Hario V60 pourover how-to from tonx on Vimeo.

I’ve seen fussier approaches than this one and haven’t done very much experimenting or brew analysis myself, but I’ll say that this has been working pretty well for the crew at Intellivenice and I’ve really enjoyed the results.

I was privileged to attend day 2 of the Symposium which preceded the show. I could say a lot about the cast of characters of coffee’s old guard and new school rubbing elbows, the visible familial camaraderie that spans from genuine love to old simmering grudges, the positive vibes and the visible posturings. But for now I’ll leave you with my major take away, which is that people in the industry are beginning to discuss and debate the right things with the right stakeholders increasingly given more of a place at the table.

I will share more about the announced Global Coffee Quality Research Initiative in a future post or two.

The US Barista Competition is a whole ‘nother compelling beast of awesome. A sort of ad-hoc coverage of the event emerged spanning streaming, twitter, flickr, and multiple blogs. (I did my part via the twitternets). The gist is that in spite of the lingering absurdities of the premise of these things, the caliber of the competitors has become truly astonishing and compelling to witness. More to say about the competition for sure, probably through flickr as I sort through my mass of images. I hope to don a judges apron myself when regionals kick up again.

All of this is prelude to the point of this post which is the people. Specialty Coffee is made of people! And there are many of them, more with each passing year, amplifying and refining each others enthusiasms, digging deeper into the mysteries of the bean and chipping away at the persistent challenges of the trade. A big thanks and shout out to the many friends and allies, old and new whom I feel deeply privileged to have connected with this past weekend.

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… (more…)

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.

But my present interest in it is culinary… (more…)

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.

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.

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.

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?