www.thirdwavecoffeeinc.com

https://ethicaroasters.com/

https://hellodemello.com/

Mentioned in this episode:

Joe Bean Roasters

Joe Bean Coffee - Coffee that lifts everyone. https://shop.joebeanroasters.com

Welcome up to the Level up podcast.

I'm Aaron Pascucci and I'm here today.

With Chris Lindstrom, producer.

And I have dragged Chris down into a coffee tasting episode again and we are very excited because Chris just came back from a trip to Toronto, so.

And yes, it's Toronto.

Don't pronounce the last T.

You will sound like a tourist.

If you want to sound like a tourist, say Toronto.

That's also fin.

So just like always, anytime I go to another city, part of the whole experience of going to another place is exploring through coffee shops.

So I think overall this time, so we were there Thursday through Sunday.

I think we went to, let me see, 1, 2, 3, 4.

I think at least five different shops over those days.

Are you like a one day one shop a day or a two shop.

A day or depends.

So try and hit three and yeah, get it done with.

So there was, I think there was a day where I did three in a day because it was lighter.

So it was like, oh, quick espresso here, espresso here.

Oh, I didn't really like that.

I'm not really gonna finish it, then move on to the next place kind of thing.

Fair enough.

I've got that.

My wife will tell you every once in a while I'll take the family on a trip and hit two or three places in one day and they're all burned out.

I have a.

I have a guilt thing, though.

Even If I'm not 100% into it, I have to finish whatever it is I'm drinking.

You know what it's.

I wouldn't say that's wrong either.

It's just, you know what it.

You get expectations set so high that I don't want to have something I'm not enjoying at some point.

And I try to do that with beer and spirits, too.

If I'm not enjoying it, I don't really just want to drink it for the sake of drinking it.

I'd rather, you know, stop and find something I'm really going to like at the moment, for sure.

And what I did bring back was to me, clearly, clearly my favorite coffee shop in Toronto that I've been to so far, which is apt.

Aptly named Third Wave Coffee.

So Third Wave Coffee is located over on Church street, close to the St.

Lawrence market, actually.

So it's in that same area as the St.

Lawrence Market.

So if you've been to Toronto at all, that's kind of the old, you know, building with all the different vendors, meat vendors, you know, bakeries, um, all that kind of stuff and it's, it's one of the like definitive.

If you're going there, you're going to visit the St.

Lawrence Market.

I'd say this is you know a, you know a block and a half away and I've walked there a number of times from when I've been there with Carry at conventions and anytime we're in town it is a must stop for me.

Where do you, where do you stay when you go typically?

So at least this time.

Yeah, this time I was over near the, near Chinatown so I was over near Spadina and King street so I was staying over in that area.

So easy to walk to a lot of great restaurants.

There were some decent coffee shops over there.

I will shout out Sam James Coffee Bar.

We had a, had something from there that was quite good.

So you know he has a very specific idea of what he wants to do with coffee.

Did end up stopping at place on the way out of town that was quite enjoyable.

Ethica Coffee Roasters.

I thought that was pretty good.

Yeah overall, you know the coffee that I tasted in you know, in Toronto was pretty good.

Great logo at Dmello Coffee.

Thought the coffee was pretty good actually.

No, I think I got to six different shops.

Geez.

Too many, too many shops Aaron.

I'm not sure there is too many but you know you end up tasting a lot.

You know it's, it's just not fair that you get to live my coffee dream here.

Traveling the world and drinking wonderful coffee.

Yeah.

So anyways, so third wave is a very, I would say it is what we would now consider to be, you know, that third fourth wave coffee.

A very, you know, very conscientious sourcing, edging certainly towards light Rose still have single origins on espresso.

They'll have, you know they have automatic pour over machine.

They do manual pour over depending on the coffee.

It's really coffee driven towards its towards a very pure level and that's something I really enjoy.

Yeah I, you know their website is really impressive.

