Grinder Dynamics

You are probably expecting a big amazing post about grinder function and design which isn't coming. Frankly, as hardcore as you can be about every little detail, the state of a grinder's blades are something that escaped me the other day. We were comparing shots of two espresso down at Simon's and one grinder turns out to have much older blades. Not completely dull but just enough to smooth out the character and add some weird mid tones.

I loaned him one with a timer mod because his switch broke, it's not unlike the one pictured in the previous post but with a different style and push button. Pulling a shot on that was a revelation on how much the blades have an effect on your coffee. Same class grinder, new blades.

While so many shots in town are pulling 20 second gushers on dead -never been changed- blades, I realistically might be able to count on one hand the shops that change them on their own here. There are many shops, the kind where you can't adjust the grind because it's so worn into a groove, any change will make unpullable shots.

Most of us have been there who have worked at more than one shop. I followed (some would proffer instigated) the whole series of upgrades at Simon's from replacing the utterly shot blades on an SM90 right up to the current row of Mazzers. The clarity of fresh blades should be something I would be used to but it's rare times when you are forcefully reminded of the difference.

Godshot and the flowvana

I was a barista.

We are moving in a lot of directions at once right now so it's hard to really say what I have moved from barista to doing specifically. As I go forward, given the reputation I had on bar, there has been a lot of discussion by those in our circle and around us that is making me feel a bit introspective. One friend described my time behind bar as a cult with it's own mythology. Like the legend of what we were doing behind bar became greater than the actuality. In some way, I agree because we were doing a lot of things that were very progressive at the time though more common now, the void after it suddenly stopped created an emptiness I myself sometimes struggled to fill. Another friend related to me yesterday that it was like the first battle of the civil war. Without the press and attention or had competing shops and our roaster taken us more seriously, we would not be here because it should have been over before it started.

I am easily willing to attest to the fact I wouldn't be dabbling in roasting or sourcing if I had not had so much friction with roasters and middlemen when I was on bar. That friction literally gave us a name and in part allowed us to second guess and test everything freeing us from the almost ideological obsession many get working with one roast style. I might have had a hand in sourcing some equipment and gone that direction but you can never say for sure. The thought has occurred to me more than once I could have been a working barista for much longer had I not been forced down the road of learning what was going on with the roast. When you are not in control, you might be encouraged to take the next step forward, more of a plunge and you either sink or swim which remains to be seen.

At that point, the vision of a large cafe with multiple SOE and a sweeping bar laden with top notch barista and dual espresso machines went down the drain like a sink shot. We shifted directions because it was no longer an option when you didn't have a product to believe in. Now my focus is set on training and working on concepts that will play a supporting role to others in the cafe. That means, some light roasting duty for limited volume and a heck of a lot of ambitious focus on getting some unique gear and equipment to play in cafes. To which a huge syphon post is about to land on barismo...

I guess it's true of anyone who tries to focus on the task at hand with seriousness and pride. You expect a lot and you desire to deliver but rarely do things align where you can actually deliver. You get the equipment, you find the training, and then finally, you realize you cannot control the coffee or function in the bureaucracy. Coffee becomes the last uncontrolled variable in the equation. This leads the obsessive types having urges to begin moving backwards in the supply chain to try and take total control of the product.

Coming in as a barista may actually be a blessing. I know it brings a specific perspective to how I approach everything.

I have had some pretty good shots in the lab lately and I feel a little yearning to get back on bar though that is quickly quashed by discussions of ghetto lattes and blender drinks. Really, it's almost a fear I can't bust out and tune that shot in the middle of a rush anymore but I know I can even if it may take a day or two to get my mojo back. I do prefer to play backup these days and just focus on tuning shots and training. To let someone else pull shots and work the blend giving advice and only stepping in when it's not getting closer is much less stressful. Quite enjoyable if not quite as sexy as the dream of the cafe that someday will happen.

Dairy don't

I'm sure somebody would love us to make some scathing commentary about the WBC and why US baristi have failed to claim the top spot or make the finals. Maybe a scintillating discussion on the problems in the SCAA and BGA. No, not today... or anytime soon because thanks to Doug's pointing it out, we have a more vile and horrible thing out there.

Dairy.

Coffee and Milk, originally uploaded by Ls³.

I know, I know, how elite can you get? No milk in your coffee. Don't take my mocking seriously. It has it's place, really, it does. I'm not lactose intolerant but I also am not an addicted coffee drinker. When I am not working in coffee, I am not an everyday drinker. If I was, I might be a whole lot more tolerant of what was in the cup.

