barismo.com : Coffee, tea, and espresso

There and back again

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 21:28:17 -0400

My last few posts have covered a lot of ground on the early years and more recent events, but there's a messy middle.

I could start this story with COVID, a bad investor, cold brew in offices growing fast, but I don't think that's actually where my burnout started.

I know now it started when I bought somebody else's café.

I'm not going to tell the story of that café or the people behind it. Their internal struggles aren't really my story to tell. I can tell my part.

I did something then that I did a lot when I was younger, in that I overcommitted. I saw somebody struggling and I tried to help. I got involved in something I think a lot of entrepreneurs probably would have looked at and walked away from. I took on a struggling company and tried to give it a soft landing.

Don't get me wrong. I hoped there was an outside chance I could make it work. I thought maybe we could stabilize the café, change some things and keep that location going.

I understand why that was never going to happen now.

Some cafés are built around a community, and sometimes at the center of that community is a person. A person absorbs an incredible amount of the stress, the struggles, the conflicts and even the emotional well-being of the people around them. A person who deeply cares about the café, its meaning, its customers and their staff, to the point of sacrificing their mental and physical health to be there for everyone. They smooth over the stress and anxiety of staff and take on the heart of the café for their customers.

Take that person out of the mix and the whole thing can fall apart.

You can rename the café. You can change the coffee. You can change the processes and put your own systems into it. You can't necessarily recreate the thing that made people love the place in the first place.

Take out the longtime staff and the longtime center of the café and sometimes you just have a room where a café used to be.

I don't actually feel bad now about having tried. I absorbed somebody else's loss and got tagged with it, but it was going to fail. That's something I could probably approach very differently today, but I don't regret doing it.

The lesson I did take from it is something I've repeated ever since: a good landlord is worth their weight in gold; a bad one will sink you.

A building owner who actually wants you there changes everything. Steve and Sylvia wanted me to open in Cambridge. Tom and Sue want me to continue operating in Arlington. When the people who own the building want a small business to succeed there, there is a relationship and a flexibility that makes an enormous difference.

Corporate landlords are probably great for corporate clients.

I'm not a corporate client.

That experience took so much out of me. I don't think I recognized that at the time because I did what I usually did.

I kept going.

There were other projects. Cold brew got bigger. Office coffee got bigger, and the market got really competitive and cutthroat quickly. Maybe that's its own story someday.

The cafés were busy. There were always new things happening. For a while it felt like having a bunch of plates spinning on sticks and running around trying to make sure none of them fell.

Then COVID happened.

Like everyone else operating a café in 2020, we had no idea what was going to happen. I think I could have handled the business part of it. Give me a process problem and eventually I can usually figure out a process. Give me a broken system and I'll start pulling at it until I understand what is broken.

COVID left me dealing with many upset customers while trying to figure out how to protect my family and staff.

But almost right as things began leveling out, I had a lot of disruption at home. The place where I could shut everything down and recover from work became another place of conflict and disruption for my family that put me under a high mental load pursuing a resolution.

That took the better part of three years to resolve and is a story I can't tell.

It is resolved now. And I think one of the reasons I can finally see all of this clearly is that I can go home now.

I can stop.

I can rest.

I didn't really understand how important that was until I couldn't do it for a very long time.

Somewhere along the way during all of that, I started losing access to things.

Not just energy.

Skills. Memory. Perspective.

I could still run the business. I could mostly deal with whatever problem was directly in front of me. I could make decisions because decisions had to be made, but I was drifting. There were days I would be in one of my own cafés and avoid the bar and customers because I could barely engage.

That's a strange thing when you've spent most of your adult life doing this and feeling connected by it.

At a certain point, I had actually forgotten how to roast coffee, how to think abstractly about the processes, and I forgot all the purpose of the business that I had set out. I leaned on the longtime staff around me to cover.

I kid you not, I've written endlessly about roast development. I've built profiles, cupped thousands of coffees and spent an absurd amount of my life thinking about the processes in coffee.

So when I got back onto the roaster and couldn't access it, the relationships between things that had once been almost automatic weren't automatic anymore.

I had to pull up old profiles. I went back through my own notes, blogs and journals. I started reading things I had written years earlier to remind myself. Then I started getting involved in roasting again.

It was the first step in dragging myself an inch at a time back into this.

The strange thing was that I still knew it. It was all still in there.

I just hadn't been able to get at it for a long time.

I think that's one of the things people don't always understand when they talk about burnout. At least it wasn't what I understood about it. I thought burnout meant being exhausted. Maybe hating your job. Maybe needing to take a vacation or step away for a while.

For me it was more like slowly losing access to myself.

When you've been doing something for a long time and it was a hyperfocus that regenerated you, that's scary to lose. You remember being good at it. You just can't quite remember how you did it.

The way back has been equally strange because it hasn't happened through some grand plan.

It has mostly happened by doing.

I started hiring some new people recently, and I've been lucky to find a few really talented people who don't need me to pour all of my energy into them just to get them moving. They're interested. They ask questions. They have ideas. They want to be here.

Seeing that spark in somebody else started reminding me of a spark I used to have.

Earlier this year, I did an event at WBUR and decided, somewhat impractically, to pull out the siphons again. I hadn't really thought about it this way at the time. I just wanted to do something interesting.

Interesting to me.

Someone there remembered a little flow restrictor I had designed for Hario kettles almost twenty years ago. That sent me back through old memories.

Then I rolled out some single-origin espresso. People were excited and talking fast and, for a minute, I had to catch up to the fact that people still care.

Then I realized I did too.

I started writing about some of these things. Siphons. Kettles. Old espresso events. Luminaire. Pour'd. Toast. Projects I had worked on and people I had worked with that I hadn't thought seriously about in years.

I started working on the Cambridge sign and touching up paint and tuning grinders. I started looking around Arlington and thinking again about what I wanted the room to look and feel like instead of just seeing another maintenance problem.

One thing started connecting to another.

Then Simon's closed.

Going back through that history forced me to spend some time with the person I was more than twenty years ago. It reminded me how curious I was and how that curiosity was my way of connecting to people.

I had forgotten how important that was.

Writing about Simon's also reminded me what a gift it is when people actually show up for a place. Good employees. Regular customers. People who ask questions. People who hang around. People who let you try new ideas with them. People who make the room something more than the business that happens to occupy it.

I've spent a lot of my career thinking about coffee shops as systems. Coffee. Equipment. Workflow. Training. Products. Design.

All of those things matter.

But they aren't the whole thing.

I'm starting to understand that again.

A few months ago I was still sometimes hiding from the bar. This week I found myself talking with some of our newer staff about hosting a barista throwdown.

Except I don't really want to do a throwdown the way we used to. I don't particularly care who can pour the best rosetta or design, partly because it's rare to meet people who are deep into latte art who are nice.

