. The rest of this article will be devoted to helping ease that possible discomfort.
            I feel the two most important things to keep in mind for a newcomer is that cupping is for your benefit and there are no wrong answers. Experienced cuppers may wish to move through the table at a race car pace slurping loud enough to challenge a coach’s whistle. Don’t be intimidated; let them move past and continue to slurp at a comfortable volume. The only awards given at the end of cupping are what you’re able to take from it, none for speed and slurp volume. Be thoughtful and attentive to the experience, the athletics to star in the World Cupping will come later. Don’t be discouraged if you’re unable to identify particular smells or flavors right away. Some cuppers are so precise and accurate with their descriptions, the fuzz of an unripe kiwi in vanilla kefir. While this is impressive, it can cause a person to go quiet. Resist that urge and say whatever comes to your head, it’s not wrong. It could even help a fellow cupper realize the flavor they were trying to decipher. Cupping is an opportunity to become more familiar with a very familiar potable and like anything becomes more comfortable the more often it’s done.
            Although cuppings may have the appearance of a “coffee professionals only” event, they are held around the city for free. Both Ipsento and Counter Culture have cuppings on Fridays, 11-noon and 10-11AM respectively. And WE invite anyone to come to the warehouse to cup with us as well or just come by to say hi and see the space. We cup every Tuesday at 9AM. We generally cup seven to twelve production-roasted coffees and always give our guests the spoons with the deepest bowls. Thanks for reading and hope to see you next Tuesday.

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            We are debuting our new Passion House customer map with today’s post. This map should be pretty straight forward for anyone who has used google maps before, but I will go over a few things in case you are new to google maps.
            First and foremost, we have set up our map to display three different categories: retail bags, coffee, and a combo of the two. These different options are all handled by different color push pins used for each location, but since the map is embedded in this post, you cannot see what means what.

Here is the legend:
Blue=retail only
Green=coffee only
Red=retail and coffee.

View Passion House Map in a larger map

The map is very handy for finding your favorite coffee no matter which neighborhood you’re in. Unfortunately, the Southside only has one (We have to change this), but if you’re down there why not check out Amelia’s for lunch. In Evanston for the day, check out Blind Faith Café. In Westmont, grab some retail bags from Standard Market.
            Click on a push pin and it will bring up a little mini window that will direct you to the business’s website, or you can read reviews left by other google users. It’s a very user-friendly interface. Check out the map and find a new favorite place to enjoy Passion House coffee.

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            I have been given the opportunity of taking over the Passion House blog. I thought for my first blog post I would give a bit of introduction of myself and what I hope to accomplish with this blog. I, John Mook, have been working with Passion House for a little over a year. I was taken on staff with little previous coffee knowledge. I had worked as barista in several establishments where coffee was served but was by no means first priority, and Joshua and Shannon are giving me a shot at making coffee my first priority, a very exciting prospect.
            This blog is one way of making that happen. Beings this is the Passion House blog, it will be Passion House-centric, but more than that I want it to be coffee-centric. I would like it to be a place to talk about all things coffee. I am hoping to look at both the esoteric and the more obvious sides of coffee.  There is going to be some science, there has to be when talking about coffee, but I want it to be entertaining as well. I also want to talk about what coffee means to us as a culture and what it means to other cultures. These ideas are getting very lofty, more than anything I want this blog to be fun to read. It should be very user friendly, meaning I want the reader to feel like a direct dialogue is taken place, and when need be–a direct-dialogue to actually take place. I want it to be a place where the reader can feel comfortable leaving questions or comments. So please do, and please give suggestions of what you might want to see in future blog posts. The blog is a learning experience for me, so the feedback would be more than helpful.
            Hopefully, this first post sheds a little light on me and what I am hoping to do. As with most things, it will probably take a few posts to get dialed in, but I’m hoping you’ll stick around and possibly learn something, but most importantly be entertained and have fun.
Thanks.

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The auction was delayed by a few days due to Hurricane Sandy and her destruction, what we didn’t know was that Steve Mierisch, founder of Pulley Collective, was cleaning up the flood waters provided by Sandy and throwing away 23-150lb bags of coffee. This would have killed a small roaster’s budget to pay for unusable product, however Steve decided to pay the farmers for the water-logged coffee. He kept this fact hidden and proceeded with his first auction announcing winning bids on Twitter and through emails. Twitter was where we first found out we were the proud owners the Nicaragua Las Brisas. Joshua and I were both astonished and excited! We contacted Steve to thank him for bringing us this opportunity and found about his losses. Joshua and I, being deeply committed to fostering the community, decided to donate $1 per 12oz retail bag sold online or in stores to Pulley Collective.

