Rolled out in time for the season!  Celebration Blend is part Flor Azul Nicaragua and part Kurimi Yirgacheffe Ethiopia; it’s both smooth and creamy with bursting notes of floral and grapefruit acidities. 

Our other new coffees are a Kenya Ndaroini Auction Lot, new lot of Kurimi Yirgacheffe, and a new composition of Black Cat Espresso (now including a portion of El Salvador AA). 

http://inseasoncoffee.com/

http://blackcatcoffee.com/ 

^Justin T from Four Barrel prepped on bar for Halloween in San Francisco.

Intelli.LA has a new family member: Miles Andrew Glanville, son of our own K.G. and Deanna Mustard!!!!  We’ll get him sipping espresso asap.

——

Just in is our El Salvador Finca Matalapa Micro-Lot.  Ask one of your friendly baristas to tell you why they love it.

A fond farewell to Tony K, tonx.org, who just relocated to San Francisco.  We’ll be seeing you soon.
Lastly, this week we’re pleased to host Sr. Julian Morales from a farm called el Agrado in Quindio, Colombia!  He’ll be observing and learning about what we do both at the cafe and at the roasting works.

^thanks, Jules.
In other, extremely substantial news, there are big changes happening in our Black Cat Project:

From Mr. Glanville himself-

” Hi All -

Wanted to let everyone know that the Black Cat Espresso is undergoing two
transitions right now.

The first transition is in the naming. What was once called ³Black Cat
Espresso² will soon be renamed to ³Black Cat Classic Espresso².

Why? Cuz there will be many different Black Cats. All espresso will be sold
under the Black Cat name, just as all DT Colombia is sold under the Tres
Santos name. Eventually, even Kid O will become ³Black Cat Organic
Espresso²
and all of our SO espressos will have a similar style of name.

Of course none of that stuff is nearly as exciting as the fact that,
companywide, ³Black Cat Classic Espresso² will soon be 100% Direct Trade.
In
fact, what¹s being roasted in Chicago already is, and LA (as always) is
about one week behind.

The blend currently consists of two coffees. It is :

- Brazil Fazenda Santa Alina 80% (100% Yellow Bourbon)
- El Salvador Los Inmortales ³El Borbollon² 20% (100% Bourbon)

Fazenda Santa Alina

Santa Alina is located in the Grama Valley outside Pocos de Caldas in Minas
Gerais. Volcanic soil, good latitude, shade and decent altitude combine to
yield consistently very sweet coffees. This coffee is actually grown at
1200m, after which it is pulped and dried on a raised, ventilated bed, a
patio and finally a mechanical dryer.

Santa Alina is bordered by numerous other well known coffee farms,
including
Fazenda Cachoeira, Fazenda Rainha and Fazenda Barreiro.

Map :
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=pocos+de+caldas,+mg,+brasil
&ie=UTF8&ll=-21.709749,-46.833344&spn=0.296643,0.560989&t=h&z=11

As far as flavor notes, you can look for some big cherry sweetness, strong
citrus and a syrupy chocolate support. Enjoy!

K G”

Courtesy of tonx.org//peep the vid for full effect

Deanna Mustard just (as of last Friday) officially began her leave of maternity absence.  She’s on all of our minds and most definitely embedded in our hearts.  This pic was taken by D. Moody at our year anniversary party.  The prize Deanna’s holding was for her second-place finish in our latte-art smackdown.  Yeah, she can still throw down.

Still In:

Esmeralda (mmmmmmmmm.. new roast is even better), Kenya Gaturiri Auction Lot, http://deaton.wordpress.com/ (pulled a bar shift today for the first time in months)

Out: Flecha Roja de Costa Rica (you can still get the red arrow mugs and ts, though), Itzamna de Guatemala

^hitting the cycle at Ritual.

S.F. was booming with coffee professionals from everywhere and the hub, our coffee pavilion, was located at Fort Mason.

The focus of the coffee pavilion was largely to educate tasters on coffee regions, varietals, and processing.  The tastings included both flights of brewed coffees (Clovered) and single-origin shots.  To make this all happen, roasters from around the country brought coffees they deemed especially special in one way or another.

As single-origin espresso, Intelligentsia featured:

-the pulped natural Panama coffee that Kyle took to the WBC

(amazingly orange-cream sweet; plush marmalade-butter)

This coffee introduced many espresso novices to the term ‘pulp natural,’ and engaged them with coffee-processing and scale of specialty coffee purchases.  The sentence, ‘experiment for this farm,’ sparked quite an interest in many tasters.

-our Kenya Gaturiri Auction Lot

(bright and deep; bursting with purple grape flavors)

-La Tortuga Micro-Lot Galapagito

(raspberry-plum citrus, milk-chocolate finish)

For brewed coffee, we featured the above coffees, as well as our Guatemala Itzamna Direct Trade coffee.

It was an awesome event on all fronts.
Tonx recaps SFN 08 and so does L.C. twitchy and they have flickr accounts too.