Trying to rediscover myself.
I’m so very excited to be heading to The Northwest Coffee Festival today. This has become one of my favorite events to work. The festival is a consumer based coffee and food event. A ton of great roasteries and cafes from the area get together for two days to hold talks on the current state of the industry to customer service and serve awesome coffee.
It took me too long to get to Metronome Coffee. I first heard of Metronome when competing at regionals in Tacoma. For some reason I never made it to the cafe. Seven months later on a sleepy Sunday I decided it was time. My friend Chad came along for the ride. He had tweeted earlier in the morning that he wanted some coffee so I invited him to join me. It’s a 40 minute drive from Oly to Tacoma, not bad.
There is no lack of natural lighting at Metronome. Windows line the street and make the cafe feel more open. Two large mainly glass garage doors face S. Union Ave. further opening up the space. I love the layout of this cafe. There is a variety of seating options, you could pull up to the bar and order a coffee or beer, sit outside, chill next to the fire or study on the stage. Metronome is also set up to be a quality venue for musicians. Something to mention is the series of blown up Polaroid pictures that spell out Tacoma. Another nice touch is access to the iTunes library that’s hooked up to WiFi, download the Remote app from iTunes and you can request a song to play on the system. It’s like a digital jukebox. OK let’s talk coffee.
First I ordered a macchiato that was made on a beautiful Victoria Arduino Adonis. Seriously hot machine. Seriously awesome macchiato. Josh showed up and invited us up to the bar. He made two siphons of some really tasty Peruvian coffee, one with a metal filter and the other with glass. Josh has come up with some non coffee drinks too. A splash in the pond was next, its double strength early grey tea poured over ice and charged with CO2 add that to a cup with ice top with half & half and a little vanilla bean simple syrup. This was one of the best drinks I’ve ever had…ever. Next the elderflower lemonade, refreshing. The sake it to me: a frosted mint iced mocha with 4oz fortified double barrel sake blew my mind it was so tasty.
I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Metronome. The service was great, the coffee was delicious and it feels like home. I recommend to anyone in the area that hasn’t been to Metronome MAKE IT HAPPEN! You will not be disappointed!
P.S. Metronome will be hosting a TNT August 25th…so there’s a good reason!
Here is a link to my Metronome Flickr set: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjvvQXyK
Official TNT NW Blog: http://tntnorthwest.wordpress.com/
Whoa I really can’t believe there are so many readers! Thanks to everyone who reads the blog you give me a good push to keep current things up here.
_Panda
Thursday Rusty from Bunn visited the Espresso Parts lab to demo the Trifecta. We had coffee from Dillanos as well as Batdorf & Bronson to play with. To show us the inner workings Rusty removed the cover and back splash panel which was very easy to do. There is a 20 oz boiler on the bottom right side of the machine as well as pumps for the turbulence/press out air. The drain is in the cup support, you must make sure to keep the drain tube clear of grounds. We had a bit of a build-up and had to hit it with some Puro Caff to clear the line.
We adressed my issue about the screen not coming out, the trick is to push a lot harder than you think you should. Unfortunately the Trifecta does not have the ability to have a hot water rinse, there are ways around this. What you can do to get a hot rinse is to set your brewing parameters to just fill and press out. We learned Pre-wet is cold water although the manual says to use it for coffee, it is only for tea preparation. I was really happy with the turnout and I feel like Rusty did a great job showing us the ins and outs of the Trifecta. After all the technical stuff we started to brew. I’ve attatched our initial notes from dialing in the Nicaragua Finca Los Milagros. We brewed around three pounds total, cleaning the machine was a breeze and we were able to brew a lot very fast. FYI a Coava Disk fits in the Trifecta handle…just sayin’. The EP lab was full, the coffee was tasty and fun was had.
The Bunn Trifecta is here to fill the void the Clover has left in cafe’s across the country. Until today I had only seen it a couple of times once at Coffee Fest and another at Seattle Coffee Works. Magically a Bunn Trifecta appeared in the EP lab this week. I decided to put Sunday afternoon aside for some lab time.
First off thanks to @BUNN for sending me a great link to all the Trifecta manuals and tasting sheet. I read the manual to help in the process. Changing the settings is fairly easy once you get used to the layout of the controls. For fun I changed the name for the brew cycle and found it to be easy to do. A normal 120v outlet will do, connect the brewer to a cold water system capable of 20-90 psi from a 1/2″ or larger line. The brewer does not have a drain tray standard, you do have the option of installing one on your own. The Trifecta’s design is rigid and somewhat cold, it’s grey and black. The handle is all plastic with silver at the end of it, I want it to more substantial it feels a little light also an aluminum cap at the end of the handle would look way better than painted silver over plastic. I tried to disassemble the handle as instructed from the manual and was unable to get the screen out. The other components cam out easily the spray-head which is at the top of the brew chamber came out easy but because there isn’t much room it’s hard to get it back on. The parts are easy to clean when brewing if you have a pitcher rinser from EP it’s a breeze.
Now let’s talk about the brewing. I used the parameters from the Trifecta site as a start for dialing in the brew. I used Costa Rica Tarrazu Shb El Indio from Batdorf & Bronson. My parameters were as followed: 28g water 8oz 203° #8 on a Mahlkonig Guatemala grinder. The brewing cycle was set to:3 second pre-wet, 10% pre-infusion, 2 second fill pause, 43 second brew time, 8 seconds of turbulence, 10 seconds turbulence off, turbulence was set to 6, press out power was 7, 35 second press out time. There was a lot of honey sweetness a macadamia nuttiness with a creamy finish. I burned through half of a pound during my lab time I went from a setting of 4-15 ending up with #8. To open the brewing chamber you pull the lever at the top of the machine up and the chamber will release from the handle, add your freshly ground coffee to the handle slide it back into the holder and pull lever down. to initiate the brewing cycle there is a small button with the picture of a cup of coffee. It’s fun to watch the brewing cycle of the Trifecta, the chamber is filled from the bottom and some from the top, after the pre-wet/infusion the remaining brew water is added and the turbulence starts. Air is used to agitate the ground coffee which adds a nice touch to the show. One problem I ran into was after I changed the brew settings the press out time I selected was not long enough and there was water left in the filter handle. I was not able to figure out how to purge the brewing chamber without starting another cycle. Last but not least the rinse cycle is cold, I would like to be able to choose between cold and hot.
I really enjoyed my time with the Trifecta it was easy and fun to use, it was able to brew a quality cup in a short amount of time and the clean up is very easy. The Trifecta would definitely be something I would use in my own cafe(hopefully one day). There is also a grinder that is being marketed with the Trifecta it’s the G2. I have very limited experience with the grinder from regionals and coffee fest but did find it easy to use.
http://www.trifectaexperience.com/
Thoughts of Clouds 