For more information on Team Verve, teams from our wholesale accounts Bellano, Bloom, and The French Press (fb), and their adorably ferocious competition, check out the USBC bios page!

MURDER!!

Self-made espresso bar owner Maggy Thorsen would rather be whipping up steam with her sexy sheriff boyfriend than organizing a barista competition. But the big Java Ho convention, the coffee industry’s seasonal trade show, has come to Milwaukee. And this year it’s not only insane, it’s murder…when Maggy finds the body of Marvin LaRoche, proprietor of the HotWired coffee chain, under a banquet table.

LaRoche was powerful, mean and nasty–or maybe he just drank too much of his own coffee. Either way, somebody bludgeoned him with Maggy’s first-place barista trophy. Hoping to clear her name, Maggy watches the man’s too-cheerful widow and an angry activist accusing LaRoche of exploiting Third World coffee growers. With a killer to catch and coffee to brew, Maggy is working overtime to save her own beans.

Apparently this is part of a larger series. So…go out and get them!

And yes, I actually bought it and read it. More choices quotes:

The baby was in a sling-type carrier, seemingly fashioned from one of the burlap bags used to ship coffee beans.
Janalee came towards us with a smile. ‘Maggy, Sarah. How good to see you. And yes, it is a coffee bag, Maggy. One of the 154-pound bags from Colombia. Little Davy just loves it.

…

Each work area had an identical espresso machine, grinder and blender, plus staples like a knock box for the grounds, trash can and the mini-refrigerator, of course. Everything else had to be provided by the participants, from mood music for their fifteen-minute presentation, right down to the espresso itself.

…

Maybe it was the rock music, a contrast to the jazz–smooth and otherwise–chosen by the other contestants. Or maybe it was here piercings, or her hair color, or her explosive specialty drink, complete with a depth charge in the bottom of the cup.

…

The lucky [raffle] winner would get to take home the centerpiece, which was a fancy basket filled with five separate one-pound bags of coffee beans from various roasters. The roasters had donated the beans as a way of showing off their coffees to coffeehouse owners. If the owners were anything like me, thought, the last thing they wanted to see by now was another pound of coffee.

Starting…soon, I’ll be sitting down with our baristas, reg-ops, packagers, roasters, wholesalers, owners etc and asking them what they’re thinking about in coffee (or whatever else they want to share). I’ll do this as often as I can with their cooperation.

It should also sync up nicely with a pact Ian and I are beginning, to meet up once a week and work on our damn blogs together. That’s if he finishes his laundry soon and gets over to the cafe.

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!

Rather late notice, but if you have the ability to be in Santa Cruz this Sunday (March 21st) afternoon, consider it well worth your time:

Verve’s three competitors will be taking over the bar* from 4:00 to 7:00pm to serve their respective coffee as espresso, cappuccino, & as centerpiece in the signature drink they crafted for the Western Regional Barista Competition!

Ten bucks per flight, per competitor, or each course will be available à la carte.

Until then, if you have not yet seen their performances, check out Chris, Jared, and Sara competing in the finals here.

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*Literally, as we will cease service of the regular menu (outside of pressed coffee & tea)!

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