Coffee from coast-to-coast: BLUEBOTTLE COFFEE SF Bay Area

THE STORY OF BLUE BOTTLE COFFEE
In the late 1600s, the Turkish army swept across much of Eastern and Central Europe, arriving at Vienna in 1683. Besieged and desperate, the Viennese needed an emissary who could pass through Turkish lines to get a message to the nearby Polish troops. Franz George Kolshitsky, who spoke Turkish and Arabic, took on the assignment disguised in a Turkish uniform. After many perilous close calls, Kolshitsky completed his valiant deed, returning to give the Viennese the news of the Poles' imminent rescue of their city. On September 13, the Turks were repelled from Vienna, leaving everything they brought: camels, tents, honey, and strange bags of beans which were thought to be camel feed. Kolshitsky, having lived in the Arab world for several years, knew these were bags of coffee. Using the money bestowed on him by the mayor of Vienna for his heroic deed, Kolshitsky bought the Turks' coffee, opened Central Europe's first coffee house (The Blue Bottle), and brought coffee to a grateful Vienna.

319 years later, in Oakland, California, a slightly disaffected freelance musician and coffee lunatic, weary of the grande eggnog latte, and the double skim pumpkin-pie macchiato, decides to open a roaster for people who are clamoring for the actual taste of freshly roasted coffee. Using a miniscule six-pound batch roaster, he makes an historic vow: "I will only sell coffee less than 48 hours out of the roaster to my customers, so they may enjoy coffee at its peak of flavor. I will only use the finest organic, and pesticide-free, shade-grown beans. If they can't come to me, I will drive to their house to give them the freshest coffee they have ever tasted." In honor of Kolshitsky's heroics, he names his business The Blue Bottle Coffee Company, and begins another chapter in the history of superlative coffee.

ARTISANAL MICROROASTING
At Blue Bottle Coffee, Artisan Microroasting simply means that we take a hands-on approach to every step possible to discover and preserve the true nature of excellent coffee -- no matter how inconvenient or time-consuming.

We take Freshness and small-batch roasting to an extreme not considered practical anywhere else in the coffee business. We use only the best certified organic coffees, occasionally using beautiful coffees that are farmed traditionally without pesticides.

After roasting, coffee beans exhale CO2 for several hours. Instead of keeping our beans in bins, we mix the blends and bag them within 4 hours of roasting to harness the CO2 to keep oxygen (and, hence, oxidation) out of the bags.

We never preblend our coffees thus assuring the ideal roast profile for each bean used in a blend. All varietals are roasted individually, and then mixed into our blends.

*** Blue Bottle Coffee can be found in the Bay Area: SF Ferry Building, the SFMOMA, Hayes Valley and more…

*** Blue Bottle has a great website: preparation instructions and on-line shopping!!

http://bluebottlecoffee.net/