Coffee Roasting at FourBarrel with Google San Francisco

Wow, this coffee is on a whole other level than what I’m used to.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited (as part of Google+’s Power User Program) to attend a private coffee tasting at FourBarrel coffee in the Mission. FourBarrel sources their own beans personally (which is rare- they buy in person themselves) and roast all their beans on site in an antique looking cast iron roaster. The group of 10 or so (including photographers Lisa and Chris) got to see the whole roasting process go down and tasted several types of coffee brewed via a Chemex.

 

The Chemex is a very cool way to brew coffee. It’s not designed for speed but to truly bring out the flavor of the coffee. Everything, from the temperature of the water to the coarseness of the ground beans makes a difference in the flavor.  We tasted coffee that was a bit above room temperature instead of the scalding hot coffee you get at other places (the heat covers up the bitterness of the coffee apparently).  We even got some really neat personal bags of coffee to take home!

Of course, once I got home, we tried the coffee with some creamer (sorry guys). You could even tell the nuances of flavor from a drip coffee machine and creamer in it! I found that very impressive. If you are interested in checking out FourBarrel- here is the location to the place we visited in the Mission. Want to see more photos from the event? Check out the G+ event listing here.