June's Cupping Event!

La Roasteria

THIS FRIDAY, June 4th

7-10pm

New Beans, Tapas & Desserts

$15 pre-sale

at cafe or call 299-8300

$17.50 at door

7-9pm Cupping & Eats

9-10pm Roasting and Cash Espresso Bar

Happy Holidays to all!

Winter, it seems, has finally come around to stay for a while, and just in time for Christmas! Also just in time for Christmas, we’ve decked out our “halls” here at Café Kubal with all kinds of festive holiday gifts and treats from the soul. Come check them out!

Christmas Gifts for $10.00 & under!

Or, combine any 3 for $20!

Sale Starts 6:30 am Friday 12/18/09 thru 7:00pm Monday 12/21/09

You can also find these items in various arrangements in our aesthetically pleasing gift baskets!

1. Travel mug $10.00

2. Bag of fresh roasted coffee beans $9.99

3. Barista’s chocolate $9.99 (yes, our secret recipe used for our hot cocoa and café mochas is available to purchase for home use now)

4. Locally Raised Honey $7.50 All natural, raw, wildflower HONEY! Your beekeeper is OUR friend … and only a phone call away. Support your local farmers. Winemaker’s quality honey from Cazenovia Lake, Fayetteville, and Fabius available at Café Kubal

5. Loose leaf tea pouch $9.99 (and yes, a select few of our coveted teas imported from Hong Kong are available also.)

6. Barista Caramel Syrup $8 (our own recipe—used in our caramel lattes!)

7. Barista Vanilla Syrup $8 (our own recipe—used in our vanilla lattes!)

8. Agave Nectar $10

All New!!! Roaster’s Membership!

Free 16 oz cup of coffee today 12/18 for Roaster’s Members.

For $20, you can buy a Café Kubal Roaster’s Membership card, and consistently obtain discounted prices on all of our whole bean coffee. This deal is good every day of the week, and membership is permanent. We think this would be the perfect gift for someone you love (or at least like!).

Roaster’s Membership Discount Price Listing

Regular Price Roaster’s Price

6 oz. bags $5.99 $3.50

12 oz. bags $9.99 $6.99

2 lb. bags $ 21.99 $13.99

5 lb. bags $ 47.99 $34.99

*******Brazil Swiss Water DECAF********

Be sure to bring it to all your holiday parties!

We hope this news helps bring you some holiday cheer. Enjoy the season, and come in and see us—we’d love to see your smiling faces! Merry Christmas to all, and Happy New Year!

From all of us here at Café Kubal.

Grind Adjustment

Certainly at this point in the winter we are supposed to perform various different exploits to simply do life as normal: put on all those extra clothes, shovel, salt, drive slowly, stay awake when it's been dark for hours. At this point, I often begin to wonder why we are still required to
continue to do everything that we are supposed to do as responsible contributors to this community and also as valiant, pioneering Americans, even when the energy required becomes significantly greater over a long period of four months or so.

For example, yesterday at Kubal we had a new record for most dramatic grind adjustment needed all at once. We always meticulously adjust the grind according to various conditions.
This allows Kubal to achieve a superior espresso. The main conditions are:

1. Relative humidity (the weather) 2. Bean age (a coarser grind setting is usually necessary for an espresso blend that has been roasted two days ago versus one that has been roasted four days ago).

Yesterday we topped off the hopper of our Mazzer espresso grinder not thinking anything unusual except, "oooo. fresh coffee. mmmmmm!"

All of a sudden, later that afternoon, the espresso just stopped extracting -- completely, not even a drop.

What had happened, we discovered was that because the air had been particularly dry the past two days, it had dried the previous batch of our blend more than it usually does in three days. That afternoon was sunny and much warmer than it had been recently, thus melting a good bit of snow causing the humidity to rise significantly.

These factors coupled with the new batch of fresh, oily espresso blend just starting to be ground, caused a clamp down. Wow...

Previously we had never had to adjust the grind more than four settings at once, but because of this alignment of augmented affairs, we had to adjust the grind seven settings and run six test shots!

For the benefit of those that don't know, simply put, we had to jump through hoops, juggle flaming torches, and walk a mile long tight rope just to serve our coffee at our normal standards. Granted, I tend to drive the standards way up in the sky, but those are my own eccentricities I suppose.

Sometimes hibernation seems to be a wise alternative, but so did the Wild West.

Roasting Like a Feen

We have our 2 for 12 sale this week, so my roaster is fired up red hot this morning. So people have told me they are glad they can get their beans before the cold snap tomorrow.

Roasteria Build-out Progress

It has been a long time coming. We finally made some real progress in the build-out. For the longest time we have been working in a make-shift space, one year to be exact. That one year seemed like a decade. We now have counters, sinks, even a vintage Victoria Arduino espresso machine (soon to be installed). This way our roasteria can not only serve our purposes as a wholesale operation, but also it can be an event coffeehouse, such as an art gallery and music venue. Stay tuned for the grand opening party. I think this will be a blast for the community of Eastwood.

