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.   

refereeing a fight

my camera was sick and we sent it off to hospital lately.  thus, i feel as though my creative impetus had been on hiatus.  now it's back and here i am hitting the blogosphere again.  coincidence?  mayhaps.  

so what's been up?  i'm going to houston in a few hours to--get this--be a judge for a latte art competition.  me.  the guy who can consistently and perfectly pour the foam amoeba.  but you know what they say...those who can't do, judge.  or some such. 

anyway, catalina coffee in houston, where the event will take place, has quietly done a solid job

 becoming houston's most thoughtful espresso destinations.  a few weeks ago catalina's owner,

 max, called me up out of the blue (we had never met) and asked if they could order 50 lbs of Jacinto.  he explained they have an enthusiastically pursued guest espresso program and they have been buying stuff from around the country and featuring it until the order runs dry.  the espresso got there in good order and then...hurricane Ike.  max says they kept power for

 most of the time and that

 they were one of the few places around who had power, which, one can hope, means all the Jacinto got consumed and, one can further hope, enjoyed, by desparate, powerless houstonians.  

so one thing led to another and here i am making final preps and doing final roasts before going to houston to be part of this indieundergroundcoffeeevent.  $20 to pour.  winner takes all.  who knows but that the winner might just be a hurricane victim and this could be the most direct charity line from fundraiser to relief distribution in the history of coffee.   fun times in texas.  hey, even the weather has cooperated.  one thing about hurricanes:  they definitely bring cooler (read:  coffee buying and drinking) weather in their wakes.  

cheers, all.    

third time's a charm

wow. i can't believe it's been almost two months since my last blogpost. for you six regulars, thanks for coming back to check in (feedreaders help, doubtless).

lots of stuff happening these days, though summer is generally a slower time business-wise, especially in these 100+ F days. in love with coffee as i am, it is always funnily difficult for me to understand why people don't want to drink hot coffee when it's still 89F at 9:30pm. go figure.

anyway, slow times or not, we're still here, plugging away, slugging away, doing lots of cupping, tweaking Big Brown, trying lots of exciting samples for the fall, setting up new wholesale clients and generally taking advantage of the relative downtime to plan for cooler weather when things will grow mad and fast toward the end of the year.

on a huge and hugely personal note, my lovely wife and i are expecting our third child. estimated time of arrival: 21 January 2009. we are both stoked, naturally. friends ask us whether we'll try to learn the gender before the baby's born (no...why spoil one of life's only true surprises?), whether we are hoping for one gender over another (no...we only pray for a healthy baby with five fingers on each hand, five toes on each foot, and so forth) and how we think this will change our lives (who knows but God? but it WILL change, for sure!)

as i mentioned, we are ecstatic, though mom is still feeling a touch of nausea even here into the second trimester. but she looks great--she always has looked great during pregnancy--and is busy reading all about midwifery and homebirthing.

don't want to dominate this coffee blog with all the personal info. i promise i will get back to blogging coffee stuff very soon. i have been ruminating on some issues i'd like to share.

until then, stay cool.

envelopes

i'm a skeptical soul by nature. i meet people very slowly and trust them even more slowly. i don't know why. on the contrary, i consider myself something of an early adopter of new ideas, always on the lookout for the next major improvement or the newest promising trend. it's funny, but perhaps the internet helps magnify my particular personality mix: if i had to take new ideas directly from people i might never get past my impressions of that person's in-person persona, and down to the idea(s) they were espousing.

my point? i'm just thinking about new ideas and what people are thinking when it comes to the directions coffee is heading. someone i just met once said that coffee auctions are a price discovery mechanism, not quality discovery. at first blush that sounds heretical to the latest received coffee wisdom out there. but there is more than a nugget of truth to that when the usual top lots in auctions like the c.o.e. and b.o.p. tend to outpace their lower-ranked brethren, sometimes by obscene amounts, when surely the coffee at the top can't be that much more amazing than the number two, three, four and so on.

this is not a new discussion. it's actually just an example of ideas and how reading them sometimes gives me pause to think in new ways.

what are you thinking about in coffee? are we still edge-pushers? what's new in your coffee world?

frozen wave

i've been enduring one of those runs where i just can't seem to make myself a decent cup of coffee. it happens to the best of us at times, i know. it's been happening to me this week. cup after cup, morning after morning for the last week have just been...blah. roasts are good. greens are good. proportions and other fundamentals are good. i just can't seem to get it together. chemex. press. hario. aeropress. melitta pour over. no matter. it's just...off.

i'll get it together and have a great cup soon, i'm sure. just tossing that out there to the wind/ether.

have you ever had a frozen wave of mediocre cups by your own hand?

post-it to self: you love coffee

i'm not a caffeine addict. i drink and sell coffee for the love of it--for its taste and for its ability to floor me with beauty.

so it has been a difficult several days here with (what has come to be known as) the phoenix project and the attempt to maintain operations at their normal pace.

and in the frenzy i realized . . . i haven't had a cup of coffee in over three days. now seriously, i know what you may be thinking when i announce i'm not caffeine-enslaved: "DE-nial." but three days and no adverse effects and no, "gee, i'd like a cup of coffee"? proof positive, at least, that i was one distracted fellow.

and so this morning as i dusted off my chemex and went through my ritual steps for a morning coffee i began to realize my hiatus.

