tonx.org

I meet a lot of people working in coffee who express frustration with how far consumers lag behind coffee professionals in their understanding and appreciation of good coffee. It seems to be a common barista lament.

I don’t believe this frustration is well founded or fair, for a number of reasons. For starters, I suspect that even the most dedicated coffee lover has limited opportunities to experience as broad a range of samples as fans of other beverages. To explore this idea a bit further, I’ve put together a very quick, very informal survey I’d like as many folks as possible (coffee pros and novices alike) to take… Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I grabbed the very last of the $5 early copies of the hulking San Francisco Panorama, McSweeney’s epic one-time broadsheet newspaper, from their Valencia Street headquarters. The paper was a five month labor of love of a team of great writers, artists, graphic designers, and investigative journalists to demonstrate what might be done to restore the appeal of a newspaper in the 21st century. I am digging it.

It’ll take me many days to penetrate into this heavy, intimidating pile of tree carcass, but some first impressions are worth sharing.

People don’t actually read newspapers, they step into them like a warm bath
- Marshall McLuhan

This warm bath is more like a jacuzzi tub, luxuriously large and hot. There is a potential for drowning. This thing makes the Sunday NYTimes feel lean by comparison.

Every section delivers something close to that rush I felt as a kid opening the color comics section on Sunday. Panorama’s comics section here is of course a beauty, with contributions from Dan Clowes, Adrian Tomine, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware and others.

The features look amazing and the A section is inspired, featuring profiles of locals getting ready to ship to Afghanistan, a map of the city showing last weekends crime, the cheapest places to buy gas in the city and a list of current christmas tree lots.

The fat Panoroma Magazine puts the increasingly flimsy Times Magazine to shame. At 112 pages it is several meals on its own, with some gorgeous photography to boot. I like the design column by Chip Kidd where he takes apart the awful Amtrak ticket design. The Panorama Book Review runs another 96 pages with a nice mix of reviews, interviews and short fiction.

These trees died for a good cause. This is pampered, grass-fed, prepared-by-great-chefs Slow News, possessed of nutritional qualities that factory farmed news lacks. A newspaper that doesn’t just regard it’s content as commodity data. A newspaper that doesn’t insult the intelligence of its readers and that indulges the full brilliance of its writers. A newspaper whose editors actually share your interests rather than merely pander to them. A newspaper whose genuine desire to serve the public interest extends beyond the scope of positioning their brand.

The continuing death by a thousand papercuts of the American newspaper is no longer news. Fingers point at the internet, Craig(’slist) Newmark, Google, ravenous corporate consolidation, and the declining literacy and attention span of the American public. It may be too late for the big papers to reverse course and invest in the kind of nutritionally rich, smart slow news advocated by this prototype, and it is easy to argue that there is no longer a viable business model to support it, but it makes for a potent “what if”.

This beast should start appearing wherever McSweeney’s other fine print products are sold for the totally-worth-it price of $16, or you can preorder from Amazon.

This tweet today from Jeremy Tooker of Four Barrel, who is currently traveling in Kenya, explains their no-free-refill policy quite nicely.

This past Sunday I conducted a culinary experiment which provoked strong reactions on a couple of forums, and I feel I should write it up here as not a great deal of info about this exists online. Amanita muscaria, the familiar, iconic bright red fly agaric mushroom, is classified as “poisonous” in most field guides. It contains two alkaloids, muscimol and ibotenic acid, which can be toxic at sufficient doses and produce a range of effects at modest doses (not to be confused with psychoactive mushrooms of the psilocybe variety). It has a widespread history of shamanic and medicinal use for its intoxicating properties, is popular among some contemporary psychonauts and appears in a lot of debatable anthropology.

But my present interest in it is culinary… Read the rest of this entry »

The pixels had barely dried on my previous post before I received word from someone involved in the unfolding SCAA negotiations with the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange. The short of it is that there was solid reasoning behind keeping a low profile on the sensitive dialogue with the ECX, that significant progress was being made, and that the SCAA is striving to improve its public relations activities.