What I talked about was maybe doing a barista social. Get a bunch of baristas into a room. Let them meet each other. Network. Hang out. Talk about coffee if they want to.

Have fun.

I couldn't have imagined volunteering to host a room full of baristas two months ago.

Now I'm excited about it.

I'm not completely back.

I'm nearly back.

But I can feel the difference. I'm comfortable on the bar again. I'm leading again. I'm making decisions and trusting them. I'm interested in things. I'm around some talented people who are interested in things too, and instead of their needs feeling like something else I have to carry, their energy is helping pull me along.

Twenty years ago, when I was working at Simon's, I wrote something about coffee being the medium and the point being having fun and making friends.

I don't think I understood then how important that sentence would eventually become to me.

For a long time I kept waiting to feel like the person I had been before burnout.

I don't think that's how it works.

I'm not that person anymore. I've got twenty more years of experience. I've made mistakes. I've built things. I've watched things fail. I've had some success. I've overcommitted. I've learned that I don't have to absorb every problem just because I think I might be able to solve it.

But the curiosity is coming back.

The skills are coming back.

The memories are coming back.

And I'm realizing they were never really gone. I just couldn't access them for a while.

It's weird to wake up one day and feel like yourself at work, and it makes work fun again. The difference now is I have a team hustling with me, excited to clear out the clutter and reestablish a sense of place and purpose. I still have a lot of things to do to feel caught up, but that's another post.

Previous location of Simon's being demolished

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Tue, 8 Sep 2026 12:45:19 -0400

More than 20 years ago, at the beginning of my coffee career, I worked at Simon’s Coffee Shop at 1736 Mass ave in Cambridge.

I got my start there in coffee by taking that part-time job. I began blogging there. I found friends and customers there. It was what proved to me that I could eventually build my own space with barismo.

Just not in the way you might think.

You may think this is a sad post about a closing or a nod to a store owner, but stay with me to the end.

When I began working for Simon, he told me he'd had a not-so-successful café on the North Shore before this and worked at Kmart before that. He was hesitant, and really quite risk-averse. To me, he was timid but pleasant.

I was not, at that time, timid or pleasant.

I was headstrong and latched onto something I saw in the potential of such a space. This led me to constantly push him to change, to update, to be more than the shop he'd bought.

Simon hadn't built that space from scratch.

When he took it over, the café had previously been owned by the indie video rental store downstairs and was essentially modeled after 1369 in Central. The owner, George, must have liked the model being next door in Central and wanted his own version in Porter.

The Hollywood Espresso Cafe came complete with colorful orange tones and movie-themed posters clear-coated onto different cabinets. Some were probably still there on the walls if you looked up high carefully. The café served really dark-roast Rao coffee with no roast dates and had this massive chalkboard menu common to cafés of its time, but with a handful of odd themed drinks like the Casa Blanca, a white chocolate au lait I absolutely detested.

When I arrived in Boston in the early 2000s, I worked there part time while also working part time at a bubble tea shop on JFK Street.

Simon had three managers in that one small shop. That led to constant crossed wires and over-ordering. There was clutter everywhere. Extra paper cups were stored under a trap door to the basement, which required moving customers and tables while making sure nobody came out of the bathroom and fell straight down the open stairs.

That made rushes almost comical at times.

We each had chalk anime-style caricatures on the cabinets behind the counter. Angry Andy had his CD placed on the counter because he hated being asked what music was playing. There were relics of the video-store ownership, but they gave the place an oddly charming feel.

So many customers had special drinks that the register had what felt like an entire screen of drinks named after individual people.

And those customers, more than anything, were what made Simon's a unique place.

I remember them well. Bringing a haiku to the counter every day, a particular drink order, a shared interest. At the time, I thought it was special, but now I realize that's what a third space truly is.

I came into that shop, in my own way, as an antagonist to Simon's. In 2006, I wrote about those early days in "Going full circle".

I was stubborn and difficult, naive and idealistic. I cleaned and organized. I chuffed at the expansive menu, suggested changes and lobbied for new gear. I irritated two of the three managers enough that they eventually left.

Colleen, though, stayed on as a manager for a while, and she allowed me to keep plugging along with near-constant incremental changes. I argued for better coffee, better gear, better training and events. I even learned latte art from a picture in a magazine and brought it into the café to teach others.

I represented the shop in competitions and pushed for a place at the table during the third-wave trend as we rotated through a who's who of coffee brands.

One of those who noticed this was Adam, a young regular who came in five days a week.

Adam had this wonderfully dry way of supporting me and was friends with Colleen. When I started doing latte art, he pointed out that he'd been to Seattle and had already seen people doing it there. But it wasn't dismissive, even though he had a way of saying pithy things like that.

Adam was one of the earliest supportive customers who said out loud that I was leaving a fingerprint on the place.

There were a lot of customers like that. They weren't always polite, but they were direct, supportive and kind.

That's why one of the first espresso blends I created when I began my roastery was Linnaean St. Espresso.

That neighborhood watched me figure things out in real time. We tested things together and tried things out. They encouraged me to change the café program, came to my weird events, drank whatever new guest roaster I was excited about and gave me a reason to keep pushing.

Not long after I was on the path to becoming manager, though, Adam died suddenly.

His coworkers at Paper Source arranged a wake at Simon's. Maybe Simon had been told, but I hadn't.

So there I was, working through a rush with Colleen, making and serving drinks, when Adam's coworkers started flowing into the café to mourn him.

It was surreal. I didn't handle finding out in real time very well.

I've never forgotten that, even now, 20 years on.

Since then, I've gone on to host wakes and wedding proposals in my own café, and I understand much better now the importance these spaces can have for a community.

Back then, though, I was still trying to figure out how to make Simon's into the café I thought it could be.

At some point I became a manager, more or less in name only. Colleen left to become a nurse, and I was working a lot due to the level of press and attention the space was getting.

To remedy my constant discussions about the pay side of things, I was offered a percentage of revenue growth over the shop's historical numbers. Simon said: grow the business and get a percentage revenue share in what I was creating.

I took it because it was the only game in town.

And because I believed. I really believed.

The problem was, the business grew a lot.

The surprise was, in the end, the pay didn't.

When those numbers showed up, it was abruptly communicated to me that there wasn't enough money to pay me that percentage because how much I'd grown the business made it unsustainable.

That pretty much sucked.

Future me would've raised hell. Back then I didn't have the context to know better.

I didn't feel good, but I kept going for a while anyway. A few more incidents came up involving clashes with the roaster being used at the café, and eventually I'd had my fill.

But by then something much more important had happened.

I'd built a network of friends, customers and eventually some investors. Many of the people who had watched me learn and cheered on what I was trying to do at Simon's would become customers of barismo for years afterward.

