Summer's bounty.

 It's been a busy summer here at Stellar Coffee.  Looking back over the summer, and over the last 2 years, we're very proud of what we've accomplished.  And of course very grateful to all of the people who have helped us to get to where we are now.  It's really been a bountiful summer for us, in a lot of ways.  

As busy as we've been, we have managed to carve out some time to enjoy the natural abundance of this place -- it is essential to take a bit of time out now and then ;)  On a trip to the lake, we discovered a rather large cache of red huckleberries.  Too good to pass up!  We returned with containers to gather them. 

Know your berries!  Get an ID book.  Don't just take my word for it.

I'm still amazed at the variety of berries that grow around here.  Nearly every shrub and brush seems to grow some kind of berry.

500mL jar

Kiersten turned them into Red Huckleberry Jelly.  

It was a fairly labour-intensive thing.  Our whole crop of huckleberries reduced down to one jar.  But I think that makes it really special.  There's a lot of love put into that one jar.

When I'm picking berries, I can't help but think of coffee farmers.  Coffee grows on small trees, producing these little fruits called "coffee cherries" (not a true cherry).  These fruits are then de-pulped and dried using various methods, and the seeds of this fruit are what we then roast, grind, and drink.  Often (but not always) these are picked by hand as fruits ripen at different rates.  The ripe red fruit produces the best tasting "beans" (...not a true "bean", technically, but a seed).

So, the harvesting of coffee represents a lot of labour.  The photo below shows 15lbs of green coffee, just prior to roasting.  

One other reason that coffee (high grade coffee, which is what we buy here at Stellar Coffee) is picked by hand, is that when coffee is grown according to traditional methods (i.e. not as a monocrop) it prefers to grow in the shade of other, larger trees, rather than in full sun.  On a farm, this shade will often be provided by other types of crops -- fruit-bearing trees.  These aren't the types of farms where you can just drive a machine through and strip off all the fruit; it basically needs to be foraged.

I just forage for recreation.  But I have a lot of respect for the work that these farmers do, and I try to honour that work.  It's one of the reasons that Stellar Coffee does mainly high-quality single origins, and why we share the origin information on our bags.   

Brazil Daterra, food safe bucket, roaster's notes.

Besides the foraging, I did do a *bit* of gardening.  But not quite as much as I did last year.  And admittedly, I didn't actually plant anything except basil.

These are last year's strawberries -- I purchased a few small plants last spring from the Saturday market in Ucluelet.  They finally produced fruit this year (a dozen or so small but delicious berries), and have put out lots of runners.

Strawberries, and little "satellite" plants.

I tucked the strawberry runners into these buckets, after pulling out the sad crop of winter vegetables.  More on that later.

 

The mint is also from last year, it reestablished itself quite happily.  This is Chocolate Mint and Ginger Mint from Naesgaard's Market in Port Alberni.  The Chocolate Mint has mostly taken over.  But the Ginger Mint is flowering, with rings of purple flowers around its stems.

Mint.  This will likely go into tabouli soon.

Basil.  I started some of it from a kit in the spring, and when I took it outside and put it in the planter, it wilted. :(  Miraculously, it bounced back.  The really tall basil plants were given to us by friends.  Kiersten made some of it into a pesto, and there's still a lot left over.

Basil.  Destiny uncertain -- more pesto?  Margarita pizza? 

Moroccan preserved lemons, or l'hamd markad.  These are a favourite -- very easy to make, but they take about 6 weeks before they're ready to eat.  I make them using the recipe from The Urban Homestead.  I enjoyed last year's batch cooked with fresh halibut over a fire.   

I bought my lemons at Green Soul Organics in Tofino -- I think its important with something like this especially, to use organic, as I'm planning to eat them rinds-and-all.

One of the most delicious and unexpected uses of preserved lemons that I've seen is on the Exotic Mushroom pizza at SoBo in Tofino, which pairs the lemons with a mix of mushrooms, soft cheeses and pesto.  I may be inspired to branch out beyond halibut with this next batch!  

Are you ready to eat yet?

The tomato harvest.

The tomatoes did not do so well -- this is the whole harvest.  Perhaps they wanted more sun, or more compost.  

Time's up, onions.

The onions didn't do that well either, considering I put them in the garden last fall, and they were already small bulbs, so they had a head start.  These needed  to come out to make room for the more successful strawberries. 

Garlic bulbs.

Ditto the garlic, which went in at the same time as the onions.  They're pretty small, they didn't produce scapes.  I grew these from individual cloves though, so I guess they did... okay.  Much better than the leeks, which grew a bit and then just... disappeared.  No trace of leeks when I dug up the garden.  (And no, there are no slugs in my container garden.  I guess they just shriveled away?). 

