Archive for March, 2002

Posted on March 27, 2002 - by deCadmus

Back to Work!

H.G. Wells doesn’t have a lock on time travel…
‘Course my trip through time isn’t measured in years, but in hours. Regular readers will have noticed a steep decline in both the number — and length — of posts recently. This is largely the result in my shift back to a “real-world” schedule: I’m nine-to-fiving again. This is a good thing, as it will make my mortgage lender very happy.

As my schedule normalizes I’ll once again find the sweet spot for the reading, thinking and writing that you’ve come to look forward to. Failing that, I’ll just write more of my usual blather. [The more things change... ]

Posted on March 27, 2002 - by deCadmus

Kopi: Good to the last droppings….

Good to the last droppings….
The Washington Times takes a swing at reporting the curious tale [tail?] of Kopi Luwak… and gets it right! Long viewed as merely the stuff of urban legends, Kopi Luwak is real enough — and while a strange brew by most any point of view — it’s ultimately just another cup of coffee… and arguably better than Folgers.

Posted on March 25, 2002 - by deCadmus

Sometimes you need a better hammer…

The current crop of web authoring tools don’t build standards-compliant pages. That is, unless you tweak them. And, there’s some hope for next-generation tools. Both brought to you by the fine folks at A List Apart.

Posted on March 20, 2002 - by deCadmus

Tasting Two Loons Coffee…

Today I’ve been tasting the coffees from the Two Loons Coffee sampler pack. In this segment, three of five. All coffees are drip-brewed with a Melitta filter cone.

Burundi AA [27/01/0028]
Tastes of strong black tea and tobacco… with an aroma that suggests bitter orange or bergamot. [Earl Gray coffee?] Its winey tones are a bit of a surprise ’til you realize its origins lie just next door to Kenya geographically. Medium bodied, most of its mouthfeel comes from its tea-like astringency. This coffee has a strong presence. Slightly musty undertones [not unpleasant really, think of monsooned coffees -- but without the head-filling numbness] and finishes with a bit of milk chocolate [a la Hershey's... with a bit of sourness to it.] This coffee could make for a superbly complex addition to an espresso blend. For brewed coffee, I’d recommend a press to bring out a bit more of its body, and to keep its acidity in check.

Ethiopian Longberry Harrar Horse [10/24/0055]
Harrars are famous for their blueberry tones, and this one’s got’em — they’re brilliant in its fragrance [the smell of the dry, ground coffee] and only slightly subdued in its aroma and in the cup. This Harrar has also got some spicy notes — a bit of cinnamon, a touch of clove lurk in this bright, earthy cup. Body? Nah. But that’s not the point, really — you don’t look for a chewy cup from Ethiopia. If you’re willing to sacrifice the berry just a bit, you’ll find some toasty chocolate at a darker roast, but that’ll also boost this cup’s slightly pungent finish. Press this one… when I brewed with a Melitta drip cone I picked up some “wet-cardboard” flavors that I can’t altogether blame on the filter.

Peru, Organic La Florida [30/186/1227]
This is a mild, quiet coffee. Its fragrance yields a bit of burnt cocoa, and a wee bit of bitter chocolate finds its way to the cup. No flavors are terribly dominant here… there’s woody notes and hints of fig, Its mild acidity makes for a dry finish that verges on ashy. Given the way this one sweats early in the roast, I’m left to think it’s not a particularly high-grown bean. Sure is pretty, though. ;)

That’s all for the moment… I think I’ve worn out my taster. Meanwhile, a minor program note… At one point today I entered the wrong URL for Two Loons. The result was, ironically enough, Two Loons For Tea, a complexly layered Seattle garage band. Happiness.

Posted on March 20, 2002 - by deCadmus

Roasting coffee smacks of alchemy

— coaxing gleaming, mahogany beans from curiously grassy, green seeds. There’s few things that make *this* alchemist happier than a bag of new beans to roast, and Steve Ackman at Two Loons Coffee in New Hampshire has come through with a very nifty sampler pack — coffees from Burundi, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Peru, and Java — a spiffy mix of origins and flavors. I’ve roasted them all up today, and I’ll start cupping tomorrow. You’ll find full results here by the end of the week, but I thought I’d post a few roasting notes in the meantime.

