Category: coffee

  • Victoria, B.C., Coffee

    Victoria, B.C., Coffee

    Fernwood Cafe

    Here’s the amateur review of Victoria coffee shops from my perspective. Which means, as my tastes are now, single origin, single cup brewed (pour over), locally roasted coffee.

    And it is fun, to walk around to these different coffee roasters and cafe’s and discover the city. Often the smaller roasters are in interesting places off the beaten track.


    Caffe Fantastico – Specialty Coffee

    They are our local shop very in Quadra Village less than a ten minute walk from our place on Prior Street. They roast and care about their coffee. They do a sweetened cold brew and serve good espresso drinks. They don’t do pour overs.

    Township Coffee Co in Gordon Head uses their beans also. We haven’t been to Township.

    Bows & Arrows Coffee Roasters

    • First Look: Bows & Arrows Coffee Roasters | Eat MagazineEat Magazine

    Very good coffee at Bows and Arrows and they care about the coffee! African and American single origins very tasty and available in a pour over. We had coffee there and it was very good. Note that there isn’t much parking nearby, but of course this is Victoria so walk or take your bicycle. I think they’ll let you take your bike inside.

    Habit Coffee in Victoria also serves their coffee and Java Jamboree in Cochrane, Alberta uses it too.

    Fernwood Coffee Company

    They don’t do pour overs, only French Press and other espresso drinks. But they do make a slow drip iced coffee which is very nice in the great summer weather. The slow brew was good. It was a honeyed Central American coffee. The iced Americano was also nice.

    The smell of cooking in the shop is very fragrant and gets your mouth watering. They feature local sourced food. And if you are tempted for the best regular or dairy free (coconut) ice cream you can go next door to the Cold Comfort ice cream shop. Their ice cream (dairy free) is very good.

    2 Percent Jazz

    They have two locations. The roasting location is at their Hudson Location, south side of the Hudson Building, 1701 Douglas has slow brew (pour over) and even a Clover machine.

    Their espresso blend and pour over were very good. They have a nice open layout. They are next to the Hudson Market which has the tastiest beef and chicharrones. There is also an olive oil store there with a lot of very tasty oil to sample and purchase if you so desire along with balsamic.

    Discovery Coffee

    We sampled the coffee and it’s good. I had a pour over, a Honduras which was very nicely done. It seems, as a generalization, that Discover focuses on more central American beans than the other places.

    We also has a nice iced Americano, which was prepared with the house espresso blend of two Guatemalan beans.

    Yoka’s Homepage

    Next time

    There are more than twenty coffees to choose from, including exotics like Yemen Mocha, India Monsoon Malabar, Kona and New Guinea. Among the biggest sellers are Sumatra, Guatemala, Kenya, Ethiopia Mocca Harrar and Yirgacheffe. Swiss water-processed decaf coffees also are available, all of them roasted in our mid-1930’s Royal roaster. We also offer customers the option of purchasing green beans, if you roast your own beans at home!

    Drumroaster Coffee

    Next time in Cowichan Bay

    Fresh Cup Roastery Cafe

    Maybe next time

    104 – 1931 Mt. Newton X Road
    Victoria, B.C.

    In order to provide the freshest and tastiest coffee to our customers, we freshly roast our coffee onsite each day using patented state of the art, small batch urban friendly roasting technology. Our patented Roastaireâ„¢ is a hybrid of the fluidized bed & aromatic coffee roasters currently available in the market today. It’s closed to the atmosphere over 85% of the time and is 80% more energy efficient than a comparable drum roaster, making it Canada’s leading clean air roaster. The Roastaireâ„¢ heat source is electric, ensuring that no hydrocarbons are produced by the roaster at the source of roasting.

    Clean air roasting.

    Level Ground Trading

    Bags available everywhere. Not interested.

    Misty Ridge Coffee Beans Roasting Co., Vancouver Island, BC, Canada

    Misty Ridge Coffee Roasting Company, the only coffee roaster in Port Alberni, mid-Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.

    Non Local Roasters

    Serious Coffee Vancouver Island Roasting Plant and Head Office

    We visited one of their locations on July 30. I had a dark roast. Espresso.
    There was no evidence of what was on brew, what country it was from and there was a rack of flavour syrups and some pump dispensers of pre-brewed coffee. Three red flags for me!

    The espresso I tried was a typical very dark non-interesting roast.

