My beautiful girlfriend isn’t here with me! Jade has been in the UK for a week now, & still won’t be back until next Wednesday. Considering that we’d spent the last six months together essentially all of the time, the past seven days have been a change. [Looking at this list, even a rather dense stranger might have figured out that I have a bit of time on my hands.]

So while there is absolutely nothing to complain about on days like today, I’m still ready for Jade to get back to share more of these moments with me!

I recently enjoyed a cup of coffee. It may not seem like it, but this is a big deal.

In general, I find it hard to “recreationally” drink coffee as a professional. This is an awful, shameful thing to write and if this blog were more widely read, I’d expect a slew of irate comments:

Much too often I find myself making or pouring five to eight oz. of coffee, then actually drinking perhaps half that amount. As I typically only drink coffee at work, a lot of the time the problem is simply that I’ll get distracted and forget about it until it’s far too cold and I go swap it for another.

What has me worried are the other times. When I actually sit down to enjoy a cup and it’s impossible to keep from evaluating what I’m drinking. Could it have been brewed or roasted differently/better? Is the roast too fresh? Are the greens starting to peak or even fall off?

Even with great coffees coffees that I love on the table, if I pick up any problems in the cup (even if this is just the thought that a certain facet could be even better) I’ll lose interest in finishing the damn thing, and when I do have it all I’ve lost focus on why I wanted to drink a cup to begin with. I have lots of opportunity to critically evaluate coffee. What I really need is a way to go back to just sitting down and remembering what drew me into coffee in the first place.

But before that, I’d better work on some actual content.

Something in the way of an explanation:

There have been more than a few attempts at posting over the past eight months or so. Writing skills certainly go down fast when you don’t actively employ them. Rather than spending a frustrated hour trying to compose and edit my thoughts, only to give up and scrap the whole thing, I’m going to start trying to power through a few posts just to get into the swing of it. So please bear with me!

We’ll be back and settled into our new place on the third of August, when I’ll report for duty for two weeks of bar shifts to kick things off.

Hope to see you up there soon!

Bravely moving to Santa Cruz!!

To say that I could not be luckier or happier to be doing what I do is a serious understatement. The common dream of doing for a living what one loves is so often unfulfilled that it is something of a cliche. I cannot image a better profession or a better life. I am enormously appreciative of the wonderful people, coffee, and times that have filled the last five years. Here’s hoping (and working towards) many, many more!

I have a modest collection of obscure-ish British folk LPs. As much as I enjoy this music, I keep the vinyl undigitized and off my iPod. In keeping it reserved for dedicated sessions of listening I not only enjoy better sound, I get to savor it more than I would as background music for my commute.

This makes me think of siphon pots. More than just the unique flavor profiles, I like saving the preparation for times when I can fully devote myself. The coffee tastes better and I’m allowed to gleefully geek over each detail.

Then I saw that this theme can be expanded upon; there are convenient parallels between brew methods and music format. If I find siphons and vinyl to be the respective ultimates of quality, then perhaps French press and compact disc are the next best: Taste/sound are still great, but with the advantage of improved ease of use & cleanup/portability and storage.

Percolator pots and cassette tapes? Both produce relatively awful results and are generally super annoying to use. They’re also both ubiquitous staples of the thrift store, looking exceptionally outdated and run down.

Chemex and mp3 can both be pretty good, in a “substitute for the real thing” kind of way. They also seem to share a fairly healthy debate regarding their quality and proliferation.

I could keep this up (giant urn/FM radio, ibrik/street artists), but I’ll refrain. Some food for thought!

UPDATED: The folks at CoffeeGeek have me beat to this in many ways. Fixed “quality” link to reflect this!

*Stolen from a Tim Styles & Deaton Pigot exchange.

jimseven includes the leading of public cuppings as part of his job. From frequently placing a radical and intense Harrar on my own tables, our conclusions are frequently aligned. (While you’re there, check out thoughts on lever profiles, research on density, an introductory video walkthrough of an awesome water boiler, and a complete history and treatise on its current state).

Tonx tears down a ridiculous, whiny rant  and churns out a brilliant customer manifesto.

I still believe that, overall, Mr. Watts has an amazing job. A very insightful look into his unique profession.

Scott Rao does not like the Chemex as a brewing method. Thread results. 

My own reading has begun to dramatically stagnate, given that half the year in which to reach my goal is already over. I’ve been working hard the last two weeks to resume pace. We’ll see…

After using nothing but straight walled pitchers for years, I knew I’d have to make a few tiny adjustments in technique to compensate for the bell shape. What I didn’t consider was the lame extended pouring spout. My first pours with this thing were just disastrous! Every time I tipped it, milk would gush out from the spaces created between the spout and side walls. I could fix that by pouring super slowly, but both the poured milk consistency and art suffered. Comparing the design to my standard pitchers, it seemed I could simply  hack the little extra bit of metal off the end to mod the handle-less back into a usable tool.

I tried this last night with a cheapo hacksaw and a rock: simple enough, although it would have been really nice to have had a real metal file lying around to polish the cut up better. I tried running it through some paces last night on my home bar. Huge improvement! May not end up giving me any additional control compared to the handled varieties, but at least now it will pour defined lines at a usable speed without making an enormous mess. I start a bar shift in about 2 minutes, so I’ll get to really test it out! If it’s promising, I’ll hunt down a file and finish polishing the cut.

Left pics full sized for some nice metal shard detail!

Somehow, turns out there is a whole page of similar products. I still like this one the best; and I’m willing to bet it makes coffee just as well as the cheap “grown-up” machines it emulates.

I sort of feel that specialty coffee needs our own indoctrination toy. Plush portafilters?

(Actually, I really want one of those…)