Here's a look at todays menu. Some offerings from Counter Culture, Stumptown and Caffe Pronto. Then, if things get really busy, we've also got a little Intelligentsia stashed away somewhere. Add in some croissants from Anisha and cupcakes from Mom, lots of family and friends from all over and I'm thinking it should make for a fun preview of Spro Hampden. Come join us if you can!

As ready as we'll ever be. Nine months and five days. If you had told me back in June that we wouldn't finish project hampden until March 2010, I might have laughed. Had you assured me that numerous delays and poor decisions on my part would guarantee a March 2010 opening, I might have cried. Tomorrow, after nine months and five days of blood, sweat and tears, project hampden will cease to exist and become Spro Hampden. In many ways, it's hard to believe. Since we set the opening date last week, many people have been asking me if I'm getting excited about opening. But it wasn't until this evening that I really started getting excited. The brewing stations. Even up to the last minute, forces conspire against us. I mean, what good is the opening of a coffee joint if there is no coffee to serve? Our usual shipment from Vancouver was delayed by US Customs. The delay of our normal coffee shipment has caused Towson's inventory to be completely depleted, forcing Arianna to hijack the Ecco Caffe order destined for Hampden. At the moment, there isn't a single bean of the Hines Espresso between the two locations. Screwed. Luckily, our shipments from Counter Culture and Intelligentsia arrived yesterday, but we're still faced with the no espresso quandry. No espresso at the place named after espresso? How foolish we could look in the morning: "Hello. Welcome to Spro. You can have anything you want as long as it doesn't have espresso in it..." That could be worse than my nightmare about eating french fries. Spro Hampden: T-minus 12 hours and counting... With UPS and FedEx already having made their rounds, we're faced with still no espresso to speak of. A plan is conceived to drive to the nearest coffee roaster and create an ad hoc blend for espresso. Not the best solution but one that might work. That's when Jess chimes in that she might be able to swing a couple of bags from another local roaster that does some pretty good stuff down in Annapolis. It's a chance since they supply another local coffeeshop not too far away and even though we're friends with the roaster, I'm sure their reticent to supplying the shop down the street from an established client. Later, as I sit in the near empty shop I start to get excited. There's still much to do before the morning but I'm relieved that we're going to open and start making a living for our baristas. We're working with some of the most amazing purveyors of coffee, pastry and ingredients in America and combining that with some truly promising baristas and I can't imagine it starting off better than this. If you have the time between 9am to 5pm tomorrow, please come visit us. Spro Hampden 851 West 36th Street Baltimore, MD 21211 410-243-1262

I’d really appreciate it if you could answer this poll, because it seems like something I ought to know/would be interesting know: Even if you are just stopping by, or reading in your feed reader – I’d be very grateful of a quick click. Thank you. Related posts:A quick espresso survey POLL NOW CLOSED Brew recipes have been [...] Related posts:A quick espresso survey POLL NOW CLOSED Brew recipes have been on my mind... One title doesn’t fit all This is going to be a bit of a... Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin .

For those of you not in the coffee biz, a Fetco is a type of coffee brewer. Most of you will be familiar with the "drip" style coffee brewers that are everywhere in America. They're ubiquitous. The Fetco Extractor is arguably the best of the lot. Programmable brew parameters, flow rates, shower rates, etc. means that the Fetco brewer can work wonders for your coffee. Lately, the trend in the niche specialty coffee market that we toil has been with manual, by-the-cup brewing. Things like the vac pot, chemex, aeropress and more has given the baristas of late a whole new game to play. Along with these by-the-cup brew methods has sprouted people and companies who are designing hot water boilers with all sorts of fancy control systems to help you brew the "perfect" cup of by-the-cup coffee. Recently, some friendly chaps invited me to come to a preview screening of one such water heating device and I've been hearing through the grapevine of a few more hot water heaters doing similar stuff. Essentially, these devices heat water to a very specific temperature and dispense the water into your, let's say, pour over drip brewer in a controlled manner simulating the pour from a hot water kettle. These are all fine and dandy ideas but the first thing that comes to my mind is: how many of these hot water devices do I need to buy and install in order for my baristas to keep up with the morning rush? I mean, one can only brew a cup of coffee so fast. And it's something I've been thinking of quite a bit lately as we prepare to open project hampden. How do we handle a rush if we're brewing everything by-the-cup to-order? Take the pour over method, as an example. Let's say that our best barista operating at her optimum speed in the best of conditions can dose, grind, prep and brew a 12z coffee at her fastest. That's a minimum of four minutes and thirty seconds. Any less and you've cut a corner somewhere that's going to seriously impact the cup quality. If we're brewing that pour over with hand kettles, we can stack brew the coffees in a simultaneous chain, which can reduce the customer wait time to two minutes (if we're on the money). With that kind of efficiency, we can brew coffee for customers without an inordinate wait. Let's say there's six people in line, that last person might have to wait twelve minutes or so. But take those same six people and put them in a line waiting for these new, digitally-controlled hot water heaters doing the pour over work and it's a minimum of 4.5 minutes per cup and that sixth customer's wait time has increased to a minimum 24 minutes. That's way too much time in anyone's book. Compare that to the Fetco Extractor brewer whose parameters you can set to deliver a really delicious cup of coffee - and you can brew 1.5 liters in four minutes. Makes me wonder if these chaps aren't simply taking the long route towards building a time-consuming, pricey hot water delivery system that is unable to beat the Fetco...

I've always been good about being able to separate things in my life. In many ways, I feel there's a need for me to always maintain a composed and confident outward appearance. No matter what may be bothering me personally, I've always tried to keep that hidden in the background. And I think I'm starting to lose my poker face. For weeks, people have asked me when we're opening project hampden. Now people ask me if I'm excited. They want to know that I'm excited. But I don't think that I am. Perhaps more accurately, I can no longer tell if I'm excited. I know that having such a great crew of baristas is exciting to me and that we're going to be doing some truly progressive stuff, but everything else feels out of focus in my world, making it nearly impossible for me to get excited about opening. When I was a child, I used to have nightmares about alien creatures. Last night I had a nightmare about binge eating McDonald's french fries as though it were live and in real time. My neck muscles are tense. I constantly feel like puking. My stress levels are at a all-time high and my heart feels like it's racing and about to explode. I've always heard about stress killing people, and for the first time in my life, I can see how. If I drop dead soon, don't be surprised, I won't be. Spro Hampden opens this Friday.

My brain is full of questions at the moment, and I thought I’d post (vent) some of them on the off chance that anyone reading them has any answers. - Chaff in ground coffee: is there an easy way to get rid of it? Does the coffee taste very different afterwards? The roll and blow method is quite messy. - Should coffee definitely spend time in reposo, or are we just roasting super fresh crop coffees wrong? I’ve tasted coffees that have been described as being too fresh (a bit green) and have seen that taste drop back over a few weeks. Is this a raw product thing or a roast profile thing? - Is there any solid research/explanation of why we bloom when we brew pourover? A bit like spinning the tamper to polish, this is something I started doing because other people started doing it. I am sure there is some solid thinking behind blooming (certainly compared to the spinny polish thing) – I just wonder if much formal work has been done. - Could you fit some form of flow restrictors into pouring kettles? (I’ve had interesting data and flow restriction results wedging a k-type probe down the front of my buono spout.) - Speaking of pouring kettles, is it me or is it really easy to brew under temp with them? - Seeing as how chocolate has a similar model to coffee, more so than wine, should we look at it a bit more for inspiration? Or is the communication and spread of knowledge and genuine information about speciality chocolate (I am sure they have a better term) behind that of coffee? - Cupping: what temperature should the liquid be at the start of brewing? at what point in the cupping brew time should the extraction reach the 19-20% mark? Do coffees taste better as they cool because they are continuing to extract? Should you start temperature influence when you break? The Uber makes me wonder about the temperature thing. - Honey process. This is clearly a much tastier name than pulped natural, how long before everyone starts using it? - Any idea how I can organise the Naturals Debate post into something a little easier to digest? There are many other questions, but I am not complaining – questions are the best bit of coffee. No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin .

