March 26, 2008

The Canister on Osborne

While not really a review, I wanted to make a quick post about The Canister, a coffee, tea, and associated paraphernalia store located in Osborne Village.

I've walked by The Canister many times, but made a point to stop in a couple of weeks ago. They have a large selection of coffee and tea cups and associated gear, and what seemed to be a great deal of tea as well. I didn't look at their coffee too closely, but they seemed to have a reasonably large selection of coffee, though it was hard to tell where it was from (and thus how fresh it was). I didn't ask. Interestingly, there were a couple of varieties of green beans for those who might want to roast at home (again there might be better/fresher sources depending on what you're looking for — do your research).

What caught my eye was The Canister's selection of manual coffee grinders. I've been thinking about getting a manual conical burr mill for my press pot, and had heard that Zassenhaus mills were amongst the best on the market. However, I never expected to find one in Winnipeg. Lo and behold — there they were on the shelf, box mills and Turkish mills of various kinds. The (presumably) owner and I got to talking about how he managed to obtain these mills given the lack of a Zassenhaus distributor in North America.

So, if you're looking for a high quality manual coffee mill, The Canister is worth a look. They might be worth a look for coffee as well — just ask where the coffee comes from and how fresh it is.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got my Zassenhaus Turkish grinder at Cornelia Bean a few years back, and it works well for my purposes. I've heard that they were bought out and that the new grinders are no longer manufactured in Germany. I have a couple of Bialetti stovetop units; Kaliffa and Kona. I noticed that you mentioned "S-Cues" in your blog, I assume you mean X-Cues. After having my first coffee at 40 (!) I literally tried every joint I could find in town that served Italian style coffee, and found that no-one could beat Tony's pours. His espresso, for a little while, makes me like other people and feel optimistic about the future of the human race. Virtually everyone else's ristretto is more like a (insert insulting descriptor here) doppio. Some good but inconsistent others include Monviso Ristorante, De Lucas, ZCafe, et cetera. This post, like most, is just me mentally farting.

Nathan said...

Yeah, I've bought loose tea from there before. The guy behind the counter seemed to know his stuff and was very friendly, not to mention the fact that they had dozens of different blends of tea. I can't speak to the coffee selection though...

I'd recommend this store to anyone looking to try something new, or wants to buy bulk loose tea in any assortment of wild and crazy blends.

I'm sure you could go in there and just describe how you wanted it to taste and he would be able to blend something up special, just for you... that's just the feeling I got.

Anonymous said...

I just heard about this place not 5 minutes ago.. I've been looking for milk frothing pitchers and coffee syrups in Winnipeg and they're pretty hard to find. Do they have them here? And how much were the manual burr grinders? Thanks!