Burundi AA
While not quite so potent in its grassiness, the Burundi reminds me quite a lot of the phenomenal Uganda Bugisu I glommed onto last year — Burundi and Uganda are neighbors, after all. The Burundi is slightly more pale in color, but elegantly prepped. These are very uniform, chubby beans. Lots of promise.

Ethiopia Longberry Harrar Horse
The Horse mark is easily the most respected of Ethiopian coffees, but these coffees vary so much from lot to lot that a name alone simply isn’t enough to guarantee a great cup. For the record, then, this sample is from lot 24/55. Longberry could be something of a misnomer with this lot — the beans vary from small to tiny — which would make roasting in a machine like the Alpenrost pretty difficult, and even folks using air-roasters need to keep on their toes… small beans roast fast.

Costa Rican SHB Tarrazu San Rafael RZ
In last years’ Tarrazu Triple Play I profiled three Costa Rican coffees, each of which shared in some part the “Tarrazu Ideal” — a bright, clean, acidy cup — with notes that vary from of wood and chocolate to caramel and even beefy flavors. Truth be told, this isn’t the best time of year for Tarrazus… we’re at the tail-end of last year’s crop, and this year’s crop isn’t really due for another month or two. That’s all to say that, if the San Rafael doesn’t cup to last years’ standards, that’s okay… right now it’s not in its prime.

Peru Organic, La Florida
The La Florida is one of those coffees that, when you roast it, swells up to be a big-beaned beast. It also appears to be an excellent example of the latest organic coffees — it’s evident real care was used in its processing. Curiously, it sweats some oil almost immediately after first crack. I don’t know whether that would suggest this isn’t a terribly hard bean [which would suggest it's not a high-grown origin] or whether it’s just a lipid-packed wonder… time, and cupping, will tell.

Java, Kayumas Estate
I haven’t been excited about Java coffees lately… this one might change my mind. Just a few hours after roasting this one’s developed complex, sweet aromas that I simply haven’t found in a Java — ever.

I’m looking forward to cupping tomorrow.

Posted on March 15, 2002 - by deCadmus

Unplugged, or Not?

Has the world’s most-watched coffee pot been resurrected? Perhaps, if you read German, you can tell me… the Google translation leaves a little something to the imagination.

Posted on March 15, 2002 - by deCadmus

Friday Fodder…

Ken Davids’ latest coffee reviews are on-line. This time he takes a look at coffees you’ll find in bags, bins and cans your local supermarket — and finds that the lines that used to clearly separate specialty coffees from the rest of the pack are blurring. I’m not so certain.

Ken’s “numbers game” — liberally borrowed from Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate Rating System — really breaks down in this set of reviews. With Davids’ system, only a precious few points separate “a cup dominated by faintly nuanced burned cellulose” and “coffee that doesn’t call attention to itself, yet three cups later you’re still pouring it.”

Truth be told, I’m not impressed with any numerical scoring system that offers one hundred scoring points, but refuses to gainfully employ half of them. Such a system leads inevitably to scoring snafus… Consider this review of Thanksgiving Coffee’s Colombian Blend:

“This coffee is so complex at the top that it positively levitates, alive
with sweet, light vanilla tones. In the finish whatever is left of the
body vanishes, the vanilla tones fade, but the sweetness lingers.”

And compare it to this month’s review of Illy’s Medium Roast:

“The aroma is subdued but sweet and enlivened with a tickle of dry,
fruit-toned chocolate. In the cup round, rather deeply dimensioned, with
just enough acidity to keep the cup subtle rather than banal.“

The first review strikes me as nearly effervescent, while the second would appear to damn the cup with faint praise. They both scored 85.

If you insist on cupping against a system of 100 points, I’d like to think you’d use the full scale. Failing that, at least stick to your guns on interpretation…

95-100 Exceptional  80-84 Good
90-94 Outstanding   75-79 Fair
85-89 Very Good     70-74 Poor

Better yet, skip the numbers. Fine coffees don’t lend themselves to a numbers game any more than do fine wines. Such numbers present an illusion of precision that simply doesn’t exist. By all means, convey the merits of one coffee relative to another — but, please — let’s not get into the realm of consumers buying coffees solely on the basis of a number, and without regard to things that really matter: like flavor, aroma, acidity, body and balance.

