Monday, April 26, 2004


cow juice

let me begin by saying that the scaa conference in atlanta's a blur to me. even as i write, author ken davids is giving the last consumer member workshop on home coffee roasting.

i had to return last night -- amazing how that job thing really impedes one love of coffee. devoted long-time readers may recall that when i left my fear was for biscotti. would i have enough?

but as usual, i had overlooked the obvious. my real fear should have been: milk for steaming into cappuccinos. where the heck was it? when you are standing forlorn in the middle of the atlanta conference center with 35 consumer members and 16 home espresso machines, the mind suddenly turns to milk.

the convention center delivery staff failed to materialize with the promised milk until the espresso lab was more than half over. the projector wasn't working. the long-time c-members went and played with the fabulous machines provided so kindly by wholelattelove, 1st line, and chriscoffee.

i myself toyed with the beautiful elektra! however, the 10 or so newbies had a hard time without the presentation, and i still worry many didn't get enough time actually making espresso, since the lab was only 1 hour and 15 minutes long.

i did come over and try to help out the newbies by pulling shots and tamping for them, and quickly discussing milk frothing. but the time was so fleeting. . . giving them straight shots to drink was less successful, since they mostly appeared to be latte drinkers.

the home drip brewing hands-on lab also suffered from lack of time, not that counterculture's david haddock and tim castle didn't have an excellent working presentation. we just didn't have time to play with all the technivorms and bunns.

this is what i learned: make all hands-on workshops 3 hours. and bring your own milk.

let me step back and just say i am very grateful to the scaa, its board, the conference committee, and the professional staff who helped make this possible. i am especially thankful for cindy chang of counterculture. that woman is a goddess.

i'm actually wracked with guilt because i had to leave early on sunday evening, and poor cindy chang was stuck re-boxing and cleaning espresso machines by herself. i'll have to make this up to her somehow.

from don schoenholt of gillies and lindsay bolger of gmcr's consumer cupping -- which drew an audience of 65, only 8 of which appeared to be pros crashing our party -- my conference experience was: set up the room for an event, see the event start on time, count the number of people, leave to set up the room for the next event.

return in the evening to clean up all the rooms. rinse and repeat. thus i can say that in a certain sense i did not attend my own conference! not that i mind, actually. i did get to stay for most of the espresso lab, and the whole drip brewing lab.

however, i did end up missing the tour of the exhibit floor, the official scaa consumer member reception, and the event i most wanted to see: the "meet the authors," where scaa chief ted lingle was speaking.

on the other hand, i did get to see the incomparable chipper harris and bill fishbein of coffeekids. and i also got to touch lindsay bolger's engraved silver cupping spoon. . .

surprisingly enough, it appears that the most successful event was the zen coffee meditation. that had a full house at 50. another 25 were easily turned away; and many people told me they wished there had been a second session on another day so they could have come.

interestingly enough, one of the attendees was the wife of the scaa conference chair, christian wolthers. she was a lovely and charming lady, and appeared to love the presentation. hooray!

but what made that so special was not only the willingness of the attendees to suspend their disbelief and try such an unusual activity, but also, naturally, the incredible solid chocolate mini-buddhas donated by chocolatier eric girerd via jim munson of dallis coffee, and of course, the fabulous biscotti of patrick coston.

another big surprise was the response to the coffee created especially for the event by don schoenholt of gillies from a blend suggested by steve colten of atlantic. several coffeehouse owners came up to me and asked about it.

overall the conversations went like this: "i love this fabulous coffee. this event is so special. those vanilla-almond-fennel biscotti are mindblowing." and several also inquired about how to hold such an event for their customers at their own shops. . . .

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