    CoffeeCrew.Com 2014

    For 18 years and since 1996, Canada’s original online resource for all things coffee and espresso, brewing methods, best practices, equipment reviews, consumer reports and more! Since the mid-90’s we have proudly served the coffee lovers of the World and make it our quest to stay current and fresh!

    Moonbeans Coffee – Roasted on Pender Island, BC

    Gulf Island Roasting

    *Before entering into the roasting business, Steve was an extraction specialist. Though his background was in importing and manufacturing, he grew up with an appreciation for good coffee. The shift into the coffee market came when Steve’s friends were roasting coffee beans in a 5-pound roaster. Steve supplied them with some of his own beans, They roasted a batch and loved it. Steve then decided to take the leap, and purchased a commercial roaster in order to supply the best coffee possible. The roaster arrived in April 2009 and after months of restoration; the first beans were sold in September of the same year.

    What really separates Gulf Islands Roasting Co from the pack is their vertical integration with a plantation in Thailand. Coffee is shipped directly from the farm and roasted into each batch of coffee.

    After humble beginnings, The Bean Time Café now houses a roaster that supplies top of the line coffee to stores and cafes across Vancouver Island and the mainland. The Bean Time Café is located at 18 High Street in beautiful Ladysmith British Columbia.*

    Caffè Artigiano

    Roasted in Vancouver. Disqualified.
    There is also a shop in Calgary.


    Read more on local coffee at 10best.com

  • Vienna Coffee

    Vienna Coffee

    CoffeePirates
    This isn’t an article about the touristic traditional coffee houses of Vienna. Here’s a practical review of some of them by someone else.

    I’m in it for the quality coffee that is freshly roasted and prepared to bring out the best flavours. It is also an excuse for walking and exploring to interesting locations and talking to interesting people in the shops. We first knew about FürthKaffee and then I found, near the university, CoffeePirates. Then we went out to find more.

    I will not say much about the individual cups of coffee we had at each place. You will get a good coffee at all these places (unless I otherwise mention it). As the beans are freshly roasted and come from small batches the flavours will be different nearly each time you go. They basically meet and / or exceed the advice of How to Spot a Quality Cafe on Coffee Geek.

    Make sure before you go to any of these places that you check they are open. Some are closed on the weekends or particular weekdays.

    (more…)

  • Nespresso Citiz Review

    Nespresso TurmixWe bought a Nespresso machine. There is a store in 360 Mall here in Kuwait.
    It isn’t cheap but doing the math says we’ll pay for it as compared to Starbucks after about 140 shots.
    The coffee is good, most of the time the shots are better than Starbucks anyhow.
    I had a used Rancilio Audrey in Canada. But the hassle to get the coffee, grind it properly, preheat the machine, tamp it just right, pull the right shot etc. really prohibited having a quick cup. And then after that the cleanup! In the end I took it back and forgot about it. It wasn’t worth the hassle. And the coffee shots
    The only thing is they don’t recycle the pods here in Kuwait. I’m looking in to an option. There is quite a recycling program now in Ahmadi so perhaps we can rise the pods out and then save for that.

    Nespresso AeroccinoWe also picked up separately an aeroccino to heat and froth the milk. It is a clever device. You can do cold milk and hot or hot with foam. It comes with two different mixers and the are magnetically driven so there are no seals shafts to clean. Clever Swiss engineering.
    There is one with an integrated base that comes with the machine or you can get it separately. We got the separate one as it has a handle which makes it easier to work with.

    Updated June 2010 and still liking it very much. We only regret putting so much aluminum in the garbage from the pods as there is no recycling in Kuwait. We will keep pursuing how to do better. I may build a gizmo to open the pods and get the coffee out so we can just keep the aluminum for recycling.


    OK, it’s now 2015 and I’m not in Kuwait. And I don’t have the machine. I sold it to a friend when leaving Kuwait as the voltage is wrong for Canada: 220 V vs. 110 V. Regarding the aluminum pods, I was unable to find a recycling place for my big bag of cleaned pods, so unfortunately I ended up throwing them in the garbage.

    I am back in Canada and now I make my own coffee. I grind fresh beans that have been roasted in the last couple of weeks then I do a pour over when I’m home and use an Aeropress when I’m at work.

  • The Most Expensive Drink at Starbucks

    The Most Expensive Drink at Starbucks

    This is cheating, doing extra shots. I think I’ll do it here in Kuwait and that will be a shocker!