I live in Inman Sq. and let me tell you, going to the neighborhood shop and getting french roast off the heated pots, having sat who knows how long, extra cream and sugar won't hurt. Nobody should cast aspersions on the cream and sugar kind because it's always relative. It has a place in the hearts of habitual drinkers used to strong (dark and bitter) coffee or bland sour coffee(think D&D iced).

On the other side of the argument, a cup of Panama Esmeralda or a berried Kenya light roast might not be so hot in that milk. At steep per cup price tags, why would you be drinking it unless you wanted to experience the coffee straight? It's a case of a good match and getting elitist about it would imply we have come farther than we really are in the industry. Being insulted as a barista that someone added cream or sugar to your drink is really a bit immature and snotty.

I once had a goal to reduce the sugar usage and reduce drinks sizes. I achieved it not by lectures and attitude but by calculated changes in the product itself and specifically marketing towards the segment of drinkers already in the know. Now I realize, just approach the coffee as the best expression you can create and don't worry about being a soup nazi to how it is imbibed. In truth, your coffee may not be as good as you think, in which case a little cream or sugar might help.

Gimmicks and designs

Interesting bit if you can sit through it.


I wonder about the small shops who market themselves as the alternative to Starbucks and all it's corporate fury. Is their lone redeeming quality simply falling into a gimmick too? Being an indie shop is good, I guess, but if your product is no better than Starbucks... does it really matter? What if the McCafe on the corner has better lattes than both but with none of the emotional satisfaction purchased from either the branding at big green or the emotional comfort of rejecting the big bad corporation?

Attitude at the counter

iPod, originally uploaded by synecdoche.

I hate running into the holier than thou attitude with people behind the counter. Snarky signs demanding or shamelessly begging for tips along with generally indifferent service don't have a place in a profit seeking business.

When I was working behind the bar, I found out one simple fact. The environment you create will determine the customer base.

Over time, I ran across less demanding customers, less impatient people, and less nonsense than when I first started working because of a simple fact. We tried to act like professionals. Not everyone, but there was a sense behind the counter of conviction and pride among what felt like a majority. It felt like people were more patient and you had fewer people trying to take advantage of you. People knew how the system worked, they knew you knew, and it was a comfortable place to work.

Sure, this is just an empirical observation that was reinforced over a painful but short stint in a cafe not too long ago where I realized, it really is a delicate mix of personalities. It may not hold truths for everyone but I believe quality service and professionalism attracts better customers.

The problem is that it takes that majority to establish a sense of what the shop is. One out of a dozen has no effect. Especially if the other eleven are the type that think they can do a better job than the owner just because they show up when scheduled.

I feel like there are fewer and fewer shops here in town where you can just go in and have a coffee and you don't get attitude. Attitude when you tear them away from their scintillating conversation. Attitude when you watch them make the drink or show any interest in it being made correctly. Attitude for simply being there at all.

On top of that, the sighs, the impatience or flat out pretending you don't exist, there is the lack of care. That's what tops it off for me. hearing stories of friends going into shops where they have good equipment and access to real training but they simply don't care.

There's no excuse for that but I don't know who to blame.

I don't go into many shops these days because it wouldn't make any sense but every conversation I have had lately seems to center around this issue. It's like coffee shops don't try to hire people who actually like coffee anymore! There is nothing worse than hearing someone complain about a shop you have no control over. Even if I did say something, it's not clear I would get enough respect to be taken seriously.

At this point, you are probably wondering why I am writing this so here's where I pass the responsibility to you, the reader.

If anything, I have learned that it is you, as the consumer, who should speak up. Things don't change if nobody speaks up. Pull a manager aside and mention a missed detail, a careless mistake, or downright belligerence. What have you got to lose?

Otherwise, you could just keep putting money in that tip jar and hope that some day the service gets better.

Weekly Dig Photo

dig photo, originally uploaded by coffeedirtdog.

I dropped in to visit friends and someone pulls out the weekly dig and asks me, when did they take this photo?

Jeez, seriously?!? Since I haven't worked in a cafe in months, this must have been at the Hsieh espresso event. The photo I get doesn't include my name, the shop we are in, or anything about coffee. Just another day in Boston where the press talk all day about oversized couches and cupcakes making the coffee shops but nothing serious about or reviews of the coffee.

There is a lot of dirt in coffee to be dug, pardon the pun, but it takes a serious approach and probably more time invested than most generic student focused assignments. Believe me, I understand that there isn't much to write about in the local coffee scene, very little to romanticize really, so it's not like I can point to some great grievance of overlooked quality.

I'd love to be out there and doing some tastings, really rocking the game with brewing events, and creating a scene but my newest project right now is bogged down in an insane catch 22. If anyone knows higher ups or has some sway with Arlington local government or is a local and just wants to help, drop me an email. Aside from that, everything these days is in limbo for the moment.

