t o n x . o r g

I finished posting photos from my amazing April trip to Guatemala where I met facilitators and producers from a project working on quality improvement for small coffee farmers in Huehuetenango, funded by Slow Food.

Starbucks buying Clover is becoming a publicity boon to “third wave” coffee. Nearly all of the many articles that have appeared about the move advance one or more of the fundamental conceits of the quality coffee movement.

I attended the Specialty Coffee Association of America annual conference in Minneapolis. As always it provided a fascinating snapshot in time of an industry in ever-increasing flux as well as a chance to connect and reconnect with the many beautiful people that make it move. Some photos here.

My friend and frequent coconspirator Kyle Glanville is the new US barista champion, edging out some well matched competitors in what might have been the tightest game this weird sport has seen yet. As a “prize” for his victory, his face will appear on thousands of bottles of vanilla flavored syrup. In June he’ll take his shtick to the WBC in Copenhagen. There is a slim chance I’ll be in attendance if flights magically become cheaper as the date approaches.

Michaele Weissman, who wrote one of the seminal articles on the new models of relationship coffees a couple years back, has a new book out God in a Cup The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee which chronicles the quixotic efforts of some familiar names in the trade and asks some intriguing questions. It deserves a proper review here once I’ve fully digested it, but for now let me tell you that she is a great storyteller and if you’re a reader of this blog its probably right up your alley. You should also check out her recently launched blog.

I’m part of a cabal of coffee folks attempting to deliver a best-of-class coffee tasting experience to attendees of this year’s inaugural Slow Food Nation event labor day weekend in San Francisco. The scale of the event will present some compelling challenges - I’ll be writing more about this as the date approaches.

Emily and I are looking to move back home to Seattle in the Fall (before the gas shortages kick in and Los Angeles goes all Mad Max on us). Before we go, there’ll be a blog post or two of my favorite things in L.A., a city I’ve come to dig despite my initial resistance.

I have a number of professional itches I’d like to scratch, and am working on a project that will encompass many of them. Stay tuned.

Pushing the limits of my camera’s battery and memory card, I shot over 900 photos during the three days of the Western Regional Barista Competition this weekend in Berkeley. Mercifully, I have edited them down to a reasonable 93 non-sucky images now up on flickr. Big congrats go to Ritual’s Chris Baca who came out on top against a very strong pack.

Also worth noting is “Brokeback” Steve Ford’s recent milestone of cup number 1000 in his obsessive First Cup series. Every morning’s first brew captured by his lens charting his progress as a photographer, roaster, and addict while the accompanying text provides insight into his continuing descent into coffee madness.

Yesterday, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz took the stage at their annual meeting announcing five new initiatives and -aping an Apple stevenote- a surprise “one more thing”… Starbucks has purchased Seattle’s Coffee Equipment Company, maker of the Clover. While the event (broadcast live on SBUX website) lacked the polish of Apple, you have to credit them for making some strides since ’05’s knee-deep in the mocha.

People have been asking me for my take on this so I thought it a good excuse to dust off my keyboard and crawl out from my self-imposed blogging exile. In short, I’m happy for Clover founders Zander Nosler and Randy Hulett and their dedicated crew who bravely took up a concept that was less than obvious and persisted to create a game changing product. Having it embraced by the green giant is a level of validation that would be hard to top.

Three years ago I had the privilege of being one of the first geeks to play with the Clover technology early in its development phase and I was honored to participate in its unveiling (including writing this exuberant post on the original victrola blog).

Unveiling of the Clover prototype at the Victrola speakeasy during Coffeefest Seattle ‘05. David Latourell becomes the first Clover barista during demo day at the Vic.

Since then I’ve witnessed many people go from absolute skepticism to embracing (and exploiting) the Clover. The Clover made it possible to give customers access to a breadth of coffee experiences (once typically confined to cupping labs) yet do so in a high-volume coffeebar environment. It opened the door to more coffee menu variety, vertical pricing, and contributed to a renewed appreciation for brewed coffee which had been eclipsed by espresso beverages in the hearts of many customers.

In many ways the Clover’s novelty as a technological gizmo and the mesmerizing theater of its rapid brewing process has come to overshadow the beans that go into it. Press reports tend to fixate on its $11k price tag, actually quite unremarkable when compared to the cost of myriad espresso machines, grinders, NSF approved refrigerators, dish sanitizers, and other less glamorous tools of the trade. An argument could be made that part of the value of owning a Clover has been that the machine differentiates a shop from chains like SBUX, but to my mind its time the narrative moved beyond “gee-whiz fancy high tech” and back to the bean. The premise and true promise of the Clover was always to highlight the coffee, and maybe this news takes us another step in that direction.