and the coffee . . . maybe it had been too long; but my cup was the sweetest, most insanely clear fruit i can recall having in, well, a long time. a great reminder of the sunshine coffee brings to the lives of so many. for the taste of it, not the drug of it. a great reminder of what it's really all about, what i got into this business for in the first place.

post meeting

there's been a lot of talk lately about the moves starbucks has been making since the re-succession to the throne of mr howard schultz. my friend-in-coffee sarah wrote a nice piece the other day about starbucks move to close its stores this week for three hours in order to retrain its employees ("partners") about the importance of good espresso beverage making technique.

after reading tonight over on the texas coffee people site a letter from "the inside" about the general contents of the meeting i got excited and began craving one of my favorite beverages from the siren while i was still working there: the double short cappuccino.

cast your mind. it's 9pm and your humble bloggerspondent finishes reading mr schultz's part about how the company has lost its focus by focusing too much on money, how the espresso is all-important and the three things every barista was going to promise to do to right the ship. customer is always right. check. espresso recalibrated to 19 seconds. okay, a definite move in the right direction. check. milk steamed to exacting standards to produce perfect microfoam every time, for each and every drink. check. i grabbed my keys and told my beautiful wife i'd be back. it was time for a little field experiment. what better time to try to get as good a drink as possible than in the immediate days after every north american starbucks store completely closed for three hours to focus on one thing and one thing only--the quality of their espresso beverages?

off to my nearest starbucks i went. as i approached the door and surveyed the static cling signage greeting my eyes i immediately felt the pangs of possible regret: on both doors was a cling displaying the words, "the neighborhood's best espresso." okay, maybe it was more eye-rollage than regret; but at any rate i figured that's what i was there to determine for myself, so in i went.

now, i have long been an advocate of the not-so-well-known-anymore cup size at starbucks known as "short." time was that the sizes went, "short," "tall" and "grande." along came "venti" (tm), and off went "short" from the menu. you could still get 'em if you asked. only you had to ask, and no one asks any questions at starbucks--probably out of fear that it might slow down the mile long line at 7:34am. still, those blessed eight ounces were often the exact size of liquid i was craving, especially when i was craving a morning cappuccino. since starbucks espresso is not really known for being interesting or even assertive aside from having a very bitey characteristic to it, i would most often buttress my short cappuccino to a double short to help at least bring the espresso to milk to foam ratio a little more into balance.

being the perfectionist that i was/am, when i was at the helm of my own starbucks store i trained and retrained my staff on the perfect way to create velvety microfoam; on the importance of steaming milk only to order; on how to free pour the perfect cappuccino, latte or mocha to within two one-hundredths of a pound by the scale every time; on the necessity of tasting the shots at least once per shift and recalibrating the espresso machine as needed to get a full 19 seconds from first visual out of each shot. (back then i had no idea about rich, sweet and intense espresso--i only knew the starbucks way, which was 13-17 seconds...which we promptly ignored to get a touch more umph out of our shots.)

my point with that last two paragraphs was to establish my own credworthiness on knowing what a starbucks double short cappuccino should look, smell and taste like.

so how did i fare on my trip down the street? in three words: not super well. i walked in, was greeted by two baristas laughing with each other about whatever inside joke they were both in on, waited about thirty seconds for them to stop joking and acknowledge my existence on this earth as a paying customer, and greeted the barista with my order: one double short cappuccino with milk steamed to 150F, please.

after another 10 seconds of laughing--i'm not sure whether at me or still toward this inside joke i came in on the fumes of--the barista rang up my beverage, still snickering, and handed my cup to the barista at the espresso machine.

this is where things really went south, for not only must this cappuccino probably now hold some sort of land speed record for quickest prep time, it was all-wrong on a number of levels. level one: the shots must've pulled about as long as it took barack obama to endorse president bush's doctrine of preemption in his debate the other day in ohio. level two: there was no steaming of milk. it had already happened. my guess is that when i asked for milk at 150F the barista on bar simply read the thermometer in the milk leftover from the previous drink and thought, "voila! this one will be easy. no work involved." no work, that is, if you exclude the work of actually scooping a heaping helping of milk foam with her spoon into my cup and handing it to me. level three: the look of the milk was just so wroooong. fish eyeballs. atlaspheres. whatever you want to call 'em, they were there in abundance on the top of my drink. huge bubbles that can only come from aerating milk to within an inch of its life. level four: the smell of the milk. argh! resteamed milk has its own unique smell. maybe it's reconstituted scaldation, but the burnt pudding aroma is not to be desired upon your worst enemy. and yet here i was, $3.24 (plus a $1 tip, i might add) lighter, having to endure this pain, this unbearable pain. and that was before i actually even took the first sip.

about that sip. i cannot here in the interest of keeping this a family-friendly blog describe the sensory experience that passed over my personhood as i got into my vehicle, removed the lid and took my first taste of this "cappuccino." even the thought of the thought is nigh unto unbearable. suffice it to say that the starbucks espresso profile has a mighty grip on what it means to be "deep roasted."

i'm not a complainer. i have never been able to get comfortable around the prospect of myself actually walking a drink back in, telling the barista the why's and werefore's of what's wrong with my drink and demanding another in its stead. i've always simply prefered to suck it up, upper lip stiffened, accepting the outcome whatever it may be as a learning experience. disappointed within myself, i thought i should at least give starbucks a second chance. ironically enough, i knew from experience that this company that has made its name on consistency would almost surely provide me with a diametrically different cappuccino experience in a store not but a few short miles away.