So I left and built barismo. A small roaster in a tiny space in Arlington, just roasting bags and wholesale.

That was what I wrote then and this is what the more complete history looks like to me now, nearly two decades further down the road after some success, some burnout and real distance.

And leaving wasn't actually the end of my relationship with Simon's.

Later, I circled back and tried to get Simon's as a wholesale account. Even getting a small piece of the coffee program as a guest roaster took a huge push. A few years in, barismo eventually supplied most of the program.

I supported that coffee program, promoted the shop and its place in the community, organized events there and provided equipment. I took Simon with me to visit coffee farms in Guatemala. At one point I even offered to partner with Simon and merge our businesses.

He had cold feet, I guess. At the time, with him owning one shop and me having two cafés plus wholesale, the slice wasn't big enough for him.

So we stayed separate and kept doing business together.

And when Simon nearly died, we were there too.

He had a severe reaction to penicillin, developed sepsis and spent weeks at Spaulding recovering. While he was gone, we kept the coffee coming. We worked with his staff, coordinated what needed coordinating and helped keep things moving.

Whatever my history with Simon was, in my mind the shop was still full of people I'd known for years, and the place meant something to me.

Eventually Simon opened another location off Harvard Square. I supported that location too and tried to promote it, but it struggled and the vibe never really developed. The manager there later partnered with Simon to open 9 Bar in Davis Square, where they chose to use another startup roaster.

That was their business and their choice.

The problem for me came afterward.

When the Davis Square shop over-ordered coffee, more and more of that other roaster's coffee made its way back to Simon's to be used up. That meant Simon's was increasingly serving another roaster's coffee while using equipment I'd loaned to support our wholesale relationship.

I raised it several times, but it continued. Eventually barismo's volume at Simon's had dropped enough that the relationship no longer made sense to me.

So I pulled the equipment and barismo stopped supplying Simon's.

That was a long time ago.

Which brings me to Simon's closing now.

I'm not nostalgic about Simon Yu. And I'm not sad in the way you're supposed to be when an old café closes.

Because looking back, Simon wasn't really what made Simon's important to me.

The customers and the coworkers did.

They were the people who let me experiment in front of them. They drank the coffee. They showed up for events. They teased me when I got ahead of myself and encouraged me when I was onto something. They gave me an audience when I started writing. They became friends and supporters, investors and an audience.

A snapshot of humanity I was in need of at the time to help me believe in myself.

Some of them followed me when I left and became customers of barismo for years. Some have been part of my life in one way or another for more than two decades now.

I spent a lot of those early years thinking I was fighting to turn Simon's into the coffee shop I thought it could be.

I guess I wasn't.

I was actually figuring out who I was and learning to find my own version of authentic.

I still am, really. After several years of burnout, I'm slowly remembering that passion and refinding those skills, realizing that connection and that authenticity.

And those customers gave me the first space to do it.

Spaces can hold our hearts.

Maybe that's why I can feel something about Simon's closing now without feeling nostalgic about Simon.

The place held Adam.

It held all those regulars and their drinks programmed into the register. It held my weird events and early experiments. It held friendships, arguments, bad ideas and good ones. It held the person I was becoming before I knew what barismo would be, before I had a family, and before I found a home.

And before any of us, that same space held an indie video store below it that held a place in people's hearts.

When Mike and Virginia moved on and closed Irish Imports, or Linda closed Joie de Vivre, it closed an era in the neighborhood as well. I still think of them as regular customers and of the spaces that captured moments in time for me.

Buying a cape for my daughter that she wore daily until I passed it on to one of my regulars. Finding a vintage toy I included in a coffee swap with James Hoffmann.

The spaces were so deeply memorable in a neighborhood filled with them.

Not because of who owned them, but because of who we were when we went there, the people we met, and what those spaces allowed us to discover.

A lot of shop owners talk about giving back to the community or how coffee saved their lives, among many overly trodden marketing narratives.

For me, it's the spaces themselves that can be breathed to life by the cast of characters in them, not just the owner or a dedicated store manager building a program.

That's what I'll remember about Simon's the space.

The colors and design didn't change. The space barely changed over 20 years from the first day it changed owners. New gear, changing faces behind the bar, customers aging and families expanding.

People fell in love there. People mourned there. People grew up there. People hung out. People moved on.

These spaces hold all of it.

You can't bring that back because once it's gone, it will never be the same.

That's the bitter truth: you can open another coffee shop in the same room.

But more often than not, it will never be the same place.

Pour'd fonts and way back when we worked on Luminaire, Toast, and others

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:27:00 -0400

Most coffee people may not have heard of the Luminaire hot water font unless you were around back in the day. It was a project that some graduates of Olin were working on back in 2010. Something really akin to point and dispense precision hot water with a controlled flow rate for per cup. I got involved as hype man and demoed it a bunch of times with the idea of running it my cafés to do pour overs. It was pretty crazy and at some point, we were at the coffee trade show and I was pulling in anybody with cred who would listen to see it. I was shameless in getting anyone I could into a side room for a secret demo. Many of these people would end up being a who's who in the industry in the years to come but my goal was to share my excitement for it's potential. I think the concept was way ahead of its time but those guys still have a site on Luminaire coffee if you are looking to design something in coffee. The font didn't materialize for my shop long term but it didn't stop me from believing in them.

Push forward a few years and I got a second go around with being able to work with another prototype. From 2017 into 2018, we met with Paul Stack and his team at Marco in Ireland about trying to apply my cold brew patent to a small scale brewer that could enter the market. This was at the peak of cold brew coolness (sorry). I got to travel to Ireland and meet some awesome people then participate in a really fun process. I toured the cafés in Dublin and did a lot of tourist walking of the city. In the end, it wasn't going to happen on the small brewer. My patent was too craft in a bigger marketplace focused on a very broad user base of customers.

In that exploration process, my focus shifted to really getting into what we could do with the coffee since our patent method provided a range of strengths. I wanted to have the flexibility to dispense hot water and cold coffee in a tight space and they were working on something that met that check list. I really couldn't stand the big hot water towers taking up so much space on my counters and was struggling with how to fit my draft concept on bar without cutting up the counters. In the end, we got something outside our original intent, we got to be the beta testers and give feedback for the first version of what would eventually become the Marco Pour'd font.

