Coffee and technology have long been buddies since the early days.The first webcam was set up in Cambridge with the sole purpose of keeping a tab on the coffee. And now fast forward to now with different coffee technology popping up every where. Every aspect of coffee is being touched by the rapid innovation. Apparently, when it comes to drinking coffee, as is the case with many other gastronomical industries, the goal is to make each bite or sip as delicious as possible. There are some very cool gadgets from something called the Steampunk, a "tricked-out-siphon-turned-glass-pipe-organ brewed coffee contraption," to the Prima Tamp, which essentially allows a barista to position the handle on whatever they need at whatever angle. Liz Clayton's list in her articles features more interesting tools.
Even we have decided to reinvent the use of the keg, resulting in our Cold Brew Kegerator.
Joyride Coffee, Steampunk
Joyride Coffee, Tumblr Kegerator
For a more detailed description of these various technologies:
"You giving me your number sounds like a fair trade"
Introducing the Beautiful Joyride Vans
Joyride Coffee, Wrapped Vans
Voilà! Thanks to our friends from Endash Space, we have beautiful, newly wrapped Joyride Vans! If you see these colors rolling around Manhattan, expect some cold brew kegerator action and some great office coffee.
Joyride Coffee, Wrapped Vans
Joyride Coffee, Wrapped Vans
Startup Perks
A little under a month ago, Molly Young wrote an article for the New York Times titled "The Calorie-Packed Perk," addressing employee benefits and perks. This article was especially relevant to me. First of all, as an intern, it has been incredibly helpful to be working at a startup, especially one that is in the midst of such rapid growth. Although I am a Social Media and Advertising Intern, I still get to see other aspects including sales, business development, and even the manual aspects, such as equipment and warehouse management. More specific to this particular internship, I get to learn about the ever-growing industry that is coffee.
I think it's a really important experience to work at a startup for anybody who wants to see an incarnation of "started from the bottom now we here." (I'm probably about to be slain for writing that.)
In terms of tangible perks at a company, I get bags and bags of some of the best coffee beans (Stumptown, Intelligentsia, Blue Bottle, Joe...), stickers and temporary tattoos from the companies we deliver to, as much coffee as I want in a day, and carbonated water!
Joyride Coffee, Start-ups
Although, as an intern, my perks are a little less significant than, say, healthcare, benefits however small are important. They keep employees happy and motivated. They make people want to stay in the office longer, because they're comfortable and having fun. In terms of recruiting, it seems that the weirder or more unique the perks are, the more people will want to apply for jobs at the respective company.
For example, one of our accounts, Warby Parker provides warm cookies, barbecue, and even Pinkberry frozen yogurt. Artsy does a weekly happy hour. At Squarespace, another one of our accounts, midday meals are prepared for employees four days a week, and on the fifth, they order out. In other words, happiness.
As mentioned in the NYTimes article, one of Bitly's perks is our office coffee, as it is for many of these tech companies in NYC.
Ultimately, perks seem to promote a happier and more productive working environment, and if that means an extra naptime or cold brew kegerator, so bean it.
Classic Coffee Joke Tuesday: Hold the sugar please, you're sweet enough for the both of us.
-Kristen Lee, aka Kristen Cavill
Café Review – OST Café
This summer, Joyride will be assembling an interactive map that functions as a café guide. I'm Kristen Lee, the Social Media Intern, and I'll be visiting cafes throughout NYC and getting a taste of the wonderful beans the Big Apple has to offer. For my first stop, I went to OST Café in the East Village. I walked in and found myself in a modest, naturally-lit, unassuming setting. To the left is the coffee bar and directly in front is a full wet bar. There are a few large, leather booths, a few scattered tables and stools along the bars. It's not a setting for a huge gathering, but it's mellow enough for a nice hangout with a friend or two.
OST Cafe, Joyride Coffee
OST Cafe, Joyride Coffee
I ordered a latte. It was exactly what anybody would ever want out of a latte - just smooth, creamy, and milky enough that I still taste the comforting, clean coffee. They also use some great beans, including some from our very own Intelligentsia.
