Volta Coffee, Tea & Chocolate: Gainesville, FL

Volta is pleased to announce the latest schedule for the UF MFA poetry and fiction reading series. Stop by the shop to hear works read by up-and-coming authors and poets from UF's acclaimed writing program. Readings begin at 8 and last about an hour.

Fall Reading Schedule

• 9/10: Hilary Jacqmin (poetry), Anastasia Kozak (fiction)
• 9/24: Harry Leeds (fiction), John Westbrook (poetry)
• 10/8: Terita Heath-Wlaz (poetry), Zacc Coker-Dukowitz (fiction)
• 10/22: Aaron Thier (fiction), David Fishman (poetry)
• 11/5: Bredt Bredthauer (poetry), Christina Nichol (fiction)
• 11/19: Kate Sayre (fiction), Rachel McGahey (poetry)

I first became aware of Ecco Caffe through their work with bringing in amazing Brazilian and Ethiopian coffees. When the opportunity presented itself to allow us to use Ecco at the shop, my thoughts first turned to Brazil. The coffee is everything I look for in a quality Brazilian: deep, soulful body balanced with the sweetness of a glass of guarapo. here's how Ecco describes the coffee: "Sugar cane, flowers and cocoa are noted in the dry aroma. This coffee is exceptionally approachable with an elegantly balanced acidity and a deeply satisfying roundness. The finish is long and finessed with turbinado sweetness."

Volta cupping notes: Apple peel and cocoa butter fragrances, with the faint aroma of a good Scotch, with a medium body. Green apple brightness that cools to the sweetness of a clean, crisp pear, with a slightly bittersweet finish like an almond cookie.

Organic farmer Paulinho Almeida has grown some of the world’s most exquisite coffees, and in 2001, Santa Terezinha won First Place in Brazil’s prestigious Cup of Excellence competition. Ecco founder Andrew Barnett has been working closely with Sr. Almeida for many years.

Next public cupping: Sunday, 23 August, 2009; 11am

Welcome to the Volta world tour! Over the last few months we've seen coffees South America, Africa, and the Pacific go head-to-head in a public cupping competition to win a place on the Volta menu. We won't be able to stock everything, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try everything. We stage cuppings whenever new coffees are released so we can compare each of the new crops.

The next Volta coffee cupping will be held Sunday morning, 23 August, at 11 am. We're taking the opportunity to evaluate new coffees from Ecco Caffe, our guest roaster for the month of August. We'll have auction lot coffees from both Brazil and Ethiopia, as well as Ecco's twist on Intelligentsia's Guatemala and El Salvador coffees.

The cupping is free and open to the public. No prior experience (beyond a love of coffee) is necessary; we'll provide instructions and guide the cupping from start to finish. A cupping is a structured tasting that is used in the specialty coffee industry to evaluate the quality of specific coffees, both in the field before auction/purchase and at the point of roasting to determine the best roast level. We'll start by evaluating the dry and wet aromas of the coffees, then move on to the "slurp" to develop an evaluation of each coffee's taste. All we ask is that you refrain from wearing perfumes or other strong scents when cupping with us-- there's just so much that a nose can take in before the individual fragrances of the coffees are overwhelmed.

Intelligentsia Chemex Brewing Guide from Intelligentsia Coffee on Vimeo.

As summer winds down and we work our way through the rest of the Central American seasonal coffees, the roasters are able to turn their attention to microlots and to coaxing single origin espresso roasts out of outstanding brewed coffees. First up on the Volta menu: Honduras. In solidarity with the campesinos working the farms of Honduras from the border of Guatemala to the mountains of Nicaragua, we are currently featuring a first-ever microlot coffee from Roberto Salazar's Finca Pashapa and a special Black Cat Project edition of Intelligentsia's La Tortuga.

Counter Culture Coffee has been working with Sr. Salazar to elevate the quality of the coffees of several farms outside of the town of La Labor, in the northwest corner of the country. CCC roaster Tim Hill explains how this particular microlot came to be:

El Lechero is a three-hectare parcel of Finca Pashapa named after a tree with milky sap. When Roberto tasted coffee from this part of the farm, he discovered something special. It shouldn’t have been a surprise; the area is at 1520 meters and has a particularly high concentration of Typica and Bourbon coffee trees. Roberto kept that special parcel in the back of his mind, and kept working to create great coffees from the rest of Finca Pashapa, focusing especially on ripe cherry picking. This year, Roberto paid pickers more to take a little extra time and care on El Lechero, and once again it was kept separate.

