How to Brew Pourover the Nick Cho Way
The blogs call him "celebrity coffee bad boy", a D.C. columnist refers to him as a "tax scofflaw" and the D.C. coffee scene knows him as the former owner of the city's Murky Coffee. Nick Cho was forced to shut down his popular Washington D.C. coffee shops over unpaid taxes a couple of years ago and has since moved to California where he is one of the owners of Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters. If you follow the barista circuit, you probably already know him from one of these capacities (wording lifted in total from Wrecking Ball's About page) " Nicholas served as a director on the Barista Guild of America’s Executive Council, on the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s Board of Directors, on the World Barista Championship Board of Directors, and as the chairman of the United States Barista Championship. He was also the 2006 South East Regional Barista Champion".
You probably also know that he has a wickedly boisterous sense of humor -- there's a possibly apocryphal (but probably not) story of him once threatening to punch a customer in a uniquely painful place for complaining when he refused to serve him his espresso iced. I, however, knew none of this when I stumbled across his instructional video for making coffee with a Tru Bru coffee station this morning, so I was totally unprepared for this: (Disclaimer: If you are viewing this on your coffee break, swallow your mouthful and put your coffee down before watching. I take no responsibility for hot coffee damage to your screen or keyboard if you fail to do so. Also, if you are offended by cuss words or seriously bad treatment of good coffee, you might want to skip this video.)
On a side note, the Beehouse coffee dripper shown in the photo of the Tru Bru pourover station above -- as opposed to the Hario dripper that Nick uses in the video -- may be one of the most attractive drippers I've seen. I like its lines and I especially like the fact that it has a little peek-hole in the front so you can watch the level of coffee in your mug, since I tend to brew into opaque mugs. If it were sold on ROASTe, it would be on its way to me already. I also like the industrial look of the Tru Bru pourover station but can't help wondering if the distance between dripper and mug doesn't let the coffee cool too much. Anyone have any experience with it?
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