To that end, the SCAA blog shares some very positive news from Ethiopia about acceptance of a number of proposals that will advance the interests of quality coffee growers and buyers, including a proposed “2nd window” that will incorporate traceability and allow for premium prices paid directly to growers.

Direct Specialty Trade (DST) Platform: The ECX will also establish a 2nd window within its system, to allow for traceability and direct exchange. Within this system, any farmer or cooperative may submit their coffee to the ECX for quality evaluation and grading, and the coffee will be available for sampling to registered buyers. The ECX will then make available a venue for price discovery via an auction. ECX only facilitates the transaction, and is not a party to the transaction. A resulting FOB contract will be made directly between the overseas buyer and the farmer or farmer group, with the inclusion of a farmer-elected Services Provider, who may provide services to the farmer such as milling and exportation. The ECX will assist in the transaction by providing guidance on contracting and fee structure.

I encourage anyone interested in these complex issues to read the full report, detailing additional specialty level grading at the exchange using SCAA cupping protocols, proposed expansions of the ECX geographic indications, increases in the number of certified Q graders, and an overview of some of the underlying issues and remaining obstacles.

Today I got a rare communique in my inbox from the SCAA (Specialty Coffee Association of America), the big trade group that promotes specialty coffee, sets standards, and holds our industry’s annual trade show. Currently a delegation from the SCAA is in Addis Ababa meeting with representatives of the controversial new government run Ethiopia Coffee Exchange which has disrupted and created an uncertain future for much of the quality focused, direct trade coffee partnerships that have cropped up in recent years. Everyone who has come to love Ethiopia’s coffees has an interest in how this plays out.

But that’s not what this morning’s press release was about:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Former SCAA Executive Sentenced to Prison for Embezzlement from Association

Long Beach, CA. U.S.A. (October 21, 2009) – The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) announced today that former Chief Operating Officer, Scott Welker, has been sentenced to federal prison for embezzling in excess of $465,000.00 from the association.
…

I get at most maybe 2 or 3 pieces of email per year from the SCAA, so it surprises me that this is appropriate subject matter for one of them. I can only assume that they’d like me to write about this “news” and share it with all 14 of my blog readers. But since I don’t feel qualified to explain their embezzlement scandal, how it happened, who was minding the store, or what measures have or have not been taken to assure it could never happen again, I’ll take a pass.

Why no press release about the important talks underway in Addis Ababa? Who is in the delegation? What are their stated objectives? What is the SCAA’s position on the ECX? The SCAA is involved in something important and (presumably) positive. Would it not benefit them to go in armed with a publicly stated position or goal, maybe with the eyes of the press and awareness from its own membership? Even sensitive closed-door diplomacy would seem to benefit from at least an open window or two.

I don’t want this to come off as inflammatory, it just strikes me that as an industry we don’t always make the best PR judgments. I’d much rather see press releases in my inbox from the SCAA about the serious work they’re apparently doing on behalf of quality coffee partnerships, not irrelevant news about old scandals they’ve yet to live down.

I’m letting go of one my favorite antique grinders.

This is a big Peugeot Freres A2 cast iron coffee grinder I picked up last year. It probably dates from 1890-1910. It has large conical burrs that are a bit bigger than a silver dollar and are reasonably sharp. The grinding action is smooth and satisfying. It is steampunk sexy, heavy, and looks really cool.

I’ve used this for brewing coffee at home and as an absurdly overkill roadtrip grinder. Not the most even grind quality but has worked decent for immersion brewing (eva solo) and gold cone. I had dreams of retrofitting new burrs to it and using it for a burningman theme camp project, but unless I sell it I probably can’t afford burningman anyhow.

Paint is original but fading. The drawer is original but missing its badge. Original bolt cap is gone (it came with a brass eagle that I removed for photos). Here is the heystuff page for it if you’re interested. I’m asking $550. Shoot me email if you have questions.

