Blue Bottle Café — San Francisco — Siphon Coffee Bar

Last winter I visited the then-new Blue Bottle Café, an offshoot of the obsessive Oakland "microroaster" and coffee vendor.



The Café, in San Francisco right behind the old Mint, had been the subject of a NY Times article a few days before so it was predictably crowded.



The focus of the room is clearly the unusual brewing apparatuses: a pair of cold extraction towers and a quartz-halogen-fired siphon bar (they also have two espresso machines—each dedicated to a specific application—for those stuck in the 20th century).



It's a good show. Water is first heated in a round flask, then a filter funnel holding freshly-ground coffee is fitted into its neck.



Steam pressure forces the water up through the filter where it is mixed with the grounds.





After extraction is complete, the unit is removed from the burner and the bottom flask is cooled creating a vacuum that sucks the coffee downward.



The process is remarkable for the "cleanness" of the brew. You can really appreciate the bright high notes without the muddiness that some other methods (e.g., French press) introduce. Virtually no sediment is present.





The first pot I tried was Ethiopian Golocha ($11), a fruity, flowery coffee. I suspect the siphon method really lets this type of coffee shine. The next day I returned for the Sidamo ($10), another dry processed Ethiopian but much earthier. I was slightly less impressed with this one though it was still an excellent brew.

The whole operation is more than a little precious but I have to admit they deliver the goods.

Blue Bottle Café
66 Mint St
San Francisco CA
415-495-3394

Rene G wrote:The first pot I tried was Ethiopian Golocha ($11)....The next day I returned for the Sidamo ($10).

Just water and beans? O-M-G!!! I am sure the coffee is delicious but $11! They can keep it in California with that new fangled gizmo. Thanks ReneG, your reports are always great.

iblock9 wrote:Just water and beans? O-M-G!!! I am sure the coffee is delicious but $11! They can keep it in California with that new fangled gizmo. Thanks ReneG, your reports are always great.

I'm not sure how new-fangled that gizmo is. I can remember my grandmother and mother both having similar coffee pots when I was a kid. Of course, they were't as sci-fi looking, but they functioned in exactly the same manner.

And if I am not mistaken those two-level aluminum Italian coffeemakers we used in Tuscany last year operate on the same principle, too - though admittedly w/o the cool glass globes. Still, I think I would try this "theater of the bean" if given the chance. Lord knows I've blown more than $11 on worse things

Davooda

stevez wrote:I'm not sure how new-fangled that gizmo is. I can remember my grandmother and mother both having similar coffee pots when I was a kid. Of course, they were't as sci-fi looking, but they functioned in exactly the same manner.

Vacuum pots have a fairly long history, although my understanding is that these specific Japanese systems are relatively new.

This article about Intelligentsia switching to Clover-only brewed coffee, which was linked in another thread, mentions that Intelligentsia will be adding "vacuum pots," although it's not clear to me whether those will be of the same type as those in the photos above or a different type.

Japanese vacuum pots have been around for a while, though they're just starting to get wide-attention in America.

Intelligentsia has been stocking two sizes of them for a couple months now. They even come with cute little propane Bunsen burners.

The cost might have been partly due to the beans: some Ethiopian coffees produce very small crops (though typically it's a Yirgacheffe that's at a premium) Though it does seem that they've made yet another advance in adding more labor costs to the production of a pot of coffee.

I always wanted to try a vacuum pot, myself - I had heard the same things about the cleanness of the resultant cup. In looking at it, though - how is this different (other than visually) from a stovetop percolator? The only real difference that I see is that the finished coffee ends up back in the water chamber, rather than in the top chamber of the coffeepot.

Ray's in Philadelphia's Chinatown has been serving siphon coffee for twenty years now, at about 1/2 of the prices above.

Mhays wrote: In looking at it, though - how is this different (other than visually) from a stovetop percolator? The only real difference that I see is that the finished coffee ends up back in the water chamber, rather than in the top chamber of the coffeepot.

If memory serves, the vacuum process is much gentler than the full boil used by a peculator.

P.S. My grandmother used to always add salt and egg shells to the coffee grounds before using this type of coffee maker. I'm not sure what that brought to the table because I was much too young to drink coffee, let alone know enough to ask the question. She never did this when making coffee by any other process.

I don't know... that whole contraption looks too much like a Dateline expose on a methamphetamine lab for comfort, although it seems like the resulting product is more expensive!

stevez wrote: P.S. My grandmother used to always add salt and egg shells to the coffee grounds before using this type of coffee maker. I'm not sure what that brought to the table because I was much too young to drink coffee, let alone know enough to ask the question. She never did this when making coffee by any other process.

I've never heard of salt, but eggshells figure prominently into "cowboy coffee:"when you make coffee over the campfire in whatever vessel is handy by stirring coffee into the water. It's supposed to "settle the grounds" I wonder if it acts kind of like a raft in consomme? If that is the case, I can see where this would be beneficial in an old-fashioned percolator, where the grounds can get away from you if you're not careful.

iblock9 wrote:Just water and beans? O-M-G!!! I am sure the coffee is delicious but $11!

