CC

Some people measure in CC’s.  I ran cross country in high school and our shirts always were marked CC.  Although this CC is for cross country, I won’t be running this one.  I think it might take me about a year if I were to run this one and my stamina just isn’t what it used to be back in high school…  Here I come Vancouver.  I’m only 16 days away.

THE ROUTE

DAY ONE- 12/13/09
Leave Kalamazoo 10:00 AM
-Gas stop before Chicago 12:00 PM
-Lunch/gas stop near Madison, WI 3:00 PM
-Dinner/gas stop near Sioux Falls, SD 10:00 PM
-Arrive Rapid City, SD 3:00 AM
That’s right… 17 hours.  Get your Coffee/Red Bull/Monster/Adderall/Adrenaline IV Drip ready to roll!  And yes, it’s true that I just want to put as many miles as I possibly can between myself and Kalamazoo on my first day.  I don’t hate the ‘Zoo, but I don’t want to see it in my rear view mirror either.

DAY TWO- 12/14/09
Leave Rapid City, SD 11:00 AM
-Gas stop in Rapid City, SD
-Mt. Rushmore 11:30 AM
-Gas/lunch/dinner stop near Sheridan, WY 4:00 PM
-Arrive Bozeman, MT 8:30 PM
Keeping it short on the second day, I anticipate being completely exhausted from the first day of traveling.

DAY THREE- 12/15/09
Leave Bozeman, MT 10:00 AM
-Gas stop in Bozeman, MT
-Mammoth Springs, Yellowstone, MT 12:15 PM
-Cooke City, Yellowstone, MT 2:00 PM (U-turn after due to seasonal roads)
-Gas/lunch stop in Livingston, MT 4:00 PM
-Gas/dinner stop in Missoula, MT 8:30 PM
-Arrive Kalispell, MT 12:00 AM

DAY FOUR- 12/16/09
Leave Kalispell, MT 11:00 AM
-Gas stop in Kalispell, MT
-Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, MT 1:00 PM
-Gas/lunch stop Plains, MT 4:30 PM
-Gas/dinner stop Spokane, WA 7:30 PM
-Arrive Yakima, WA 10:45 PM

DAY FIVE- 12/17/09
Leave Yakima, WA 11:00 AM
-Gas stop in Yakima, WA
-Gas/lunch Goldendale, WA 12:45 PM
-Arrive Vancouver, WA 3:00 PM

HOME SWEET (new) HOME.

16 days and I can barely stand it.

18 Days.

As the majority of the country starts to save up for the Holidays, I’ve started saving right along with them, but for a completely different reason:  I’m moving to the West Coast.

I’m truly excited about the move.  Sure it’s a fresh start in a new city, with new people and new surroundings, but that’s not my main reason for excitement.  I’ve never felt truly challenged as a barista before, and I am anticipating this new store and new boss to completely kick my butt when it comes to being challenged.  In the past I would challenge myself to get better and better everyday, but I never found myself really pressed to improve my skills from any of my co-workers or bosses.  It’s not that they were poor workers, it’s just that there is a difference between a barista and a career barista.  There was always something to learn- helping to challenge, teach and train my fellow baristas was always something that helped to advance my knowledge of the craft, but I never felt challenged back.  Although there was pressure, it was not the same as direct attention from someone that cares as much or more about the quality of coffee than I do.  I’ve never felt intimidated before, and now I do.  It’s a strange feeling to be excited about intimidation.  To be overjoyed about being forced to push your limits.  I’m actually looking forward to no longer being a standout.

As I move to new shores and a new coast, I’ll have to let go of the coast and coasting that came with this Michigan shore that I have come to love for so long.  When I walk into work from now on I’m not going to throw lingo over people’s heads if I start talking about coffee beyond “light roast and dark roast.”  I’m moving to a shop where people can pull flavors out of a coffee in the same way I try to.  I’m moving to a shop where people challenge themselves to become better everyday, just like I have done for so long.

It will be nice to be in like company.

18 days.

Random Thought…

Here’s an out of the blue thought for today:

Looking at the La Marzocco USA blog site today, I happened across some of the pictures that they posted of a GB5 with see through panels.  It got me thinking, why do we stop with just panels?  What if a “naked” portafilter wasn’t just bottomless, but see-through?  What if it was made out of glass or something.  Baskets too.  What if the group was made out of glass as well?

