Saturday, June 26, 2004


tomorrow and tomorrow

having the awesome annual nyc scaa consumer member coffee cupping event tomorrow means that today has to become a sunday.

in terms of pizza-making and yoga, that is.

i spent my lunch time yesterday at the exchange helping set up the grading room.

this meant i got the glamorous task of helping grade some of the coffee to be used.

"here's a job you're totally qualified for," former scaa prez steve colten cracked in his usual groucho-marx way, as he handed me what looked like a stack of slender wooden boxes.

the boxes were frames, holding metal screens with round-holed meshes of different sizes.

since part of coffee bean grading is based on size, what you do is sieve the beans by just scooping a huge number into the top of the stack, picking it up, and shaking to sort.

shaking. and shaking. and shaking. for about oh, 45 mins. nonstop. batch after batch after batch. i'm told that in guatemala the people who do this 60 hours a week get US$5!

sometimes people remark how fun volunteering for the scaa must be. and it is -- if you like getting up at 5:45am to plug in espresso machines, coming back at 2am to scrub them and spending the rest of day running around in search of milk while unhappy people who have paid good money to get in threaten you with portafilters of hot heavy brass.

do it 2 or 3 days in a row and it's called "conference."

idling away your summer afternoons shaking green coffee while various grading room employees try politely not to roll their eyes at such a hopeless loser should probably be called "madness."

by the end i most likely had more beans on the floor than thru the screen. naturally the pros have a gentle kind of rolling motion that quickly gets the beans thru the holes while somehow not scattering a single one.

note to self: must discover "zen & the art of coffee screening."

but seriously, i do love my time with scaa and the coffee people. specialty coffee folks are among the most fascinatng in the world.

it's something about the passionate, adventurous and romantic nature of coffee itself.

my brief indentured servitude in the grading room should have been a double-happiness thing, because it's also used by the cocoa tribe.

but alas, i didn't meet a single chocolate scion while i was there. . .

and while i brace myself for more shaking when we get to the exchange for the event itself, let me remind you all: the extravaganza begins tomorrow, 11am, at oren's daily roast on 58th & madison.

see ya there!

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