To the next 'golden' brew

87980001, originally uploaded by SIWA COFFEE.

Right now, there is a lot of navel gazing going on in the blogs about what brew methods are best, what to do now that the clamour for Clover turned into the planet buster on the death star....

A lot of people are talking about moving to the manual methods or anything new that's less automated. Siphon, pourover bars, and getting back to basics are becoming the buzz words. I think it's just a movement in trying to find a new niche, the new amazing brewer that will give them the angle. Specializing and definite product differentiation from the big boys. I am proud there are some serious cats out there brewing vac with all the tedium and technical precision of a guitarist mid solo but they are the few among a mob of new found fans of the manual method.

The times are changing and nothing is settled right now. There are no firm standards and we have no clear direction where things will be in the next year. It was not too long ago that I believe we were in the dark ages of coffee on the verge of change. Sure the forums were buzzing and 3wavers were aplenty working for 'the goal', but it was a time with a lot of passion and very little substance. Vac sealing was something only eccentrics did and few would publicly admit how much coffees deteriorate much less think about freezing a coffee.

The focus was on the equipment mods, ritual movements in preparation, and all about these name brand 'black box' blends. The forums were left to the machinations of latte artists proclaiming the value of triple rosettas and pacman blowing flames in your cup AND gratuitous photo series of 'naked' portafilter triple thick one ounce muddy baked 'chocolate' shots. Sure, there was an interesting segment focused on how to hack some cheapy piece of equipment into some better cheapy piece of equipment.... but eventually, you PID your PID and it becomes redundant so you end up buying the best equipment after spending lots of cash on a series of small modded upgrades.

Somewhere along the way, a lot of focus on the actual coffees was lost. Sure, I realize everyone is 'about letting the coffee speak for itself' and other catchy phrases but a little less time on forums talking about the concept and more time living it would help us all.

It's all the more complicated these days by marketing that is geared at direct trade and relationships where the farmer as a brand is glorified on one hand and on the other often then repackaged in mill marks where the farmer disappears again. Transparency is a funny thing we all talk about but don't really ever see or have the access to understand.

Then there are coffees where the placement in contests or prices paid set notoriety and it can simply be a contest to pay the highest price for the right to pay the highest price AND then you have press and buzz based on expensive brewing equipment and 20K utterly superfluous heating elements clouding the picture of what is really good coffee and what is just an expensive lamp making cheap coffee at a high price.

So, if you can clear through the fair trade, organic trade, direct trade, bidding wars, ego trips, pricey brewers, complicated techniques, barista flair, and well, everything but cup taste to well... simply cup taste, that's an amazing moment of clarity.

Things haven't really changed that much but I am thoroughly excited by splintering segments of the industry headed in new directions. The point is, there are great things going on in coffee BUT you have to dig deep and often the people doing the most amazing bits don't spend time cruising coffeed or CG, they are out there doing it. Marketing rarely cuts through to the tiny elements that can help make or break a good coffee.

IMG_3245, originally uploaded by edwinfvh.

Romancing the cup

Cups, originally uploaded by jaminsky.

What if you took a good coffee... and preserved it? A solid 90pt cup. Strong sweetness. Good pleasant fruit. Clean and well processed on the patio. Strong aromatics and a sugary finish.

You find that coffee at origin and then you mill it to higher than specialty grade standards, let's call it grade zero.

You pack it progressively and preserve the coffees, vacuum seal and keep degradation and contamination issues at bay.

A fresh cup, prepped well, preserved on the way from the farm to the roaster. An interesting idea. No sexy brand names, just focus on keeping unique cups as close to the farm gate flavor as possible.

What would you pay for this? What value would it add to the cup? What would the coffees taste like and how different would they be from the same coffees prepped at specialty grade with 5 defects per sample in jute and normal packing?

Oh the humanity!

Coffee shops are often a unique set of personalities and even in the cleanest most organized ones, there are still bits of drama.

The best shops are like a strange family where everyone plays a role and the friction is focused on moving the line and getting orders out. That's the best case (but highly improbable) scenario where there aren't a lot of side dramas distracting from the actual coffee production.

While we often tend to get self important as barista, the truth is that we are only the end in a long chain. Quality is every single step in the coffee production chain. As a barista, I can speak from a great deal of experiences, returned roasts, tense meetings, and general service of some embarrassing shots that the barista is often the fall guy as much as the occasional hero. The barista may, at times, be able to swoop in and bask in some of the glory but they are simply the last step in a hugely complicated process.

I'm not even going to get into all the details of production at the farm level. If anything, I really believe in focusing on the demand the rest of the chain sets rather than the supply. If we search out and pay for better sorting, cleaner prep, riper coffees, and more interesting high elevation 'sexy' varietals, farmers will respond.