i was right. as i walked into the second store on my evening jaunt i was greeted not with exclusionary inside jeers but with a genuine smile and a courteous greeting. having been to both these stores on several occasions i knew that this second store, while being a little more friendly, was often inferior in production quality. and since every problem is a management problem, i chalked it up to the district manager's decision to stock this second store with a less-experienced, less customer service savvy manager, someone who could fill the post in a sort of starter role as he/she gained experience before being moved into a higher volume, higher profile store, such as the first store i visited. well, somebody forgot to inform me that the managers at these two stores must have either a) switched places, or b) switched skill levels; because the second store had hustling baristas who took my order speedily and took care to obviously follow the standards outlined in the meeting they had just had.

as an aside, i thought it a nice touch that the second store had chosen for its coffee of the day board design to write in bold letters, "OUR PROMISE: TO MAKE YOUR DRINK PERFECTLY OR TO REMAKE IT UNTIL YOU TELL US IT'S RIGHT." the board was then signed by the dozen or so baristas that worked there. bravo.

so i ordered my drink, a double tall cappuccino with milk steamed to 150F. the barista kindly acknowledged my drink and attempted to finish quickly the last bit of espresso machine maintenance he was absorbed with when i approached the counter before getting on with my drink. no problem. he was already in the middle of it, i thought. seconds later he asked me, "you said double tall, right?" no, i politely corrected: double short. no problem quoth he and went to wash out the milk pitcher. again he stopped to ask me a question, "milk to 150, right?" yup, i nodded, and off he went. carefully he steamed the milk, creating the appealing whisper of milk as it is first aerated, then submerged to finish steaming. with a careful eye on his milk thermometer, he turned off the steam wand at precisely the right temperature, perfect for immediate consumption. next was time for shots. 13 seconds from first visual. not so great. had he not been paying attention to that part of the meeting? no, in actuality, he had, for no sooner did the shots finish than he dumped those shots, rinsed the shot glasses and tried again. this time, 17 seconds. still not as long as i would've liked but survivable, especially considering all else thus far in this second store had been most pleasant. i even noticed the conspicuous absence of the "neighborhood's best espresso" stickers on the doors. surely they must've just not arrived yet at this store. after all, this is standardizationstarbucks.

the verdict on the second drink? much, much better. a world of improvement in visuals, olfactoryness and in the overall atmosphere of the store. and then came the clincher. when it came time to pay the barista actually just shook his head slightly, waved his hand in a sort of half-stop manner and said, "don't worry about it. i asked you way too many questions about your drink. i should've been paying better attention to you as a customer." what?!? what was this? i was taken aback. the look on my face must've surely been one of shock and awe. i was...genuinely surprised and delighted by the actions of this barista. my only recourse was to dump the money i was going to use to pay for the drink directly into the tip jar. and even THEN i was pleasantly surprised as he said, "hey man, that's not really necessary. i appreciate it a lot. thanks." whoah.

at this point i had to say something. while i felt ridiculous about revealing details of my evening's field experiment i knew some sort of compliment was in order if for no other reason than to solidly accept and reinforce the good vibe i was getting from what so many now call the cold call of the sterile siren. i took one sip of my velvety foam and said to the barista, "i just have to say thank you. this is the best double short cappuccino i have received at a starbucks in a long time." he acknowledged the compliment, thanked me once more and bade me farewell for the evening. as i began to turn for the door the only other thing i could muster in praise went something like, "looks like the little meeting worked, eh" and immediately upon the sound leaving my vocal cords i had almost wished it hadn't been uttered for fear of sounding condescending. yet to my surprise my hirsute compliment was met with a gracious and genuine smile and a, "you bet. thanks again for coming in. have a great night, sir." wow. surprise and delight is back in business at big green.

back in the vehicle i now had my two cappuccinos side by side to compare and, well, let's just say that once i got a really good drink of my second cappuccino, not even the amazing vibe and perfect milk foam was enough to overcome the vampire bite of such dark roasted espresso, leading me back to the maxim that a house is only as sturdy as its foundation. as both drinks cooled to about the same level on my drive back home, i could scarcely tell the difference between the first and second, save for the lingering remnants of the first drink's scalded milk peeking out from the shriekingly bitter double shots of espresso i called for. alas, this was starbucks after all, i reminded myself. and while i did catch a glimpse of the former days of the old gray mare's now faded coffee and customer service glory, it was as fleeting as, well, probably as fleeting as was the espresso's crema itself.

in conclusion i would have to say that although mr schultz is to be highly commended for his demonstrative retaking of the reigns into a radically public and different direction than his company has been earning its recent reputation for, starbucks will have to be equally singular about pursuing quality roasting profiles to go along with the other changes. simply lengthening the shot times is not going to cut it, although cut through my mouth with their bitterness they did--right to the gums. barring a radical change in actual espresso taste, no amount of training or retraining is going to get me back into the doors of a starbucks again, no matter how nice the barista is. and it's certainly no enticement back through the doors for the three minute, lingering inside joke sneers i would almost certainly have at least a 50/50 chance of enduring at any starbucks within driving distance.