OST Cafe, Joyride Coffee
They have a relatively simple menu, with classic café drinks, but they also have a heartier menu with cheeses and charcuterie. Between the menu and the Parisian paintings on the walls, the cafe has a distinctly European feel. OST is right on the corner of 12th and A, so it would be perfect for people watching through the window if it gets too cold or too hot to be sitting outside. I feel like it would be a nice place to go around late afternoon or evening, more so than the morning, perhaps to grab a coffee and maybe a drink or two as twilight hits.
OST Café 441 E. 12th St. (Between Ave A and 1st St.)
Coffee by: Intelligentsia
Triple C Action: Counter Culture Office Coffee
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We are proud to add a new roaster to our all-star lineup of office coffees: Counter Culture Coffees! Counter Culture delivers directly from the farmers to give coffee lovers handcrafted goodness and "the most delicious and exciting coffees in the world." It also happens to be one of the "Big 3" Third Wave Coffee Roasters along with Stumptown and Intelligentsia. It's basically a huge deal. :)
By agreement with Counter Culture, we can only offer these great beans in five-pound bags, unground.
Espresso Toscano: Sweet dark-chocolate and buttery caramel
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Honduras Finca El Puente: Called in 2005 the “Purple Princess” this coffee has an astounding cup of lavander, grape and plum
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And Number 46: a European-style blend and crowd pleaser
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Counter Culture office coffee is also awesome because of their coffee education program called Counter Intelligence (the name is a little Counter intuitive - ha!). They have training centers in NYC, North Carolina, Atlanta, and D.C. to educate those who are interested in how to craft the tastiest coffee!! And considering over 54% of Americans over the age of 18 drink coffee every morning, it wouldn't hurt to know how to make it well.
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So there's Counter Culture office coffee for you and hopefully it ends up on your counter!
What do you call a cow who's just given birth?
...De-calf-inated!
The Good, the Bad and the Aeropress
The Aeropress has been gaining traction in the high-end coffee world since its introduction in 2005, with good reason. But it isn't all good news.
The method brews a quite unique cup, that melds the brightness and mouthfeel of an espresso with the texture and simplicity of a traditional drip. The system definitely has some brilliant elements, but I don't find myself using it, and instead returning to my typical prefered method, the chemex. The traits of the Aeropress make it the ultimate brew method for the road warrior; but for those of us with a more sedentary life style, it leaves an unquantifiable something missing.
The Good:
Light - The Aeropress weights almost nothing. Not important in most situations, but for travel: essential.
Quick - While not quite as fast as espresso, the Aeropress brews very quickly, somewhere in the 30-60 second range, roughly paralleling its hybridity between drip and espresso.
Unbreakable - Not quite. But close. Being made out of plastic certainly helps, but you can carelessly throw this in a bag for travel and arrive with a still functioning brewer, unlike a pour-over, chemex or French press.
Compact - The space required for a aerpress is about that of a 16oz beer can.
Makes Good Coffee - Getting good at brewing on an Aeropress is definetly easier than learning an espresso machine, and it makes a darn fine cup of coffee. They aren't used in cafes because of durability, after all.
Inexpensive - At $30, an Aeropress is an affordable brew method. Because it doesn't break, that $30 can last years, unlike the poor chemexes who keep dying in our offices (boiling water into a 40 degree chemex will break it, who knew?)
Neat - The "puck" system actually makes the Aeropress one of the neatest and cleanest brewing systems I've experienced. There is little mess, and at the end, the brewer just requires a quick rinse.
The Bad:
V1 - Despite working quite well, the Aeropress still feels like a brew method in its infancy. There are too many arguments about inversions for oils v. typical brewing, and the device doesn't quite answer the question of what it is supposed to do. The result is a brewer that hasn't quite worked out all of its kinks just yet. Some would call it versatility, but I am a believer that design should make its use obvious to the user and the Aeropress feesl a bit like it is trying to do everything for everybody.
Filters - Just about the only thing that prevents the Aerporess from being a perfect travel system is the need for specially designed, non-reusable filters. While the need for these is intrinsic to the system itself, their rather small distribution, and the relatively unkown nature of the press, means that you can either order them online, or get them at a specialty store.
