bread, coffee, chocolate, yoga

in which oren and i have a slight perceptual difference

2007-12-18T19:00:00.000-08:00

so the awesome oren sent me said colombia tolima corazon and i immediately tore up the bag the way greedy children descend on ruffles.

and boom! the aroma of super-fresh roasted beans struck me with a near physical blow. i swear.

in a daze i rushed to contact o. himself. "o o o," i said, "this tolima certainly is nothing like any ordinary colombian. it smells like roast chicken!"

this caused o to hesitate slightly. "well," he replied, "if you think it's chicken, i hope at least it's fresh chicken."

his answer had the gentle air of "what kind of lsd have you put your nose on, girl?" but that's the way it goes in coffee sometimes. i happen to love chicken, so i meant it as a compliment.

ah the memories of roast chicken in the farmhouse in kansas. . .but while o has an impeccable cupping nose from which we all can learn, i cannot give him my scent memories, so in this case alas we are forever separated by time.

this too is part of specialty coffee's loveliness. it is intensely personal in a way that can be hard, so hard, to convey, despite all the training we get on the scaa flavor wheel!

finally a real vibiemme manual

2007-12-16T12:10:00.000-08:00

long-time readers recall that i presently have 3 espresso machines: my beloved italian princess, the rancilio silvia (it's interesting to note how this machine has held its value – i could easily sell it for what i paid for it since it is in excellent condition!); my steamy latin sweetheart, carlos expobar (thanks as always, wll!); and of course, caesar vibiemme from jim of 1st-line.

everyone knows the italo-inglese of the standard vibiemme manual is, um, difficult at best and unhelpful at worst. so jim has sent out a great illustrated pdf, more than 30 pages long, of everything you need to know about caesar.

it is most excellent. i adore caesar, he can have my whole kitchen!

thanks so much jim; caesar has been a great addition to my life and makes great coffee with ease.

how i developed my relationship with caesar without it? well, caesar isn't too bad really, but this manual does provide some great hints on descaling, temperature adjustment, and gasket replacement!

fantastic work, jim.

and the beauty pours down

2007-12-14T19:43:00.000-08:00

woot! more delicious coffee has arrived from:

forrest at batdorf: the dancing goat. many thanks for the staple espresso of bccy!
oren at oren's daily roast: colombia tolima, kenya aa. rock on, o!
don schoenholt at gillies: the best sumatra ever, the lintong kuda mas, triple-pick, japanese prep grade 1; the famous yrg(a.k.a. the best yrg ever); and his yemen moka sanani. divine! so grateful

but picking up from yesterday, i started the morning as promised with mark inman's taylormaid spicy-floral and bright miraflor in the cafetiére.

go for it. highly recommended. will chemex tomorrow and write more. oh, wait. . .i have about 7 lbs. of coffee in da houae.

the beauty pours and pours on down.

yes i am alive!

2007-12-13T19:02:00.000-08:00

sorry for the long delay, folks, but vacations happen. i went to jamaica, where among many other things, i visited the twyman's old tavern estate and walked through wallenford.

young david twyman is energetic and passionate; his lovely mother dorothy is as delicate as a bird. she roasts the beans in her diedrich, and prefers her coffee dark to accent the chocolate flavors.

drinking the twyman's dark roast is exactly like making a great cup of mild island coffee and then melting a dark chocolate candy bar in it. oh yum.

i also hiked up a road through the dennis estate (hi james!), where mr. right chatted up some coffee pickers briefly.

hurricane dean in august roared through, ruined the roads, and tore up the trees. in some places the shading banana trees were taken down, really affecting growth.

also, a longer than normal rainy season, which the farmers attributed to global warming, made everything too wet for too long. this caused david twyman to fear that fungus would take root; he was hoping for much sun from now on.

i have many pictures of driving-thru-the-landslides in the cloudforest until you get to the place in "downtown" section where the road washed out, leaving a gaping break about 100 feet long that plunges 2500 feet straight down. a twisted tongue of asphalt dangles in space.

