I got an email yesterday from Mike, who has had to recently close a cafe here in Vancouver. He’s looking to sell his Rancillo Espresso Machine, but hasn’t had any takers so far. So, I offered to post the details for him, to see if that would help.

Rancilio Classe 10 SDE, Automatic espresso machine, stainless steel casing, with two filter groups, manual steam and automatic TSC, two hot water nozzles.

This machine is less than a year old, purchased December 2004 and used moderately for nine months in a small independent coffee bar. It has been well taken care of, cleaned every working day and serviced recently to replace rubber seals in filter group. Unfortunately, we had to close our shop and want to find a good home for our baby as we simply don’t have space for it at home.

Hooks up to water supply, drain hose at bottom to drain into catch bucket or hook up to drainage system. Runs on 220 V power supply.

Comes complete with three (3) chrome-plated copper portafilters - two double, one single, filter cleaning discs, cleaning brush, TSC cleaning hose, and instruction manuals.

What is the TSC?

An automatic steaming wand, with separate buttons to produce steamed milk for lattes or cappuccinos. Just put the right amount of milk into the steaming pitcher, place the pitcher on the rack with the TSC in the milk, and press the desired button. The machine will even remind you to purge the TSC afterward, which is accomplished by pressing either of the two steaming buttons.

Is it easy to clean?

Extremely! The Classe 10 has automated cleaning cycles, eliminating a lot of the tedious manual work. Most notably, the automatic backflush feature… load the cleaning discs right into the filter holders, add a bit of Purocaff coffee cleaner (or equivalent) load them into the groups and start the cleaning cycle… the machine will clean each group in alternating cycles.

Cleaning the TSC is also easy. You attach the small cleaning tube to the intake nozzle, add cold water to a 1 litre pitcher, add Purocaff (or equivalent) dairy cleaner, place the tube and the TSC in the pitcher of water, and start the TSC cleaning cycle. After a moment, you just need to replace the used water with fresh cold clean water for the rinse… and a couple of minutes later you’re done!

What is this machine worth when brand new?

The Classe 10 SDE normally retails at about $8500 US/$10,000 Canadian.

Contact Mike for details.

One of my fellow b5ers, Gayla, caught this news before I did. A new tactic by Starbucks. Now, we know that Starbucks has primarily built itself off viral marketing - stuff on the streets, word of mouth, and most nontraditional marketing efforts. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to hear that they have co-opted the huge attention being placed on Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner (“Bennifer”) by offering them a sponsorship contract.

Considering that people are absolutely obsessed with Jennifer’s upcoming baby, often posting every picture out there as a “bump watch”, being the favorite mom-to-be, and that their relationship is very hot in the news, a product placement comes at a good time. I’m sure it hasn’t slipped the minds of the marketers behind this that placing a large Starbucks cup in Jennifer’s hand while pregnant could potentially get them more to-be or nursing mothers, who might otherwise stay away. It’s all about image.

A Lowdown spy reports that the caffeinated couple has snagged an exclusive “seven-figure” contract with Starbucks Coffee Co. to drink, be photographed with and generally promote the popular java around the country.

“It’s a relatively new deal,” says the insider. “And considering how often they are photographed with the stuff, I’d say they’re working pretty hard.”

Bennifer II - who married in June and are expecting a baby girl any day - are rarely seen in public without their trademark oversize cups emblazoned with the ubiquitous Starbucks logo. And with his career in the dregs and hers on hold, a hefty endorsement deal could be just their cup.

Of course, the rumors are being denied, as they would even if they were true. Guerilla marketing is guerilla for a reason.

Pic via popsugar

Solar Roast is a roasting company in Oregon that uses 100% organic and fair trade coffee and uses most "Earth Friendly" roasting methods. They can claim this because their roaster doesn’t use any fossil fuels: it uses the sun.

Roast Master Michael Hartkop wanted to create a truly organic roasting method and with the help of his brother David they built Helios.

Helios uses a 10 foot solar collector to focus the sun’s rays onto a drum roaster. This is enough to reach temperatures of 600 degrees Farenheit. The mirrors automatically track the sun, using solar power for the electronics, making roasting possible all day long. Of course, this only works on sunny days, so roasting during winter in the Pacific Northwest is a bit of a challenge.

