Charlie and the Celery Factory
Sometimes I just make up names, and you can't stop me
Thanks for tuning in last week; I hope your staying-in-late Saturday coffee dreams were a good substitute for the text-newsletter version.
This week’s coffee shop spotlight!
Oslo Coffee Roasters
Oslo Coffee Roasters, from Brooklyn, have a cute shop up in “Yorkville” [UES] I visited a couple weeks ago.
I passed by this coffee shop on the way to work and saw someone tie up their dog right on the door; a clear sign that they knew that this coffee shop was theirs; a quiet interlude that they could just have them and the coffee shop; no one intervenes.
It’s a part of who they [the coffee shop] are:
Oslo started in 2003 “when JD and Kathy Merget moved from their tiny Chinatown apartment to start a small coffee business in Williamsburg, Brooklyn”.
You can tell the brand is really important:
I honestly wasn’t the biggest fan of the coffee, however; I did, though, enjoy the vibes and the people inside. I felt unknown and ostracized for not being a part of the small-town that existed in this tiny café. I think here that’s a good thing, if you’re in it’s much more special.
What’s new, Jude?
THE SOIREE, in ALL CAPS, is a very pretty café in midtown, just under central park on the west side.
Y3xt Coffee Bar — is this place real? They have a picture of a pool surrounded by hotels/timeshares. Like a lot of you, I also have a pool and a timeshare here in NYC. I just didn’t think I could put a coffee bar in too!
N25 Nitro Tea whatever this is, I’m here for it.
Hutch & Waldo — Austailian, in battery park, near Tribeca. Looks nice!
Danis Roastery Inc — Clinton Hill — Coffee, Sandwiches, Lobster, Grocery.
Purple Waves — just north of Central Park, on the west side
Break time!
I had a story for y’all, but this newsletter is yearning to be released and it’s Sunday at 4:41p.m.
And now…
Coffee news!
UC Davis’s Coffee Center, which is a real thing, came out with an app to let you automatically check for defects/color/size in your coffee beans. It costs a lot of money to get the “photosheet” which is a calibration tool for the app, but you can get the thing printed and still check for size and defects without a guaranteed color check.
Laughing Man is launching a franchise program. This coffee shop in Tribeca was founded by Hugh Jackman after a trip to Ethiopia.
Decaf Coffee has won the 2024 US Brewers Cup, and not just decaf coffee, decaf typica [as opposed to arabica or
Folgers® robusta].A notoriously evil company, Nestlé, is spending $20,000,000 towards coffee in the Democratic Republic of Congo to create sustainable coffee imports to use in their Nespresso line. In their marketing, it says their aim is to help stabilize the (focus on the coastal/coffee growing) region and increase access to clean water. Ironic.
The ion beam. Not really necessary, but if you saw the recent James Hoffman video on static, it is a real [albeit tiny] difference for a paltry…$165.
Brood has a cold brew maker that condenses nitrogen from the air and flash freezes your cold brew as it mixes the concentrate + water. Cool!
Cotierra raised $1 million in pre-seed funding to expand their “biochar” production. Biochar is charcoal from biomass and helps soil health.
The Recipe Section
I can’t convince you to try this, but I can encourage it. This is a Good Idea™.
celery & magnolia
You were sitting in your ivory castle, thinking to yourself you have all the foods and flavors you’ll ever need—that your coffee is ‘complete’; your plate is full.
I have unfortunate news, your ivory tower is off-white plywood and spackle.
Enter Celery.
Celery is the clear next step in this terrible evolution we call “good ideas”, and it is a 2nd-perfect spring drink in 2024 [just behind a magnolia capp].
It is light, airy—
—and you still have the taste of the crunch, without the gross celery flavor.
It’s springlike, and crisp.
Enter Magnolia.
Making the rounds all over InstaTok, Magnolia is purported to have a gingery flavor—assuming you pick the flowers that are not overripe nor brand new. You can find a syrup recipe for this online, as there’s no claim to originality here.
[By the way, this is likely the last week you can get Magnolia in the city (for free!) so get pickin’!]
For the recipe
Unlike our previous recipes, this one is a blend-and-basket [pulverize-and-permeate? centrifuge-and-sift? obliterate-and-distillate?] as you aren’t simply putting the spice with a sugar-syrup.
You are simmering the vegetable, then blending and straining the mixture. [Crush-and-clarify?]
2 cups celery, or 12 large celery stalks, loosely sectioned/cut to fit in the pot
1.75 cups sugar
1 cup water
Celery contains a lot of water [around 95.4%!], and around 0.5 cups of water per 1 cup celery [celery takes up more space than water].
It comes out to about 351.505 + 2.707 [from 202g celery] = 354g sugar and 480g water. So, feel free to be a little heavy handed with the sugar [a minor amount of the starches may be turned into sugars (4.7874g) as it cooks]
If you want to be obtuse, add 124g of sugar to this recipe.
You goofball.
Blend in a blender [extirpate and exfiltrate], everything
(optional) place the mixture in a pot and boil 10–20 minutes. Alternatively, let the mixture sit in the blender for a half hour.
strain out to a syrup
Then,
1.5 oz celery syrup
0.5 oz magnolia syrup
12 oz sparkling water, like Saratoga
Stir, no shake
Thanks for tuning in!
Also, remember that video I mentioned re: the water into the can of instant coffee, making a very strong coffee? He’s re-done it with the Panera charged lemonade instead. Nice.
Enjoy your coffee!
hahaa