This is by far not the last of our summer-related food projects.  I'll be heading to Tofino after work today to pick up a case of peaches from Green Soul Organics, and 15lbs of cucumbers from TUCG (with whom we're proud to be associated).  So!  We're going to be canning a whole lot of stuff in the next few days.  The bounty isn't over yet, and neither is summer.  Hope you're all enjoying it.

Decaf, yo.

Now, I know that some of you have decaf mentally filed under When Bad Things Happen to Good Coffee.  I understand.
Or perhaps you concede the point that decaf has its place, for some people in some circumstances, but that place is not in your pantry.  I hear you.
At Stellar Coffee, though, we are connoisseurs of decaf.  So I'd like to tell you a little bit more about that.

Although we intended to bring decaf into our line from the beginning, we only (finally) brought it on about a month ago.  It took a while to find one that we really liked.
We contacted three different brokers, cupped a number of samples.  One sample didn't meet our criteria for reasons I'll discuss later.  The second sample did not crack -- no first crack, no second crack (not good) -- and when cupped, it tasted like cardboard.  The third sample was magic.  It's the Goldilocks story, I know.  But it's the truth.          

Our decaf comes from small scale farms in Africa that have always used chemical-free farming processes.  We buy it from a small company that works to ensures the farmer gets paid fair wages, and they help to improve industry infrastructure.  Our supplier (of this particular coffee) has a direct trade relationship with these farmers, and we buy some of his overstock.  While we do feel that third party certification is important, we understand that this can in some cases be cost-prohibitive to farmers, or that some farms may be excluded if they are "transitionally" organic, or if they do not belong to cooperatives.  It's tricky; and while there's a lot that I could say on the subject I'm instead going to get off my soapbox, get back on the subject of decaf, and leave the rest for another post, another day.

We received a very generous sample of the green coffee in the mail -- 2 full pounds!  A quarter pound is a far more typical sample size so we had a lot to play with, but even so, it didn't take long before we knew that we'd found something special.  Our first sample roast behaved really nicely in our little home roaster (it cracked!), and when we put it through the Aeropress® it produced a glorious head of crema.  Joy!  The straight shot of coffee tasted distinctly of baker's chocolate and roasted almonds.  Yum.  It is a pre-roast blend (meaning blended-then-roasted, rather than roasted-then-blended, which is more typical) of Ugandan and Burundi beans.  Rich with flavour.

With all the care and attention that we put into our decaf, I'm sure you can imagine our sorrow when, in offering it to some folks, they look at us as though we've just offered them a cup of compost tea.  That's why I'm here to do some decaf PR.

I should say I've managed to convince some folks.  My favourite reaction came from my landlord who informed me the coffee was really tasty but that it "didn't work".  True story.

Others have just become convinced over the years that decaf "tastes like nothing" and are harder to sway.
Well...
In some cases that's probably true.  Grocery store brands in pre-ground packages that sit around for indeterminate periods of time -- might taste like nothing.  By-the-cup drive-throughs serving packets of pre-measured, pre-ground coffee -- I can't really vouch for that, either.

And then there's the methods of decaffeination.

Now, I don't know if you know this, but a lot of decaffeinated coffees out there are decaffeinated using chemical solvents, specifically methylene chloride and ethyl acetate.  Two points about this.  Well, three.

1) These substances are Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS), so, I'm not going to be controversial here.  But I do encourage you check out the above links, it's good information.

2) I'm just not sure that coffee beans exposed to chemical solvents will retain their flavour.  Maybe I'm wrong.  But I haven't personally experienced any coffees that have been decaffeinated by these conventional means that were anything to write home about.

3) I'm not going to buy -- or sell -- any coffees that have been decaffeinated using these methods.  Simply because I specifically look for coffees that have been grown without chemicals, so why would I want these added during the final processing?  (It is the reason that I rejected the first decaf sample I was offered, mentioned in the 2nd paragraph of this blog entry).

The decaf that I've bought is decaffeinated by SWISSWATER® Process, which is a proprietary process involving carbon and water.  Coffee processed by this method can be certified as organic in Canada, the US, and Europe.  To learn more about it I encourage you to watch this video (longish at 10 min, but worth your while as it's both entertaining and informative).

 
Our retail decaf bags now carry the SWISS WATER® Process logo, so you can look for these now in stores in Tofino and Ucluelet.

"Okay", you might be thinking, "but why decaf?  I get why yours is better, but I still want the caffeine".  Me too -- most of the time.