They have a nice list of single origins and blends, but they seem to be out of stock right now. I’ll give them a try in a few months, when the sun comes out again.

Yep, I held true to the reviewing thing. I actually tried coffee from Disneyland. *shudder*

Oh, it was not fun, let me tell you. We went to what looked like the most “main” in terms of coffee at Disneyland, the Blue Ribbon Bakery on Mainstreet.

Now, the first clue here is that the cafe is sponsored by, and served by, Nestle. Oy. I was in for it there. Well, I decided to get an Americano, and Ianiv a plain old drip coffee. Can you tell which is which?

Well, the one on the left was the Americano. And you can see me trying below. What you don’t see is the grimace on my face. Oh my. I have to say it was as bad as any coffee from a random gas station that was brewed 4 hours ago kind of thing. And it was watery. So watery. Skimping on pennies for sure. Ianiv’s was a tad more horrible, and perhaps even more watery. Lovely.

Although mechanical grinders are really great for grinding your coffee at home (we have one!), they can break down.

This guy found an old grinder at an antique store and decided to restore it. Took it apart and fixed it. And shared the pictures and how to.

Check it out here.

Via Make

This is us on our way to Disneyland. We drove down, all 21 hours, just the 2 of us. Coffee, of course, was needed. As well as copious amounts of any caffeinated product we could get our hands on.

So, not wanting to get coffee at some random gas station in the middle of the night, we took all our stuff with us. This is me grinding in the car. Thank goodness for free hot water at gas stations! I think the attendant was jealous ;)

We even took our new snazzy coffee canister from Pottery Barn.

I saw this almost two weeks ago but I forgot to share it with you here. Scott Beale took some pictures at Ritual Roasters, a coffee shop in San Francisco, on Halloween when the employees dressed up as Zombie Starbucks baristas. You can see a few pictures in his Ritual Starbucks photo set.

We’ve redesigned Vancouver Coffee along the same theme as what we’ve done with Blogaholics. Some of the major changes to note are a reorganization of the columns, the addition of more navigation items, and the stripping of many graphic elements.

This should improve navigation, loading time, and basic visual appeal. It’s much easier to update, and lets us also swap images in and out when we want. We hope you like it!

We have, however, kept the header photo, the postit and the pin - these are part of the brand we’ve created for our blogs and we decided to keep them. They’ve been resized a bit smaller, though.

What do you think?

I keep my eye on cool gadgets and whatnot for my Cooking Gadgets blog, and one of my feeds pulled up something interesting. It’s called the “Agitor”.

The Agitator is a new concept to stir coffee. A button on the bottom of the cup can be pressed and the coffee then stirs, or ‘agitates.’

The system involves a small pocket of space, surrounded by a soft plastic membrane, at the bottom of the cup. The membrane has small holes, allowing the liquid to fill the space. By pressing on the space from the below the cup, it forces the liquid back out of the holes, thus “agitating” the contents.

It’s the idea of Creighton Schlebach, who wanted an easier way to keep his coffee stirred during moments when he didn’t have any free hands. He says you can use it for other stuff too, like instant soup, chocolate milk, and such.

It does have the benefit, I admit, of stirring your coffee in places where it might not be fun to do so, like say a moving vehicle. No hot coffee spills. Then again, I have my lovely mug, and I can just shake the darn thing. ;)

Via Strange New Products

We are all used to finding some kind of toy inside a box of cereal, but a woman found an unexpected "prize" inside her bag of Folgers coffee. She’d been making coffee from the same two-pound bag of freeze-dried coffee for a month (that is just wrong!) when she found a hard clump that after cleaning turned out to be a dead baby turtle.

Folger’s explanation is that the turtle could be the result of flooding from Hurricane Katrina. The coffee was already ground, I wonder how it is stored in those warehouses to allow a little turtle to get into the packing line.

She is not planning to sue the company and that things could have been much worse. Worse? How?
Buy fresh coffee from someone who can actually cares and can keep control of the product’s quality.

From the Iowa City Press-Citizen

Starbucks in the Philippines has developed a new Frappucino product featuring coffee jelly (little cubes of coffee gelatin). Kind of like a bubble tea concept.

Check out more here.

Via slashfood