SingleCup - The Aeropress, like many popular brewers, makes only a single cup. A big part of coffee for me is the conversation, and the chance to socialize that comes with it. The Aerorpess is and feels like the private possesion of a coffee nerd, it isn't something you could break out at lunch with your grandma, the way a frenchpress or chemex can span the gap between nerd and the creamer-crowd.
NotEspresso - It is a little obnoxious to compare a $30 brewer to a $3000 machine that requires an electrician and a plumber to install. But that is what the aeropress is aiming for. It is a bold effort, and while they capture much of the essence of espresso, the lack of pressure leads to a cup that brings espresso to mind, but which does not fill the same hole in your soul. Sometimes espresso is sublime, and maybe it is my brewing, but I just don't think the Aeropress is up to the challenge. I think I would like it better if it were trying to do its own thing, but espresso, but it's not.
Tough to Learn - While the Aeropress doesn't require the same amount of experience to use properly as say an Espresso machine, the element of pressure requires a steady and skilled hand to use properly. While elements like water weight and grind can be quantified and squared away, manually applied pressure is much more difficult to gauge, and is difficult to deliver consistently from brew to brew.
Obviously, my complaints are nit-picky, and generally speaking the Aeropress is a significant addition to a barista's arsenal. In its own way, as a specialized tool used by a experienced user, it can deliver an amazing cup of coffee. But it isn't for me. I love espresso, and I love drip, but for different reasons. Aeropress fills the gap between the two, but it doesn't really do either quite the way I would like.
Boss Says no Joyride: In pursuit of Good Office Coffee
So not every office is lucky enough to have good office coffee and quality equipment. So how do you make your office coffee better? First off, you need to give up the idea that your coffee will be ideal. Unless you take rather significant steps, you aren't going to be able to achieve the same results as good office coffee beans and great machines. What you need to focus on is improvements. It may be a bit unsatisfying, but in most offices I've seen, there are ways to improve the office coffee. All of these same recommendations will also improve the quality of home brewing as well.
1. CLEAN!
![dirty_coffee_maker[1]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5588564ae4b08fd2d8e631f1/1449856962344-W39C6V5V7HFBM6OK70SZ/dirty_coffee_maker1-225x300.jpg)
dirty_coffee_maker[1]
The single biggest thing you can do to improve the quality of your coffee is to clean everything it touches. The flavors in coffee come from oils in the beans. These oils will stick to just about everything they touch. IN a grinder, the coagulate into a sort of resin that sticks to grinds and keeps them in the chamber. When brewed, these oils layer upon themselves to make glass filmy and brown, or slowly tarnish metal. This isn't actually tarnish, but rather is layers of oils stuck to the That means cleaning your mug (i've seen some gross mugs) it means cleaning the carafe or airpot (we sell Purocaf for this very purpose). You have to clean the brew basket (where the filter sits). Depending on the machine, this part can have grooves and cleaning can be tricky. A tooth brush works fairly well for a lighter cleaning, while a toothbrush+boiling water+purocaf should work on even the oldest stains. If you have a gold filter or any kind of reusable filter, leave it in boiling water with a teaspoon of purocaf over night. Make sure you rinse it thouroughly the next day though, puro caf is a very strong cleaner and won't help your coffee taste any better. If you use a scoop to dose your coffee, clean the scoop. If you keep your coffee in a reusable container, clean that as well, but be sure it is completely dry before returning beans or grinds. If you use a grinder, a toothbrush should help you to clean it out. Canned air also helps. Most conical burr grinders (click here for a few good ones being reviewed) can be disassembled. Doing so will help ensure that no beans end up stuck in the grinding chamber, slowly rotting and making your cup muddy. I know that this seems like quite a bit of work, but if it is done on a regular basis, it takes very little time and this step alone make a significant difference. This is the single best step in the pursuit of good office coffee.