Like a bright bat-signal cast across the twitterverse into the clouds of my highly distractible and overcaffeinated brain, I am called to the blog-cave today by a piece of purported journalism - the cover story of this week’s NY Press slamming the good people of Stumptown Coffee. Many wise and appropriate things have been said in the comments section of the online article already, but I’ll cast my 2 cents into the fountain of this mini-rant…

Much like Twilight fans, coffeegeeks are notoriously easy to troll, and I guess I’m not immune. Take an ill-informed premise, add in some vague anti-hip faux-populism, air-headed economic theorizing, and a weird need to establish grudges against people you’ve not met… well, you’ve got yourself the makings of a runny turd of not-quite-journalism suitable for stirring up a fun pile of emails to your editor (who clearly ought to have better things to do, like fact-checking a cover story, but I digress).

In my last post I asked why coffeebars are so often singled out for special pseudo-scrutiny about their motivations, margins, and business practices. I’ll again resist a full accounting of the answer to that difficult question but one big element worth touching on is the discomfort many of our fellow citizens have with human authenticity in their retail transactions.

We are comfortable with the customer-is-always-right servile status quo of corporate retail. We are comfortable when the person at the cash register is on a lower rung of the unspoken but ubiquitous class divides which define our public behavior. We are often much less comfortable when the person on the other side of a transaction is a real person, a peer, or (heaven forbid) someone younger or more attractive or of otherwise enviable lifestyle. In America we are instructed that by nestling safely into our well-rehearsed role as “consumers” we can expect others to assume their complimentary facilitating and enabling roles, shielding us from having to engage with strangers as anything more than non-player-characters in the game of capitalism.

I would argue this customer / service-provider divide or lack thereof is the nut of what distinguishes good “indy” shops or owner-operated retail businesses from chains and corporate monoliths. It is the element that most reflects on that elusive and hard to approach notion of authenticity, which many folks, infantilized by consumer culture, aren’t always comfortable navigating.

I wont excuse bad service but I also don’t have much truck with the notion that our mere willingness to throw money around by itself entitles us to special treatment.

All of which is to say that the guy who wrote this article clearly has an issue with some people who work at Stumptown, or cool people generally, or people he perceives as trying to be cool, or people who are considered cool by other people who he has determined are themselves uncool. Insert obligatory mentions of bicycles, mustaches, and skinny jeans (I kid you not, read the article!). Maybe he tried unsuccessfully to date a Stumptown barista (editors note: never date baristas).

If I were a better wannabe culture critic myself I might go on further about the origins of consumer privilege, strategies for subverting retail expectations, or the ideal of service in a theoretical gift economy, but I put down the bong years ago and skipped the academic disciplines of college completely so y’all are on your own there.

And coming back briefly to the original article (which is amply refuted in the better comments), I would like to say that Duane and the crew at Stumptown march on the side of angels in this coffee game and deserve commendations for the inspiring work they do. The landscape of coffee company marketing and hype is littered with buzzwords and bluster and confusion still reigns in the press about what truly separates the greats from the merely goods or the totally phonies (a state of affairs us coffee folk still struggle to address effectively). An emerging pantheon of names (familiar enough to readers of this blog to not merit repeating) is finally getting well earned praise in certain circles. Foodies, good journalists and some great restauranteurs are starting to figure out coffee (even as most prominent Food Critics continue to ignore it or get it wrong). Things are looking up.

Now that the economy has gone to shit and ex-bankers are lining up to become bread bakers and baristas, big box stores are shuttering and being reborn as churches and community centers and farmers markets are flourishing, maybe we are ready as a culture to dispense with some of our old mass-market hang-ups. Have you hugged your hipster barista today?

As a teenager Kyle Glanville used to hot rod cars. As an adult he hot-rods coffeebars.

There is a lot to be said about Intelligentsia’s genre-destroying upcoming Venice Beach coffeebar, but I’ll skip the geeky details to point out perhaps the most interesting facet of the project: everywhere I go in L.A., people are talking about it. The anticipation here for the opening of this shop, beyond the usual coffee cognoscente circles, is probably unprecedented. The sort of buzz you might hear around a new restaurant from celebrity chef. This is partially a result of the increasing confluence of social media and foodie enthusiasm but also a reflection of how well-received Intelligentsia and its Silverlake shop have been in a town that has lacked for an established coffee culture.