Their Instagram is even more impressive.

If you're like me and you've been around and you know the third wave which we all hate the term now it seems, you know it did not give me a huge.

I didn't have high expectations.

Yeah you know that's fair and you know and I knew it was, I knew it was going to be good coffee.

Yeah you know it was going to be Something different.

And Chris's recommendation goes a long way.

He's.

We've mentioned he's certified in spirits.

He runs local.

What do you call food about town?

Yeah, local food and beverage podcast.

But I mean, that's how Aaron and I met was through coffee nerdery.

And I can't slow down.

So, yeah, his.

His palate is there, which is awesome.

So.

And his recommendations are spot on.

If you're in the area and need any sort of food recommendation.

He turned me on to a liquor store.

That is wonderful.

The guys are over there at Bay.

It's not Baytown.

Baytown.

It is Baytown in Webster.

Yeah.

So Baytown or Pinnacle or Parkway up in Greece.

Those are kind of my go to spots in Rochester, you know, people who care like I care.

Which is why I love tasting with you is, you know, we both care really hard about coffee.

And when I get a chance to bring something like this back, you know, I'm so excited.

I do want to shout out, and I'm probably going to mispronounce his name, but Sharhai is the gentleman who I was talking to.

He's the head of coffee at Third Wave.

He's also the education and event coordinator at Genius Coffee, which does repair, service, accessories, parts, espresso machines, coffee machines, you know, water equipment, other things like that.

So he's involved with that as well.

Do you know if they repair espresso machines?

I wouldn't be.

I believe they do, because when we.

Were at a whole Lotte Love, we used to get customers from Canada a ton.

Yeah.

I think they're relatively new, but I believe they do now as well.

Yes.

And that was always a thing.

They're like, well, you could ship it to us.

I'll go, yeah.

And we always forget because we're in upstate New York.

It's international.

We don't think of each other that way a lot, but we are.

Yeah, for sure.

And so, you know, he's involved in lots of different things.

And every time I've gone in, he's the person I've talked to.

So I've always enjoyed our interactions.

We've always had great conversation.

And when I mentioned, hey, I was looking for some coffee to buy to bring home, he's like, well, this is the one you had on both espresso and pour over.

So why don't you grab that bag and I'll give you a sample of another one, too.

That was going to be.

My question is, how do you.

How did you select this when you walked into.

You Know a coffee shop, it's always overwhelming, you know.

Oh, for sure.

I went to Chromatic and they had 20, 30 bags on the shelf.

And as much as I can rely on my knowledge of processing and things like that, I look at, I'm like, it's going to be a crapshoot, you know.

Yeah, for sure.

So this, you know, when I go into a place where I know that the quality is high, I don't like ordering.

Yeah.

So when I go in because, you know, you know I'll be in right now, probably go there two or three times a year.

So I've been enough where, you know, we've had conversations.

So he'll remember who I am at least, which is nice.

So I'll just say serve me, you know, an espresso and you know a, you know, a drip style coffee, whether it be batch or auto pour over or pour over of whatever coffee you think I should have as a serious coffee person.

And I trust that he's going to serve me something he cares about.

So what we have in front of us today, you've got the bag in front of you.

Yep.

I was waiting to because I've been sipping on it and it's, it's quite lovely.

Yeah.

This is a natural Ethiopian from the Hamasho kebble region.

Yeah, it says it's Hamasho stations, the location.

Yeah.

And what's on the bag?

We've kind of fallen away from some of our little usual snippets there.

Coffee bag reader.

Chris, you're making me laugh and I'm supposed to be mid conversation here.

You know, they've got a roast profile on here.

This is way at the left end, the light end of their scale, which is also interesting.

They've got four stops and the highest is medium.

I was going to say the highest is medium and I glossed over that.

That's funny.

That's real interesting.

Yeah.

I mean this so like, and I say this with the greatest amount of love possible.

