Gloomy-day culture, combined with a history of coffee roasting and espresso bars, keeps Seattle at number 1 on many top coffee lists.
Seattle’s coffee history
Seattle’s first coffee shop, Cafe Encore, opened in 1958 during the early counterculture wave that would mark the 1960s.
Seattle’s Best’s roots date back to the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Cafe Allegro, Seattle’s oldest operating espresso bar, opened in 1975 and has now been serving espresso from a University District alleyway for over 45 years.
Starbucks
Starbucks was born as a coffee roaster in 1971 in Pike’s Place Market and later became an espresso bar.
In the 1980s CEO Howard Schultz lead the massive international expansion that has put Starbucks, locally known as 4-bucks, on nearly every street corner in the world.
Tully’s and Seattle’s Best emerged as rivals in the 80s and 90s. In 2003 Seattle’s Best was swallowed by Starbucks and Tully’s filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2012. Actor Patrick Dempsey bailed them out of financial ruin the next year.
While Starbucks has dominated the worldwide coffee industry Seattleites still prefer the abundance of locally roasted, gourmet coffee on every street corner.
Coffee roasting in Seattle
Seattleites have long enjoyed the continuing trend in local niche coffee roasting.
As a visitor to Seattle you can’t go wrong. Many espresso bars either roast their own beans or sell beans from a local roaster.
Grab your local bag for enjoyment back in your homeland.
Historic coffeeshops along the tour
Cafe Allegro
Cafe Allegro is Seattle’s oldest espresso bar
4214 University Way NE
(Entrance is in the alley)
Seattle, WA 98105
Fremont Cafe Ladro
Ladro is an established Seattle chain
and local roaster
452 N 36th St
Seattle 98103
Ballard Bauhaus
Originally located on Capitol Hill
Bauhaus is an iconic Seattle Coffeeshop
2001 NW Market St
Seattle, WA 98107
Coffee fun FAQ
What are the different types of coffee beans?
Arabica coffee bean
Coffee arabica, sometimes known as “mountain coffee”, is the dominate coffee bean cultivated throughout the world.
It represents about 60% of the worlds coffee production.
Originating in Ethiopia, wide cultivation and distribution began in Indonesia in the late 1600s and is generally preferred due to its sweeter, milder flavor.
Gourmet coffees are frequently high quality varieties of the arabica coffee.
Robusta coffee beans
Robusta coffee also has origins in sub-Saharan Africa. It makes up most of the remaining 40% of the global coffee trade.
Popular in Europe, Middle East and Africa, it is known to have a stronger, harsher flavor profile than Arabica.
It’s mostly produced in Vietnam and has almost double the caffeine than arabica. Due to it’s harsher flavor it is often used as a filler in lower grade coffee blends.
Good quality beans are also used in Italian Espressos to achieve a thicker crema and fuller bodied taste.
Robusta is also believed to be useful as an antioxidant, fever reducer, and in asthmatic relief.
Liberica coffee beans
Liberica coffee, native to Western and Central Africa, is very rare and mainly produced in the Philippines and Malaysia.
Liberica replaced arabica in Indonesia after the arabica plants were killed off by coffee rust in the 1890s.
Due to their rarity you will pay a premium on the global market for this bean.
What are the different ways to brew coffee?
Coffee can be boiled, steeped, filtered, or pressurized.
Turkish coffee
Turkish coffee, or arabic coffee, represents perhaps the simplest and earliest form of brewing coffee. It is often used throughout Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa.
Finely ground coffee and water are placed into a pot and brought to a boil.
The result is a strong, foaming, espresso-like poor, with a thick sludge of grounds at the bottom of the cup.
French Press
A french press is an example of a steeped coffee brew method. It uses a standalone coffee pot with a plunger containing a filter.
Grounds, often ground courser than other forms of coffee, are placed in the pot with boiling water.
After steeping for a few minutes the plunger is pushed down to compress the grounds. The coffee can be poured while the filter keeps the grounds in the pot.
Espresso
Espresso is made by forcing pressurized hot water through a finely ground coffee puck.