field experiment now complete, i walked in the door, climbed the stairs and glided into the room where my wife was to have her opportunity for drink inspection. the differences in drinks were obvious upon the first eyeballing: the first drink was still visibly marred with globe bubbles while the second still had remnants of what was once glorious microfoam. [see drinks pics above, in order of appearance.] she nodded her approval of the second's foam. and then...the sip. it was like reading the directions on a shampoo bottle. view. smell. sip. find disappointment in the espresso. repeat.

repeat.

repeat.

and repeat a million times tomorrow and every day hereafter for big green.

i guess somehow despite all the store closings and promises made to make changes for the better, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

covering the $495 spread

been an interesting week. monday was a holiday but tuesday marked the day inspectors for our new roasterie would start descending on our humble operational headquarters. in all, there were six division inspectors who would need to give their john hancocks saying we were good to go: building, mechanical, health (food), fire, electrical and plumbing. no problems, i figured. i'm sure we won't be 100% in the clear; but we should have at least enough stuff done to merit at least a provisional okay. plus, i'm articulate enough to snow my way through the rest of what we may lack. and that's pretty much how it went down. but not before long stretches of boredom and doubt. everyone was supposed to show up on tuesday. but oh yeah, these are bureaucrats. nothing happens on time or according to plan. and we pay them several hundred dollars for the privilege.

first, let me say that inspectors are worse than the cable guy. we always thought the four hour window of arrival the cable guy gave was bad. these inspectors say you have to be there between 7:45am-4:30pm. no clue when they might arrive. and you'd better be there. if you are gone for a quick lunch and they show...toast. if they arrive before you in the morning, God help you. and calling them is no help because they never return their voicemails. now, normally all this wouldn't be so bad. i have stuff to roast and ship and there's still plenty more to arrange in our new space. except for the bottom sentence on the envelope they give you to hold all your inspection paperwork which reads: "It is unlawful to occupy the premises until all inspections have been cleared." i got really hung up on the meaning of the word "occupy." did that mean we couldn't have any of our stuff in there, even if it was practically all in piles (which it was)? did it mean we just couldn't be up and running, making money at what we do? could i fire up the roaster and service my wholesale accounts? would the smell of roasted coffee tip them off that we had already jumped the gun? what would my lie, er, excuse be for the smell? would they believe that the place had already been freshly painted before i got in there? i decided to keep everything in a sort of working funk, stuff piled in corners or under other junk that i knew i could use but that looked, to the casual, non-coffee-industry observer, just like a pile of stuff. functional disarray, i called it. if we jumped the gun, or looked as though we were jumping the gun, no soap. back to square one.

i was really concerned about this issue and worried they would find my level of moved-inness to be illegal, thus voiding my application and sending me to said square one. i was worried, alright...that is, until the first inspector showed up. six hours into my wait, mind you. his visit took all of four minutes and was a breezy pass. my first one down. after that i could breathe a little easier, having suddenly remembered an age-old truism: bureaucrats simply don't give a hoot. they don't care whether or in what stage i am "occupying" the premises. honestly, i doubt half of them cared at all whether i called for inspections or not.

at the end of day one i had three inspections down and three to go. electric gave me a provisional green light, granted i got some minor stuff switched around. the building inspector literally spent all of 45 seconds in the place, asked what other inspectors had already shown up, said, "you're looking good here," and signed off. it was the final visit of the day that got me a little riled. the mechanical division inspector showed up, made a bee line toward the vertical ventilation stack for the roaster(s) and began rubbing his thumb and index fingers on his chin in that quizzical way. after about 30 seconds of that he said only, "um, no." to which i said, "um, no, what, sir?" to which he said, "where did you get this?"

me: i built it.
he: you did?
me: well, yeah. me and my father in law.
he: how?
me: well, with this 4" and 8" double wall ducting, those braces holding the ducting to the rafters, that aluminum tape, that flashing and those screws holding said flashing to the roof and the rain guard up top of it."
he: how does it work?
me: (i explain some of the technical aspects of the roasting and ventilation process)
he: um, no.
me: um, no, what, sir?
he: well, you gotta have a licensed and bonded contractor build that for you.
me: why? it works. why should i pay someone else to do what i can do for free?
he: where are the specs?
me: what specs?
he: the specs from the roaster.
me: what specs from the roaster?
he: the specs telling you how to build this thing. i can't sign off on this unless i see the roaster manufacturer's specs saying this layout isn't gonna burn the whole building down.
me: no disrespect sir, but isn't that the fire marshal's call?
he: well, i still need the okay from the roaster manufacturer.
me: i...don't think the roaster manufacturer is in the business of doing ventilation specs. they do roasters, not ventilation systems.
he: i can't pass this, then.
me: then what am i supposed to do?
he: get the specs from the roaster saying it's okay to build it this way.
me: um....er, well, would it help you if i just turn on the roaster and show you how it works?
he: no.
me: well then can i just call my roaster manufacturer now and get him on the phone so he can tell you we're okay?
he: no. i need to see the specs.