that's when you push the car through the dennis estate road and hike around the hill with the pickers!

but now back in sleet-storm noo yawk, i'm greeted with a loving care package from long-time bccy pal mark inman of taylormaid. oooh ooh ooh.

wonderful organic coffees, his red rooster, the goat rock, fave espressi a and 0, a couple of fantastic single origins. . .the one i'm drinking tomorrow readers is the fair-trade uca miraflor natural reserve.

finca siberia returns

2007-11-17T11:06:00.000-08:00

long-time readers may recall that i regularly review batdorf's famed finca siberia pacamara from el salvador (here and here, for example).

this is what's so fantastic about enjoying the privilege of a long-standing relationship with a coffee roaster — we can return to the farm year after year and see how the coffee changes, how the farmer has been able to improve quality, how the roaster has been able to build on the relationship and roast the coffee from a full understanding of all its characteristics.

and speaking of relationships, it's a pity my long-time friend jessica marshall left batdorf to return to school this fall. best of luck jessica!

you are a super girl. to paraphrase the dolphins, "so long and thanks for all the coffee."

(actually my favorite d. adams quote remains "all it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground. . .and miss.") but this allows us to welcome forrest, a pretty groovy guy himself.

forrest was kind enough to send me this year's finca siberia. woot! thanks to you, big guy.

got your scaa flavor wheel handy? ok let's go.

the finca is roasted as always to what i'd call full-city- (the beans showed no traces of oil). i chemexed it in the usual way.

i know that even people with long experience reading this site are flummoxed by the notion that coffee really has a near infinite flavor range, within the taxonomy of the wheel. but those who truly love coffee won't be surprised when i describe the lovely pacamara as having a spicy ginger-flower fragrance, a crisp green-apple brightness, and a basalmic rice nose with a caramel-vanilla-type aftertaste.

the chemex gives it a pleasant medium body. i easily enjoyed it black.

highly recommended if you like that tingly sensation you get when biting into a juicy tart granny smith. other people might raise their eyebrows. . ."a coffee that tastes like a mix of green apples and ginger flowers and pours from the pot like a maroon satin ribbon falling from its spool?"

oh yes. welcome to the passionate and beautiful world of specialty coffee. forrest also sent some interesting chocolate, which i'll talk about later. . .

tolima in da house

2007-10-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

so this morning i was sampling andrew b's ecco organic nicaragua, las termopilas, from the other day – it's not as bright as i thought it'd be &ndahs; when what arrived but oren bloostein's colombia tolima? life just gets better and better. . .can't wait to brew this baby in the chemex!

thanks again, a & o!

the glorious andrew b. offers c.o.e. salvation!

2007-10-15T18:48:00.000-07:00

ooh ooh ooh. it seems like a dog's age since the fabulous andrew b. of ecco sent coffee!

now i realize what's been missing from my life! but seriously, along with jessica's can't-live-without batdorf dancing goats, andrew's northern italian espresso is a favorite in the bccy household.

and, as always, andrew's so generous with the c.o.e. goodness! today it's an organic nicaraguan prize-winner, with a cupping score above 90!

grown by farmer milton canales on the las termopilas estate in nueva segovia, it's a high-grown caturra! andrew lists it as grown at nearly 4,600 feet.

oh, we love high-grown coffees here at bccy. a wet-processed coffee, it's apparently completely sun-dried, meaning this should be a bright, floral and fruity cup.

with a roast date of the 11th, i can't wait to brew it tomorrow in the vac pot. thank you, andrew!

she's so heavy

2007-10-03T20:06:00.000-07:00

whoa! 10w/40 and that's a good thing!

i'm talking of course about the body i found in peter g's counterculture finca kilimanjaro.

just terrific body in the cafetiére. lightly bright and citrusy as promised.

altho' peter had compared it to a kenya aa, i have to say i didn't find it anywhere near razor-y.

but as i was grinding this morning i noticed by beloved saeco 2002 was having a hard time, grinding very slowly. the motor had a markedly labored sound.

so i decided to rush home early from work this evening, take the puppy apart, clean it, just give it the once over. as i do so i suddenly realize this grinder is about 8 years old now!

and then of course i ran some of josh's great grindz through it to brush up the burrs. all good.

ah, it grinds as speedily as ever and the motor sounds better. . .