Toasttab.com was another one but that relationship has had more length to it. The founders, Steve and Aman, of that point of sale application showed up via an introduction by a family member. We met with Aman and the team repeatedly and were open and direct, giving feedback on what we could want if we were to have a tablet driven point of sale. At the time we had a weekend table service brunch so we wanted tablets that could function as a register but then could be taken to a table and used to tale orders. We asked for a ticket screen that wasn't paper tickets as well so we didn't have a massive pile of paper. The details aren't important, what they did was ask us what we wanted, our dream setup and we gave them that detailed feedback. This was in a time when registers were linked to a server computer in your basement, not the standards that exist today. Toasttab's team showed up with a working version and we adopted it becoming their first customer. Flash forward, they grew and went public on the NY stock exchange. They invited us down for the event when they rang the bell and we got to stay in New York for the night and have that experience.

Recently the team at toast came in to shoot a small commercial for socials in our space. It was a lot of fun hanging out with Steve and Aman. I even got into character a little bit to be in their commercial.

Kind of wild when you think about it that I've been lucky enough to do more than once what few people ever get to do in this industry. Demoing a prototype and advocating for its design being put into production or tweaks to existing gear to modify it for another use is a really interesting process. With Luminaire, I got a group of friends for years after, and from Marco and Toasttab I got gear we use in the shops daily.

Easter Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Sun, 5 Apr 2026 19:03:00 -0400

Some quick updates, you can watch the WBUR CitySpace panel here.

I ran the Peru on the 364 bar as an SO espresso (18g dose 200.5f 1.75oz yield by volume). Really positive feedback and maybe it's psychological but we started to move bags of it quite briskly. Switched over to the Yirgacheffe today for a bit, similar specs but a little longer volume as it's thinner and brighter.

Changed the burrs on all the little pour over grinders at both shops, the change is always immediate. I also tweaked the water remineralization cartridges at 364. Cambridge water is pretty hard on coffee machines so we have to use RO to clean it up then put something back in. I also put that black two group linea back on the bar after replacing a bad key pad, and a group head solenoid as well as a full descaling.

Had a scheduled group come by Saturday from a local school that let us host a full cupping and a roast demo. Basically 9 people cupping 5 sets of our coffees and then asking questions while we roast. We are going to do more of this going forward as an event offer for people to let us cater a coffee experience.

Clean S.O. Espresso

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:03:00 -0400

One of the things about keeping a blog and being in coffee for a long time is that trends can come back. If you wait long enough, the old is new again.

This crisp Sunday after a nice busy Saturday at Broadway, a customer named pulled me aside to tell me the espresso was really good. He introduced himself as Jay, asked what was in it and pointed out that he lives over in Porter Square and that “everywhere the shots are burnt.”

His words, not mine.

We talked for a bit. It was actually a little hard to keep up. Jay was excited and talking quickly, the clockwork espresso was doing its thing, and he was ahead of me on several points. It took me a minute to catch up.

But somewhere in the middle of the conversation I realized something:

There’s still a lot out there that can be done with espresso and can still be exciting.

Lately we’ve been getting more customers coming in and talking about shots. Ordering straight espresso. Asking questions. Paying attention.

For me, it's brought back two moments that really shaped how I think about espresso. The first was back in 2006 I took a trip to New York to visit my friend Chris Owens, who was working at 9th Street Espresso at the time. I was coming from Boston, where most espresso was dark roasted Brazilian coffee or something close to a black and tan (French roast cut half and half with lighter roast).

The espresso scene was dark and the shots were long.

Chris had recently been to Scandinavia for a barista event (I think it was the Nordic Barista Cup) and he had done a café crawl while he was there. When he came back he had smuggled a bag of coffee with him.

It was a blend of extremely expensive coffees:

Guatemala Huehuetenango El Injerto, a Rwanda Golden Cup, and another coffee in the mix. Back then coffees like that would almost always have been reserved for filter brewing. The conventional wisdom from a lot of respected people in the industry was that coffees like that simply wouldn’t work as espresso.

They would have recommended brewing them on a Technivorm not an espresso.

But Chris pulled the shots.

They had structure.

They were layered.

They were clean.

They were beautiful.

I had pulled good shots before, on Synessos, on home setups, in cafés, but I had never tasted anything that intentional. That well paired.

It stuck with me enough that I later wrote about that experience here.

The second key moment for me was taking that inspiration forward few years to 2008. Once I had actually been trained in roasting and wasn’t just trying to make the best out of other people’s coffees or blends, I started developing my own philosophy around espresso and chose to test apply it then and there in one gloriously crazy event.

I set up a espresso tasting event at Simon’s Coffee Shop. I had been the manager there and helped build the coffee program that put that café on the rails it still runs on today. The café had this monster 4 group linea that used pstats to determine the Temps. I had to dial in the left 2 groups to one temp and the right two to another, then have four espresso dialed in for the event.

Heres my memory of the four different espressos served:

• Two Ethiopian coffees paired together

• A single-origin estate Kenya

• Panama Esmeralda Geisha

• And a classic Brazil–Yirgacheffe blend

The shots ranged from $3 up to $9, which at the time was beyond wild. We had several pounds of each coffee in the hoppers.

We went through all of it.

People would get in line, take a shot, go wow, step aside… then get right back in line and order another from the lineup. It was amazing.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you people don’t want to try interesting things. People want experiences. That event even got covered by some local press, either The Dig or The Boston Phoenix. Unfortunately there’s almost no record of it now, but I did write about it as a feeding frenzy at the bar.

⁠

Over the years I’ve done guest espressos, single-origin espressos on bar, espresso events, lots of experiments and a lot of fun in my owm shops. But scenes move in cycles. Things get popular, then they quiet down, then they come back in new ways.

Talking with Jay today, he was pushing me that people want this and that “If you build it, they will come.”

Field of Dreams quote aside, he's right. He was making the case that there’s still an audience for this. That people are curious. That people want to taste these things and care again.

Maybe he’s right. So I’m going to take that seriously and follow through. I’m going to start slotting some single-origin espressos on the bar at Broadway and see what happens. I already dialed in the Peru Cajamaru as a shot at 364 Broadway, Cambridge. It will be on the menu shortly but you can ask for it if you drop by.

Right now, I have the grinders and kit setup but I pulled the Linea PB off bar to service it. In the meantime I got a GS3 as a backup so it will be a bit slow during rushes but gotta do a full descale and clean on the Linea PB to get it peak.

Because the Boston scene has been in a lull for a little while and maybe it's time to have fun again. Rekindle my love of espresso and just go for it.

Give me a couple weeks to get everything set up. Stop by 364 Broadway Cambridge and see what you think the difference is between a single-origin espresso and a two bean blend blend.

Kettle gicleur and Hario Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 21:28:00 -0400

At WBUR'S CitySpace event, one intrepid coffee enthusiast brought attention to my foray into kettle gicleurs. We called them Kettle flow restrictors but they were essentially snap in Teflon pieces to adapt the hot water flow out of the Hario beehive or buono kettles. It was high temp Teflon precision machined and designed to narrow the flow rate so you just tip the kettle to a 45 degree angle and get a perfect slow flow without all the balancing of the kettles. It took away the focusing so hard aspect and allowed you to get it just right. This made a lot of sense for v60 because there is no real restriction beyond grind/dose and flow rate of water, pour too fast and too much water will run through.