...and so it went for another couple minutes of back and forth. city bureaucrats. cannot see beyond the specs. no forest for the trees. seriously. stop to think for a minute and take a look at it and realize that it is probably the best darned built, most solid thing you've seen all day, dude. and realize that you probably see a bunch of crap-built stuff by so very many "licensed and bonded contractors." and stop once more to realize that all you really need to do is step out of the theoretical world of covering your a** and step into the world of a) turn it on; b) examine whether it does what we say it does and c) it poses no threat to anyone/anything because it's very simple, basic and safe technology; and you'll be just fine. but no. he needs. to see. the specs. now...i realize that this is for my own protection and whatnot, yada yada yada. but seriously. what is it that is so magical about having to pay a contractor? you will only pay more and have it done less well and then have to pay them again in six months to fix what they only should've done right the first time.

anyways, after day one we were 2-1. that evening (after bureaucrats go home for the day) i spent the next four hours roasting and bagging and got home after a 21 hour day. the next day, nobody showed up. i got up after 4 hours of sleep, sped over there to arrive on time...and waited the whole freaking day while NO ONE showed. doing nothing but watching dvd's on the computer, trying to "not occupy" the building, reading a book, listening to some new demo's from questions in dialect's summer release, doing a touch of textual analysis on the fascinatingly complex theological syllogism that is Romans 1-3 (it's in the Bible), eating leftover saltines because i was too scared to leave for lunch lest i miss someone, and so forth. wasted day on the inspections front. (if the shoe had been on the other foot and i had made them wait there...!)

thursday morning came the fire marshal. another two minute visit. another clear pass. why hadn't the mechanical division guy given his approval so easily, i asked the marshal? he couldn't tell me. suggested i appeal to his supervisor. i said i would. he said he'd come back in a few weeks to buy some coffee. i said he could have a bag on me. he began to get a scared look on his face. i realized he thought i might have been offering him a bribe. i told him to come back and pay full price when i was "occupying" the building. plumbing division inspector also came thursday. another quick green light.

all that remained was the health department. after three calls and voicemails to their department on wednesday and thursday and no reply, i could only assume they would show on friday.

and so they did. late on friday. as in, i was almost leaving for the weekend. and i received disappointing news. the long and short of it is that they expect me to pay $500 for a sink to wash a single $5 piece of equipment once every other week or so. no rats were dancing in the rafters. no cockroaches were squirming in the beans. the place was spotless and we were in tip top shape (that is, for someone who wasn't actually occupying anything). all except for the stainless steel scoop i measure beans with. not to code. filthy. full of disease and pestilence and every malodorous thing imaginable. at least that's how the inspector made me feel. in fact, the scoop is shiny and clean and has not a trace of dirt on it. and yet i will be required to purchase a full-on heavy duty commercial sink so that this scoop can be washed, then rinsed, then sanitized and put back into production. $500 for $5. sounds like a bureaucrat at work. no forest seen for the trees.

now, let it not be thought that i am anti clean or anti sinks. and in fact the sink is on our budgeted list of purchase items. only not for a couple months down the line when we actually begin to serve things using utensils and whatnot that require washing, rinsing and sanitizing, i.e, things that people will use to directly consume food. not this stainless steel scoop that will scoop beans that will then be roasted to well over twice the temperature required to kill any bacteria in any food item on the planet.

alas. if you want to dance with the pretty girls you have to dance with the ugly ones first.

it's true. moving into a new place will always cost you more and take longer than you think. even if you think about it taking longer and costing more than you originally thought. and in the final analysis none of this is a deal breaker or will be much more than a couple speed bumps on the road to a successful new plateau for brown. but it's fun (yes, fun in its own wretched, not-making-sense way) and you learn from it and become better. for now, though, i just want the green light to actually "occupy" the building so i don't have to be roasting in the dead of night.

2008 stuff

yes, he still blogs.

no, he has not died.

yes, he still thinks about good blog topics and how to develop them.

no, he has not been ignoring you.

yes, 2008 will spell the return of the brown blogger in his new and improved, er, way. (don't know why especially it will be "new and improved" other than that we're always working to get better over at brown.)

anyways, i thought about a year in review but someone already beat me to it. then i thought about a top ten list but a certain other "across the ponder" stole the first punch. darn brits. so this entry will just be what i personally and professionally hope to see happen in 2008.

in no particular order...

• i hope to expand my current roster of coffees that are purchased directly from the farm from about 20% to over 50%. baby steps, of course, and all that, but it's important to build that relationship. and since brown is building its volume it begins to make more sense to start talking in quantities that wouldn't just make farmers laugh. they may still laugh; just less.
• getting this roasterie/warehouse/office/lab finished is key to expanding out operations. at this stage, barring inspection catastrophe or unforeseen obstacles, we should be finished with our refurb and have test fired big brown and have her ready to go into full production. this (setting up the new roaster) has taken longer than i had anticpated, primarily due to the fact that we are spitballing at best and have gotten to this point by sheer trial and error, without graphs or instruction manuals to guide us. no complaining. just it is what it is and we will lick this problem mid-january.
• this is the year brown will become a member of the coe. i have no illusions brown will swoop in and steal a prized auction coffee that will shock the world. no, no. not my intent. basically we just want to put our money where our mouth is and since we finally are faced with the prospect of having some spare money...
• i'll be traveling again in 2008. not sure where but i have my eye on el salvador and possibly even africa. but we'll see what pans out.
  