The irony is that while many people see the complications in preserving quality, few people take the attitude that this is as absolute as it appears. Obviously, it becomes increasingly difficult financially at every step in the process but while many green buyers acknowledge that coffee tastes great at the gate they are hesitant to spend the money on measures to prevent fading and staling. There is even research and documentation at many levels detailing this which begs the question, who can really argue green doesn't age? Yet, many still pack coffees in jute bags in uncontrolled conditions such as large multi use warehouses with no intention of ever upgrading. Imagine having a warehouse deep in an area like Georgia where the heat and humidity turned your green from emerald jewels to tan lifeless wood in short order during the summer. Imagine that jute fiber flavor penetrating and contaminating your coffees while small bug bites and molds are spreading bit by bit with little bluish green spots as pales are appearing more and more over time. Hugging the farmer through the bean isn't so romantic anymore is it, especially if the green goes south?

Then you have the other situation where someone gets all that absolutely and spares no penny to expedite transport and store them, then preserve them with great labor including re-bagging the coffees. Then they roast them to death or worse, the roasts are all over the map with mind boggling inconsistency or dare I say it, simply mislabeled before shipment. Why should any of us pay for a product that's all over the map? What good is a 90pt coffee roasted a bit too dark or roasted light simply just for the sake of light? What good is it if the roast is just plain botched?

All that comes down to the barista, who assuming any small amount of that 90pt cup remains, they are left to try and figure it out. If they are extremely lucky, the equipment is somewhat clean and cared for while possibly up to date. They might even have some semblance of training or communication from the roaster to get something out of the coffee. If you, as a consumer are extremely lucky, all of it comes together and you get a decent cup worth paying for.

A friend asks, what part of the the process effects flavor the most? The real question is what will a 90pt cup taste like when at every step in the process, it actually came out the best it could? BTW his better half has a blog too where she often disagrees with him...

Post Thanksgiving resolutions

I have finally recovered from all my post thanksgiving hustle. Having moved from Porter Sq. down to Inman Sq., I now have a lot more to explore in terms of restaurants and shopping. This has nothing to do with coffee but it explains why we have been quiet lately.

The recent event was really eye opening for me. I was proud of Kaminsky getting up there and pitching to the crowd as much as of Ben who was able to keep the brews coming. I think it really was refreshing while at the same time quite exhausting. The point was, it showed how our group can really get the point across when we bear down and focus. With that thought, we are going to do a lot more local and community focused events in the future. The demand is high and I lucky the opportunities exist here in Cambridge to have such forward thinking events about coffee.

We need some time to get set up with all our other current projects but we'll let you know through the site, so add it to your feed reader and get in line!

We are thinking of basic brewing classes, defects, roasting errors, coffee aging, and other events to hit home what quality is. Without a core of educated consumers, shop owners will never move to serve better coffees or upgrade training/equipment to match. Everything starts with a demand fortruly great coffee.

What is it with double entendres and coffee?

We have done a lot of crazy experiments. Some were very rewarding and a great many were very educational dead ends. Cold brew was interesting, aeropress, not so much! Suffering through a few months of poor roasts where it seems we went from supposedly good roasts to suddenly not being able to handle anything left us quite irritated. Months of perseverance let us explore all kinds of tiny tweaks and variances that might lead us to the holy grail of roasts, so to speak. Thankfully, our roasting has finally shown some rewards as we continue to pursue our dreams of fragrant espresso, at least until it falls off the table and we have to reboot our whole profile once again.
Right now, we are pursuing a little project of sharing some roasts with friends to get some critical feedback and really open a dialogue on what we are tasting. Describing something you like is really quite hard when only you can taste it, right?
Meanwhile, most of our tiny green collection is tidily stored away right now. Vacuum sealed with secret techniques applied to preserve the green. A quick thought though about storage, suppose you are Wendelboe and your Wendelspro is showing signs of age in the green department, what do you do? You have black week when fresh new coffees arrive and then celebrate. To reiterate a question, why don't people spend more time figuring out how to keep it from getting old in the first place?

Third wave, fourth wave, fifth wave...

This is Roosevelt. Rosie to some, Idgy to others. Roosevelt has a dirty mouth.

I wonder if most dogs can tell the difference between good food and bad or they just simply eat? I have definitely had some picky pets in the past who would turn a nose up at 'pet food' opting for what was on my plate instead so I'm inclined to think they could be discerning. Rosie is not of that ilk though.

Obviously, this post's not going to be about my mother's spaniel, it's about us as foodies and coffee aficionados. We eat so much processed food and so many items that are simply of questionable quality that I often wonder what is our food culture? Do we just simply put stuff in our mouth and say, well, it tastes good with little thought to quantifying that feeling... or is there something more to it.