Mind you, this was a time when dark roasts were still everywhere, roast dates were rare, and labeling coffee like a French wine label was considered novel. Many of the leaders we now think of as legends were advocating batch brew and were quite skeptical of per-cup brewing. The push was toward buying a high-end drip machine, not standing there with a kettle and doing it manually like we did. It was a wild moment where experimenting with pourover sometimes felt like we were swimming upstream.

That kettle flow restrictor really was a thing for a while and we sold a ton of them until it just faded for us. More people started copying us and selling them so we just stopped. It was a heck of a throw back though for one of the dozens of coffee attendees to bring up something from a specific time frame like that. Check out our shelves from that era, selling siphon!

Back then, we were part of a wave in 2008 to that brought Japanese coffee gear from Japan like siphon, kettles, and v60 by hario into the thoughts and hearts of a lot of coffee people who were pontificating about our American coffee scene and what to do next in coffee. While we definitely were the voice evangelizing it in the early years, we inadvertently got involved in bringing a bunch of gear in through varying channels as we advocated for it and for a while we were trying to establish a gear business based on the demand we were seeing.

I even made a trip to Japan and visited Hario headquarters but could not convince them to sell to us. I am pretty sure I wrote in barista magazine about the trip and do still have the photos on my Flickr which I've included below in this post. Check out the glass violin from the Hario headquarters museum!

I think in the end though the demand and attention sparked Hario into opening hario usa but it was the first wave of gear into the states before so many start ups and others began making competing gear. Now there is a huge selection of gear options that solve the problems we identified and an explosion of quality kits to noodle around with. Gone are the days of gear smuggling in suitcases from Tokyo mega coffee stores.

Shout out to that attendee for bringing me back to that headpsace for a bit.

WBUR CitySpace event

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 11:40:28 -0400

Last night we set up at WBUR'S CitySpace for a pop up. The format was interesting in that I got an hour to serve coffee while people arrived for the event. Honestly not knowing the scale of the event, I chose a brew method that wasn't built for speed or capacity, the Siphon.

It's a throw back for me because it was one of my favorite methods back in my early coffee days. We'd get together and brew on a hario TCA 2 cup and load it up with coffee to evaluate roast issues and character. So much stronger than a cupping that you could really see the issues in a coffee.

Back then we (barismo bloggers) had a reputation of being known for this method to the point that I got invited out to the west coast to present a bar doing just siphon. It was my first major event I traveled out of Boston for and would turn out to be a who's who of the next decade of specialty coffee. This being nearly 20 years ago now, it was back when the coffee community was just starting to do throw downs and barista jams.

So maybe it was a reach to be trying to set that up in a situation where I didn't have an idea of how many people would attend or be interested in tasting coffee at night but I gave it a shot on the idea of bringing it back to basics.

So siphon brew on one side and to give contrast, I put the same coffee (Colombia El Plan) as our cold brew on the other. So attendees went from the basic clean coldbrew to the heavy dosed siphon for contrast. The idea being the coldbrew we do is clean and more like regular coffee where the siphon will have all that structure and layers of flavor. It worked really well and we got a huge response from it. I haven't really ever gotten so many good high level coffee questions in an event that wasn't pro.

Afterwards, there was a panel and some seriously good conversations. I got to swing a mic around and answer some solid topics. It was great fun but my takeaway was that the coffee scene in Boston is in a position to get a bit of a revival.

We now have a limited edition release of this single bag lot from Hacienda Santa Rosa on our shelves. Yep, Gustavo only had about 150 lbs worth of yield and we got it all. It's a new micro plot surrounded and isolated by forest corridors on all sides. This plot has similar elevation to Buena Esperanza. High nitrogen soil and it's planted under the existing rustic hardwood canopy. This is a beautiful plot and a beautiful coffee. Available at @barismo171 and @barismo364.

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Sat, 10 Dec 2016 12:53:00 -0500

http://ift.tt/2gMtiiV

Hot draft of a Thai coffee we brewed with @beanspirecoffee. Thailand is a producing country with a lot of potential but also several problems to overcome in the near term. Storage of green, processing, and varietals to name a few. The biggest problem will be one of brand. As Thai coffee improves, it will face a perception bias. Many roasters will simply write it off because they will lump it in with other asian coffees. That means lower price offers and often a basic unwillingness to sample them. We are betting that over the next few years companies like beanspire will overcome many of the hurdles to get better. Expect more info on that this winter.

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Thu, 20 Oct 2016 17:15:00 -0400

http://ift.tt/2ecBCN0

New seating and signage @barismo171. One of several projects these last few months. Our staff put a lot of work into the remodel so drop by and give them props for the improvements.

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Fri, 14 Oct 2016 11:46:00 -0400

http://ift.tt/2ee1hPw

(Pic:The nursery at Hacienda Santa Rosa/aka Buena Esperanza/El Plan/Cerro Verde) Buying direct isn't a well defined term and we all have our own interpretation. A staff discussion about another roaster 'well, they are new. Don't roasters do direct buying later on....'. Since that roaster already dresses the coffees and talks about the importance of farm relationships, so the question of why they weren't buying direct yet was topical. We can't speak for the industry peers, but for barismo, it was a core value from the beginning. We went down and started sourcing directly with visits and purchases our first year. We set up our business in Jan 2008 but didn't open until late summer with our first few direct buys in hand. Thise first buys amounted to over 40k or about what we put into roasted gear. We felt both were of equal importance if we wanted to be taken seriously. It was a bit of a risk to drop that much money on coffee when we could have focused on turning spot coffees every 30 days. We felt without the farm relationship, it would just be selling coffees we didn't really know that well. This was eight years ago, so it was really not as common a thing to source directly. The idea was that you can't dip your toes in the water, you have to invest early if you want to build real meaningful change. Waiting would have made it much harder to get off of spot buying and into sourcing directly. Now we have farmers like Gustavo (Hacienda Santa Rosa) that we really truly collaborate with (coming up on 5 years). We find ourselves in contact with many of our partners at the farm level year round because the farm and roasting businesses are tied together. They are excited, and should be, by our success because they share top billing in it. #coffee #directtrade #barismocoffee

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Sun, 28 Aug 2016 08:28:00 -0400

http://ift.tt/2bseLpl

The runaway favorite of the last two days @barismo295 was by far our draft latte. It looks cool and it tastes good. It's really exciting to see Kendall adopt something so new, so quick. Thank you for the warm welcome. #draftlatte #latte #coffeegeek