This holiday season, it would be an inexpensive and impressive way to please people by making them a French press of coffee. Currently at the shop we are jammed full of French presses of all different sizes if you don’t have one of your own. If you are unsure of how to prepare one, I can gladly instruct you on the process.
Just for a reminder, here is some info last presented in issue# 2:
To make a French press of coffee at home use a course grind. The grounds should float in the water if they are fresh. Make sure that your grinder produces uniform-sized granules. Otherwise, you will get some silt in the cup.
Sinking grounds are a result of completely degassed coffee (old). Use boiling water, technically about 200F. At the shop we use 2oz (weight) of grounds for a 32oz (volume) press. At the pre-press stage of a French press, it should look like a Guinness with some nice head. If you've never seen a well poured Guinness, I am sorry; I can't help you. Let the coffee brew for around four minutes, or until you detect a wet aroma. Then press! Enjoy.

Pasta's Daily Bread. Now at the cafe we are proudly selling freshly baked bread from Pastabilities, including the stretch Italian!

Punch Card

We are a little upset about the unfortunate state of the economy as most of our loyal patrons are. So we have decided to keep the Coffee Punch Card at our Eastwood Cafe, while many establishments are doing away with theirs, we thought that keeping the Coffee Card would be a token of hope. Many thanks to our customers for continuing to visit us.

Buy 10 beverages (drip coffee, espresso, tea; hot or iced) and get the next one free!

Click HERE and print one right now. Give it to a friend or bring it in yourself. For your convenience we will continue to have them at the counter.

For those that don't know, we are located at:

Cafe Kubal Coffee Roasters
3501 James Street
Syracuse, NY 13206

New Arrival!

The bean is Narali, which is the same exact bean and crop as our
Sitara, but the it is sun dried instead of being washed. The word
Narali means "different." It is an entirely different species bean
than nearly all others commonly served. Unlike the commonly brewed
arabica and for that matter nearly all other robustae, the robusta
coffee grown in the Sethuraman Estate is round and smooth.

Robusta coffee beans have a tainted reputation as being an inferior
species of coffee primarily because of the large centralized roasters
that started to get big in the early 1970's. They tended to exhaust
the soil and over-harvest in areas of South America, especially in
Brazil, where the were millions of coffee bushes being grown on land
not even suitable for coffee.

All Robustae have the potential to be equal in quality to the Narali
and the Sitara, if proper care is taken from seed to cup.

It is a shame that through mass production at least one species of
plant is devalued...

Here are the cupping notes:

Aroma : pear, berry
Taste : Georgia peaches, sundried
Body : full body, round
Aftertaste : tart, cocoa

We rocked the Indian Sitara as a single origin espresso on a Mirage in the lobby Friday morning at the State Street Theatre in Ithaca, where the NERBC was held. A few heads were turned because the bean was featured in the coffee dinner served by the Carriage House Cafe the evening prior, and it got high praise from the judges. Because the coffee dinner was open only to the judges,many of the competitors, volunteers, and spectators were anxious to get a crack at it. We feel that as a roaster we "got out of the way of the grower" and served this bean, a washed robusta, in an impressive fashion. Our mantra is to roast in a way that the grower would appreciate...

Also, our Brazil was used in Deferio's blend. He makes us look good, but he wouldn't use our stuff it wasn't any good. "It's a nice Brazil." Congrats Chris for taking second place in the region.

These links will follow the updates on the results:


http://coffeed.com/viewtopic.php?f=25&p=22713

http://twitchy.org/

http://www.scaa.org/about_regional_next.asp#Northeast

We just got back from Guatemala. My wife is from there. Her parents have lived there for almost 30 years. Just before we left, numerous times people greeted us and said, "Lucky you! Have fun in the sun."

Guatemala, being Central America and all does have far more sun than Upstate New York, where live now. But we did not go to sunny Central America for pure enjoyment, although, yes, it was nice to evade the cold and gloom of winter.

But there is an intense amount of tension in the land called Guatemala. Beautiful landscape; third world situations. The harsh, mountanous landscape provides awesome views, but is the cause of many infrustructure problems, which preserves some secluded villages and prevents pollution from the outside world, but also inhibits supply lines and weakens the economy.

I find it funny how so many people have no idea what it is really like to go there. I think some people over-simplify life as either "work" or "pleasure." You work hard to enjoy life and go on vacation. In my case, not really that simple. It pains me to think that other Christians even think this way. As if the most important thing in their lives IS NOT fully sacrificing their lives for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

My wife Rachel's parents have done that. I respect them completely. Theyleft the comfort of their own culture to translate God's word into the Mayan Ixil language. We look for the priveledge to do God's work like that with our lives. We don't have to time to deal with other Christians that inhibit this in our lives.

It was not for fun and relaxation that we went to Guatemala. It was for more than that...