...but some do. There's this tradition of adding cocoa powder to the top of milk drinks here. I am not sure why. But at least it precludes the fanciness of Latte art decorations.
In general the caliber of the espresso here, in particular from the shops we went to like Reuben Hills, Mecca, and Coffee Alchemy, is excellent. They really have the shots dialed in. We only had a few where I felt the roast was a little off.
As you might have noticed, we just sold out of our last dry process Ethiopia. Since we use DP coffees in many of our blends, that also means that a those blends are out of stock for the moment. We hope to have another DP Ethiopia in soon, but in the meantime we might recommend our dry-process Yemen if you're looking for a wild African coffee.
Today is a big day for the coffee offerings at Shrub. We've sold out of three of our best sellers: Sumatra Tarbarita, Ethiopia Maduro, and Guatemala Finca Florencia. But don't worry, fresh on their heels are a new dry-process Ethiopia going up today and (coming soon) new crop Tarbarita, a new Guat, and another Costa Rica.
At Shrub, we're obviously focused on our single-origin offerings. But, we do offer most of the blends available at Sweet Maria's, and today we're putting up two of the Sweet Maria's Espresso Workshop blends: Espresso Profundo and Tono Alto. Most of you are probably more inclined to develop blends on your own, but if you're looking for a new espresso blend, check these out!
Well, this year's Panama Esmeralda Gesha auction is over, and we ended up buying 600 pounds of Lot 1 and 300 pounds of Lot 3. We've gotten a few inquiries about putting some of it up on Shrub, and we do plan on doing that once it arrives in the next month or two. We're thinking of packing it in small vac packs --- 6 pounds or so --- with little markup over the auction price and shipping (so look for a price under $40/pound), so that as many people as possible can get their hands on it.
Well, it's finally happened: we're just about sold out of the Kenya Gakuyu-ini, so we're pulling it off the site. It's been one of our most popular coffees, but we've got some other great Kenyas lined up. In the meantime, if you just have to have one more order of the Gakuyu-ini, shoot us an email...we've got a few pounds still stashed in the back.
We've re-negotiated our international shipping rates with UPS, and have been able to secure rates that are much lower that we were offering through FedEx. So, we're now only offering UPS shipping for international orders, rather than letting you choose between UPS and FedEx. It's more convenient on our end to have all the orders go through the same carrier, and hopefully you'll enjoy the better pricing.
Today we're rolling out two new coffees. The Ethiopia DP Haile Selassie Sidamo is full of complex fruit and makes a sublime SO espresso shot. Great Ethiopias were rare this year, given the ECX debacle, but this is definitely one of our favorites.
Today we're putting up the third installment of coffees that we purchased and then sent out for decaffeination. This one is a mix of two lots from the Nyeri region of Kenya, and it really is the best decaf coffee we've had in recent memory. Check it out, and, as always, post your comments if you decide to give it a try.
