Holiday Hours

Third Rail Coffee will be open on Christmas Day!

This is especially good news for those of you who:

• Want to reward yourself for all those thoughtful presents you bought your loved ones.
  
• Need to sneak away from those pesky relatives who've assembled in your living room.
• Need something to bring to that holiday dinner party you were invited to.
  
• Need to fuel up for a super-late shopping spree. PS: A bag of freshly roasted artisanal coffee makes a really great gift. So does a Gift Certificate.
• Can't go ONE day without your Third Rail COFFEE!!!

...and so our Hours for the holiday season are:

• 12/24 - Normal hours (7am - 8pm)
• 12/25 - 10am - 2pm
• 12/31 - Normal Hours (7am - 8pm)
• 01/01 - 9am - 8pm

Holiday Gift Box!

Stumped for a great Christmas or Chanukah present? Get your favorite coffee lover this sweet little duo packed with goodness and FRILLY RED SQUIGGLY THINGS!

Inside our gift box they’ll find a bag of Intelligentsia’s stellar ‘Celebration’ blend. Folks are going wild over this blend of Kenyan and Ethiopian coffee. With every sip, Kool and the Gang will start playing in their head and they may start to dance a little. This may or may not be a good thing for others but they’ll be happy.

Even BETTER (because it’ll last much longer) than the coffee, they’ll get a sweet, limited-edition Third Rail Coffee inaugural mug! (only available in this gift box). It’s got the most amazing photograph of two of our baristas that’s reminiscent of Grant Wood’s famous painting, American Gothic.

An even $29 makes you a super gift-giver this year and the holidays are here already so don’t delay as quantities are extremely limited!

Our 1st Cup of Excellence® coffee now available at Third Rail!

In what will be the first of many we’re sure, we’re pleased to say we’ve got our hands on a Cup of Excellence® coffee from 2009’s El Salvador competition.

From the farm of Jose Guillermo Alvarez on the slopes of the Santa Ana Volcano, Finca Malacara’s COE lot is full of stone fruits and molasses with a distinctly chewy mouthfeel, a nice citrus/apricot acidity and a dark chocolate finish. This one’s a real killer and will only be available for a short while as quantities are extremely limited. Come in for a hand poured Chemex or take home some whole beans as a special Holiday treat or gift!

If you’ve never heard of the Cup of Excellence (COE) program it’s a great idea that began in Columbia about 10 years ago. In a nutshell, the COE is a competition of sorts in producing countries. Individual farmers submit lots of their most special coffees to their country’s COE committee. These coffees, several hundred lots typically, then enter a rigorous 5 stage selection process that culminates with an international jury of the finest cuppers (i.e. tasters) on the planet assigning the ultimate list of “winners”. It varies from country to country and year to year but usually there are about 2 dozen coffees in any given competition that are awarded the Cup of Excellence designation. At this point, roasters and importers from around the world vie for these special coffees via an online auction.

We could go on and on about the virtues of the system and the benefits that everyone involved, from the farmer to the you, the coffee drinker get out of this. Instead, we’d just love to have you over for a cup and we can talk about it some more down at the Rail.

For further information check out CupofExcellence.org

Ecco at the Rail

Photo 'courtesy' of ConfusedBee

As anyone who’s ever had the pleasure to meet the man behind Ecco Caffe knows, Andrew Barnett is one heck of a guy and a top notch coffee man. We’ve always known we wanted to have ‘guest’ coffees come in and out of the shop and we always knew that we wanted Andrew’s to be the first to really get that slot. So this week at Third Rail we’ll be pulling shots of two of his espressos. We’re going to alternate somewhat but right now we’ve got a very special single origin espresso (another first for us):
La Maravilla from Guatemala.

This is a stunning coffee and a wonderful espresso. It's very clean and crisp, with a wonderful cherry hard-candy flavor, light chocolate notes in the foundation and a ton of juicy fruit, including nectarine, apricot, and sweet grape. It has incredible floral and fruit aromatics. The aftertaste is long lasting. This is one of those espressos where 75% of the pleasure comes after you drink it.

