coming up

Catalina Coffee is the man.  Or are the men.  And women.  Or something nice and props-able.  I was so happy to be able to be in Houston for this event (see post below) and to be a part of Texas' growing coffee scene.  Having grown up in Houston, the city has a sentimental place in my heart.  But with the advent of Catalina and a small crop of fresh new coffee spaces (think Inversion, Taft Street and others) they are eschewing the soft-market sentimentality of feeling as though they have to offer the five "S'es" (sandwiches, soups, salads, syrups and smoothies) and going for the gusto by putting the coffee first and letting the chips fall where they may.  And if my time at their recent Latte Art Throwdown (and my subsequent Sunday afternoon visit) were any indication, the chips are definitely falling their way.

Space is the enemy here, and geopolitical boundaries seem to be the enemy of our coalescence.  Because the entity is known as "Texas" it seems to make sense that we should all be one big happy family.  But as the interstate sign makes clear as you cross into Texas from Louisiana, this really is a big, big place.  The sign reads:  WELCOME TO TEXAS!  Beaumont = 15 miles; Houston = 150 miles; El Paso = 798 miles.  Thus, we have to make the best of our situation by grabbing every opportunity for community, no matter how frequency and geographically-challenged and those opportunities are.  

Coming up:  the second annual SCRBC in Austin and a chance for our corner of the world to continue to build both momentum and a tighter sense of community.   

brown's first real, er, employee

everyone, meet j.r.

he is Director of Awesomeness at brown. j.r. comes to us by way of last year's texas barista jam, whereupon he took it upon himself to come out from behind the counter of his then coffee job at ruta maya san antonio to join our festivities and quickly leave ruta in the dust, figuratively and in actuality (read: he actually got serious about coffee).

and now the news from him that he has recently hired himself as brown's southeastern u.s. rep at the currently going-on southeast regional barista competition.

so he calls me tonight and says, "man, have i been itching to talk to you for a few hours," then proceeds to tell me how he accidentally discovered--by awesomeness or luck, he wouldn't say--that said serbc was going on just a half mile from a little coffee place he had been meaning to visit for a while since moving to florida but was never really "in the neighborhood" (and i thought he was just politely putting me off when i suggested he might find decent espresso there).

anyways, he shows up at the serbc, schmoozes his way around, meeting coffee industry folks, trading stories and gathering information, all under the premise that he is, indeed, in the employ of brown. which is fine. i told him i'd probably have done the same. and it's fun to think he's leveraging brown so hard out there, getting in touch with farmers and other industry types. he represents well. so i promoted him from Awesomeness Intern all the way to head of the department.

oh, yes. he's also a closet republican. (he's ultimately too smart to buy all the current drivel and drone and no-actual-sound-argumentations that pass for liberal positions these days, which only reinforces the old adage that if you're not a liberal by the time you're twenty you have no heart; but if you're not a conservative by the time you're forty, well, you have no brain.)

gutsy

i said a couple posts below that i had nothing new to add to the wbc signals being pumped out across the blogosphere already. while that may be true, i did have a thought that i considered worthy of extrapolation, and that is how gutsy a move it is and how cross current it is for a barista like james hoffman to capture the title of world's best barista by seemingly going in the opposite direction of where the competition as a whole is going.

i guess here's what i mean. watching all the great video posted on zacharyzachary showed the wholesale complexification of the event into the next realm of true culinary events. now, for sure, there is still a long road ahead before the general field is producing performances that are anywhere food network worthy. but it was evident to this blogger that the sheer volume of participants and the overall level of seriousness and skill at which most of the participants competed shows that this competition is ready to take those next steps into acceptance and respect as a true global culinary event. (the fact that we may actually be 3-5 years (or more) away from those kinds of accolades and acceptance is not my point here. there seemed to be a tangible shift upward in the level of competition as a whole this year, which says to me that the event is gaining critical mass.)

therefore, with the level of complexity and sophistication moving generally upward it is mildly but pleasingly surprising to recognize jim as the world's best vis-a-vis the fact that he seemed to consciously go the opposite direction of this general complexification by winning it all with two single-origin coffees.

