bean blogging
I scrooged away much of my Soltsmas in front of my laptop failing to write up a coherent epilogue of the many lessons I learned in my week of guestblogging about coffee on Dethroner.
Mostly I learned that writing is hard. I had an ambitious list of articles I wanted to crank out and barely made it through a quarter of them. I wish I would’ve gotten around to writing about what makes a great coffeebar, fair trade issues, some deeper stuff on caffeine, and a couple more humorous pieces I’d sketched out. As it was I ended up prioritizing the consumer advice style posts and never made it too far beyond that. But I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out and I got some very good feedback from readers.
There are a lot of people blogging about coffee of late (almost more than I can keep up with) but much of it is geeky thinking-out-loud, preaching to the choir, or shadowboxing with strawmen. Not to mention enough bulletin board traffic to keep the retinas burning into the wee hours. Interesting up to a point for fellow coffee nerds but not having much to say to a wider audience. So it was both challenging and refreshing to get to write for a more general readership (big thanks to Joel Johnson for sigining me up for it).
I have a new appreciation and admiration for those with the talent and patience for diligent writing and regular blogging. I’d like to get to that level but, balancing my other duties, I think posting at least once a week might be a reasonable goal. Maybe something to add to my list of new years resolutions…
links to each of the articles I wrote…
What is Coffee?
Selecting Your Beans Part 1 - The Truth on the Coffee Aisle
Filter Versus Immersion - Time to Toss that Drip Coffee Maker?
French Press Rehab
Grinder Guidance
Good Coffee Made Simple - the Chemex
Why Not Great Coffee?
Selecting Your Beans Part 2 - Better Know a Bean
Milky Tonic: Latte Art
Home Espresso - The Slippery Slope
Espresso Gear
Roasting Your Own
Selecting Your Beans Part 3 - Where to Score
Clothed Coffeemaker - the Eva Solo
December 30th, 2006 at 7:13 am
I have to say I really, really enjoyed your articles at Dethroner and did my best to get as many people as possible across to read them - especially non coffee drinkers.
I also agree that the coffee blog is looking a little tired at the moment, and I think everyone who writes a coffee blog is becoming aware of it which is probably causing more people to try and find something to write about - most of which ends up, as you correctly identified, is “geeky thinking-out-loud, preaching to the choir, or shadowboxing with strawmen”.
Oh - and I love my Chemex!
January 1st, 2007 at 11:42 am
i found this a surprising comment on ‘roasting your own’:
As a guy who roasts coffee on serious heavy-duty commercial roasters, I tend towards skepticism that great results can be achieved with a converted popcorn popper or countertop electric roaster. After all, you can’t expect to reproduce Pizza Bianco at home on an EZ Bake oven.
placing the emphasis on machinery seems wrong. to me, roasting is about patience and practice and paying attention to details. heat is heat, but knowing how to use it is the important part. i’ll take the homeroaster that cares and pays attention to their roasts any day over a pro that just flips the switch, no matter how heavy-duty and serious that switch is.
yes, i’m a hit-dog homeroaster.
January 1st, 2007 at 12:17 pm
“i’ll take the homeroaster that cares and pays attention to their roasts any day over a pro that just flips the switch, no matter how heavy-duty and serious that switch is.”
I would agree with that sentiment completely. Ultimately its about the operator and what he/she can do with the bean with whatever gear. But when people hear they can buy one of these glorified hair dryers that are on the market and get the same results as a Stumptown I have to scratch my head.
I have yet to cup a home roasted coffee that could hold up to a coffee roasted well on dedicated gear - whether its a 90kilo vintage german roaster or a 2 barrel jabez burns sample roaster from the 30’s. I don’t feel qualified to speak too much on the physics of it and I’m hoping to someday be proven wrong if I’m just missing something, but it seems like you can do things with gas and iron/steel that can’t easily be reproduced on typical electrical devices or thin drums.
I think its probably easier to make a perfect soufle at home than passable roast of coffee and as such its another slippery slope that people should be cautioned about diving into unless they’re really going to put in the effort.
I’ve had some good dialogues with home roasters over the last couple years and have greatly softened my initial skepticism of it - and I believe that home roasters (largely thanks to guys like Tom Owen) are on the vanguard of appreciating great origin coffees. But I think we’re still in the bronze age as far as the available (affordable) roasting tools go.
May 7th, 2007 at 10:50 am
The links to your articles appear to be dead. What a shame! Enjoy reading your blog and checking out your pics on flickr.
May 7th, 2007 at 10:55 am
No biggy. Found my way to dethroner and your articles appear to be alive and well. Thanks.
May 20th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
fixed those links - thanks!