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Thu, 25 Aug 2016 17:05:00 -0400

http://ift.tt/2bKrvdA

Cold shots in a chilled glass really hits the spot in this weather. Solid feedback so far. We are working to make them even colder, if we can. These puppies have the same strength (tds/brix) as a real espresso but the caffeine of a small filter coffee. Before we served it up, we sent it off for caffeine testing to make sure our draft products aren't unusually caffeinated. Testing came back good for us, but doesn't speak to other cold brew methods... so YMMV.🍵🤓

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Mon, 15 Aug 2016 12:06:00 -0400

http://ift.tt/2aVW3vZ

Drop by @barismo364 Broadway, Cambridge this coming week. Barismo will be testing out some new draft coffee concepts that should be appearing on an updated menu this week. The draft latte (pictured) combines our milk faucet with a true draft shot concept. We took up the challenge when we heard shops were serving regular coldbrew in a 1:1 ratio with milk (out of taps and in cans) but calling it draft lattes. The quick thought was, 'hey that's just an au lait' but the second thought was 'but what if it was done right, how could we do that.' First, we had to create a cold shot of equal measured strength to an actual espresso. Then we Nitro it to get espresso like crema. Assemble and make sure it worked flavorwise in a real latte proportion (coffee:milk, 1:4ish). It really did in the best way. The result is a stone cold iced latte topped with a presistent cold micro foam.

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 16:27:00 -0400

http://ift.tt/2b98YoU

Top(our transparent pricing), bottom was sent to us by @santaanacoffee (see @truthtradingco for more co like this). barismo "was mentioned in the sustainability table here at the Anacafé 27th Congress" in Guatemala. 😆🖒👍 We've been buying direct since 2008 and working on an evolving partnership approach with farms. While many roasters are adopting farm direct or directly traded looking labels, there was one piece missing: the ability to draw a line between the price we set for quality with farms and the price we set for coffee fans like you. 🍵🤓 For barismo, they are linear and quite related, which isn't often the case in our industry, but maybe that can change✌#coffee #directtrade

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Mon, 8 Aug 2016 17:00:00 -0400

http://ift.tt/2aG9BWc

We've been doing a popup in Kendall Sq outside @barismo295 ahead of opening. There has been some coffee and swag going out every Friday. Our new neighbors at Cove are bringing in a piece that's essential to the community. Check this video out for more on our visions: https://twitter.com/barismo/status/760579026197020672 Over the next few weeks, we will be hiring to staff up in Kendall and across barismo. On the retail side, with the new space, we need to add barista, floor supervisors, and even some baking/kitchen help. On the roasting operations side, we are looking for packing, roasting, coldbrew kegging/bottling, and more. Big moves with Kendall Sq. opening soon and a big scale up in our roasting/bottling divisions this same month. Email info@barismo.com if you are interested. #barismo #barista #coworking #kendallsquare

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Fri, 5 Aug 2016 18:40:00 -0400

http://ift.tt/2aOTR65

Nitro coffee is all about those bubbles 😉🖒 Far left is coldbrew pouring next to nitro on the right. The color difference is clear. Those tiny bubbles give authentic Nitro coffee an almond color and add that interesting mouthfeel. We will expand the draft bar this week to include two secret new innovations 😲 #coldbrew #coldbrewcoffee #coffee #nitro

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Tue, 2 Aug 2016 13:03:00 -0400

http://ift.tt/2aN7mpq

New 'not the coffee' things to get excited about: chocolate confections 🍫 & nut milks 🌞! Expect confections by @gatecommedesfilles this fall and nut milk products as soon as @nuttylife.boston gets that wholesale permit (soon-ish). More ideas in the works, stay tuned for updates! #cambridgema

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Mon, 1 Aug 2016 12:16:00 -0400

New 'not the coffee' things to get excited about: chocolate confections 🍫 & nut milks 🌞! Expect confections by @gatecommedesfilles this fall and nut milk products as soon as @nuttylife.boston gets that wholesale permit (soon-ish). More ideas in the works, stay tuned for updates! #blog #cambridgema

Today's weather says espresso. Offering shots of Buena Esperanza with it's caramel and citrus notes or Clockwork (blend) with it's smoothness. Can't go wrong either way. Both pulling 18grams in, 26-28 seconds, 32grams out. 🤓👌 #blog #twitter #coffee #espresso #barismo #directtrade @barismo364

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Sun, 31 Jul 2016 11:22:00 -0400

via Instagram http://ift.tt/2ajjs67

An update on barismo, dwelltime, and voltage

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 10:15:00 -0500

Many of you have seen, read, or heard rumblings about what we are up to. Let me break it down and explain a bit more.

We started dwelltime 3 years ago with a mission to build a flagship cafe. We hosted throwdowns, took per cup to a new level, hosted farm producer events, and won some awards along the way. It has, on many levels, been a success. It was never quite barismo though. That's probably because barismo delved into additional outside investment to open the cafe, hence the different name. In 2015 we ended up buying out that outside investment and have been doubling down on the core aspects that we care about.

Meanwhile, Voltage has been a mainstay of the coffee community for many years under Lucy Valena. We were the roaster there for several years and as with many of our partners, we shared strategies, discussed financials, and were quite invested in that space. Lucy was getting married, looking for a change, and with the renewed momentum and energy we had, we have been in a unique position to get more involved. It became a natural fit for us to go one step further and bring that space into our family and continue it's vision. Once we won approval from the city to let this happen, we now have some clarity to communicate to you.

dwelltime and voltage are closing.

In their place, we will be opening 2 more barismo locations. 364 Broadway (dwelltime) has already undergone the cleanup and changes that better communicate who we are. The new colors and layout were something Lucy has organized in her new capacity with barismo. 295 Third St. (voltage) will be under renovation in the winter, some paint, new gear, modifications to the bar. We hope to have a new food menu in place and get things up ~~and running by January~~. It will be much more in line with what we do on Broadway.

UPDATE: For 295 Third St., barismo is looking to partner with Cove.is to bring a new look and feel to the gallery side of the space. It has been used for years as a study, meeting, and work area so we feel that upgrading that capacity with Cove to meet the needs of the neighborhood is best for everyone. More to come soon as this is pending landlord approval and will require some additional construction.

That is not to say we will not be investing in our other spaces. Our original barismo location in east Arlington will get a paint job and possibly some facade work over the winter. We are also planning a menu change to go into effect by Christmas. There is a lot going on everywhere.

By 2016, you will be able to visit us at three retail locations:
171 Mass Ave, Arlington, MA
295 Third St., Cambridge, MA
364 Broadway, Cambridge, MA

You can still contact our Somerville roasting operations for wholesale/office/online orders via our website:
barismo.com

We hope that clarifies everything!
Sincerely,

Jaime van Schyndel

Coffee Sourcing Transparency

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 14 Aug 2015 11:03:00 -0400

UPDATE: We wrote more on the why & how of transparency in Fresh Cup Magazine -- read the full story here!

