http://tonx.org Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:34:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://tonx.org/archives/162 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 ... http://tonx.org/archives/161 This tweet today from Jeremy Tooker of Four Barrel, who is currently traveling in Kenya, explains their no-free-refill policy quite nicely. http://tonx.org/archives/160 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 ... http://tonx.org/archives/159 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 ... http://tonx.org/archives/157 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 ... http://tonx.org/archives/156 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. ... http://tonx.org/archives/154 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 ... http://tonx.org/archives/153 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: ... http://tonx.org/archives/152 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 ... http://tonx.org/archives/150