Were Howard Schultz to read some of the overly presumptuous grumblings of certain coffee “professionals” in the forums, I can only imagine him turning to Zander and saying “how’d you ever do business with these clowns?” Detractors aside, I’m sure the coming months will be a strange trip for the CoEqCo crew, but my hunch is that this was not a deal that they entered into lightly. Existing Clover customers will continue to have access to parts and support, but future availability of the machines is in doubt.

The sky isn’t falling so much as the ground is slowly rising. Whether or not Starbucks’ initiatives will manifest as any leap in quality in their cups remains to be seen (I’m skeptical), but their renewed effort on marketing coffee should be welcomed by small roasters. Schultz speculated in his presentation that some people might even be tempted to [gasp] start drinking coffee black, no sugar. If that’s the meme SBUX wants to push, I’m confident that it will be quality-focused microroasters that reap the most benefit over the long term.

Flew in yesterday afternoon… couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day. Many moments of sun and the peak of fall colors. Its good to be here.

The next few days will hopefully be filled with some successful mushroom hunting and long hikes in the mountains punctuated by pilgrimages to the many espresso temples old and new. I’ll be here through next weekend’s coffeefest which is hopefully enough time to catch up with friends and colleagues here, many of whom might be reading this post….

I don’t get Facebook.

I did the Friendster thing back in the day, played with Orkut when invites to the site were a hot commodity for bored screen-dwellers, and by the time myspace appeared (and single-handedly revived the once deprecated web aesthetic of the blink tag) I lost all interest. I really don’t grasp what utility these social networks offer and am wary of the privacy implications of Facebook, the social network that collects so much data with so little apparent useful return.

I started an account, no doubt like many others, just to see what the fuss was about. It didn’t take long before my inbox was calling out to me to confirm this or that friend request which allowed me to then view the noisy and completely uninteresting pages of people who I already have sufficient knowledge of and means of communicating with. I’ve followed incredulously the stories of Facebook’s mythical valuation in the billions of dollars and wonder if these reporters (or more accurately, the cheerleaders at Facebook-obsessed Valleywag) are looking at the same boring website I am?

I think Facebook is just an adult version of the Tamagotchi digital keychain pet: it cries at you (from your inbox or feed reader) demanding attention and you get some tiny unconscious reward for “feeding” it and watching it grow. That people find this marginally fun and slightly addictive (at least until the immediate novelty wears off) is no surprise, but that so many believe Facebook represents some vanguard of Web 2.0 is a real head scratcher.

All of which is to say that if I ignore your friend request don’t take it personally. If I ignore your poke, superpoke, virtual chihuahua, vampire bite, zombie attack or trivia quiz its not that I don’t like you, its more that I’m a cynical curmudgeon who wants Facebook to die a quiet death like all the other social network fads that preceded it. If you have no idea what any of this stuff is, let me assure you that ignorance is bliss and you’re not missing out.

My favorite place to get espresso in Los Angeles might now have to be Jeff Johnsen’s Choke in East Hollywood.

Intelli barista Ryan dragged me there for the first time yesterday as I’m long overdue in making the pilgrimage. The place is absolutely beautiful and if you have any desire towards scooters, mopeds, or small motorcycles there is much here to inspire. Jeff’s a great guy and his Seattle-honed barista skills are top knotch. The shots he pulled us (pausing from a bike repair) were sweet and thick. Why did I wait so long to check this place out?

Choke is located at 4157 Normal Ave - about half a mile from Sunset Junction and open Tuesday through Saturday 10-7.

My pal James Hoffmann, who recently won the title of World Barista Champion, has thrown down the gauntlet for some equally silly barista shenanigans. His absurd latte art challenge is attracting some interesting entries, the best of which will be up for voting very soon. The exact prize is unclear, but the glory is irresistible for some. I got the privilege of photographing Ryan Wilbur of Intelli L.A.’s fully-absurd submission today.

Devin makes the sacrifice for Ryan’s art, now immortalized in jpg.

I’ve heard several baristas speak of this idea in the past, but this may be the first time its been done. Ryan’s canvas was provided by fellow barista Devin Pedde, who is recovering nicely. I took many photos of the stunt which can be found on Flickr. Some of them might even be considered a bit racy!

UPDATE: Sarah at Barista Magazine posted the mock cover we photoshopped and sent her as a joke. Good times.

Good article on superstar coffee buyers in today’s New York Times by Peter Meehan (who also wrote a great piece last December on the NYC espresso scene). In To Burundi and Beyond for Coffee’s Holy Grail we get a glimpse at the coffee hunting ways of Stumptown’s Duane Sorenson, Counter Culture’s Peter Giuliano, Intelligentsia’s Geoff Watts, and Terroir’s George Howell (whose Cup of Excellence program is credited with bootstrapping much of this new coffee buying paradigm). I imagine and hope this will make many more people curious to experience some of these remarkable coffees.