2. Keep it Fresh No matter if you have the beans for good office coffee, if it gets old, it will be flat and taste stale. The best way to describe the right way to buy coffee is to "Buy coffee like bread, often and a little bit at a time." In office setting, this means carefully burning through all of the old beans before acquiring new beans. But it also mean buying beans in smaller quantities. When possible, only buy beans with a roast date on them (most better brands will offer this. Most cheap coffee doesn't). Even then, only buy beans roasted within the last week. Any older than that any you are starting to significantly impact flavor. Even if you had the best office coffee, it wouldn't be worth a damn if it were six months old. 3. Store your beans properly Beans aren't difficult to store. Keep them in a dark, dry place, that doesn't get ridiculously hot. Freezing them isn't effective because you shouldn't be keeping them for a long time in any case. I personally like to use airtight containers like the effective if overpriced Oxo Pop tops. A dark, dry place and an airtight container will do wonders to prevent the beans from going stale before their time. This doesn't override the "Keep it fresh" commandment, though. Proper storage prevents premature deterioration, it doesn't increase shelf life. 4. If possible, grind only when you need to. If you grind, grind right! Ideally, you should grind your beans mere seconds before the first blush of hot water hits them. This holds the maximum amount of oils in the beans, and also slows the deterioration of those oils through exposure to air. You know that smell of freshly ground coffee? You are smelling particles of the oils that give coffee its amazing taste and you want them in your cup! Now having a grinder isn't always feasible in an office setting. They are loud, and they add steps to the brewing process. If your coffee is pre-ground, however, you simply must keep it airtight when not being used. If you have a grinder, you need to make sure you are grinding the beans properly. Unfortunately, the only way to truly know is through trial and error. Unless the brewer is rather nice, it probably has a significant variation in brew temperature from machine to machine. The best way to figure out if a brew is right is to test it. Assuming you are using the right amount of coffee, if your cup is flat and a bit flavorless, you are grinding too coarsely. If it bitter, overpowering or chalky, you are probably grinding too finely. Eventually you will find out what your machine likes, but cheaper machines can vary brew to brew as well, so you may never really hit a perfect sweet spot. 5. Dose Properly It seems self explanatory, but you need to properly dose your coffee. To little coffee and you end up with flavorless brown water. Too much coffee and you get a bitter, teeth-staining beasty. But how much coffee do I need? For every 6oz cup (that is the cup measurement on most brewers) you need 170g of water, and thus around 10g of coffee. As a rule of thumb, it should be around 2 tbs of grinds/cup so around 1/4 cup coffee grind/ 6oz coffee. This should only be considered a starting point, however. Depending on the brewer and the fineness of your grind, you will probably need to adjust it one direction or another, although no more than 20%. 6. Drink Fresh Old coffee is gross. Don't drink it. This also means don't make more than you will drink before it gets cold and old. Filters are cheap so its better to make coffee twice and use an extra filter, than to drink old coffee for half the time. 7. Know yourself Different people have different tastes in coffee and even if you had really good office coffee, if it isn't to your taste, you aren't going to like it. If your coffee is tasting too bitter and ashy, then you are probably buying beans that are too dark for you. Don't buy anything with "French Roast," "Espresso Blend," "Dark Roast" "Spanish Roast" etc. If you can look at the beans, buy beans that are lighter in color and have no sheen to them (that sheen is actually the coffee oils being brought to the surface of the bean through the roasting process). If, on the other hand, you find your coffee to bright, or possibly to acidic, you might want a darker roast. Again look at the beans and pick something a bit darker in color. You might also try espresso roasts, or African or Indonesian coffees as they tend to be a bit more in your face. Even so, don't buy shiny beans! That is an indication of a bad roaster. Between these 7 steps, you should notice a remarkable improvement in the quality of your coffee. The same thing all applies to home brewing as well. To be honest, I wish there was a way that I could give hard and fast numbers for everything, but making the perfect cup of coffee is simply an issue of multi-variable calculus where nothing is known. You have to balance grind, volume, water temperature, and to be honest, the result can still vary wildly, dependent on ambient temperature, humidity and even altitude, not to mention the machine and the beans. What I layed out is intended to get you to a starting point, but to get from there to perfect is a painful, but worthwhile project. Adendum: If you have K-cups or nespresso, I'm very sorry but there is almost nothing you can do. You can get a reusable K-cup and combine it with your own coffee to make an improvement, but to be honest, a Keurig machine doesn't really brew very well. The temperature controls are erratic, and the semi-presurized brew method isn't ideal. Figuring out the grind will also be tricky. You might be able to make improvements but it will never get even close to perfection. Go buy a grinder, a french press or chemex, a kettle and a hot water heater and make your own coffee in a better way.