Kyle and the crew at intelli are making some bold design choices for the new shop, as detailed in this recent LA Times preview. Some of the classic limitations and bottlenecks of typical cafe service are being eliminated and the customer experience follows a model that we road-tested at Slow Food Nation of more personalized interaction at multiple stations with knowledgeable baristas acting as hosts. Another element of the design that I’m excited about is the preferences for ad-hoc bench style seating and the total elimination of the usual tables and chairs. It was an idea I fought hard for during the design of the Silverlake store, that Kyle and architect Ana Henton have succeeded in fully realizing with the new space.

Though I’m no longer on the intelli payroll (full disclosure: I still enjoy frequent free coffee), I feel compelled to continue to evangelize for the great work that they do, particularly as drinking good coffee remains under assault. The trope that Specialty Coffee is an overpriced indulgence is regaining some currency thanks to lazy journalists musing on the economic downturn, the fall from grace of Starbucks, and new big-dollar PR blitzes for McCafe.

To digress, yesterday on NPR, I listened to MarketPlace’s Kai Ryssdal open a piece on the new McDonalds campaign with the line:

“Among the most brilliant marketing moves ever was convincing us to spend $4 for a cup of coffee that it costs a company maybe, I don’t know, maybe 30 cents, half a buck to make.”

Does noted business journalist Kai Ryssdal also think it is “brilliant marketing moves” that fooled me into paying $5 for a pint of microbrew beer last night? Did Kai Ryssdal feel as victimized by capitalist sorcery when he was munching an In-N-Out burger in the next (much more interesting) segment?

For some screwed up reason, of all the myriad bills, businesses and retail transactions we encounter on a daily basis, we reserve a special place of skepticism and strange condemnation for coffeebars in our amateur economic speculations. Why is that? Why is there a widespread belief that coffeebars, with their long lines and beverages priced sometimes higher than two times the price of a cup of coca-cola (larceny!) are mercilessly raking in profits? Where does this misapprehension and borderline hostility come from?

I’ll leave those as rhetorical questions and spare you any more of my half-baked essaying. Bottom line is that the indy coffeebar business gets some poorly-reasoned criticisms hung on it and we should explore creative ways of refuting some of the dumber misconceptions.

Intelli’s Venice coffeebar will hopefully be opening middle of this month.

For the eleven folks who still peek at this dormant blog, wondering if I’ll return from my self-imposed blogging exile, the answer is (as always): “maybe”.

Last weekend I attempted with mixed success to liveblog the Western Regional Barista Competition in Los Angeles. I imagined a blog filled with some short, irreverent videos (like the fun videos on the now-vanished zacharyzachary.com), barista profiles, signature drink breakdowns, and a lot of interaction with the internet audience. What ended up happening was more of an IT wild goose chase of trying to set up and maintain a very fat, but very macguyver’d internet connection and the constant scrambling for the right cord or dongle or electrical outlet to keep the whole thing from collapsing. At some point I had to choose between trying to keep the live video stream on ustream functioning and tending to the blog. The stream won the day.

the nerve center of the wrbc2009.net huddled around our one powerstrip, photo by Ian Tobin.

Fortunately some really stellar folks had my back. The tireless Brent Fortune, Guatemalan Barista Champ Raul Rodas, Aussie by-way-of U.K. Tim Styles, and my flickr brother Ian Tobin got plugged in and kept things rolling. Foodblogger Joshua Lurie over at FoodGPS showed us how it is really done - competitor interviews and detailed play by play - picking up the ample slack.

In the end I’m filled with a sense of personal disappointment, but am pleased that the event overall was a smashing success, and impressed with the caliber of all the competitors (even the many first-timers) in attendance. We had over 200 folks watching on ustream and over 3200 visitors to the blog on our biggest day. With a little more effort and a little less duct tape, one wonders what the audience could become for these odd events in the future?