what i'm not saying is that jim is not deserving of it or hasn't the skills of anyone else. clearly not. what i'm saying--and loudly applauding--is the brilliance of his statement that simple is better, especially when it comes to espresso.

now, who knows but that this fact of simplicity wasn't merely a quick decision based on the fact that jim and company didn't want to have to blend anything, were too low on time to work up a good blend, or that they simply got access to those two coffees first and just decided to run with them for better or worse. etcetera. nonetheless, the move was gutsy and that it succeeded i think justifies their decision (and my long held belief) that striking coffees deserve a platform of their own. better that than blending them, however skillfully, into a symphony of other flavors. i respect that move but it is not a path i like to take.

so hats off to jim. you've reopened a vital conversation vein that is worthy of serious contemplation.

here's to that day

first off, a big congrats to james hoffmann of the u.k. for winning the title of world's best barista. hats off to king james. look at his winning perfomance (and that of almost all of the other 44 contestants, here.

other than that, i have zero original thoughts to add to the groundswell of opinions already being posted around the net with regard to the recently completed wbc and/or barista competitions in general, other than to say that it is always inspiring to be reminded, as i was while watching some of those clips, to recognize that there are some really passionate and cool coffee people out there. there are so many more of you out there that i have yet to connect with and just hope for the day we'll get to hang out over beers, without the need to feel we have to impress one another, and just...talk coffee. i had a glimpse and a taste of that a couple weeks ago in boston (see snippet below).

here's to that day for more of that.

road trip

so it's that time of year again, the time when people get itching to get out on the road and go somewhere, do something. i'm not impervious to that bug so off i go. the fun thing of it is that much of my 'vacation' will actually be work (coffee) related.

early next week i'll be in dallas spectating at the scrbc. i really had hoped to be able to help in some capacity--as a judge, volunteer or some such. but my wife's work schedule precluded that. we'll be heading farther north from dallas so we all needed to have the same schedule in place. anyways, i'm very much looking forward to seeing the competition because of what it means for the continued building of our fledgling coffee community here in texas. many people have the misnotion that because we are geographically isolated coffee-wise that we are somehow less passionate about coffee and coffee culture. the fact is there are some very passionate people in this state whose only trouble with being a regular part of such a vibrant coffee culture is the fact that it can take literally a full day driving just to get from one good cafe to another. we're talking el paso actually being closer to los angeles than it is to houston. size does matter but that won't stop us from growing as a vibrant outpost of coffee culture.

i'm taking pics and submitting a little report on the event to barista magazine, so keep your eyes peeled for that in the next issue.

anyways, immediately after dallas--and i mean very much immediately, as in, i may be running out the door as they announce the scrbc winners--we'll be driving up to tulsa to visit with one of my clients for a special chocolate/food/wine/coffee dinner event. i'm stoked about that, as i'm told these events are very cutting edge regarding pairing the aforementioned types of foods. the next morning i may lead a quick, small cupping with the staff there--they are a chocolatier/restaurant at one location and they have a full coffee house as a second location. or we'll just spend some time working on their GB/5 and tweaking my espresso for their machine. i'm excited to spend some time working behind their bar to optimize the parameters for the espresso i've created for them. they've given me some outstanding feedback on it so far and i guess it'll just be cool to see it from their perspective.

by 10 a.m. we have to be leaving tulsa to be in st. louis by around 3 p.m. where we will pick up my friend at the airport and drop off my wife and kids with her parents who are are from indiana and are meeting us there to take them to indiana for a few days. my friend sean and i will be heading a couple hours north to cornerstone festival (we go every year) for a few days of too much music and maybe too little good coffee. sunday we both head over to indiana to spend a couple days with my in-laws and for me specifically, to get a first hand update on how the new roaster project is progressing. (by the way, the beer keg i referenced a couple posts ago is being used as housing for the chaff collector. cool!) i'll try to take some pics of that as well and keep everyone updated on that. i'm pumped about that, of course.

after that it's drive home with everyone. we'll drop off sean in austin on the way home, where his company has a satellite office, and then we'll continue on the 80 miles down the road to good old san antonio. home sweet home again.

we'll talk soon. wish us well.