This espresso has a medium to light body and is gorgeous as a straight shot and very nice as a macchiato. This is not an espresso for people who like the “massive” or “intense” espressos (syrupy, hyper-concentrated), nor is it for people who drink milk drinks. But if you're in the market for something more delicate and layered and expressive, this might be your coffee.

…and then the Ecco Espresso is going to be on tap as well.

Gorgeous notes of bittersweet chocolate begin the cup. Vanilla and sugarcane transition seamlessly into a lingering caramel finish. This coffee exhibits a rounded acidity and silken mouth feel creating a classically balanced espresso.

Ecco Caffe's Espresso was designed to deliver an abundant, luscious, and syrupy crema that is perfect for cappuccinos and caffe lattes. When blended with steamed milk, notes of cocoa enhance its elegant caramel-toned soul.

…Andrew tells me this blend is currently made up of about 85% of the Cachoeira Yellow Bourbon and the rest is the Finca Maravilla.

Hope to see you there and just a heads up – we’ll only have it in this week!

PS: We have both of these available in 8 oz. bags

Third Rail Locked Down

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Originally uploaded by BoweryBoogie

This was the scene outside our store today during the President's lunch around the corner at Il Mulino. We dared to dream we could open this business and we dared to dream we could elect him. We'd of never guessed both would happen and that one day those two things would collide and absolutely KILL the business (for a few hours anyway) !!

We did get to serve coffee to some Secret Service guys though, maybe they'll recommend it to their boss next time ; )

From London to DC to NYC!

We're excited to kick off our guest coffee program with a seasonal espresso blend (Summer Espresso) from London's Square Mile Coffee Roasters. From now (noonish - 9/1/09) until we burn through the one kilo we've got.

"...Currently the blend is composed of 2 different lots of coffee from 2 different origins. It is a very sweet and clean espresso blend with notes of caramel, toasted nuts, treacle with a soft, buttery texture and a berry juice finish. Excellent in milk with notes of caramel, chocolate and a little fruit.



Similar to Spring this is a very simple blend, in terms of components and ratios. Both farms have Cup of Excellence pedigree – Las Nubes winning the Guatemalan competition in 2001 and La Carol placing 6th in Colombia in 2005.

The wonderful natural acidity in these coffees keeps the shot fresh and juicy (perfect for summer) but their strong natural sweetness keeps the shot in balance and it could, in fact, be our sweetest espresso yet when you really nail the shot."

Many many thanks to our great friend Nick Cho down in DC for sharing and special thanks to Katie Duris for hand delivering it to us!
And of course to Square Mile Coffee : )

New Coffees IN!

We’re pretty excited to rotate in some new coffees at Third Rail this week. First and foremost is my all-time favorite coffee, Flecha Roja from Costa Rica. This coffee is truly sensational in my book. Super sweet and juicy, like pure cherry juice at some points, snappy acidity, and did I mention it’s SWEET – dear God this coffee is sweet.

Sidebar: We passed on Intelli’s first release of this coffee as it disappointed us on the cupping table. I actually could not believe it was the same coffee I remembered so fondly from years past. It turned out it was the first shipment and I’m thinking this coffee just needed a little more time in ‘reposo’ to fully develop into the superstar it is. Cool learning experience!

Our second rotation in is ‘Los Inmortales’ from El Salvador. This was almost everyone’s favorite on the cupping table. A savory aroma gave way to some chocolate with hints of tobacco. The body was super silky and we got lots of white grape juice and some honeydew melon in here as well. This super clean and delicious coffee held up throughout the entire cup, it cooled the best of anything we cupped that day. In fact there was another coffee everyone had as the best UNTIL it cooled where it got unpleasantly woody and salty.

That’s it for now, the Tanzanian stays on not only to represent it’s part of the world but because it rocks. We’re kicking around the idea of holding a semi-public ‘tasting’ to pick the next coffee to come in, stay tuned for details and/or let us know what you think.