A few weeks ago we were discussing our current projects with a customer who has been with us since the very early days of barismo. Looking back on where we have come since 2008, they noted one of our defining qualities has been that we've never settled with where we are, and always are working on the next project. That pursuit and advocacy of quality has taken many forms over the years and has helped push our local & national coffee market.

Still, in some ways the coffee market today is harder than ever for a consumer to navigate; alongside genuinely great coffees on the market there are cheap coffees dressed up in the same way, packaged and marketed to mimic progressive quality coffee. No matter how many pictures of farms and slick branding accompanies the coffee, at the end of the day they're still the same "black box" blends that don't tell you what's in them, roast dates hidden or unlabeled, and the coffee itself simply being cheap & poor quality.

The best way we can respond to this is by becoming even more transparent; this year, we are making a move to full pricing transparency for our coffees. We're proud of the prices we are able to pay farmers & how they have increased each year. We fully own that we don't sell the cheapest coffee in the market by a long shot; our business is in quality coffee, and in order to get quality you have to pay farmers more money for their coffee. We have made a concerted effort over the years to build our business in a way so that we can reward producers for their work & the risks they take in pursuit of quality. We've often shared this information casually across the counter when talking coffee sourcing with customers, and we have taken the step this year to fully publish what we pay for coffee.

The coffee prices we paid for this year's arrivals are listed below. The prices are per pound green coffee. Every country we work in and source coffee from has a different dynamic between farmers, millers, exporters and contracts; based on that, we have listed one or two different prices: Free On Board (FOB), which is the price for the coffee delivered in a container to the ship dock, and Exit Warehouse Price, the cost to us once the coffee leaves the warehouse in the United States on its way to us.

After the coffee arrives, we have to pay for the cost of origin travel, truck freight, handling, rent, gas, electricity, equipment, bags, labels, QC, and labor (in addition to extra costs of running a business — accounts receivable/collections, accounting, insurance, taxes, etc). During the roasting process itself, green coffee loses 17% of its mass during the roasting process as water weight. In this light we believe that quality coffee is an incredible value in light of all the hands and expenses that are involved from the coffee nursery to the coffeebar.

Our average Landed Price in 2015 is $3.90 per pound. In comparison the commodity coffee price (C-market price) today ranges from $1.20 - $1.60 per pound, the same price that was being paid in the 1980’s; everything has gotten more expensive over the past 30 years, but the majority of coffee farmers are still making the same amount of money.

Coffee	Relationship	Origin	FOB	Exit Warehouse	Pounds Green Coffee
Buena Esperanza (Hacienda Santa Rosa)	Direct	Guatemala	$4.25	$4.54	3,800
Pena Blanca (Hacienda Santa Rosa)	Direct	Guatemala	$2.75	$3.04	21,432
Cerro Verde (Hacienda Santa Rosa)	Direct	Guatemala	$3.00	$3.29	6,080
Finca Santa Ana	Direct	Guatemala	$4.25	$4.85	3,040
El Xalum	Direct	Guatemala	$4.00	$4.58	5,420
El Bosque	Direct	Guatemala	$3.95	$4.51	10,100
Jardin De Aromas	Direct	Costa Rica	$3.25	$3.60	3,040
La Bandera El Quetzal	Direct	Costa Rica	$4.00	$4.35	2,280
La Lia Santa Rosa 1900	Direct	Costa Rica	$4.25	$4.60	760
Genesis Oscar	Direct	Costa Rica	$4.75	$5.10	760
Meridiano AA	Direct	Colombia		$4.00	3,040
Matahara	Importer Contract	Ethiopia		$4.18	3,800
Abysinian Mocca	Importer Contract	Ethiopia		$4.40	3,040
Gitare AB	Importer Contract	Kenya		$4.10	1,980
Finca Santa Leticia Pamon	Importer Contract	El Salvador		$4.25	1,520
Mario Doroteo Perez AA	Importer Contract	Honduras		$3.90	3,040
Manuel Adan AAA	Importer Contract	Honduras		$4.35	1,520
Tupac Amaru	Importer Contract	Peru		$4.40	1,824
Average Exit Warehouse Price: $3.90

For love of coffee

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 14:50:00 -0500

2015 marks our 7th year offering up fresh roast and per cup. While a lot has changed (see dwelltime, Cambridge Cold Brew), a lot of our core love of coffee is still there. The weather is just dreadful right now but it's a great time to look back before we look forward to the rest of the year.

I started in coffee a decade ago at a time when there were nearly all dark roasts being offered at local cafes. Mystery blends without roast dates made it pretty hard to find great coffee. That doesn't even cover the lack of good tools and equipment back then. These days, things have changed a bit and the equipment is getting to be a non issue and it shows. More coffee shops are doing latte art and the execution has become better in our scene. These days, there are still mostly dark roast blends at coffee shops in town and while you hear and see 'single estate' used a lot, there isn't that much of it actually being served. Shops and roasters are really laying into 'freshly roasted' but it is surprisingly hard to find whole bean that's less than ten days off roast. The messaging has evolved but there is a lot of room to grow in terms of the quality. Meanwhile, the national 'indie' coffee scene is obsessed with venture capital, acquisitions, aggressive expansion, and (quietly) exit strategies but those topics are less discussed locally. It's easy to be overwhelmed by it all.

In some ways, I am back where I started when I founded this company. I find myself asking some of the same questions. How do we (continue to) do what we do in a community of shops where so many shop owners may be pulling in the opposite direction? After a lot of thought, I realized that we just have to acknowledge that barismo is on a mission. We love coffee and just happen to also be lucky enough to have found a community of coffee drinkers that let's us be a little nerdy and obsessed about great coffee. We have a complex business and a bit of an uphill trek but sometimes you just have to focus on what matters. So, here's a break down of what our core goals are for 2015:

Fresh Roast We will continue to strive to be the only coffee brand you will consistently see on shelves locally that is delivering coffee 24 hours off roast. We want you to take it home and enjoy it in the first two weeks while it is fresh.

Fresh Brew We will push for, wrangle up, and argue for the most attentive, detailed, and cared for brews we can muster. We promise that while you may have to wait a little longer for a brew, it wasn't sitting around all day staling and waiting for you.

Transparency We will never blend up a mystery bag or serve up a murky 'dark roast' that lacks farm identity. We also promise to share as much as you can stand to listen to about our farm partners and their stories of quality improvement. Without transparency, we'd be taking credit for their work and that's not very barismo.

Education We promise to share our brew methods, offer up classes, organize farmer events, and host cuppings.