What is good taste? How do we define quality?

It brings up the thought that what I believed was great only a year ago, I doubt would make my top list now. That is a statement about my evolution in coffee and the way our perspective has been shaped. It began with fresh roast and 'not burnt' then migrated to a myriad of qualifications including how it was processed and at what elevation it was grown. I really began to notice how much our group has changed in our perspective of coffee over the last year after our most recent cupping session. Sitting at a table with Silas and Judson while Ben manned the sample roaster gave me a renewed feeling of direction in coffee which immediately made me look back on how we got there.

Many people getting into coffee, who use the Internet, will start with a site like coffeegeek.com. For a while, it's like an epiphany. Pull thick chocolate ristretto shots, take photos, repeat. Life was good. Then things quiet down and after a while those chocolate shots were becoming boring and a lot of people lose interest. Some people fade away and move on to other interests thinking they had mastered some angle of coffee at that point. Others moved forward and found home-barista.com and it could provide a more serious place where technical people converged and pontificated 'what if?' After time though, the mods and hacks came to an ending point where everything was PID'd including the toaster and there seemed to be little more to explore for the coffee enthusiast.

A peak, not the end of the road but to the limits of experience, knowledge, ability, access, or simply budget. For me, what I naively thought I mastered long ago still remains a mountain in front of me today because quite simply, as I learn more about coffee, I realize just how hard it becomes to learn each little bit more. This potential keeps me going. That next 5% looks like Everest in the distance but it's a mountain worth climbing. It's a harrowing thought to think that with all these fancy cafes popping up and pocket emptying bids for coffee, it only means that it doesn't get easier from here on out. The competition will get smarter and tougher as everyone tries to best 'the best.' it may be jaw dropping bids for coffees that may be hot names rather than good coffee or it may lead to a roaster's renaissance where roasters compete to get the most from every super expensive coffee. I dream of that roaster's renaissance someday because then there will be so many great cups out there to be had.

This reminds me how George Howell often pontificates that this industry is 'in it's infancy.' I wonder if he understands how deeply truthful that rings. We chest thump about the skilled barista, competitions, and artisan roasting while we simultaneously battle uphill to simply have a common language of what quality might potentially be. I have no criticisms to lay, only a simple question.

If this is the beginning, what's next?

The line between 'customer is king' and caring too much.

While browsing Trader Joe's for some Trois Pistoles and Chaucer's, I was able to overhear a conversation about wine that gave me a kick. A lady asked about the case of $2(3 round here) Chuck. She stated how her friends had all been recommending it and how she heard in a blind tasting of 300+ wines, it purportedly won the tasting.

The guy was working the coffee section and giving away samples while having this conversation. I continued browsing not really listening until the guy begins to raise his voice in indignation of her insistence that this cheap wine is actually good even though she had not tasted it. She was looking for a party wine selection which seemed to strike a nerve for the guy behind the counter. This guy begins relating how he makes 10/hr and would rather buy 5 solid wines in the $10 range than waste his time with this wine. He relates how every party he attends is serving this wine and how he finds it insulting. 'What, your guests are only worth $2?' he retorts as they debate. He relates how it is inferior and the taste just isn't there and the entire tasting sounds like a scam much like the tastings of Folgers coffee vs other roasts. He then begins a series of rants finishing with a flurry about how our consumption culture misses out on great tastes and somehow ties it to our taste for Dunkin Donuts coffee with lots of cream and sugar. Oddly entertaining as it ended with her walking away as another customer who missed the debate walked up asking for help getting two cases of the Chuck.

It is situations like this that lead me not to give many recommendations of any roasted coffee except what I have in hand presently (behind the bar) that I like. In coffee and unlike wine, roasts change bag to bag and green coffee ages(changes) over time. To keep some credibility, I hope to keep the scoring/reviewing off our site aside from a bit of commentary. It is well known around our circle, we have a poor opinion of coffee review and it's particularly flawed methodology in scoring espresso. I don't think the industry is develped enough for coffee critics like there are wine critics but that's my own opinion.

That aside, I am quite ambivalent about the particular $2 wine. The question is, snob or just passionate about the product? How far is too far when you care but you have to sell a product you may not believe in?

I don't have an absolute answer but I know I don't invest time in people who push me to acknowledge what I feel is inferior coffee. The guy who says, 'darker the better' may not be worth arguing with so I get them what they want and move them along. Those who really seem interested, I will engage in long conversations and invest myself in sharing what I love.

Gardening and coffee

I am out of Cambridge right now in Eastern TN to be exact. Not exactly on a coffee related mission right now therefore the lack of noise. What I have been doing involves a lot of painting, repairs, decking, flooring, and gardening.