Whenever you see the Nicaragua Las Brisas for sell, pick up a bag knowing you will be helping, not only, a small craft roaster grow but also a new business helping to facilitate relationships between roasters and farmers.

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Upon taking this challenge I sat with this coffee, smelling the beans every chance I could, each coffee I made was consumed at a much slower pace with a notebook in hand, searching for every flavor in the beverage and the best route to take to still preserve the character. The end thought was how do I tame this crotchety old man yelling at me and turn him into something delicate and beautiful? The answer was Gin.

I picked a G’vine Floraison Gin due to their use of 10 botanical ingredients that I adore, one of them being cardamom, and thought it could add a greater balance to the end result. I drank the gin and coffee together, although it was good there was something missing. The gin cleaned up the fall flavors that intrigued me to begin with in the coffee so making an herbaceous syrup was the only answer, rosemary and sage with a base of local wildflower honey and lemon zest. Combining all the ingredients, I ended up with a well balanced drink that highlighted aspects of my 3 components, the cardamom and vine flower in the gin, the wild guava and fall aromas in the Sumatra and the cleanness from fresh herbs and zest.

Ready to try it?

Herb Syrup:

In a small pan over medium-high heat add 3/4 cup filtered water. Next add 2 full sprigs of fresh rosemary and 1 full sprig of sage. Simmer with a lid for 12 minutes. Add 2tbsp local amber wild flower honey and simmer with the lid off for 7 minutes on high heat to reduce into a syrup. Take off the heat and add the zest of one lemon and replace lid as it cools.

Wild Hot Toddy

2oz  fresh brewed coffee

2oz G’vine Gin

1/2oz herb syrup

Stir and garnish with a sage leaf. Enjoy!

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Coffee Manhattan:

Start by brewing a coffee concentrate, the coffee should be more fruit forward for best results, I used the Guatemala Puerta Verde. 35g coffee (cupping grind) to 375g water, brew for 4 minutes and filter. I used a mason jar and filtered in a Chemex filter. Pour hot coffee directly over 1 cup frozen whole cherries add 2 whole star anise pods, cover with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature until cherries are fully thawed, refrigerate overnight. Strain the cherries over a sauce pan for 1 hour letting them release as much juice and concentrate as possible. Place saucepan on medium high heat, add 1tsp of raw honey. The idea here is that we just need to raise the temperature just a bit to melt the honey and open the flavor of the star anise. DO NOT BOIL!!! Max temperature is 140 degrees for one minute. Put the liquid to cool in the refrigerator.

For the cocktail:

2oz Templeton Rye Whiskey

1oz coffee/cherry concentrate

Add ice and STIR until cooled, strain into a glass, add a soaked cherry and enjoy!

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Post number 1 in a series: The Great Coffee Exchange, Spring 2012.

It’s been an interesting few days of coffee in my house. Last week some coffee friends and I organized what Drew Moody is calling The Great Coffee Exchange, Spring 2012 (I added the “Spring” part). Basically, we each bought a bag of locally roasted coffee and split it into fourths, keeping one portion for ourselves and sending the other three out into the world. We have some great areas represented: Drew in Chicago, Daniel in Washington, David in Boston, and me in NJ.

First up is Drew’s pick: Guatemala El Limonar.

Sorry. Just playing with my new super wide lens.

The Coffee
Roaster: Passion House Coffee Roasters
Origin: El Injerto, Huehuetenango, Guatemala
Farm: Finca El Limonar
Elevation: ~2000M
Process: Washed

The Brewing
Method: Clever brewer
Ratio: 23.4g coffee : 344mL filtered water
Grind: coarse
Directions: 40g bloom for 30 seconds. Full immersion for an additional 2 minutes. (2:30 total time.)

The Review
The aroma hits you hard from the moment the beans are ground and explodes when the water hits. It’s extremely citrusy. It’s like brewing a lime. In the cup it’s more of the same. There’s a lot of citrus acidity, like drinking limes and grapefruits. Very fruity but very smooth. It’s bold, but not heavy or muddy. The mouthfeel is on the thin side, but has a good linger and slides through the palate like it’s ice skating. There’s a subtle richness like a chocolate cake that offers a bit of balance to the fruity acidity.

As the temperature drops, everything fades away. Except of course the limes. I swear it tastes like a cup of tart fruit juice. A crazy cocktail of citrus goodness. If I were blindfolded and drinking the bottom half of this cup, I don’t know if I could tell that it was coffee. It’s that juicy.

