New York City Coffee Tour

On a recent long weekend trip to NYC, I had a chance to visit several of the coffee shops I’ve been hearing so much about online. Thanks to some great threads in the CoffeeGeek forums and espressomap.com, I pretty much had my coffee bar crawl all planned out before leaving last Friday morning.

The NYC coffee scene is impressive (if you know where to go, that is). Every one of the shops I visited had either a La Marzocco GB5 or a Synesso Cyncra, plus lots of other high-end equipment. It's hard to believe all of these places can survive in NYC with a menu of just coffee and a few pastries - no sandwiches, no smoothies, etc.

I visited 6 shops over a 3 day period, taking a few pictures along the way. My tour included the following shops (in order of my visits):

• Café Gumpy (Chelsea Location)
  
• 9th Street Espresso (13th Street Location)
• Café Grumpy (Greenpoint Location)
• Gimme! Coffee
• 9th Street Espresso (9th Street Location)
• Joe: The Art of Coffee (Waverly Location)
• Café Grumpy (Chelsea Location) - couldn't resist one more stop at the Chelsea Grumpy before heading to the airport for the trip home.
  

Here are a few pictures from the trip:

Kyle and Ed from Cafe Grumpy

Cafe Grumpy - Greenpoint











Ninth Street Espresso








Ninth Street Espresso








Joe: The Art of Coffee

Updated iRoast2 Decaf Profile

Here's the decaf profile I've started using. I found that it pushes the 1st crack out to about 8 minutes in, right after stage 3 starts. I like to stop just after I hear some snaps of the 2nd crack usually about 30 seconds into stage 4.

Stage I 320 / 5 min
Stage II 365 / 3 min
Stage III 390 / 4 min
Stage IV 440 / 3 min

On my unit the fan noise and speed drops at a programmed temps of 390. The next drop in speed/noise is when it hits a programmed stage of 440 or higher. That said, I'm not sure if the second stage above at 365 matters, I bet I'd get the same result if stage 1 went 8 minutes at 320... will try it soon.

YouTube Newbie

I created my first video of an extraction on the Vetrano. Turned out pretty good :-). The video resolution makes the end of the shot look more blond than it really was. Comments encouraged!