Gardening doesn't have much to do with coffee but there is something of an analogy I was thinking about this morning while driving through the Heights. Every house had neatly trimmed shrubs and hedges, boxwood and spruce, all green and neatly cut green grass. Every house was different but every yard the same... from a distance. Hedges, decorative grasses, and the occasional Impatiens or Petunias by the mailbox. Yard after yard, the same, all green and tightly kept. Immaculately homogeneous.

Nothing wrong with that until I pulled up and looked over the garden project we had worked on earlier. Color, lots of color, heirloom Lilies and Gladiola's. In a way, that really summarizes how I often feel in coffee.

Some are focused on the trimmed hedges while I adore the blooming varietals.




To me, the best coffees have great descriptors or rather they are worthy of great description. The boring generic ones are not worthy of much beyond a generic description. I find that good coffees have a ledger full of adjectives and this is what makes it hard to relate to most regular coffees drinkers.

I get the luxury of knowing where to get good coffees and have been honored to sample a large variety of grades from many different roasters. Sometimes I get lucky and find great ones but I also spend a lot of time bemoaning the lack of access to the greatest ones.

On this trip I have only been able to taste a few home roasts so let me first apologize to all the coffees we wronged in learning how to roast. It took some time to get where we want to be but now there's a lot less bad and a lot more good. Locally for coffee, there is nothing readily available except for bottomless pots and fast food chains. I have been spared as I have been drinking a lot of tea and luckily Ben sent just enough home roast for a few vac pot brews.

About a scone

originally uploaded by yehwan.

Scones are something I wasn't really aware of until I moved to Cambridge. Not a big thing in the South, I guess. Finding a great scone though seems to be a harder thing than most give credit. Finding quality baked goods or pastries in a top cafe in general seems to be a difficult proposition. Most of the high end or famous (on the Internet) cafes I have visited carry pretty blase or pitiful food accompaniments to the coffees offered. It's a shame and I would go to great length to have good scones and great coffees in the same shop. Why not?

When I first started working at Simon's, long ago, I was introduced to scones. A lot of scones in fact, but they were like dense bricks whose only saving grace was a slathering of sugary icing on top or heavy amounts of chocolate to sweeten the tasteless lump. Carberries scones, which though once very popular, lacked redeeming character and were not something any of us behind the counter wanted to eat. Those scones were however the most commonly served in town since Icelandic(I think) investors came in and turned Carberries into a factory type deal. Baked at night and delivered in the morning, they were already tasting day old by that point.

I decided to make it a priority as soon as I could get enough influence. Once I convinced Simon to audition new pastries, the problem began to be simply who? There were options but not a lot of good options out there.

Petsie Pies is a wonderful bakery about a 10 minute walk from Simon's. Baked goods only, scones and fruit pies that have a home style feel and great texture to them. So, I found the owner, Renee and struck up a proposition. Renee is a smiling boisterous person with a great demeanor and a charm that brightens a room. We wanted those scones. We decided to bake them from the dough and we would even come pick them up if we had to. All they had to do was mix it and have it ready. After some discussion, Renee relented and promised to work something out.

Weeks passed and no call, nothing. We were jilted but the scones were good, so I made another trip over. Renee apologized and we discussed more options ending with a promise that we would get scones.

A month passed and no call, nothing. I was annoyed but the scones were good, so I made another trip over. Renee again apologized and we opened discussions again to get those scones.

Time passed and no call, nothing. I did not wait this time before going back again to check with Simon in tow. We all agreed the scones were good but we needed to commit one way or another if this was going to be a reliable situation. Mind you those scones were good.

The summer was ending and much time passed with no scones, no call, no nothing. I made one more trip, because.... those scones were good. One last trip, I told myself and that would be the end of it. I caught Renee for a chat where I professed my situation and commitment to get something done having spent so much time on this venture. If there was a better choice, I would have been there but this was worth the effort I kept telling myself. Renee professed she wanted to do this. She convinced us this time she was serious. I told her one day I would stop coming to which she replied, one day I would stop coming and she would have missed this chance. Famous last words, I thought.

To my surprise, a few days later she dropped by Simon's for a drink. Not too long afterwards, we finally had those scones. For months, we had these great scones, scones I wanted to eat, scones I would push customers to try. Then one weekend, no more scones.

Turns out Gus 'Stick to Ice Cream' Rancatore (Toscanini's) put in a very large order with Renee for scones. Now Gus already had a binding deal with one of his partners to only use their scones so this came out of left field to us. Evidently, Renee couldn't handle the order and dropped selling us all scones as a result. There would be no follow up trip for me, I was done on this journey for a better scone.