• more stuff to buy. shirts. brewers. grinders. developing your market and so forth.

there's more to the story. maybe you haven't banished me from your feedreader and you'll stick around to see it unfold. 2

setback

napolean had his elba. the americans had their anzio. set against that relief, the issues today with big brown probably don't merit me getting all down in the mouth. frustrating, for sure; but nothing to get defeatist about.

now that the big engineering and main fabrication is done all that is left is basically tweaking the tolerances so that our new homemade roaster acts predictably well every time. one area we've been spending a considerable amount of time on this week is the tolerances of the drum vis-a-vis the faceplates. when the faceplates were first installed they fit true to the rotation of the drum with less than 1/10th" gap on either side and on either top or bottom of the rotation. my father in law will tell you that, had he to do it over, he would've first cut the recirculation vents in the faceplates, then welded them to the bases to buttress the drum. doing it in the reverse order of that has caused, as best we can tell, the faceplates to bow ever so slightly as to rub ignominiously and irritatingly with every revolution. and metal on metal--argh!--ranks right up there with fingernails scratched down the chalkboard; or the "shing!" of a silver fork pulled out quickly from clenched teeth; or (perhaps worst of all) the sound of a barista's tamper banging the portafilter between tamps.

for the last two days, my intrepid father in law has been laboring under the assumption that some combination of tension and release between the rods that run from faceplate to faceplate was the answer to the swivel and swerve of the drum. but after no luck with that, this morning he arrived just after second-breakfast with a metal grinder and oversized grinder disk to shave slightly the edges of the drum. i had to roast and run errands for most of the first half of the day, but when i returned, there he was, still frustrated at the lack of progress even after all his maneuvers. add to that the smell of burning metal from the grinding and all was not going well today with our progress toward our larger roaster.

at this point perhaps it was my fresh perspective that must've (luckily, probably) recalled something we were discussing before he and my mother in law departed texas for a month. i suggested that perhaps the problem could be end-ran if we either a) loosened one or both of the bearings at either end of the shaft upon which the drum rotates, or b) loosened the collar on the shaft that resides between the faceplate(s) and the bearing(s) that constricts or frees the drum on the shaft to have some "walking room." after some trial and error down these twin paths we realized we were definitely on something resembling the right track, and with a few bumps of the rubber mallet on the backside pulley right at the shaft's end we were able to eliminate all but a paper thin revolving scrape of the drum on one corner of the front faceplate.

so, hands full of the smell of metal and minds full of the grime of unrealized ideas, we decided that to get to the place where all we had was a tiny shimmy that would either eventually run itself smooth during normal operations once we got up and running or that we could grind down the final infinitesimal extra bit another day was as good-a-progress as we were gonna' see today.

and so we left it.

that was perhaps--let us hope--the last major hurdle in this final set up phase. the rest from here appears to not be reliant upon such exactitudes.

from here? onward to our (still prospective) roasting space several miles away down toward the center of town. we made good progress earlier this week in our negotiations with the landlords and have verbally agreed to press forward exclusively in good faith. i hope one day to blog about carl and grace, the little couple who own that space and who are just the sweetest folk you would ever want to meet. in all honesty, they are a big reason we have decided to continue moving forward in exploring that space as our potential new world headquarters. the other is our desire to help build critical mass in an interesting and eclectic part of san antonio that is beginning to see economic and cultural revitalization. again, more on that stuff in a future blog post, should we close on that space: i'll post a sort of neighborhood primer for your late night blogreading.

enough for now though. thanks to you four who still read faithfully.

more to come.

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.)

couple more

some final, quick pics before "big brown" arrives next week. remember, everything you have seen up to and including this point is completely homemade using regular off the shelf parts. Only a couple pieces of stainless steel were special ordered.




forgive the background with the starbucks coffee brewer. at least, to your right, you can see a well used french press. yes, the wood looks a bit bulky and awkward. yes, the amazing steelwork looks brilliant. we'll get it sorted out soon.






this is the cooling tray. i should say, it's the cooling tray 1.0, as it will no doubt be upgraded next month with an agitating arm(s) of some sort. yes, it is detached from the roaster (i.e., has its own separate fan apart from the airflow used on the roaster).






the part you're meant to see is that this arm lowers the screen of the cooling tray to dump beans into a separate holding bin after cooling.




next week she arrives. set up will be slow as we aren't in our roasterie yet. hopefully early november to be up and running.

upkeep

those (four) of you who read this blog regularly know that i started in on a topic a month or so ago that i have yet to finish posting about. we were discussing the political, social, economic and quality ramifications of the various agencies and bureaucracies currently associated with the specialty coffee trade.

since that time an interesting thread has gotten going over on coffeed about fair trade pricing and all its attendant ramifications. in light of that educated discussion i'm going to bow out from completing my thoughts on it, as i have put my little hat in the ring over on that thread and don't want to be potentially talking out of turn.

in other news, the new roaster will be here shortly. in one week, to be exact. the last things to get done are the cooling tray, the trier and setting the rpm's correctly for the drum size. because we're basically short on time, my father-in-law is setting up a rudimentary but functional cooling system that will incorporate a regular box fan (separate from the roaster) and a lift type system to dump them into a bin once the beans are cooled. the trier will be fashioned out of stainless steel and will have a replaceable handle so i can use wood or something else in the future. i am seriously thinking about getting one of those custom reg barber triers seen at right (hat tip: geir oglend's flickr account).

the changeability of the cooler also highlights one of the great features of this roaster: it is easy to add, change, move and otherwise alter stuff on it in the future. tweaking will be a necessity, i'm sure. thank goodness it'll all be done under the watchful eye of my good ol' dad-in-law.