Obviously tapping the portafilter with the tamper becomes a thing of the past- shards of glass in customer’s coffee tend to get bad reviews.  Also, I’m no scientist, so I couldn’t tell you how this would play out for heat retention, structural stability at nine bars and expansion and contraction with heat gain/loss, but it all seems like it would be fine.

Is this something that is possible?  I think it would be amazing to really see what’s going on inside of that portafilter while the pump is running.  We’ve taken the first step, why not take another?  Does turning the portafilter and group into glass actually allow us to see anything inside while the espresso is extracting?

Are there reasons why this is completely impossible?  I know it may not be practical, but I’m speaking just for possible verses impossible.

-bry

Once Burrs are Hot, How Hot and for How Long?

Flat vs. conical, the debate that seems to occupy every grinder forum on the internet in at least a couple posts was raised again the other day.  Someone raised a point that, for some reason, I had never thought of before:  Conical burrs have more mass and turn slower, so they don’t heat up as quickly.  We already knew this, this is why they are to a busy cafe’s advantage.  However, once they are hot they are hotter longer because they are larger.  This was a new thought for me, and is obviously to the disadvantage of a really busy cafe during the rush times.

Has anyone ever checked the temperature of their burrs after a really busy couple of hours?  How long does it really take for conical burrs to heat up, especially verses flat burrs?  And once they are hot, do flat burrs cool off faster than conical burrs?  It seems that their smaller mass would mean they would have to, according to physics and all.

So I guess my question is, do shops routinely get busy enough that those “ever-to-our-cooler-advantage” conical burrs get as hot as flat burrs?  Is the conical shape actually to the advantage of staying cooler longer?

Why am I so fascinated with grinders?

I’m interested to see where comments go…

-bry

“Are we there yet?”

I have been involved in coffee for a relatively short period of time, really.  It’s a long period of time for me, but in retrospect, it’s  not much time at all and I still don’t feel I have a substantial footprint in the coffee industry, especially not in comparison to some.

However, in the short time that I have been in the industry I feel like we have covered more ground than in many, many years prior.  Decades, really.

Jet-set back to 1970.  Truthfully, I’m not even born yet, not even thought of for that matter.  In the coffee world there is no such thing as a micro-lot.  No Cup of Excellence.  No barista champions or barista competitions.  There is no such thing as Fair Trade Certified and certainly no Direct Trade.  There is no such thing as a Synesso, no thought to PIDs and pressure profiling and there is no debate about whether we should tap the portafilter with the tamper or not.  If we get really serious about it, there isn’t even a solid specialty coffee market in the US yet.  We are still one year away from Pike’s Place and the birth of green circled Sirens and quite a few years away from that same corporation moving toward commercial coffee vs. specialty coffee.  The life of someone in the coffee industry at this point is vastly misunderstood compared to someone in the industry now.

Back to 2009.  The internet is a breeding ground for debates, information, and (coffee) social networking sites.  Roasters and baristas scream in their Twits and blogs about how unfair it is that they can no longer source specific lots from farms.  We have people vacuum packing their green coffee beans at origin before they are shipped to the roasting facilities in the United States.  You mention La Marzocco and the first thought that comes to a discerning barista’s mind is “paddle group with variable preinfusion.”  You mention Mazzer and the first thought is that of a giant Robur with electronic dosing.  We have (somewhat controversial) tampers that increase the surface area of the espresso with ripples to yield a sweeter shot.  Shops are spending thousands upon thousands of dollars on siphon brewing bars.  Coffee shops are holding public cuppings.  Coffee schools are up and running.  Drip coffee airpot systems are being seen as inferior to methods such as vac pot and manual pour over.  Single origin espresso is hotly debated.

We have come a long way in a short time, so I pose the question:  Are we there yet?

There are certainly things that need to be fine-tuned, technologies that need to be tweaked and methods that need deeper understanding.  But are we there?  Is the finish line in sight?  Is there a finish line at all?  Of course, the obvious answer is no, and it’s the answer that I firmly believe.  But with the answer “No, we aren’t done yet,” the question “What next” obviously follows.  So where are we headed?  What happens next?