From Passion House:

As you brew this coffee the aroma hits you with ripe peaches and hydrangeas. Your first sip, the fresh floral flutters to the roof of your mouth while peaches and nectarine skin flood your cheeks. Sparkling lime soda water hits the sides of your tongue and tupelo honey settles into your tongue. Notes of fresh fig play well with all the peaches. The finish leaves you with the richest of milk chocolate and creamy caramel.

As usual, you may not find all of these nuanced flavors in your cup, but this description is fairly accurate. It’s very fruity, as I’ve beaten into you in my description above, but there’s a certain depth to the sweetness and a bit of body that reminds you of chocolate or caramel.

Drew raves about Passion House constantly. And now I totally see why. I’m glad he chose this coffee as his contribution to The Great Coffee Exchange, because it’s a doozy. It’s honestly one of the most interesting and enjoyable coffees I’ve had in the past…weeks? months? Maybe since the Kuma Coffee Guatemala Bella Carmona.

Stay tuned for the next post in The Great Coffee Exchange, Spring 2012 series. You should also check out Drew’s review of this Passion House Guatemala El Limonar.Review

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Review: Passion House Coffee Roasters // Guatemala El Limonar

by Drew Moody on Jun 11, 2012 • 1:08 pm 5 Comments

click image to purchase

This is going to be a unique week here at the Table, as we’ll be sipping four coffees that I received as part of The Great Coffee Exchange—a trade-off that I was part of with four really great guys, from four really great cities, via Twitter. Represented were Seattle, Boston, New York City, and my home sweet home, Chicago; the participants, respectively, were Daniel (@ddavidn), David (@_Simple_Simon), and one of my favorite coffee bloggers around, Randy (@randylevine).

We each picked the latest offering from our favorite local roaster, divided the beans equally four ways, kept one fourth for ourselves, then sent the other three-fourths to the other participants. There were no guidelines, and the only rule was that the coffee had to be bought from a locally-owned small business—the region didn’t matter, the varietal didn’t matter, whether the coffee was a single origin or a blend didn’t matter.

After taking part in this exchange, I am left wondering why I had never thought of doing this before. In exchange for my share of coffee, I received three really great, unique coffees.

Welcome to my Table, here in the corner of this cafe. To start this week of reviews off, we’re going to sip a cup of Guatemala El Limonar that was provided by, who I’ve decided is my favorite roasting operation in Chicago, Passion House Coffee Roasters. Feel free to pull up a chair.

Today’s coffee comes from Finca El Limonar, located in the heart of Guatemala’s most famous coffee producing region, Huehuetenango. The farm got its start around the mid-1900′s and has been churning out fantastic high-quality coffees ever since. It was born when the Aguirre brothers inherited their late father’s farm and divided it in half; nowadays, Finca El Limonar is operated and managed by their mother, Rosa María Ovalle Mont.

Her main goal has been to produce a quality cup of coffee under conditions that are environmentally sustainable. She achieves this by employing as little chemical substances as possible on her farm—if chemicals aren’t absolutely necessary to enable or assist her coffee’s growth, she doesn’t use it. Instead, coffees are removed by hand or by machete. This as about as close as to organic as you can get.

El Limonar has a wet mill on site, where treatment tanks are used to purify and recycle the waste water in order to avoid polluting the many local rivers and streams. Left over coffee pulp is then recycled as a fertilizer for young plants.

the basics:

origin: El Injerto, Huehuetenango, Guatemala
farm: Finca El Limonar
elevation: ~2000 meters above sea level
cultivars: Bourbon, Catuai and Caturra
process: fully washed, patio dried
certifications: standard

the coffee:

As soon as I rip open the packaging, a burst of peaches, floral aromatics, and lemon-lime zestiness comes exploding out. It smells like this is going to be a really sweet cup of coffee.

Immediately post-brew, while the cup is still hot, my palate is greeted by the sweetness of Georgia peaches, apricots, pears, white grapes, and a flutter of floral aromatics, that flit in over the top and tickle the roof of my mouth.  I’m particularly fond of the bed of sweetness that coats my palate, that all of the fruitiness comes gliding in on.

As the cup cools off a bit, a very zesty lime acidity suddenly appears, from out of nowhere. The cup cools off just a little more and now the cup is starting to resemble all the best qualities of a gin and tonic. It has the bubbly mouthfeel, the slight carbonation of tonic or soda water that makes your taste buds stand at attention, and the zestiness of the lime wedge without any of the “burnt plastic” aftertaste that gin and tonics sometimes have (depending on the quality of the gin in the well). I let the cup cool just a little bit more and the peach and honey sweetness makes a reappearance, gently caressing the sides of my palate while the lime and tonic glide right down the middle of my tongue, creating a massive taste experience.