Value We believe that value is built on everything from how the coffee was processed and stored to roasted and brewed. We will do our best to make the case for what makes good coffee and why we invested in the farms we did. We don't roast anything dark (nothing goes into second crack) and we will continue to avoid obscuring the quality farms have worked so hard to create.

Redefine the Regular Coffee People want to drink good coffee. We don't assume you want to drink bad coffee. If you come in our doors, we know you came looking for more and we will do our best to provide that cup. We want the chance to make your regular everyday cup something special.

While we admit we're on a mission for great coffee, it is a labor of love. We do all this and more because we think it matters and we hope you agree. Sure, we might not be willing to compromise, but in the end, we hope you will see and appreciate the effort from seed to your cup. We want you to enjoy the coffee while we say thank you for the support over the years.

Coffee tree tap handles!

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime van Schyndel) — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 10:00:00 -0400

Keep it local Camberville, MA: barismo's founder, Jaime van Schyndel gives a run down on some cool new tap handles at dwelltime.

Coldbrew on tap is the new big thing right now. Cafes, offices, and restaurants are picking this as a new option for quick serve coffee. There are pre-designed 'javarator' setups you can buy and even a reddit section dedicated to the kegging of iced coffee setups. This is the next big thing in coffee!

To celebrate the last two years of serving coldbrew on tap at dwelltime, I came up with a fun idea back in the spring:

While visiting El Bosque de Parramos in Guatemala this spring, I picked up a section of a coffee tree stump from a plot of the farm that had older plantings. This was one of 5 branches coming off the main stump and was still alive. Avelino himself cut the stump off and chose this particular piece of wood.

I brought the wood back and left it with our friends and Somerville neighbors at DGF. After some curing and resting time, the wood was cut into three sections, sanded and prepped as tap handles for a kegged coldbrew setup.

One of the cool aspects of this old stump is that is was right along the pathway. It has several scars along it's backside that came over the years. Over time, different farm workers would sit roadside and have their lunch. They would invariably leave their machete in the closest stump, to which this little tree was the victim a few times. Kind of cool to think about how over the years, the scars tell a story.

Coffee wood grows fast and is typically not good quality. The older varietals that are less dwarfed can get to 20ft tall and this is the type of heirloom bourbon we ended up sawing off to make our handles. This particular stump may have had 20 years on this branch to get to this size. It's color is a bit like poplar but it has a slight tint of green to the bark and wood. Needless to say, I am excited to see how it ages and colors with time.

While we can't guarantee coffee wood tap handles for your setup, we can help you with a no fuss install and consistent quality product if you are in the Boston/Cambridge area. If you are interested in serving coldbrew on tap locally or having this in your office, let us know. We have been refining the process and have a separate division dedicated to expanding this. We already have offices and clients across the spectrum setup for coldbrew coffee and tea on tap but are looking for some exciting new places to get this concept into while it's still hot outside.

NOW Roasted In Somerville

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 3 Jul 2014 11:19:00 -0400

After some hurdles, we are now roasting in our new space! Our first full day of production roasting was on Monday. While we weren't planning on a few of the hurdles that set back the move until the last few days of June, the silver lining was that the majority of our 2014 crop coffees are just getting to port in the next 2 weeks, so we had to move just a quarter of the amount of coffee from 171 Mass Ave, Arlington to our new home at 14 Tyler Street, Somerville.

We took last Thursday to move over, and brought over some extra hands to help with moving bags of coffee. Among the many positives to our new roastery is the addition of a loading dock; many of our long time customers have seen us in the past having pallets of coffee dropped off on the sidewalk, then carrying them one at a time through the roastery and downstairs to our basement storage. Pallet jacks and forklifts are lightening the load quite a bit.

Along with the change in location, we've switched the actual roaster we use. Our trusty pair of 4 kilo roasters has served us well, but we had reached near maximum roasting capacity. Late last year we purchased a 12 kilo Probat coffee roaster and have been refurbishing it inside & out. We've been happy with the results so far, and you should expect a positive difference in our coffees going forward.

We're spending most of this week and next working out some of the logistics of our wholesale operation here. By the middle of the month we'll have updates with events & classes at the new space. While it's not a retail store or coffeebar, there'll be plenty of opportunity through the rest of the summer to get to see our new home.

Coffee Updates

We've released some new coffees over the past few weeks from this years crop of coffees out of Kenya & Ethiopia; in addition to Doppleganger (on our last blog update), we've released Homunculus (a 50/50 blend of coffees from two different mills in the same region of Ethiopia), and Kochere Grade 1 (one of the components of Homunculus). We have a second wave of coffees from Ethiopia & Kenya already lined up for later this summer.

We're expecting the boat carrying our coffees from Costa Rica to arrive at port in New Jersey on July 8th. It should take another week upon arrival to clear customs, then we'll be able to bring these coffees -- Jardin de Aromas & Bandera de Dota -- up to Somerville!
Confirming more good news & arrival details from Guatemala today; we'll have a further update for you next week!

Local innovation needs coffee, local coffee needs a little innovation: @Clypd #Somerville

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 May 2014 10:00:00 -0400

Keep it local Somerville, MA: barismo's founder, Jaime van Schyndel gives a shout out to a local tech company that brought support for a local roasting company.

Caffeinate and innovate. One of the great things about being nestled into this area is that we are surrounded by great ideas and forward thinking companies. There are some seriously cool people doing the next big thing. Sometimes, we get to play a tiny role in fueling that!

Over at Clypd in Somerville's Davis Sq., they have a full tap setup of Cambridge Coldbrew. They started with cold coffee and quickly moved into adding our direct trade coldbrew tea as well. We were surprised with how easy it was to install as they already had a small kegerator for beer. The second surprise is how much they go through! They were up and running in no time, we just had to put an extra keg out there for them.

We want to give a shout out to those folks for being the spark to get us moving on this project. A big thanks to the folks over at Clypd for bringing us into their family and for tuning us into the ideas driven culture around us.

Stay Fresh Updates: Upcoming events, new coffee, and much more... Sign up to receive updates!

NEW COFFEE!!!

Our much beloved and adored doppelganger espresso is back and fittingly it's to be one of our first Somerville production roasts. It will appear online and on retail shelves this weekend!

A pairing of two Kenyas, this coffee is lightly roasted to get it to sing some delicious notes of fruit and floral. It's juicy and sweet, great as espresso, coldbrew, or as a drip coffee.

TEDxCambridge : June 5th 5pm,

We are a coffee sponsor! If you were one of the lucky ones to have booked a ticket, we will be right there with you keeping your energy up with great coffee! (Check out our new espresso cart at this event).

A huge thanks to the organizers of TEDxCambridge for letting us be there to support! See TEDxCambridge for more details on their spring event.