Perhaps someday we’ll even see a mass of coffee connoisseurs happy to pay as much for a cup of “expensive” coffee as they already pay for a pint of cheap beer. Crazy thought, I know, but a boy can dream.

Emily and I survived our brief trip into the chaos of Burning Man, mind and bodies mostly intact. I’ve attended 7 of the last 10 years but still find compelling reasons to endure it all over again, old friends being at the top of the list.

I took more drugs than photos (just kidding) but you can see a few pics I’ve uploaded here. A far more entertaining and comprehensive look at this year’s gargantuan event for the curious can be found in this report I stumbled across by Marc Merlin who had the enviable luxury of arriving by plane.

Several people have asked me recently (before, during, and after my trip) if Burning Man has become “too big”. The answer is yes (population 45,000+). On a very practical level the density of the crowd makes it challenging to keep any cohesion to your adventuring posse. Turn your head for one second, become momentarily hypnotized by something shiny or blinky and suddenly you find yourself separated from your group, wandering among a crowd of people all similarly struggling to navigate the chaos. Your odds then of re-joining with your pals are slim and not worth much effort. Lacking any technological fix like cell phones, SMS, twitter - heck, even FRS radios no longer work well - one has to make the stark decision between aggressive insularity (vigilant cat-herding or handcuffing yourself to your friends), or flying solo into the storm. This can take on a certain additional gravity when mind altering substances enter the mix.

Now mind you this is not the worst thing in the world, and for some this state of affairs is probably appealing. After all, one goes to Burning Man with at least a certain amount of slack in the tether to the ordinary world if not cutting the tether altogether. Commiserating with strangers, falling through trapdoors, questing for some deeply personal and ineffable utopian trace or maybe just a clean port-a-potty are all worthwhile Black Rock City activities. But the diminishing middle ground between being lost and locking arms with comrades presents a daily/nightly conundrum that was less of an issue when the odds of bumping into the people you hoped to see still ran high.

Which is to say that I wish I’d had more time to catch up with many of my campmates - some of them old and dear friends who I rarely get to see. Many friends and acquaintances who weren’t camped nearby I never crossed paths with even once. The most meaningful moments that I did manage to share with friends felt like they were stolen from the swarm that always threatened to sweep us all away. Perhaps other people have better degrees of luck negotiating this (or slower-moving friends), but its clearly a different ballgame today than it was when the population was much smaller.

On a more abstract level, the growing scale of the event has a bounding effect on the zeitgeist. In years past, each new leap in scale promised to deliver some novel emergent character to the event, the truer “theme” revealing itself from a collective meta-improvisation. Now the combination of familiarity and, I think subtly but more insidiously, the homogenizing effect of everyone’s similar adaptive strategies to the increased scale make the emergent character more predictable. You can set your watch by it. Stunts like this griefer who lit the man early register as barely a nuisance against the unstoppable flow of the event toward its signature chaotic equilibrium.

That said, we are already talking about possibly going next year, coming up with strategies for better navigation of the maelstrom and concocting harebrained art projects. Next year’s silly, controversial (though ultimately probably irrelevant) official “theme” has been announced: American Dream. Laughing Squid has the details and much entertaining commentary from his readers.

Last week I had the pleasure of spending a few days with Jon Ferguson of recently minted microroaster Cultiva Coffee. “Nebraska isn’t quite HELL…” he told me during our email exchange about the possibility of my coming to Lincoln for a meeting of the minds and some roast profiling jujitsu. From the favorably edited version of it I experienced, Lincoln actually seems pretty great.

By “Hell” Jon might have been referring to the weather. I arrived in the middle of an intense heat wave that broke with a severe storm. Five years in Seattle and one in L.A. and I’ve all but forgotten what real weather feels like. Hail, lightning, ominous green clouds… I love it.

I’ve posted some pics from my trip over on flickr.

Jon is doing really great things with his coffee and his ace barista Tamara served me one of the sweetest shots of espresso I’ve had in ages, rendering me momentarily speechless. The quality of his single origin coffees will dispel any notion that you can’t achieve excellence with a strictly fairtrade/organic offering list. “Passionate” is a word that gets thrown around a lot to describe the zeal that infects coffee geeks, but its a fitting term for Jon, who (having done time in the Peace Corps) has his long-term sights set on deepening the definition of “sustainability” within our industry.

So in addition to thriving farmers markets and community supported agriculture, great music venues, good microbrew beers, awesome record stores and bookstores - Lincoln can also chalk up some world class coffee roasting.