If you drop by one of the locations for Petsie Pies and see Renee, say hello and pass along this story for me. Good scones are hard to find, maybe a bit too hard to keep. Most people will never understand how hard it is to accomplish little feats in quality much less great steps. How easy it is to give up but those who are not content can achieve great things, if only for a moment in time.

Brian Quinn on the ristretto

"I think ristrettos can be very limiting, and in many instances, are often compensating for poor green quality. Or, put differently, ristrettos often compensate for darker roasts, which are often compensating for poor green quality.

A traditional double - by traditional, I mean ~1.75 ounces of liquid pulled in ~25 seconds - pulled from high quality, lightly roasted beans can offer incredible nuances that make ristrettos taste dull and flat in comparison. You can get higher-toned flavors and aromas of citrus, berries, and flowers that are just crushed by the overwhelming mid-tone flavors in ristretto pulls. You appreciate the sense of balance and range in the coffee as well - those higher notes playing against the more "typical" flavors of chocolate, nuts, and tobaccos in the coffee.

I made a point about green quality, because ristrettos can also smooth out defects or detracting notes in a coffee. You can take a funky, fermented Yirg or an overwhelmingly earthy Sumatran, and knock down those flavors by roasting dark. You can also knock them down by overdosing the basket and tightening the grind. That high note of wild strawberry funk, and that deep note of wood and earth get knocked down - because, in my opinion and experience, the ristretto pull tends to underextract the higher and lower notes in a coffee.

And some coffees, in my opinion - even high quality coffees - taste terrible when pulled as a ristretto. Terroir's Southern Italian (yes, I mean the darker roast) tastes like ash when I push the dose into the 18-21g range. At 16g, you get a nice mellow cup with some great flavors of pecans and hazlenuts, with some chocolate and citrus on the edges. And in no way does that cup lack in flavor or intensity. It's just different.

I'd also say that in my experience, darker roasts and tighter pulls are actually easier to do at home than the more traditional double. Paradoxically, I find ristrettos FAR more tolerant of distribution issues than lighter doses and lighter roasts.

When I first got into higher quality espresso, I used to really like ristrettos. Lately, I find them to be pretty boring. I don't know if you're into wine at all, but for me, ristrettos remind of the whole California cab craze 10-15 years ago. You had these wines coming out with incredible body and extraction - thick, inky, tongue-coating wines. And some of those wines were great, but many were really relying on extraction to make up for lackluster / boring fruit flavors. They turned my head at the time because of the mouthfeel, but as time went by, I started to really appreciate the incredible finesse and clarity that a great Bordeaux or Burgundian wine offers, or a top quality California Pinot Noir. The latter three wines, for me, are the best analogy for what a great traditional double offers.

So, no, I don't think ristrettos should be the default pour at all." Brian on home-barista.com

Summertime in Cambridge

I think summer may actually be here in Cambridge. It's a good time for reflecting and refocusing. All the students leave and the streets are a bit quiet as only the real residents of the area remain. Kaminsky left for the summer after giving notice at Simon's. Since I quit a long time ago and Kaminsky left also, I would ask not so politely for people to just get off my back about what's being served there! Good or bad, ask Simon or better yet the roaster. While I still go in occasionally, I have very little to do with what is being served, good or bad. I can make suggestions because Simon is a friend and my door is always open if he needs help but that's as far as it goes.

That out of the way, Ben and I have been meticulously plodding along chasing a goal not unlike someone else down south. We have to start from zero though, not just worry about two favored taste descriptors pairing well. Simply getting an ideal interpretation through a lot of experimenting and painful cupping sessions is a hard track but you learn a lot. The truth is that we as a coffee community don't often question the 'experts' and we really should. There's too much hero worship and acceptance that because someone made three thousand posts on a forum, they must be an expert. Try everything, test everything, and draw your own conlcusions. That aside, there is some interesting stuff going on we may never talk about on the blog hence why we are quiet these days.

A byproduct of that is that I really don't drink coffee right now and unless someone says something questionable, I wouldn't bother with the forums. Even when we hit on something really good, I taste it on the cupping table, enjoy it and then go home and de-coffee. I guess I am learning to disconnect more when not 'working' and that will be a good thing going forward as I hope to dig in soon for the long haul in coffee.

As I begin pondering a serious move into coffee, sometimes I sit back and I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed at Simons? What if I had not gone to Guatemala and made the friends I made? What if Chris didn't share the shots of Crescendo? What if I didn't guest Ecco and meet Andrew Barnett? What if Ben and I hadn't paired up more than a year ago at the Saturday Afternoonn Coffee Club? What if I decided not to walk down and check out his home setup? There are dozens of what if in our advancement in coffee. Chance meetings and luck have moved me in many directions and I feel lucky about that. As far as I've come, the hardest parts are still in front of us. Cheers to that!