next item on the agenda: finalizing discussions on my new roasterie/warehouse. more on that soon (i hope).

rounding third

we're almost round third base, heading for home. that, of course, is my father in law--the man responsible for cooking up the recipe i've concocted. thank goodness he knows what he's doing and how to put stuff together. this pic to the left is a view of the gas controls side panel and the pulleys that turn the drum inside the roaster. if the gas controls look familiar, say, kitchen-like-familiar, that's because they are formerly a part of a kitchen stove. with four burners arrayed like the top of a gas stove and a middle pipe-type burner running down the center of those, we should have the btu's to get 'er done right. natural gas, in case you're wondering.

speaking of the right, that's him again holding on the hopper and chute throat. on the drawing board the hopper's diameter seemed appropriate for our purposes. once it got sized up next to the actual roaster body, however, we both agreed that it is too tall, too thin. it may require a step stool to load manually, something i'm not too keen on doing, especially at near-capacity loads. but it's an easy fix for some future date and not a critical error. just fabricate a lower, wider one and voila!

today, i got this email from him that read:

Hi Aaron,
Just a quick note...You're looking, for the first time, through the sight glass of Big Brown. You're good to 1200 degrees F and have a 3 x 3' viewing area. The trier goes by the little tick mark just below it. -Dad

i think he went to the local fireplace shop to get that, since the other day he told me his son, my brother-in-law, had recently gotten some replacement glass for his fireplace there and it clicked that this would also serve our purposes. i would've probably also preferred the trier and sight glass to be on the left side as you face the front of the roaster, next to the gas controls. but now i think i might just be getting nitpicky. after all, my father-in-law did place the sight glass and trier at the exact heights i requested so i wouldn't have to stoop or tippy-toe up to see them, or have to hold my arm/shoulder in some ergonomically uncomfortable way for any period of time.

you can also see the drop door that will empty beans into the cooling tray. ah yes, the cooling tray. running into a spot of trouble there. the plan as it stands right now is to basically attach (possibly detachable) a box with a separate fan to the bottom of the chute area. time is a little low for us now, so that may be the running option and we can tweak or change it after it arrives. and about that e.t.a.? we're looking at just over two weeks now. unfortunately, i won't be roasting with it in two weeks, as I still need to find and sign for a new place to put her. but i've got a line on some places and the move in shouldn't be too big a wrinkle to iron out.

more later. just wanted to share some of my excitement.

has it really been almost a month?

i'm getting pretty bad at blogging. maybe i blogged so much in the early days because i didn't have any real work to do. in any event, i just wanted to highlight an event i participated in a couple weeks ago that ties in with another project i've begun work on.

not long ago i took a trip up the road to austin to be part of the Texas Coffee Think Tank. the name sounds auspicious, but it was really just an informal gathering of texas coffee professionals designed to share experiences and encourage each other around coffee. i was asked to lead a cupping session for our inaugural meeting and afterward we would share lunch, beers and conversation around what we wanted the group to accomplish coffee-wise.

i thought about all the regular cupping sessions i've done in the past (geography as flavor, how roast affects flavor, cupping for defects, pre-ground versus fresh-ground, etc.) but since it was august i realized it was a golden opportunity to undertake a very special cupping.

some of you who have read here for a while know i am participating in a two year study with some colleagues that focuses on packaging and storing greens in ways that can possibly help maintain freshness better than traditional jute/burlap. with my friend jaime acting as catalyst we decided to vacuum pack several samples of fresh greens during our january/february '07 trip to guatemala. the idea was to separate vac-packed samples into room temp green samples and frozen green samples, and then every six months for two years we would open the corresponding samples from each storage method, roast them identically, cup them and capture any notes. jaime and i have both blogged about this before, so i won't rehash it all now. but i did notice in the run up to my meeting in austin that since it was now august (six months after returning from guatemala) it would be a golden opportunity to utilize the unbiased palates of the others at the meeting.

for the meeting's cupping i decided to try something a little different. it just so happens that i have greens from the same lot of the same farm in guatemala from '06 and '07, as well as the frozen samples from '07. so it was the nearly perfect apples to apples comparison i was looking for to determine the affects of time on greens. i say "nearly perfect" because both the '06 and '07 non-frozen have been carefully stored at room temperature, but the '07 non-frozen has actually also been rebagged out of jute and into plastic. and of course, the '07 frozen has been removed from jute, vac-packed and frozen immediately upon my return home at a constant zero degrees fahrenheit. close enough for government work, i guess.

anyways, visually, the greens were easily identifiable. the '06 had a pallid color relative to the solid jade of the '07 non-frozen. but the frozen '07 looked so much richer jade than even the non-frozen '07 that it almost looked as though they were different beans altogether. the roasted aroma of both whole bean and ground was almost a dead giveaway. and finally, of course, the tasting was the real test. no surprises...the frozen sample ran away with it. unbelievably fresh, fruited and sweet with a high degree of jasmine-citrus aromatics and fragrance.

now, typically i'm a big fan of blind cupping; and normally i would have conducted this session blindly as well. but i felt it was more important to make it known which was which for the purposes of level-setting everyone's palate to what fresh tastes like. did i tip the jury? i really don't think so. half the group had to ask me which was which anyways because they were busy talking among themselves as i was explaining. but they were asking which was which because when they got to the frozen sample they were blown away and were only asking to confirm what their tongues were telling them.

