August 30, 2010
The other day, when walking down the street, I caught a whiff of perfume. It was the same scent that my first girlfriend used to wear, a girl I dated on and off from seventh grade through ninth, and smelling the perfume again brought waves of old emotions back. Remembering my first kiss, and really, the first sort of connection I had to another person that evoked some sort of false signals of love.
I get the same way every year when I smell coffee from Yirgacheffe. There’s something so beautiful in those candied fruit and floral aromatics. I was sitting at the bar counter at the Millennium Park Coffee Bar the other day on my day off, and as soon as a batch of coffee was dropped in the Guatemala for a cup of the pour-over coffee of the day, the scents drifted seductively across the brew bar and curled up around in my nostrils. My palms started sweating, and I wondered if my co-worker was going to introduce me to the beautiful new coffee that just arrived in the store, or if I’d have to stumble into some sort of weird pick up line on my own.
“So, you come here often? About once a year, eh? But you’re staying for a few months?”
So there’s a chance for a light, late summer romance! Just don’t tell my wife.
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July 27, 2010
Yeah, I don’t know why we ever let them write a coffee article either.There’s a problem I have: before I became a full on coffee nerd, I was working my way into writing as a possible career. That didn’t quite pan out. Turns out, I’m much more useful professionally as a coffee maker than an editor. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t lost my growing passion for the written word.
So I’m left with, now, a deep passion and professional immersion in the world of coffee, while I continue to write and read articles with a fervor. And anytime I can catch a newspaper or magazine article written about coffee? Why, that might just be the conjunction of two worlds. But there’s a problem. Most mainstream outlets really don’t know much about coffee, and instead of educating themselves, they tend to fall to a few horrible cliches to carry their piece instead of in-depth information. So without further ado, the following is a short list of words I’d love to see disappear from articles written about coffee in mainstream outlets.
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July 23, 2010
The full gear lineup.When I first brought home my Virtuoso grinder, I was replacing a KitchenAid ProLine that I’d been upgraded to when I lost a spring on my previous KitchenAid grinder, and the customer service lady misunderstood me and thought it was broken. It was a fine grinder that served me well, but I was ready to step my game up. After months of using one in the store for our Chemex and Cafe Solos, I decided to go for the Baratza Virtuoso grinder.
But I found something out when I got home. I found that I could not get a grind setting that brewed a delicious cup, and reacted the way I was used to in the cone — the coffee bed would rise quickly, or drain slowly. Instead, I found the water would pass through the grounds quite quickly, giving me an overall brew time of less than a minute. And thus began my quest for discovering the perfect brew specs for the V60.
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June 30, 2010
Obviously some type of devise used to cook drugs.I’m not particularly proud or fond of the last two posts that I have up here, but I think they represent what happens when you let your judgment slide and you just can’t let a comment go, and it’s something I should leave up to remind myself of that fact. Even though I want to just leave it all in the dust, I’ve got another itch to scratch, and it shames me to think that this kernel of thought comes from Todd Carmichael, once again.
In one of his latest posts, “chasing the dragon with slow-brew apparati” is used as a rallying phrase. Todd’s approach to thinking of coffee heavily focuses on espresso, and he’s been quite clear about how he views brewed coffee. But here’s the problem with this: he’s got it all turned around.
Chasing the dragon? It’s firstly a reference to a particular way to smoke heroin. In context, here, it’s used as a reference as someone trying to attain the unattainable — after that first high, you’re never able to replicate it exactly the same way, and you’re forever attempting to achieve something just beyond your grasp in the cup.
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June 8, 2010
XKCD, well aware of the problem.On a Monday night, the last thing I expected to see in my inbox was an email from Todd Carmichael, one that began with this paragraph:
Before I become completely ostracized there are number of very important topics in roasting that are never properly discussed on blogs like yours. I have 9 of them, and this is the first. Would you mind discussing it?
Then he went into point one of nine, which I won’t reprint here, but can say that it may be a valid concern about gas roasting. I figured that hey, maybe he did want to pursue an honest to god back and forth discussion, and participate in the overall pursuit of great coffee. So I sent him an email back, detailing what would be needed for me (or anyone) to take him seriously, and consider this first, valid point that he had sent along.
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