The beauty of the 'Double Roast'

A double roast is not something I would recommend for any good coffee. It's a roast where a normal profile is begun but as the coffee coffee progresses in drying to a point where it begins to gray, you dump it and cool the coffee. You then warm the roaster up to a much higher temp and drop the now cooled green back in and attempt to continue the roast. The resulting cup will be a polished, very low acid and extremely 'coffee' tasting coffee. It will have no fruit and little unique aroma, the roast flavors and the woody coffee notes will be all that remain of what is now an entirely generic coffee.

I guess I could understand this for someone roasting C-Grade who desired heavy body and low acidity. Then again you would wonder why someone like me would even be talking about this.

We were roasting today and were struggling getting efficient drying on what we believed to be a particularly good coffee. Knowing it was good made it more frustrating. At one point during a drop, a mistake in the flame setting caused the roast to begin to tail near the end of the drying phase. On the spot Ben decided to just dump it and cool it. He pulls out the old Japanese book on slow roasting and chronicles the 'delights' of the double roast. Having accomplished most of our goals for the afternoon, we decided to go for a double roast. A roast later, we had our double roast and a few new observations.

We pondered the exhaust and how the heating element was reacting with the barrel. Then it came back to the flue. Most roasters simply have an on or off while the Japanese and Taiwanese models have a variable control. Based on the discussions sparked by the double roast, we were able to ascertain we needed more efficient venting. Ten minutes of tinkering and we had a ghetto fabulous chimney fan combo increasing our drying efficiency. An ugly but entirely useful hack!



Sometimes things we know are dead ends are worth pursuing simply for the experience.

Top three things Porter Sq. Cambridge doesn't need

1. Starbucks
2. The Gap
3. Abercrombie Fitch/American Eagle Outfitters

Not too long ago there were a series of billboards featuring scantily clad male models peering lustfully down on Porter Sq. We can thank the billboard owner but we could wonder why it was there at all? It was such an out of place advert for an area where people are more inclined to wear clogs, ride bicycles, and bemoan gentrification.

It wasn't too long before vandals (we call them performance artists) took to paint ballooning the billboards. It happened twice before the message was clear that the ads were not targeting the right audience.

More recently, a struggling and somewhat misplaced outlet of The Gap closed in the Porter Exchange. Down the street from little unique shops like Joie De Vivre and across from Paper Source, this was long since out of style. Considering all the unique boutiques and the prevailing attitude among many who live in the area, it just wasn't a good fit.

The thing worth noting is that with the open space provided by the Gap left searching for a nice strip mall, there are rumors that a Starbucks is moving on that location. Porter exchange needs a Starbucks like Harvard Sq. needs more banks.

It's not so much that Starbucks is doing anything wrong, it's that by simply moving in, they will be displacing several businesses in the exchange. The bubble tea kiosk is most assuredly gone and the Japonaise bakery kiosk is rumored to be leaving as well. The ice cream place in the back is rumored to leave and I can only assume the coffee kiosk downstairs is gone also. What worries me though is that the culture of Japanese restaurants there will begin to change or be uprooted by this shift. It is one of the things I enjoy most about the neighborhood there. The Udon and the Ramen shops, sushi at Kotubukiya or Blue Fin, curry at Cafe Mami, or simply a bowl of Bibim Bap at the Korean shop and snakcs at Kotubukiya Japanese Grocery. I just don't feel like we need more corporate brands so much as a need to preserve the cultural/community locations. That and there is a Starbucks on Beacon and in both directions on mass ave, making this the fourth in a ten minute walk of my house.

Mark this under rants rather than coffee.

BGofT and Wendelboe

Noteworthy read: Barista Guild of Taiwan forum interview with Tim Wendelboe Part one, two
...excerpt from the interview.
"The worst flavours for me would be if the espresso is stale and has a charcoal or burned flavour. I do not like over roasted espresso, nor too light so it tastes like lemon juice. I also dislike ferment, mustiness and all other defective flavours. I believe in a good balance between sweetness, bitterness and acidity and mouth feel. Sweetness is always the taste I try to enhance the most. But without bitterness the coffee is not interesting. I prefer many styles of espresso. Right now my blend has a strong aroma of almonds and marzipan. The taste of the espresso reminds me of dried fruits. The aftertaste is very long lasting, oily and has the flavour of bittersweet chocolate. I like fruity espresso and also chocolaty espresso, but taste is individual and there is no correct answer to what an espresso should taste like. If it pleases you and stands out from other espresso, then you have probably tasted a good one, right? - Tim"

Anyone has some espresso like what he's describing, get me a bag. Good to see the folks in Taiwan are taking an interest in Tim and others.