I was polluted completely by, you know, the original profile and mission of what Joe Bean Coffee was, you know, where it was the pure, you know, pure light roast with almost everything and it was, you know, that really polluted me.

And this place lives up to that kind of purity of coffee.

Yeah.

Which, and they still have flavored drinks, you know, they still have, you know, delightful other things that you can get.

But like this is really driving towards that, you know, real pure light roast expression of a place and the nose really brings it to.

And I wouldn't have guessed on our brewing or sipping or anything on this that it was a light roast compared to, you know, what I would consider a light roast.

Almost.

Yeah.

Just to go back, we got.

Their flavor notes are whiny mixed berries, chocolate round, velvety.

I stop whining.

What was that?

This is from Kindergarten Cop.

Oh God.

Some of my favorite sound effects.

But yeah, I think you mentioned in our conversations that they were really focused on clarity.

Yeah.

And you know, pouring it and brewing it.

It definitely was clear, translucent maybe without being watery looking.

You know, it was a clear, dark opacity.

That's what I'm looking for.

It's opacity was high and consistent.

Yeah.

And something that I really picked up from chatting with, chatting with him there was generally when they're doing, you know, drip style coffee, their ratios are way higher than the standard recommendation of 500, you know, a thousand to 60 grams or 500 to 30, which is just over 16 to 1.

So that's like 16.16 2/3 to 1.

Essentially.

I think they're regularly brewing, you know, to 18 or above there.

So they're definitely, when they brew it, they're also brewing at a very, you know, a higher amount of water through.

So it ends up being.

You can really isolate the flavors and it tends to be more tea like.

But that's through technique just as much as it is the roast.

Yeah.

And that being said, the body isn't weak.

No, it's very strong.

And we brewed at 17.

I brewed at 17.

I didn't go 17 and you did 17.

Yeah, so.

So I had had this this morning at the same ratio, but we moved two clicks on the Ode to the Ode Gen 2 to one click above 5 because I thought it was, it was very tasty when I had it this morning, but I didn't think it was quite as clear as I wanted it to be.

So I wanted us to really be able to taste the clarity when we sampled tonight.

So that's where we're at.

And we had an interesting conversation on temperature.

What were you at?

2.

204.

204.

I typically brew at 190.

And the conversation we had was, why did you choose 204?

What was your answer, Chris?

I don't remember.

At some point, you know, at some point I picked something and I think it was because, you know, the recommended was like from something I saw is probably 200 to 208.

Sure.

So I just picked the middle right in the middle.

Yeah.

So, you know, that's where I chose.

I've never really changed it.

I kind of just leave it the same forever.

So me, from brewing at Joe Bean where they gave me temperatures, I.

Ben, if you're listening and I'm wrong, you know, make sure to leave me a note here.

Was brewing at 190 typically.

And again, the only main reason was that's what somebody told me at some point.

So if you have a specific temperature you're brewing at, please hit us up.

This would be an interesting thing to chat about.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

And I think to your point, like smelling, smelling this, I'm getting more of those light roast profiles.

I'm getting a lot of those floral notes, which I really like.

Yeah, it, it came off to me as a.

Almost a typical Ethiopian.

Yeah, I wouldn't say blueberry particularly, but more on the floral, the floral side of Ethiopian coffees.

Yeah.

And I've honestly, I've only really had one Ethiopian that like punched me in the nose with blueberry.

Yeah.

I got raspberry off of this on a smell.

And that makes sense, you know, a little bit why they call mixed berries.

Because I feel like that you could blend that into blueberry very easily for sure, you know, if you wanted to.

So I just got that, you know, if you could smell red, you know.

Yeah.

And I think that goes to that whining as well because this isn't like, like the whining is when you're talking about like Cabernet Sauvignon where it's so dark and dense.

It's more of that like bounciness of like, you know, a cooler climate, Pinot Noir or you know, something along those lines where it has more of those complex bouncy notes.