Other times I just want the coffee ritual, though, and I don't want to be tweaked.  You know?  Coffee is more than a means to an end to us at Stellar.  It's not just a legal drug.  It's more than a fuel.  It's to be savoured.  Sometimes I want an evening latte, prepared at home and served on the deck while dusk is setting in, instead of the wine or tisane I might otherwise choose.  Or maybe I want a cup of black with a shot of liquor.  Decaf is an evening drink, it helps me unwind and feel pampered.  And that is why we are decaf connoisseurs.     

So, for those who have not experienced great decaf, I encourage you to give it another try.  Just look for fresh roasted, chemical-free, whole beans.  Decaf can be delicious -- I promise!

Thanks for reading.
Kat

Stellar Coffee About Town

Welcome to the new Stellar Coffee Blog!  We've been really busy these last few weeks.  Here's a recap of what we've been doing -- some of the highlights.  

One of the things we're really excited about right now is our new partnership with the Wild Pacific Trail Society.  For those who may not have had a chance to visit the trail, it is this amazing rugged path that runs along most of the expanse of Ucluelet's rocky coastline.  It's a wonderful place for trail running, dog walking, berry picking, whale watching, and quiet contemplation.  At Stellar it is often part of our commute as well, as our roastery is located only steps from the trail.  So, it's close to our hearts.

So, when a couple of our friends from the Wild Pacific Trail Society approached us with an idea to develop a blend especially for the trail, to help raise money to expand and maintain it, of course we said yes.  To launch the new Wild Pacific Trail Blend we set up a table at the Ukee Days festival and served free coffee for the local folks and visitors in attendance.  You may also have spotted us at the Ukee Dogs tent and at the Tofino Hot Dog Stand (thanks Zane and Luke).  We got to put some faces to to some Twitter handles, meet some cool people, and we sold a few bags, as well!  Look for the Wild Pacific Trail Blend in our PLA-lined unbleached paper bags with the gold foil stickers around Ucluelet and Tofino (see below).     

 Here's Kirsten at our Ukee Days booth, keeping cool in the shade.

Our Wild Pacific Trail Blend bags.  Love the gold foil stickers, they look really awesome. 

Getting ready for the trail promotion/our launch made for a lot of packing!  Here's some of the bags we filled.  That's a mango plant behind the scale, courtesy of our friends Dan and Stacey.

We're very DIY here at Stellar.  That sign behind Kirsten in the top photo was actually made by me -- here's the paint I bought.  I should say "eventually" bought, after some 10 minutes spent comparing paint chips to the Twitter logo on my iPhone.  (We're also very picky here at Stellar).

Priming one of the boards for our signs.  I couldn't help but think of my Grade 11 painting teacher as I did this, his methodology for priming boards for art class:

Sand.  Then gesso, one direction.  Then let it dry.  Sand again.  More gesso, crossways to first set of brush strokes.  Dry again.  Sand again.  3rd coat of gesso, at an angle.  Final sanding.  And oh yeah -- prime the back, or all that wet gesso will cause the board to warp (no need to sand).
  

I didn't do that here (sorry, Mr. Elston).

But hey, I like the rough board effect.  Besides, so much of the creative process is about separating the rules from the guidelines.  And so much of running a business is about working to a deadline.  

 

Here's one of the signs in progress.  Upside down because that's how I was working on it, since it's easier to look at it objectively that way.  I think I gave this one to Sarah at GT Antiques in Port Alberni for her shop.

We love GT Antiques.  Every time we go the owner, Sarah, has beautiful new pieces of antique furniture in the store, vintage dresses along the wall, handmade cosmetics and jewelery, and dishes -- we've bought so many vintage Pyrex bowls and containers from her that we just love.  And recently she's started serving and stocking our coffee, so we're just thrilled!  Sarah made up a window display to promote us, which you can see below: 

 

You can see all of our bags lined up in the window, which is awesome -- but, what you can't see as easily in this photo is that she's also got all of her antique percolators, scales and other brewing equipment in the window as well!  It's a really nice display.  Inside by her brewing station she has some of our bags on wooden antique brassiere rack that originally came from a shop in Toronto (probably from the sixties?).  Hilarious, and so quirky -- we love it!    

Shirley at Shearwaters Natural Foods has us promoted in her window now as well -- also awesome, we love Shirley's store.  I just went in to stock up her shelves yesterday, and they were empty, so it looks like the sign's working. ;)  She says everyone's been raving about the coffee, and we love to hear that.  Picked up my usual stock of Indian food while I was there (makes me miss the ubiquitous thali plates of Toronto a bit less), seasonal berries, organic milk.  Left a large stock of Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, Wild Pacific Trail Blend, Single Origin Espresso, and SWISS WATER® Process Decaf Espresso.

That's about it for now.  Cheers, and thanks for visiting us!