I know for the years that I have been deeply involved in coffee, baristas have been kicking, screaming and begging for advancements in grinding technology, and that’s really what this post is about- sorry for the insanely long intro.  We have conical grinders now that are putting out some fantastic coffee.  We have grinders that are more or less half a gram accurate in their electronicly programmed dosing.  A few years ago that term would have caused people to stop and wonder what in the world they were missing out on.  Where does grinding technology go from here?  Do we get water cooled counter-top grinders?  Do cafe grinders get roller-grinder features?Do we get to a point where we get to control some sort of digital graph on the grinder that displays what particles, in a specific micron size, are in what percentage in the grind output?  Is that even something that is necessary?  We all seem to say and advise over and over that grinding, and respectively the grinder, is the most important part of the preparation.  I guess the question I pose is… how do we make it better?  Can we make it better?  Are we there yet?

-bry

Grinding, but with less bumping…

It looks as though Mark’s Tamping Science, Theory and Practice article on Coffeegeek.com may actually get some life in terms of parts 2 and 3 after all.

I know when the article first appeared a couple years ago, I was really intrigued.  It was my first exposure to the idea of “not tapping” and my first introduction to the entire debate of “to tap or not to tap.”  For about six months after the article originally appeared I conducted an experiment using a bottomless portafilter to see if I could discover a substantial difference- or any difference for that matter- between a shot that had been “tapped” and a shot that had not been.  The main problems that I discovered with tapped shots were channeling, but this has become common knowledge now.  Tapping can cause the puck to break away from the side of the basket if done incorrectly.  However, when a light tap was present, I really don’t feel that there was any substantial decrease in quality.  More importanlty, though, there was also no substantial increase in quality.  What’s the point of a step in espresso preparation if the results are the same minus that step?  It reminds me of some home baristas I see that have nearly a 2 minute routine of insane dosing, distribution and tamping techniques that usually yield a product exactly the same as that of someone who does a more traditional dose, distribute, level, tamp and pull.
If all of the steps don’t yield a better product, why have the steps?
And this was really the first time my mind was opened up to the idea of exploring what steps were actually necessary in espresso preparation and which were not.  Many personal experiments have followed, usually with results that are quite obvious and that I expected to be quite obvious.  Regardless, it will be interesting to see where Parts 2 and 3 take us, if- after 3 years- they finally take us anywhere at all.

I know this article is now ancient. There really is a part 2 and a part 3 coming.

The problem is (and was) that I was waiting until the CoffeeGeek Tamper Project was finalised before posting the other two articles. The 2nd one is written, the third one is in draft form.

For several years, I’ve been trying to coordinate with Reg Barber to get what I thought was the ideal tamper built – at least what I thought was ideal. Prototypes were made – there’s about 20+ in existence now, and people like Jim Hoffmann, Andy Schecter, Matt Riddle and others have one.

Unfortunately (for this project, not for him), Reg is a very busy person, and we got bogged down in the minutia of the design. I wanted it to be perfect, out the door. There were many frustrations along the way.

Very recently (as in the last three weeks), the tamper project has been kickstarted again. New CAD drawings were done and the piston shape, along with the handle shape (it’s GOTTA be extremely comfortable) have had some final tweaks, including some very minor (but important to me) aesthetic and usability additions. I’m optimistic this tamper will eventually get built, and we’ll have an initial run of 200 to offer (already about 100+ are spoken for – not sure if that’s still the case, but there was some very serious commitments).

I am embarrassed and sorry that this has dragged out for so long, and that Part 2 and Part 3 haven’t seen the light of day here yet. Hopefully that will change soon.

Mark

So I suppose we’ll have to see how much longer this takes, but at least the article is again receiving light.

-bry

A Humble Start…

Everyone has a blog page these days.  People that have a website will still have a link to their blog page on the website.  It’s the thing to do for sure, and another sure thing is that I am getting into the game far later than everyone else.

So where to begin?  It seems like your first post should be something groundbreaking, earth shattering and overall, something that sets the whole thing in motion from that point forward.  What I realized, however, is that if I try to construct something like this for my first post, I’ll probably never get around to posting something I feel is 100% right.

So, this is post number one.  Painfully boring and uneventful.  It talks about nothing at all, especially not coffee.  I do hope, though, that it acts as a springboard to give me a tiny little start into the blogging community.

-bry

Let It Begin

As often as I spend time online looking at other people’s blogs and pouring my heart into the comments that I leave on them, I feel it’s high time I started my own blog.

So here it is, plain and simple.

We’ll see where this goes.

-bry