Carm tends the pot. There are times when I wonder if we ever can really make traditional foods as good as our parents. Sous vide onglet? No problem. Hydrocolloid that? Not a big deal. But toss me into the pot with traditional Filipino food and I might just screw it up. With nothing left to do on a Sunday evening and me not really being in the mood to be alone, I head over to Chuck and Gen's swanky new house in the rolling hills outside of Westminister where Carm is preparing a pot of sinigang. For the uninitiated, Sinigang is the sour broth standard of the Philippines. It can be prepared in a variety of different ways but it's always soured by the leaves of the tamarind. And since tamarind leaves can be a bit tricky to come by, there's always Mama Sita. Sort of almost there. Think of Mama Sita as the Hamburger Helper of Philippine Cuisine. In case you don't have the time or inclination to hunt down the elusive tamarind leaves, Mama Sita has a powder mix just for you. Most importantly, Mama Sita has somehow deduced the proper amount of sourness in the mix and it tastes just like your lola used to make. Maybe I'm just stubborn. Maybe I'm just that "hardcore." Or maybe I'm just foolish enough to cling to some sort of arcane "must only be made from scratch" philosophy, but I've never used Mama Sita's mixes. I'm certain I've eaten dishes made by Mama Sita, but I've never used Mama Sita to make my dishes. Then again, I don't cook Filipino food that often. But I should. Indian tamarind paste. Not ideal for sinigang. By the time I arrive, things are in full swing. Carm has already been to the market to gather ingredients but did not see the Mama Sita's so she went off-book and picked up a bottle of Indian style tamarind paste. I should note that I like tamarinds. Give me a ripe tamarind and I'm gonna eat that sucker down. This Indian tamarind paste is tartfully sour but it's a paste made from the unripe fruit, not the sour leaves. It may sound like no big deal but the leaves don't impart color to the dish, leaving the broth clear. The brown paste of the tamarind fruit is slowly discoloring the broth into what could be beef stew. Having never made sinigang before, I'm cast into the mix because the flavor balance has gone slightly pear shaped and we're trying to figure out what to do. The sourness is there but it's not bold enough. Maybe if we boil it down and reduce the broth the flavor will pop. My peasant sized serving. After about an hour of reducing, the broth still hasn't popped. Time to add more ingredients. More tamarind and the broth gets darker. How about a little more fish sauce for saltiness? Then some lemon juice for acidity? Ooops - crap. Now there's too much acidity. More Tamarind. After quite a bit of errors and calculations, we finally get the sinigang to the right sour balance and sit down to eat. The extra cooking time has rendered the pork super tender and it's actually not bad - even though it has that unfortunate brown color. Next time we won't have to invite Mama Sita - so long as we get the right leaves.

The Friends & Family Invitation. After eight months of planning and working, on Thursday, March 18th, project hampden ceases to be and Spro Hampden will emerge in its place. We invite all of our friends, family and readership to join us on this day anytime between 9am to 5pm to enjoy a coffee on us. Spro Hampden 851 West 36th Street Baltimore, MD 21211 410-243-1262 www.sprocoffee.com

Kimmy sets up the POS. It's the last Saturday at project hampden and there's still much to do: install the POS register and get a bunch of miscellaneous stuff in order. Pretty soon we'll be making coffee for real. Looking out from The Pass. No can do on the 12z Cappuccino? My kind of register! deBuyer Carbon Steel Pan Custom tamper by Reg Barber.

At Hotelympia I met Rosalyn from Allegra and I asked her the simply question of how many coffee shops there are in the UK. She was really nice and looked it up for me: “The total UK coffee shop market, including branded chains, independents and non-specialist operators, is estimated at 11,063 outlets” Allegra produce reports and do fantastic market research for the coffee industry. Have a look at www.allegra.co.uk