Search Results for blue bottle
If you love beer — I mean love, not that “let’s be friends” stuff — here are a set of posts from the Know Your Brewer blog that you need to read on Kevin McGee and his Healdsburg Brewing Co. — a “nano brewery” in Sonoma County, CA.
Along with Elizabeth St. Brewery and (newly discovered to myself) Clara St. Brewing (both here in the San Francisco Bay Area), it’s a veritable revolution of “nano” proprotions.
The stories one hears of how the various incarnations of this new batch of “nano” brewers came to be is evocative of the stories that have floated about on the early years of the latest batch of coffee roasters such as Blue Bottle – started by James Freeman – and Stumptown – hatched by Duane Sorenson. Freeman wanted better tasting coffee so he started roasting his own. Sorenson started out by hand delivering individual bags of coffee to each of his customers.
The rest is history.
16 April 2010 | View Comments | |
Cappucino at Blue Bottle in the San Francisco Ferry Building
“Retrofit” espresso blend (did you know they use a different espresso blend at each of their locations?) in one of the “for here” Heath Ceramics cups. Stylish. Smooth. Tasty.
16 April 2009 | View Comments | |
Shifted Blue Bottle Panorama
QuadCamera continues to be an incredibly fun iPhone app that encourages spur of the moment experimentation.
18 March 2009 | View Comments | |
Mint Plaza, San Francisco (click image for smaller size)
On my way to Blue Bottle Coffee. Taken with the QuadCamera app for the iPhone.
11 March 2009 | View Comments | |
Niyarita
Honestly. Before I picked up this bag, I truly meant to go somewhere else. After all, it seems all anyone ever reads here – at least where it concerns coffee – is “Blue Bottle, Blue Bottle, Blue Bottle“. Broken record. So Sorry.
Actually, I intended to make my way over to the new kid in town The Mission – Four Barrel, just recently out of their alley spot – if, for no other reason, than to take advantage of the opportunity to pick up a bag of beans selected and roasted by those native sons of the Northwest – Stumptown – without having to pay shipping costs (cheap bastard, I know and, yeah, for the moment, Four Barrel is, indeed, using Stumptown beans).
But, here we are again, looking at a picture of a bag from Blue Bottle and, as is usual, they are unique and incredibly tasty. Nayarita is from Mexico is a dry processed bean (unusual for a South/Central American) and so keeps a wonderful berry flavor and aroma that is usually only found in African beans. At the same time there is the same earthiness that I have found in the only other Mexican I’ve tasted – Taylor Made’s Zaragoza – as well as the same mellow acidity. So, a smooth, subtly earthy cup accented by the delicate berry flavor brought on by the dry processing.
This is, after all, one of the things I love about Blue Bottle: you are not likely to find this on their site. You have to go into the store where — ta-da! — you are presented with a wonderful surprise. Something you have never had before and might not ever have again. Another stellar cup of coffee from BB.
But, I promise, I will pick another roaster next time … really.
31 October 2008 | View Comments | |
Well, I’ll be, Blue Bottle’s stellar beans have hit New York and have taken up residence in “A Restaurant That Respects Espresso”.
19 October 2008 | View Comments | |
Architecture firm Sagan Piechota’s renovated office (and “salon” space as well, apparently) on Linden Lane provides the space for Blue Bottle Coffee’s seminal “bricks and mortar” retail outlet and hopefully, soon, right out front, a nice little alley renovation that will make sipping one’s finely crafted espresso beverage just that much more enjoyable.
19 October 2008 | View Comments | |
Wallenford Estate JBM (on flickr)
What I’m Drinking Now: Blue Bottle’s Wallenford Estate, Jamaica Blue Mountain.
How can a coffee be so carmelly sweet and rich, so smooth, so mellow with one of the most pleasurably lingering finishes I have yet experienced? Could it be because it cost me $21 for a half pound?
Not that price correlates with flavor as a rule. Sometimes things are expensive simply as a reult of limited supply. Both Jamaica Blue Mountain and Kona are excellent examples of this. Both can only be authentically procured from extremely limited geographical confines so supplies are low and prices are high.
This does not mean that everything with the name Kona or Jamaica Blue Mountain should be considered exemplary in terms of quality. As price and flavor lack correlation so does location and quality. Coffee is an agricultural product and one should not make the mistake of failing to factor in the skill of the farmer and/or the quality of the land on which an agricultural product is grown in considering it’s quality.
Blue Bottle coffee in San Francisco offered up a batch of Jamaica Blue Mountain. It’s the largest single amount of money I have ever spent on a bag of coffee beans and I felt, ever so slightly, like an elitist chump throwing down that kind of money for a half pound. But I put my faith in the talents and skills of whomever it is that is in charge of bean selection at Blue Bottle and I was not let down. The rumpled, rapidly emptying bag tells the story. This is good coffee.
10 October 2008 | View Comments | |
Blue Bottle in the Ferry Building! (click the image to enlarge or see it in my flickr photostream)
Let the empire begin! Blue Bottle will be taking up what, really, is it’s rightful place in the mecca of local food: The San Francisco Ferry Building and, in the process, expanding from two to three locations in the space of one year.
The copy, though. Not only can these guys pick and roast a mean bean. They can write too.
7 October 2008 | View Comments | |
Bella Donovan
What I’m drinking now: Bella Donovan.
From Blue Bottle, natch. “A classic moka-java blend”, indeed: smooth like one, floral/earthy like one. A classic.
19 September 2008 | View Comments | |
Blue Bottle’s Purosa PNG
What I’m drinking now. This is one of my favorite coffees. Ever.
Of all the elegant, intensly flavorful beans Blue Bottle offers, I find the Purosa PNG to be the most elegant, most flavorful of them all. Sweet, earthy, full bodied, so well balanced it could pass as a master blender’s crowning achievement. But this is no blend; just single origin perfection.
8 September 2008 | View Comments | |
Blue Bottle Corner - 3
It’s hot in San Francisco. Time for a New Orleans Style Iced Coffee at Blue Bottle.
I was struck by how the sun, at it’s late afternoon/early evening angle, was creating such a stark contrast between two adjacent sides of the building. [Read more →]
7 September 2008 | View Comments | |
My feeling is, there are already enough places where you can get a cinnamon latte and a muffin wrapped in plastic. Why would I want to build another one of those?
James Freeman
From an article in San Francisco Magazine entitled A new buzz.
Mr. Freeman is the owner of Blue Bottle Coffee out of Oakland, CA. He recently opened a new café — to add to the kiosk in Hayes Valley — off of Market street in San Francisco.
9 July 2008 | View Comments | |
Morning ferry solitude (click photo to expand)
The drudgery of my twice weekly ferry rides from Larkspur to San Francisco, on my way to SFSU, are over for now (but hopefully forever). Racing to the ferry in the morning, hoping it wasn’t sold out is not the way to spend a morning.
But once I was at the San Francisco ferry building it was more peaceful. I had made it across the bay and, unless I wanted to hit up Blue Bottle, I could sit and enjoy a cup of coffee from Peet’s while the sun came up.
19 June 2008 | View Comments | |
“At Blue Bottle, coffee reaches the upper limit”
In the morning, the pairing [of Blue Bottle’s siphon-pot-coffee] with perfectly poached farm eggs on feather-light Acme white toast with whipped butter and flaky sea salt ($6.50), is a dream come true.
Oh so true. Oh so true. (@Examiner.com)
21 March 2008 | View Comments | |