Only 15 bags of green coffee were harvested for this microlot selection. We will be featuring it as our limited availability coffee for the next week. Stop by soon, because the Lechero won't be around for long. We are offering Counter Culture's El Lechero on the Clover for $3.25 a cup.

To the southeast of La Labor, Fabio Caballero's Finca La Tina is a jewel among coffee farms. As the first coffee farm in the Mogola region of Honduras, Finca La Tina has been in Sr. Caballero's family for three generations-- since its founding in 1930. Intelligentsia buyer Geoff Watts describes the farm:

At over 5,400 feet, La Tina farm is one of the highest farms in Honduras. The views are breathtaking, and there is no doubt that this piece of land is a wonderful place to grow coffee. Of course, growing the coffee is really just one step in many that lead to a great cup. The preservation of the quality that nature produces is as important in the equation as the actual growth. The sequence of events that take place after picking, beginning the moment that the cherry leaves the tree, help to define the difference between an "artisan coffee farmer" and a "harvester."

We've been offering the brewed coffee as La Tortuga, a blend from lots harvested at Finca La Tina and from Sr. Caballero's son-in-law's adjacent farm in Maracala. We also earlier featured a microlot brewed coffee from Finca La Tina, but it only lasted on the menu for a week before the supply ran out. Now we are getting one last gift from Mogola: a Black Cat Project single origin espresso based on a small lot of coffee from Finca La Tina. As with many single origin Central American espressos, the Finca La Tina espresso is bright. My first exposure to an early test roast, at the Chicago roasting works, reminded me of a lime popsicle. Now that we've had a chance to play with it here in Gainesville, we're coaxing out a deeper piloncillo-brown sugar base that counters the lime-zest intensity at the front of the shot.

The Black Cat Project Finca La Tina espresso is available as a .25 cent upcharge for any espresso drink. Personally, I like it as a straight double-- but then again, I like extra-hoppy IPAs. Matched with sweetly steamed milk, it makes the perfect summer cappuccino.

Introducing the rarest teas that we’ve ever had at Volta: limited edition antique-style Dong Ding mountain oolongs. Both our medium and light-roast Taiwanese Dong Ding oolongs have a relatively high oxidation levels (about 45%). The lighter tea was produced using traditional Dong Ding style processing called Four Seasons style. The medium roast tea is a varietal that descended from the original Ti Guan Yin varietal; it underwent a special charcoal (high temperature) firing to give an amazing depth of flavor.

The Four Seasons tea was almost unavailable; we picked up all 100gr that were brought in to the US through Intelligentsia-- enough for 20 customers to enjoy this amazing tea. We were able to purchase 200gr of the medium-roast tea. If I though we could get away with it, I'd only carry oolongs of this caliber. Both teas require that you commit some time to enjoy them: both are so tightly rolled that it takes four or five infusions before the leaves completely unravel.

From Shan Lin Xi, Taiwan, High Mountain Oolong (Gao Shan Cha) is very lightly oxidized (about 20-25%), very lightly roasted. This processing, combined with the high elevation, produces an overwhelming floral character and rich mouthfeel. This tea was grown at an elevation of nearly 2000 meters in one of the highest elevation tea producing areas in Taiwan. An extremely rare and treasured tea, the Gao Shan Cha is much more delicate and refined than the Antique teas. It hits its peak by the third infusion and begins to fade by the fifth.

In previous years, Intelligentsia's Guatemala Itzamna (and El Cuervo before that) was a blend of coffee from two or three farms in different regions of the country. This year, each individual farm's crop was notable enough to separate into unique releases. We just switched our Itzamna from Finca Maravilla to Finca La Soledad. The coffee from La Soledad is touch brighter, but silky and with a strong vanilla finish. Henio and Raul Perez's La Soledad farm is from the Acatenango region of Guatemala, at an elevation of 1470-1740 meters; the coffee is a blend of Caturra, Bourbon, and Typica.

