As a former Toronto guy, I would trust Tony. I have also heard many good comments about Boxcar.

As a fairly new Ottawa guy, my go to place is Ministry of Coffee (Elgin and now Parkdale Market locations). They rotate their roaster weekly - Heart, P&S, Bows and Arrows, George Howell, and 49th Parallel. Occasionally, I do drop by Bread and Sons for more 49th Parallel.

In Ontario I would strongly recommend Pig Iron, though their selection is limited and doesn't change very often. There are various Toronto roasters like Sense Appeal, Cut Coffee, and Propeller I've never tried because they don't have web stores. Same with Anchored in NS. I occasionally treat myself to coffee from a Western Canada roaster when I feel like footing the shipping bill and/or waiting over a week for delivery.

BC:
http://originscoffee.com/
http://www.49thparallelroasters.com/
https://www.philsebastian.com/
https://bowsandarrowscoffee.com/
http://www.rocanini.com/
http://jjbeancoffee.com/
http://fernwoodcoffee.com/

AB:
http://www.transcendcoffee.ca/
http://www.fratellocoffee.com/

Be careful about roast dates when buying coffee imported from the States. I was at Le Nektar in Quebec City last week and they had a display of Intelligentsia beans roasted on July 6

I've actually ordered from Square Mile in the UK several times. The sweet spot for shipping is six bags at £3.20/bag. Monday shipments typically arrive by the end of the week for me here in Waterloo, which is faster than Canada Post Expedited from BC.

coffeestork wrote:As a former Toronto guy, I would trust Tony. I have also heard many good comments about Boxcar.

As a fairly new Ottawa guy, my go to place is Ministry of Coffee (Elgin and now Parkdale Market locations). They rotate their roaster weekly - Heart, P&S, Bows and Arrows, George Howell, and 49th Parallel. Occasionally, I do drop by Bread and Sons for more 49th Parallel.

Hi coffeestork, I've read your blog before. Nice work. Noticed you haven't been posting for a while. Will you be picking up the pen again?

Also, if anyone is looking for Stumptown beans in Toronto, I found this place. They get weekly shipments from Stumptown on Thursdays. They sell 12oz bags for home use:
http://www.kupfertandkim.com/index.html

As for Intelligentsia beans sold at Manic. They get them weekly, I believe, and it only takes a day or two for them to get here. So they're only a couple of days post-roast when Manic puts them up for sale.

Bob_McBob wrote:In Ontario I would strongly recommend Pig Iron, though their selection is limited and doesn't change very often. There are various Toronto roasters like Sense Appeal, Cut Coffee, and Propeller I've never tried because they don't have web stores. Same with Anchored in NS. I occasionally treat myself to coffee from a Western Canada roaster when I feel like footing the shipping bill and/or waiting over a week for delivery.

BC:
http://originscoffee.com/
http://www.49thparallelroasters.com/
https://www.philsebastian.com/
https://bowsandarrowscoffee.com/
http://www.rocanini.com/
http://jjbeancoffee.com/
http://fernwoodcoffee.com/

AB:
http://www.transcendcoffee.ca/
http://www.fratellocoffee.com/

Be careful about roast dates when buying coffee imported from the States. I was at Le Nektar in Quebec City last week and they had a display of Intelligentsia beans roasted on July 6

I've actually ordered from Square Mile in the UK several times. The sweet spot for shipping is six bags at £3.20/bag. Monday shipments typically arrive by the end of the week for me here in Waterloo, which is faster than Canada Post Expedited from BC.

Thanks for the kudos, Stork! You are the man.

I love going to Sense Appeal and having a shot. They are consistent and they haven't fallen into the 'as light as we can make it' trend......yet. Chocolatey fruit comfort shots are great.

I've done the Square Mile ordering myself and I've had the same experience. It's also great stuff, like truly great stuff.

Pig Iron's Steel Wheel has been very good, but I haven't had it in months.

Propeller Coffee at Crema Coffee sells the Ace espresso and that's usually a very tasty shot. It's a very nicely balance shot of bright and sweetness. I've had one espresso pro call the shots 'sour', but that wasn't my interpretation. I go to the location at Bloor and Yonge.

I'm not taken with anything provided by Detour and rarely go to Dark Horse Espresso.

Manic's Manic espresso blend from Social is nice. It's cheap and it's a full pound of coffee. It's not going to blow your socks off, but it is a great daily driver.

Spitz.me wrote: I've done the Square Mile ordering myself and I've had the same experience. It's also great stuff, like truly great stuff.

Bob_McBob wrote:I've actually ordered from Square Mile in the UK several times. The sweet spot for shipping is six bags at £3.20/bag. Monday shipments typically arrive by the end of the week for me here in Waterloo, which is faster than Canada Post Expedited from BC.

What do you recommend from Square Mile? I imagine it's all good, considering it's James Hoffmann's baby.
But what do you both like?

And, yes, the other good thing about Crema Coffee Co. at Bloor/Yonge is they have an operational Clover machine.

Too many choices! First world problem, for sure!

Finally, one of these days I'm going to get Sam James' Cut Coffee espresso blend to pull at home. They always pull excellent shots at his Toronto shops. Anyone pulling this at home?

Was in Toronto two weeks ago and bought some from the shop near the Drake Hotel. It's interesting, although i like brighter coffees. Could not quite get the flavour separation on my setup though. Must be the equipment

Same James pulls ristrettos from what I remember. Were you pulling ristretto?

Yep, I'm pretty sure they're pulling ristrettos at SJCB. I was there the other day and was told they dose 18.5 to 19g with a temp of 199F. I forgot to ask about output.

I'm pulling between a normale and a ristretto. I'm using 18,5 grams but i haven't checked the output weight in a while. It's a tight pour but not super tight. Anyway, i have a suspicion that my Mini may not be giving me the best grounds compared to the Robur in their shop (looking at a K10 in the internets).

The bag i got from the location near Drake Hotel was 8 days out of roast. I think that's quite acceptable considering i ran thought it in 5 days.

It is my experience that bags bought at the different cafés in Montreal all hover between 1 to 2 weeks off roast, and this is true even in the top places. Heck, it's even the case at St-Henri and they roast onsite. I can understand the product is expensive and they try to minimise losses, but it's a little disappointing. Maybe i'm being anal about it too.

It's actually the main reason i'm using Social Coffee. I order it online and it's in my hands just a 2-3 days off roast. I even let it rest sometimes lol

Bob_McBob wrote:I occasionally treat myself to coffee from a Western Canada roaster when I feel like footing the shipping bill and/or waiting over a week for delivery.

I didn't fully realize how good we have it in the U.S. with respect to shipping until I started looking into having some Canadian coffees sent to me via Canada Post while I was on vacation in St. John, New Brunswick, visiting family recently. IIRC the average shipping charge *within* Canada on a bag or two was around $12. I'm used to paying about half of that for USPS Priority--yikes! In the end, I didn't cough up any $$ because Jessica Cole at Elysian kindly offered to send me a few samples (which, I should add, were excellent).