The Golocha was the best cup of coffee I've had, ever. Actually it was about three cups, more than one person ought to drink at one sitting. Blue Bottle isn't the kind of place I'd frequent (even if I could afford it) but I'll never regret spending that $11.

stevez wrote:I'm not sure how new-fangled that gizmo is. I can remember my grandmother and mother both having similar coffee pots when I was a kid. Of course, they were't as sci-fi looking, but they functioned in exactly the same manner.

The quartz-halogen gizmo is fairly recent but the method is not new at all, predating your Bubbe by nearly a century (see Matt's post and the link within). Vacuum pots were very popular in the US in the first part of the 20th century. Here's a nice picture from William Ukers' beyond-amazing All About Coffee from 1935 that illustrates this.

Davooda wrote:And if I am not mistaken those two-level aluminum Italian coffeemakers we used in Tuscany last year operate on the same principle, too - though admittedly w/o the cool glass globes.

If you're talking about a Moka Express, it's not quite the same. That type of pot forces hot water up through packed coffee grounds but doesn't suck it back down. Partly because of the lack of an efficient filter the resulting coffee is very different.

Llama wrote:Intelligentsia has been stocking two sizes of them for a couple months now. They even come with cute little propane Bunsen burners.

Yes, I've had my eye on the Yama stovetop pot (I wish they carried 5 cup size). Intelligentsia's price is better than any I've seen online.

Mhays wrote:The cost might have been partly due to the beans: some Ethiopian coffees produce very small crops (though typically it's a Yirgacheffe that's at a premium) Though it does seem that they've made yet another advance in adding more labor costs to the production of a pot of coffee.

I always wanted to try a vacuum pot, myself - I had heard the same things about the cleanness of the resultant cup. In looking at it, though - how is this different (other than visually) from a stovetop percolator? The only real difference that I see is that the finished coffee ends up back in the water chamber, rather than in the top chamber of the coffeepot.

Yes, the beans were special, or at least Blue Bottle thinks they are. I didn't give their full pedigree because I don't remember the details (my eyes glazed over while listening to the recitation).

I think two significant differences between vacuum pots and percolators are temperature control and filtration. By the time the water contacts the grounds in a vacuum pot it is well below boiling, ideal for extraction without bitterness. Percolators continuously reboil already brewed coffee. Vacuum pots have a filter between the two chambers whereas percolators typically have only a perforated basket.

It would be very interesting to use the same beans and compare a vacuum pot with other methods. I suspect Blue Bottle's siphon coffee is so good because of both beans and technique.

cilantro wrote:Ray's in Philadelphia's Chinatown has been serving siphon coffee for twenty years now, at about 1/2 of the prices above.

There's a nice article about Ray's in the Spring 2007 issue of Gastronomica. I would have mentioned it before but I don't think it's available online.

Here's the one we used to have. The top glass container eventually broke and was replaced by a metal one.

I visited the bar a few weeks after they opened, too, and must have been there right around the time Rene visited. I enjoyed the spectacle of the process almost as much as I enjoyed the people watching the barista:



A few years ago I purchased an electric Bodum vacuum pot coffeemaker - all plastic - that CB2 was selling at 50% off. I ended up giving it to my roommate, who routinely drank a pot at a time. I just tried to find it on the web - at Amazon, it appears to be out of stock, but there are a number of other options - stove top and electric, including one from Black & Decker (!!).

I blogged about my visit to Blue Bottle HERE (for some reason, the photos are linked, not published on the site...odd).

stevez wrote:Here's the one we used to have. The top glass container eventually broke and was replaced by a metal one.

Those nice old Cory pots with glass filter rods were once among the most popular in the US. You can almost always find them on eBay (indeed the picture you posted was taken from a current auction). I seriously considered getting one but the rubber gaskets are often in poor condition (the one in the picture lacks it completely) and replacement parts aren't easy to come by. So after much deliberation I decided to get one of the current models, probably a Yama.

Back to the Cory. Here's a video of one of the old timers in action. The first half in particular isn't exactly riveting viewing.

Here's another cool picture taken from All About Coffee showing an early 20th century precursor to Blue Bottle's siphon bar:

That's a much more sophisticated set up that the first Blue Bottle Experience I had at the Ferry Treminal Farmer's Market a few years back. I apologize that the picture isn't very good.

But, if you'll look closely, you'll see that the Blue Bottle staff is setting up paper drip filters in a wooden brewing contraption, When the ground beans were added, simmering water was poured over them from the tea kettles to the left.

It took about 30 minutes to get a cup of coffee. It was good enough for me to bring a couple of pounds of their beans home with me... which, by the way, you can buy over the internet

http://www.bluebottlecoffee.net/StoreFront.bok