The first iteration of this year's Itzamna came from the Maravilla farm of Mauricio Rosales. Situated in the HueHuetenago region, the Bourbon and Caturra varietals of coffee grow at the dizzying heights of 1850 meters. While we have switched over to the Soledad farm for our brewed coffee, the Maravilla isn't going away: we will soon be offering Sr. Rosales' coffee as a single origin espresso. We had a very limited amount of the Maravilla espresso last year as one of our first guest espressos. This year's edition is every bit as spectacular.

Volta produces a few hundred pounds of high quality coffee grounds every week. For the last year, the good folks at Edible Landscapes have been picking all of it up for their composting operation-- until our production outpaced their demand. The grounds make great compost and also work as a mulch. While unbrewed, ground coffee is highly acidic, grounds from brewed coffee are pH neutral and very rich in nitrogen.

Volta's grounds are free for the taking. We have each day's espresso and brewed coffee grounds (along with organic tea and the occasional agua fresca watermelon rind) in individual plastic bags. Just ask your barista for a bag of grounds if you want to start working coffee compost into your garden or landscape. First come, first served: if you want an entire week's output, just ask.

Seattle gardener and author Ann Lovejoy offers her advice about using coffee as a compost:

Used coffee grounds have many uses, from mulching to compost building. This is one ubiquitous material it's hard to have too much of. If you decide to mulch your beds and borders with ground coffee, here's a hot fashion tip: Remove the filters first. Those raggedy white papers look too tacky for words when left fluttering around your flowers. White or brown, you can shred the filter papers and mix them into the compost, where they'll break down nicely in short order.

Ground coffee is high in nitrogen, making it a very good mulch for fast-growing vegetables. Many organic growers swear by coffee grounds as mulches for tomato plants, both for the nitrogen boost this heavy feeder appreciates and for coffee's ability to help suppress late blight.

Coffee-ground mulch also can help reduce the ravages of slugs and snails. At a recent class, one participant announced that she always mulched her hostas with coffee grounds each day and had never before understood why they were never bothered by slugs.

For this month's ArtWalk, Volta presents "I Almost Remembered," an installation of photographs by Gainesville-area photographer Greg Turner.

Greg Turner's fine-art photography seeks to tap shared moments of childhood and reckless youth, to create links between the photographer's imagined past and the viewer's real-life memories.

To bridge these pasts he uses simple snapshots of the American road, those objects glimpsed in the in-between places on the American highway and residential street. The clues that let us know we're leaving one place and arriving at another: powerlines at
sunrise, the overpass in evening.

ArtWalk will be from 7-10pm on Friday, 31 July. Greg Turner's photographs will be exhibited at Volta through the last week of August.

• Volta will be closing at 7pm this Saturday (7/18) while half of the staff are up in Chicago training with Intelligentsia. Regular hours resume on Sunday.
• Volta will be at the UF Center for Performing Arts on Sunday evening for the first Summer Wine Festival — Corks, Cakes and Chocolate! Come join us in the Phillips Center Fackler Foyer East for a wine and chocolate tasting. Natalie and Italian chocolate importer Andrea Tosolini will be on hand to feature samples of Volta's new Italian chocolates. Socialize with friends and enjoy delicious samples from local businesses. Hors d’oeuvres will be served in the lobby as you make your way to Fackler Foyer West for an auction featuring handmade cakes from professional and amateur bakers. Tickets are available at the Center for Performing Arts, on the UF campus.
• Speaking of chocolates, we've been receiving new chocolates over the last few days: we now have Askinosie's amazing 77% dark bar from Davao, Philippines. It's the first commercially available chocolate from the Philippines in decades, and it has a wonderful, wild fruit flavor behind the punch of a 77% dark bar. We also have the Askinosie Dark Milk back in stock, as well as a new variant of the white chocolate with goat's milk, this time using the San Jose del Tambo cocoa butter from Ecuador. Finally, we're completely restocked with Cuorenero chocolates from Italy. The tobacco-wrapped chocolates are back, and we've introduced a new 70% single origin Bolivia bar.