Notes from the freight house.

We take decaf seriously, which surprises people who have been trained to treat it as a punishment or a joke. Ours is decaffeinated by the Swiss water process, no solvents, just water and patience and a lot of charcoal doing quiet work. It comes off Number Nine on the same mornings as everything else and […]

We roast small and we roast often, most mornings before the doors are open, because coffee is a fresh thing doing a convincing impression of a shelf-stable one. The bag on your shelf is not lying to you exactly. It is just being optimistic. A big roast once a week would be easier on me […]

I invented a drink. Espresso, a little maple, a lot of confidence. I named it The Bram and I wrote it on the board in my own hand. It sold 0. Not few. 0. People read The Bram, paused, and ordered the Tarrazu. Della watched this for 2 days, then quietly rewrote the board. Same […]

When Beatrice is cooperative and the espresso is pulling sweet, the milk is the last thing left to get wrong. And most people get it wrong the same way, by being in a hurry. Cold milk, cold pitcher. Tip the wand just off center so the milk turns instead of bubbles. You want a quiet […]

A cup of coffee is almost entirely water, which means your water is almost entirely the coffee. People spend on beans and a machine, then brew with whatever comes out of the tap, and wonder why the version at the bar tastes better. You do not want distilled water, which is flat and lifeless and […]

We keep 2 sets of mugs. There are the good ones, heavy stoneware that sits in your hand like it means it, and there are the rest, which are fine. The rest hold coffee and have no complaints. They are simply not the good ones, and everyone can tell. The good mugs go to people […]

Nobody at Trestle is assigned a seat. The regulars have simply decided, among themselves and without a meeting, where each of them sits, and the rest of us have learned to honor it. The window two-top is taken on weekday mornings, with the paper. The stool at the end of the bar belongs to the […]

I read, on a Sunday, that a drum roaster runs better with a little oil in the right places. Number Nine has 2 right places. She also has several that very much do not want oil, and on the first try I found neither of the right ones and one I should not have touched […]

The brass register out front is a National. We call it the National, with the proper noun, because it has earned one in a way a tablet never will. It rounds to the dollar. It does not make change in coins and it never has. If your total comes out a few cents over, the […]

We do not serve food. People ask about this more in the morning, when they are hungry, which is understandable. The answer is no, we do not have pastries, we do not have toast, we do not have anything to eat, and we are not planning to. Adding food would mean a health permit, a […]

Right. A pour-over, the way I would talk you through it across the bar if there were no line behind you. Della trimmed this down to four lines once. I have quietly put some of it back. Heat your water to just off the boil. Rinse the filter so the cup does not taste like […]

There is a closing checklist on a card behind the bar. I did not know about it for the first 3 weeks because nobody told me about it and I did not think to ask. I thought closing was just cleaning until everything looked clean. The checklist has 14 items. Some of them are obvious: […]

The Tarrazu is the Tuesday coffee. It has been the Tuesday coffee since before I can properly account for, and it will go on being the Tuesday coffee long after I have stopped keeping track. Some things you do not put to a vote. Almond, green apple, clean. Washed, even, predictable in the way a […]

The first cup I make in the morning is for the bar, not for a customer. It is a calibration. I pull a shot and taste it and decide whether anything needs adjusting before the door opens. Usually nothing does. Sometimes the grinder has drifted overnight and I dial it back in. This is not […]

Beatrice is the espresso machine. She is a lever machine, which makes her more opinion than appliance, and this morning her opinion is no. It happens when the air goes heavy. The group runs cool, the shots pull thin and sour, and no amount of talking to her helps. So we chalk a sign on […]

Every September someone asks when the pumpkin drinks start. The answer is never, and it is not a stunt. We roast what Number Nine gives us that morning and we write it on the board in chalk. That is the menu. There is no other menu. Some mornings the board says a bright washed Ethiopian, […]

A tasting note is a compressed description of what a coffee does in the cup. It is not a list of ingredients, and the coffee does not contain blueberry or jasmine or brown sugar. Those are reference points: flavors in the same frequency range that help locate what you are tasting. Della writes notes like: […]

Our hours say we open after the 8:14. People ask what that means, and the honest answer is that the 8:14 was a through freight that stopped running in 1971. We keep time by a train that has not come in more than 50 years. The Bracken Valley and Northern ran right past the building, […]

The building was a freight depot for the Bracken Valley and Northern railroad. It was built in 1923, in brick and timber, north-facing so the loading dock stayed cool in summer for the perishables that came through. The railroad stopped running in 1971. The track came up in 1974. The building stayed. We took it […]

Number Nine is the roaster, a drum old enough to have a name and a temperament to match. She runs hot before noon and cool when it rains, and there is nothing in any manual about either, because there is no manual. There is Della, a notebook, and a great many mornings. A cool drum […]

I write the specials on the board in the morning. This is my job. I have a specific chalk and a specific way of writing the price and a specific place on the board where the special goes, relative to the Tarrazu, which is always there. Della edits what I write. Not always, and not […]

An espresso shot runs for about 25 to 30 seconds. Under 20 and it is under-extracted, sour and thin, lacking body. Over 40 and it is over-extracted, bitter and sharp, losing sweetness. The 10-second window between those two outcomes is where all espresso lives. Beatrice is temperamental, and her mood affects the time. On a […]

This week's Lintong came in a shade dark. Cedar and baker's chocolate, the way it always reads, but with a longer, earthier finish that settles at the back of the cup and stays through the second sip. Della blames the rain. Number Nine blames no one. It is not a mistake and it is not […]

There was, for one regrettable week, a rotating carousel on the homepage. Bram built it on a slow Tuesday, the kind where Beatrice is down and a person needs something to do with his hands. It auto-played. It had arrows nobody pressed and dots nobody counted. It is gone now, and we do not discuss […]

Della keeps a log. It is a small notebook behind the bar, and it is for incidents: things that went wrong, things that almost went wrong, and things that technically did not go wrong but that she wants on record anyway. I appear in it more than anyone else. I have not read it, but […]

Coffee is brewed at a ratio of coffee to water. The standard starting point is 1 to 15 by weight: 1 gram of coffee for every 15 grams of water. From there you adjust. More coffee and the cup is stronger and more intense. Less and it is thinner and easier. Most home brewers do […]

We write orders on a pad. Not a tablet, not an app, a paper pad with a carbon copy under each sheet. The top copy goes to the bar. The bottom copy stays on the pad and becomes the record. The National tallies the totals. It does not need a description of what each line […]