But yeah, it, it's definitely got a very nice, you know, almost delicate body to it.

Velody seems appropriate and the body is great.

Raspberry, blueberry flavors.

Definitely a dark chocolate and a cocoa in there, no doubt, to bring it back.

And, and it comes in like the finish.

Comes in more chocolatey.

Yes.

It's there in like the mid palate, but it really comes through cleanly with that, you know, what we would almost usually call like a specialty medium, chocolatey finish.

Okay.

But this is.

You're getting more of those bouncy flavors up front and then it finishes with that like, like really nice, like a, almost like a single origin chocolate kind of flavor more than just like dark chocolate is dark chocolate is dark chocolate.

Yeah.

And it was, you know, it's the, it's the dark chocolate if you, I almost describe it as natural cocoa.

Yeah.

More if you get like a 70, 80% dark chocolate cocoa bar, something like that where it's that real umami chocolate flavor coming through there more than, I don't know what else we describe our typical dark chocolate as.

Yeah, it, it's, it's kind of one note, you know, depending on the level of density of, you know, cocoa in there.

So your percentage of cocoa solids is the percentage.

And if it's not like a single origin chocolate or what we'd call specialty chocolate, you know, you tend to get that generic, you know, sweetened dark chocolate note and maybe you get a little bit of fruitiness.

But when you get to some of the single origin stuff you can really get, you can get some brightness, you can get some distinct fruits, you can get, you know, all those different things that we love in coffee.

You can actually get in chocolate as well.

Oh yes.

And that's a whole nother thing.

So I would say this definitely edges towards that versus being general dark chocolate.

It's a little bouncier.

So this is a wonderful coffee.

If it comes in roughly, they're looking at $25 for 250 grams.

25 Canadian, of course.

Ah, so you're dropping international thing, dropping.

By, you know, to 3/4 roughly.

So that's a killer deal.

Yeah, it's really not unreasonable for the level of quality that they're doing in the shop.

You know, depending on the limited release of some of the stuff, you know, the, your, your pour overs will be like 11 Canadian.

So still it's high.

So you know, it'll be in that, you know, $758 kind of range for an espresso or you know, a pour over.

Some of their more limited releases are high process coffees.

But you know, realistically if you're getting some of that stuff, that's not an unreasonable price to me.

$7 is becoming a standard price for things.

Yeah.

Which is unfortunate.

Agreed.

But here we are.

Here we are.

So anyway, I, these are guys that you should put on your radio.

On your, on your radio.

Yeah, we're going to put it on your radio dial.

I'm going to bring that one back.

These are guys you should put on your radar.

You should definitely pick up something.

They should get on the map for what they're doing.

This initial taste is very impressive, very clear, great coffee flavor and it's.

You don't want to sit this while you're at your computer doing work.

Is My overall impression, you want to sit this and actually enjoy it.

I'm thinking Saturday mornings when I go and sit outside where you can focus on it and enjoy it that way.

Yeah, I think it definitely deserves a little bit of attention and I think it's a great thing to do with your coffee when you have the opportunity is to really sit with it and enjoy it.

And if you happen to visit Toronto, you know, from our area or otherwise, I think it's a must stop.

And, you know, it's a tidy little shop, but still a great place to talk and nerd out and, you know, and really sit and enjoy some coffee.

All right.

And with that, we are level up and we'll be heading into the week with some wonderful coffee.

We hope you enjoy your coffee.

Cheers.

And make sure you check out other shows on the Lunchadore Podcast Network.

I'm going to recommend that you check out the Anomaly Presents podcast.

And if you happen to be in Rochester and have a chance to go to the Anomaly Film Festival, you should check that out.

It's an amazing place to go be amongst people that love the weird and amazing movies of the horror, sci fi, the unexplainable in a real great festival atmosphere.

Could not recommend it enough, so thank you so much for listening.

We'll be back next time with more level up.

This has been a presentation of the Lunch or podcast network.