2 new coffees from counterculture

2007-10-01T19:14:00.000-07:00

and a big bccy thanks to peter g. of counterculture for two new microlots, the finca kilimanjaro, from santa ana, el salvador, and the finca el puente los cipreses from marcala, honduras.

peter compares the el salvador to a kenya, with notes of blackcurrant and caramel – sounds yummy to me – while he calls the honduras bright, citrus, and smooth.

both of these seem perfect for the chemex to me!

dancing with the goats

2007-09-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

besides discovering that the nice syd low of aliencamel is also a coffee lover and friend of long-time bccy pal and barista champ paul bassett, he and i had a nice chat about email on the iphone, which you'll see posted shortly over on iphonefreak. of course syd has one of paul's sunbeam machines.

and while my job has just been insane recently, again!, i do want very much to acknowledge and thank the ever-wonderful jessica of batdorf for her delicious dancing goats. basically, it's main substance on which i live nowadays. . .

see me again at da freak

2007-09-06T10:29:00.000-07:00

yuppers, dear readers, much as me no fan of the mermaid, i am interested in its iphone integration.

see me on this over at iphonefreak.

thanks big guy!

2007-09-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

i absolutely don't know you, mec, (but this is the famed french comic from which you take your screen name) but thanks for posting me as a link on kopikol! yeah some of the comments are not that great, but who cares?

17,000 hits later, i gotta say, the french love coffee. pity they drink so much robusta. . .cafe au lait and a p'tit espres' for everyone!

freak out with me

2007-09-02T12:45:00.000-07:00

yuppers, dear readers, it's true – you can find me now also over at one of the top iphone blogs, iphonefreak.

here's my inaugural post, where i freak out about the lack of strong calendar integration for iphone. so come on over and dance with the freaks.

i worship my iphone, but that doesn't mean the killer app's been found quite yet. . .and should steve start selling ringtones next week, you bet the first one i'm buying is:

in memoriam alfred peet

2007-09-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

alfred peet

specialty coffee pioneer

grandfather of american specialty coffee

may flights of houris bear thee to thy rest

today is declared an official day of coffee mourning

alfred peet's influence on the specialty coffee industry
is incalculable

on the iphone unlock

2007-08-24T18:46:00.000-07:00

of course the entire internet was abuzz today with the iphone unlock. it was like xmas all over the world.

but the issue that must be addressed – by at&t – is why? why did so many fanbois devote themselves to this odd task?

not just because of a weird principle about open networks. no, it's a direct statement about how much everyone everywhere loathes at&t.

if their executives don't yet have customer satisfaction as part of their compensation package, well, it's almost too late to start. can you imagine how it must feel to work at one of the world's most despised companies?

i mean, no amount of re-branding is going to overcome the intense negative emotion. . . okay, open hatred . . . inspired by at&t. if i were a shareholder, i'd be shaking management by the lapels with rage.

the pity is, it could all have been avoided. at&t could have generally treated its customers better.

but years of arrogance and abuse have brought us to the point that no, it's a global party to stick a finger in their eye.

no doubt now all my friends overseas will be skyping me to beg me to find a way to smuggle them an iphone v.a.t.-free.

the purple princess alights

2007-08-24T18:11:00.000-07:00

woo-hoo! long-time no-hear-from one of bccy's oldest pals, peter g. of counterculture.

but today he kindly sends on his most personal and special coffees, a bean close to his heart – the honduras finca el puente, a.k.a. the purple princess, so called for its shimmering lavender fragrance and lovely fruit aroma.

when you think of coffee fragrance, you rarely think purple flowers from france, but as ted lingle always says "coffee is infinite: the wheel is just a guide to the mountaintop where you go on alone and gaze into forever."