the rest of the meeting was productive and fun. john from jp's java (the founder of the group and our host for the day) made lasagna for everyone and supplied the beer. some great ideas were borne from the meeting and everyone looks forward to september's get together at austin java, where we are trying to get a screening of the movie black gold. eventually brown will host a meeting, if and when we get our roasterie built here.

oh and by the way, the purpose of the frozen greens experiment is not to get everyone to freeze their greens (although that was a clear winning argument from our first cupping). the purpose is to open the conversation about moving away from storing in jute/burlap by giving viable alternatives. i do have some '07 crop from that farm that is being purposely kept in jute to run against our frozen samples a little later in the year and into next.

on its way

part two of my pseudo political drama blogpost is on its way soon...

meantime, i wanted to make mention of one of my new favorite blogs. not new in the sense that they're new; new in the sense that i had the good fortune of discovering them. "discovering them" as in, they ordered some coffee from me and were kind enough to post a not too harsh critique on their site.

the blog is called coffee and conversation and believe me, this is one of the more thoroughly researched blogs around. they aren't hacks like me; they actually do some homework instead of tossing around opinions. for starters (after reading the brown review, of course!), check out this fascinating and in-depth discussion of what it takes to be called "shade grown" and/or "bird friendly" according to two well-respected organizations: the rainforest allliance and the smithsonian migratory bird center.

anyway, just giving props and thanks to c & c for their shout out toward brown.

also, in a completely unrelated point, if you're not currently using an aggregator, may i suggest netvibes.

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.

back from boston

no time to work out all the details just now. but my trip to boston was reinvigorating and refreshing and challenging and tiring (in a good way) and full, full of serious coffee considerations. what would you expect from the boys of barismo? seriously, more soon. i'm shot, though. i'm heading to dream about what a real shot of northern italian from george should taste like. meantime, you can head over to my flickr site to view the boston pics.

several trips in one, part one

what a whirlwind i have just returned from! it's very nice to be able to take a 'vacation' and have it tied largely to work (read: tax write off). i was fortunate enough to be able to do just that this past week as i traveled over 2500 miles on our federal interstate highway system across this great country of ours. this recap will not capture every detail of my trip; each of these segments of my trip do and may merit their own individual posts at some point in the future. but here's the first part of the trip: from san antonio to tulsa.

first up in our trip was dallas and the scrbc. this was held at the s.w. food expo and although it didn't get a lot of attention tucked away in the corner of the expo hall it was nonetheless a huge step forward in the emergence of texas baristaness as a viable player in the national scene. yes, it's true that we are still miles behind our comrades across the rest of the country. but my honest feel is that we posted loud and clear that we are ready to enter the same arena and learn and grow and make our own waves. congrats to patrick, clancy and jason for great presentations and for taking us to the next level. here's to many more levels in the very near future.

yes, in some ways this event had that slapped together feel. i feel this came as a result of the fact that we have never done/seen this type of thing before. but we'll get better and now that we've been there and done that you can be sure that that famous texas pride will not let us hang down in the "also ran" category for long. you have to give huge props to mike for putting in untold massive amounts of time to make this event run as well as it did. simply massive.

i left dallas even before the final round was completed and winners announced because we had to be in tulsa that evening for an event that would highlight the entire trip for me. i was set to visit one of my newer wholesale clients, kokoa chocolatier, and be their guest for a monthly dinner event they host. normally, kokoa is a chocolatier serving full plated desserts in the evening and a lite food menu for lunch. twice a month on consecutive days, however, they host a full-on dinner that pairs foods with wines and chocolates and yes, even coffees. i had faint idea what i was getting myself into as i stepped into the store, having only personally met the manager for the first time just minutes earlier. but as i sat down and looked over the eight course meal it began to hit me and the thought became louder and louder in my head: this is a good match for brown. (hate to say it in print, but) sometimes as a wholesaler you sell to people because you need volume and cash. sometimes, as in this case, however, you realize you really do have a good match. kokoa is a great example of that. they are quality driven, aesthetically concerned for all their products, they care highly about service and they love their customers. i sat through my eight course, $135-a-head meal and just spun. my head spun. my spirit spun. i knew this was right and good and worth growing a serious relationship with this client. especially when the last course was presented: a plate of freshly prepared cream, small chocolate brownie wedges, freshly sliced strawberries and shortbread cookies, presented cleanly on a plate and paired with the private house blend kokoa and brown have collaborated on. the dessert course was simple and phenomenal and paired perfectly with the coffee.

and of course, it helped cement the match (and really boosted my ego) as some of the dinner guests approached me and said they were big fans of my coffee. it is a very surreal experience to introduce yourself to someone(s) and have them say, "oh we know who you are, aaron!" it is perhaps even more divine to visit a client who is distance-prohibitive and see all the coffee pieces working together flawlessly in nearly the exact way you would do it yourself.

next time you're in tulsa, oklahoma, make sure you visit them at one of their two locations.

part two will discuss the next leg of the trip including a visit to a coffee retailer using a clover. i also hope to expound on some of the ramifications of this trip for brown as a business as a result of this trip and these experiences.

just one quick pic

...to give you a picture of what's to come. i have a ton of pics from my recently concluded trip to guatemala, some of which are already up on my flickr account. this one is of yellow catui from the farm of el injerto, last year's cup of excellence winner for guatemala.