It is often served with sugar and is the basis for many other coffee drinks, including lates and mochas.
It is one of the most concentrated forms of coffee and is characterized by a thick foaming crema, flavorful, emulsified oils, that sit on top of the pour.
Did you know espresso has more concentrated levels of caffeine per once than drip.
Drip brewed coffee
Drip brew coffee is a method of brewing coffee conducted by pouring hot water over fine coffee grounds sitting in a filter.
It’s an American staple! We now have an ever evolving array of automated home coffee makers set to kickstart our automated daily lives.
How would the kids get to school if it weren’t for our automated drip brew coffee!
Did you know drip coffee has more caffeine per serving than espresso!
How is decaffeinated coffee made?
Safely removing caffeine from Coffee while maintaining flavor continues to be a challenge for the industry 50 years after the development of the first commercially viable decaf methods.
Swiss Water Process
The Swiss Water Process is a chemical free, water based decaf process. Originally developed in Switzerland in the 1930s it is now a commercially viable process.
There is a single facility located in Vancouver, BC. and is the only decaf process certified organic.
The process uses Green Coffee Extract (GCE) to remove caffeine.
Caffeine is dissolved from the beans by soaking an initial batch of beans in hot water. The caffeine and flavor charged hot water is then run through a filter to remove the caffeine.
What’s left are flavorless decaf coffee beans and flavorful decaf water (GCE). The first batch of flavorless beans are discarded while the water from the first batch is reused to decaf the remaining batches.
The GCE water is saturated with coffee flavor compounds and is unable to absorb and remove additional flavor from the secondary batches.
This enables the extraction of caffeine while preserving most of the flavor.
Organic Solvent Process
There are two solvent based processes used in the decaf process: indirect and direct.
To soften the beans they are either soaked in hot water (indirect) or steamed (direct) prior to being washed with methylene chloride or ethyl acetate.
These solvents selectively bond with caffeine molecules and wash the caffeine away.
Sometimes the beans are reintroduced to the water so that the beans can re-absorb much of their flavor compounds.
How do you know which method was used on your beans?
Generally, you don’t!
Your brand might claim to be “naturally decaffeinated” when using the ethyle acetate method since small traces of the solvent can be found in nature.
If nothing is listed it is likely to be a solvent based method.
Supercritical CO2 Process
The CO2 process is costly and generally used on large batches of commercial grade coffee.
The beans are first steamed and then placed into a pressurized extraction vessel. Liquid CO2 is then forced into the coffee.
The CO2 acts as the solvent removing only the caffeine molecules, leaving the flavor mostly intact. The CO2 is then returned to a gas leaving the caffeine behind.
The left over caffeine is then used in sodas and energy drinks.
What are the different types of coffee roasts?
Coffee roasting is the process of roasting green coffee beans (aka seeds) to bring out the aromas and flavors hidden inside the bean.
There are four common roasts found in the mainstream coffee industry.
Light roast
Light roasts, also known as light city, half city, cinnamon and first crack, have a lighter color and show little to no traces of the roasting process. No oils will be present. They have higher acidity, less body, and a more varied flavor profile.
To maximize extraction light roasts are best brewed with slower brew methods such as drip brew.
Medium roast
Medium roasts are medium brown in color and also referred to as full city, American, regular, and breakfast roasts. Fuller body, lower acidity.
Dark roast
Also known as full roasts, Viennese, French, Continental or Italian Espresso are dark and have an oily sheen to the bean. The coffee tastes more roasted or bitter with fuller body.
Most commercial coffee is a dark roast. You are essentially drinking burnt coffee.
Double roast
Double roast, also referred to as French…a true French roast, Spanish, or Turkish.
The beans are roasted until they begin to smoke giving them a very burnt or charred flavor.
Sources: wikipedia.org, districtroasters.com, coffeeconfidential.org, www.livescience.com, ncausa.org, perfectdailygrind.com, swisswater.com, hilinecoffee.com, starbucks.com, seattleallegro.com, bauhausstrong.coffee, caffeladro.com