the potential of coffee, its romantic and passionate allure: yes it is most powerfully found in these rare perfumes. everything you could want in coffee is there to be found if you devote yourself to the search.

the finca el puente's a relationship coffee: peter's known the caballero family for years on a personal level, and indeed they visit each other back and forth. the finca el puente's just a coffee that you identify, not only with that specific family, but also peter – drinking it just tells you a lot about who peter is!

so i'm very happy to have this year's purple princess. i'll be brewing it tomorrow afternoon before my regular visit to supermodel central, and of course after my staple bean for the morning cappuccino, jessica's marvelous batdorf dancing goats!

sigh. lemme guess. . .

2007-08-22T18:16:00.000-07:00

"using chemical analyses and follow-up taste tests by humans trained to detect coffee bitterness, the scientists discovered the compounds that make coffee bitter and also how they form."

drumroll please. . .and the answer is going to be compounds formed during roasting, like chlorogenic acid. dark roasted coffees are always the bitterest, from the phenylindanes.

i guess the "scientists" doing this study are like, from mars or something, because anyone who's spent 10 minutes talking to a coffee chemist, to a pro taster, to long-time bccy pal paul songer, or the like, already knows this.

so let's take off our blindfolds and read the rest of the article. sigh.

sometimes you wish people would just read flament on google. for example, here.

please remember that bitterness in coffee should pleasant, as in dark chocolate and stout. anything more than that: overroasting!

bad coffee! the mermaid! avoid, dear readers, flee!

a really dumb idea

2007-08-21T20:18:00.000-07:00

only someone who doesn't actually practice a lot of yoga would think this mat would be a good idea.

i'm trying to imagine how it would be useful in inversions – or even during an intense power or ashtanga yoga class.

yeah, i'm trying to imagine it at greg's class at yttp. where, now that the 20th has passed, i intend to return tomorrow eve.

see ya all at the 6pm class! i'll be a tad stiff for the first round of surya namaskar, but after that. . .i'll be flying!

my little heart leaps for joy

2007-08-19T19:53:00.000-07:00

"Not only are people drinking anywhere from one- to two-thirds of their java outside the home, but specialty brands are increasingly invading the supermarket aisles that were once the purview of Maxwell House and Folgers. And they are seeing success: Brands such as Newman's Own, Intellegentsia and Green Mountain are all gaining market share, largely at the two titans' expense.

Patrick Schumann of Edward Jones said the old reliable brands aren't likely to pick up any lost sales. "The brands that have been established as being higher-quality really are the brands that are going to be able to show continued momentum," he said."

i don't know for how many years now i've been arguing that consumers do respond to coffee quality, as the article concludes. and doing so often in the face of specialty coffee professionals, nonetheless, who often argue that the "average consumer" doesn't know about coffee and doesn't care.

well care they do, 'cuz they've voting with their wallets.

another thing about this piece that makes me really happy is of course to see long-time bccy pal doug zell's intelligentsia right up there as a major regional/semi-national roaster. woo-hoo doug!

this isn't to say that i'm slighting my philanthropic friends at gmcr, tho. not at all!

the only part of the article that bugs me is the end, which describes how tough people find brewing coffee at home to be. pity.

but part of the problem, besides the fact too many americans were stuck with only low-quality supermarket junk available, is that most home coffee machines are just terrible. the water's too cold, the cycle and dispersion are all wrong – it's not america's fault.

we need a revolution in coffee machines just as we have had one in specialty coffee! when will the online machine purveyors really step into the limelight?

who will invent the truly awesome new machine design?

hooray for intelly!