At room temperature, the limy-ness backs off a bit, the acidity rounds out and becomes more balanced, the mouthfeel smooths out, and flavors of creamy milk chocolate and sweet caramel and brown sugar come out. A soothing flavor and mouthfeel that relaxes my palate after all of the excitement of the cup’s middle stages.

Medium body; medium lemon-lime acidity; honey and “bubbly” (for lack of better descriptors) mouthfeel; crisp, clean finish.

the bottom line:

I know it already seems like I’m on the payroll at Passion House Coffee Roasters since I’m always, always, always raving about their coffees, but I swear to you that I’m not! I really am this over the moon about what Joshua Millman and Shannon Steele are doing inside of their Fulton Street warehouse. In the year or so that I’ve been drinking Passion House, I think there’s only been one roast I’ve tried that left me thinking “That was pretty good”; the rest of the coffees I’ve had left me exclaiming, “Wow! This is really good!”

The Guatemala El Limonar is certainly no exception. This was such a fabulous cup of coffee. Crystal clear clarity, sparkling, well-defined acidity, smooth and refreshing, and, most importantly, so very, very tasty.

When you participate in something like a Great Coffee Exchange with three strangers from different cities, you want to send them a brew that you think is the best your city has to offer. I didn’t have much to worry about with Passion House because, like I say over and over, everything they do is great; but I am pleased as punch that the Guatemala El Limonar was this good.

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Review: Passion House Coffee Roasters // Cold Brew

by Drew Moody on Jun 21, 2012 • 10:32 am No Comments

click image to purchase

Today’s the day folks—the longest day of the year, the summer equinox, the official first day of summer. As it has been the last few days, today is also incredibly hot. That’s why, in between attempts to make brooms and eggs stand up straight on their ends, I’ll be drinking an iced cold brew throughout the day.

Welcome to my Table, here in the corner of this cafe. Today, on this first day of summer, we are sipping Passion House Coffee Roasters’ debut in the world of cold brewed coffee. Feel free to pull up a chair.

A couple weeks ago, I got the opportunity to attend Chicago’s Coffee Fest at Navy Pier (that was another woefully hot day, actually). I believe this was the weekend that preceded the Great Coffee Exchange—a week that I was drinking a lot of (and absolutely loving) Passion House’s Guatemala El Limonar. So I was giddy with excitement when I came across Visions Espresso‘s booth and saw that they were serving hot and iced pour-overs of that same El Limonar!

Now, let me be up front with you—this is going to be a pretty short review, because I already reviewed the Guatemala El Limonar last week and, unless I’m now living in a parallel dimension, the specs and flavor profile of the coffee haven’t changed all that much. However, having said that, there are a few things I’d like to point out about the cold brewed (or even iced) version of it.

So, let’s get down to it!

(spoiler alert: I really loved this coffee brewed over ice when I had it at Coffee Fest.)

the basics:

origin: El Injerto, Huehuetenango, Guatemala
farm: Finca El Limonar
elevation: ~2000 meters above sea level
cultivars: Bourbon, Catuai and Caturra
process: fully washed, patio dried
certifications: standard

the coffee:

Despite it being a touch too old, I still had some Guatemala El Limonar left over from the Great Coffee Exchange, so we’re going to sip it two different ways today: cold brewed straight out of the bottle and poured over ice with a Hario V60.

After the Great Coffee Exchange, I read Randy Levine’s review of the El Limonar and it was almost as if we had reviewed two different coffees: when I tasted peaches and floral aromatics, he tasted a lot of lime and citrus. Between the two of us and some input from Shannon Steele (one of the roasters at Passion House), we determined that the  flavor differences probably derived from the brewing methods. I was using pour-over methods like my V60 and Chemex, and Randy was using a submersion method with his Clever dripper.

Again, that seems to be the case here.

Poured over ice, this coffee is so, so sweet; an explosion of peach and nectarine, floral aromatics, and brown sugar. The Cold Brew, on the other hand, while those elements are definitely present, is much more citric, with massive flavors of lime and milk chocolate.

Light body; light, crisp mouthfeel; medium acidity; clean, refreshing finish.

the bottom line:

Well, no surprise here—I really love this coffee. I really enjoyed it hot, but I really, really enjoyed it cold. Hot-brewed, this coffee was very tasty and flavorful with great clarity and well-rounded acidity; but over ice and cold brewed—boy oh boy. All of the flavors burst to life!

The Cold Brew was incredibly tasty, and incredibly refreshing.

Meet me this Saturday at the Deerfield farmer’s market in Deerfield, Illinois and give this coffee a try! I’ll be serving it up with Joshua Millman of Passion House.Review Cold Brew

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