One Barrel
Four Barrel is excited to offer our café customers service at our new front bar. Tuesday through Sunday, from 9:00am to 4:00pm, the front bar offers a selection of coffees and single origin espresso. The menu changes daily as our seasonal selection of coffees change.
The front bar is unique in that each coffee on the menu is available as cup-at-a-time drip OR espresso. This presents a unique challenge to our baristas – these coffees are literally pulled from the shelf rather than being roasted specifically for espresso. The challenge is adapting these coffees to the espresso preparation, balancing their intensified qualities while presenting an accurate depiction of their flavor profile. The Versalab grinder and La Marzocco GS3 make multiple offerings possible; it is a powerful and versatile combination that allows us to optimally calibrate each coffee, then switch parameters on the fly to fit each coffee’s precise extraction requirements.
We prepare drip coffee on our custom-fabricated drip stands using either Hario V60 or Clever drippers. Our intention with each hand-crafted cup is to use an optimal water-to-coffee ratio to present a perfectly balanced extraction.
The Hario differs from other drip cones in that it is perfectly conical and has a large aperture at the bottom. This configuration necessitates a careful, deliberate application of hot water with a purpose-built spouted kettle, and a delicate balance of variables. The turbulence pattern of the center-weighted controlled pour creates a conical bed of coffee that extracts uniformly, rather than channeling hot water past unevenly distributed coffee. The result is a clean, sweet, complete extraction that emphasizes aromatics and complexity.
The Clever is a unique hybrid full-immersion dripper. Similar to a French press, the grounds are fully saturated in a sealed brewing chamber. After several minutes pass, the plug is depressed, allowing the brewed coffee to flow through the drip cone. The full immersion extraction emphasizes sweetness and body in a rounded, balanced cup.
We felt the need to provide an outlet for our customers to experience the breadth of our coffee offerings at our café. It’s our goal and our pleasure to provide a one-on-one experience that is coffee-focused, educational, accessible, and TASTY.