2007-08-18T09:35:00.001-07:00

congrats to doug! long-time readers know that doug zell at intelligentsia is one of bccy's oldest, oldest friends.

and so now his new store in la-la land has opened! congrats to you, doug!

quite remiss

2007-08-12T12:36:00.001-07:00

forgive me all i have been quite remiss in posting. . .especially to thank everyone for their great coffees!

i truly enjoyed unclebeanz 2 samples, the wonderful taina and the la castano. i don't understand why artisan coffees in the latin style like this aren't taking the nyc area by storm.

will somebody please fund norman vasquez so he can open his retail location? because his business niche -- upscale latin consumers -- is a no-brainer. that's a 5-store chain off the bat.

and of course jessica's always delicious dancing goats, the batdorf coffee on which my life runs. basically, due to the demands of this work project, i no longer eat or sleep but just live on the goat.

after aug. 20 i'll tell you how that all went down!

in the meantime, thanks to you all for your patience. i will be back very soon!

from da iPhone

2007-08-06T14:52:00.000-07:00

blogging from the iPhone!!!

Yup blogger.com plays well with iPhone.

And thanks for all your kind words about my latest appearance in the Sunday new York times!

That was fun but the "blue eyelashes" part flummoxed me.

now the at&t hell begins

2007-07-29T12:41:00.000-07:00

ok, so everyone knew the downside of the iphone would be at&t – all american mobile providers, but esp. at&t, are famous for the elaborate ways they torture and rip off customers. my colleagues overseas cannot restrain their amazement when they learn of our primitive phone services here and how many ways we are screwed, ways that are often illegal in the e.u.

so. my time to meet the metal teeth of at&t had come, i guess.

i pick up my iphone to try to contact a colleage (oh yeah, working on saturday and sunday, welcome to my new job) only to discover that at&t tells me "phone calls are disallowed." local & international both: wtf?

after a mere 20 minutes on hold, i get through at&t's various voice menus only to be told i have to call after-hours support. great.

at least after-hours support puts you through only about 7 minutes of voice-tree hell before you connect to a human being. yay!

the rep needs to send 2 updates of some kind to my phone to make it work again. um, excuse me, but i'm supposed to be contacting a european person who is waiting on my response.

but the rep can't give me international dialing. i have to wait until monday for that.

why? just press the freaking button on my account and let me work, please!

oh no, at&t corporate policy wouldn't actually let its employees be helpful. in the meantime, the phone begins to work again.

but of course i've missed my european appointment time. great.

i set the phone down and wander off to make pizza dough (late because of this nonsense!) only to come back and find my euro contact, wondering where the heck i was, had been frantically texting me – not that at&t could bother to deliver a timely text.

these were time-stamped 3 hours earlier! faaaan-tas-tic.

note to steve jobs: just raise the cash and buy out at&t, will you please? toss those mo-fo fat-cat executives outta their high towers preferably without benefit of stairs, ok?

nice mention of our friends

2007-07-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

"Flat White, an award-winning café in London's Soho that opened two years ago, has carved out a niche by specialising in a no-expense-spared version of the Antipodean-style frothy coffee from which it takes its name. The company is now looking to expand.

'What we offer over the chains is a much higher attention to detail and more of a community feel,' says Cameron McClure, the New Zealander who was one of Flat White's founder baristas.

'The big guys are really just making coffee drinking more widespread, which ends up creating demand for us.'

'Those people who can tell the difference end up searching out something better. Our business works by taking an artisan approach that's much more labour intensive than the competition are able to offer.'

Flat White buys its beans from The Monmouth Coffee Company, another small, London-based operator that has thrived in the face of competition by adopting an approach more akin to fine wine than coffee."

nice piece! those english: tea-drinkers no more!

long-time readers will recall my visit to monmouth and even the nice impromptu cupping i had there! congrats to my pals at monmouth. . .

brewing the big o

2007-07-28T09:24:00.000-07:00

so of course this afternoon i chemexied up a pot of o's huila from yesterday. this is the huila that caused so much street attention yesterday.

i swear if you want to make friends in nyc, walk through astor place with an iphone and a bag of o's colombia huila.

long-time readers may recall that o believes kona to be the most deliciously fragrant bean; certainly this huila must be second.

o tells me it's from san augustin.

i can tell you that i'm drinking its spicy-floral, basalmic rice and dark vanilla caramel tanginess black. highly recommended.