Posted on March 13, 2002 - by deCadmus

The Web is not Walden Pond

The Web is not Walden Pond… and attempts to make it so through increasingly stark simplicity are well-intentioned, but badly aimed.

Simplicity often belies the truth. The truth if the web is that it is the most mind-boggling array of unstructured information that has ever been. And it’s growing exponentially, and it will not stop. It is increasingly the de facto body of reference for all of us. It will inexorably be the sum total of explicit knowledge on our planet. How do you simplify that? By making it “…as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

As simple as possible…

Consider the works of Matisse and Picasso. Not your style? Try Keith Haring. Simplicity is alluring. A line-drawing can evoke far more than it actually reveals, by distilling the subject to its most essential form. It’s not coincidental that great art illustrates this… there is more than a little art to conveying the very essence of something.

…but not simpler.

Mere simplicity can dilute meaning. Consider Starbucks coffee stamps… at-a-glance labels that would tell you what the coffee in the bag is all about. Starbucks coffees are — very simply — Bold, Mild or Smooth. Does it really suffice to say that Sumatra, an earthy, dry-processed Indonesian coffee with loads of body and a caramelly finish is bold? Or smooth? It’s both, and then some, isn’t it?

On the other hand, consider Google. Google’s apparent simplicity belies the complexity that lurks behind its interface… it is arguably the web’s largest, most relevant and most capable search engine. Would Google be so effective if not for its extraordinary clarity of purpose?

Design — be it product design or interface design — can be simplified to the extent that it is no longer meaningful, or useful. Simple can be obscure. Simple doesn’t scale. Simplicity does not make a very good design goal. Instead, simplicity is most effective as a method to achieve a different design goal… clarity.

Posted on March 12, 2002 - by deCadmus

Whole Foods Roasts

Whole Foods Market recently opened a store in Overland Park, just about 15 minutes from home. It’s a welcome addition. I’m not an especially rabid consumer of all things organic — in Kansas City, organic very often translates into sad looking foodstuff that’s scrawny and full of bugs — not my ideal. I am, however, a big fan of *fresh* food. And from what I’ve seen so far, Whole Foods delivers not only terrific produce, but a far wider selection than I’ve been able to find anywhere else… if I’ve been able to find it anywhere else at all.

I am amused by the paradox… Organic produce. Soy and vegan products. Veal. Veal? Yeah… and maybe the biggest selection of veal in Kansas City. Go figure.

Most intriguing of all, however, is the in-store coffee roaster. Yes… they roast in-store. Daily. The green coffee comes from Allegro, where Kevin Knox rules the roast [or at least the selection of coffees]. The roaster itself is a huge beastie… an air-roaster with a glass roasting chamber the size of a ten-gallon aquarium. It’s something of a work of art as well — hammered copper, brass and chrome rule the day. I’d never seen a roaster quite its equal, so I rummaged around on the Net to find out more. I turned up Sherri Johns at the intersection of Allegro coffee and Whole Foods, so I zapped her an email with my questions.

These days Sherri is an independent coffee consultant and author [if I had 26 years' experience in the coffee business, I'd hope to pursue a similar track] and she was very generous with her reply… The Whole Foods in-store roaster is a JavaMaster, the creation of Dick Sewell, a coffee guy and tinkerer from the cold reaches of Michigan [a better place than most, I imagine, to crank up a large coffee roaster]. It makes for an engaging display. More to the point, it makes for pretty good coffee, too.

I sampled the store’s Allegro and Red Sea blends, both roasted that same day, and stored in open-dated bins. The Red Sea blend was rich with blueberries, revealing its strong measure of Ethiopian Harar. The Allegro blend is a “twin-peaked” Central blend, which I am pretty certain is the house coffee of Kansas City’s Hereford House restaurants… distinct for it’s complementary acidic high notes — a Tarrazu and a Colombian, I think. Yummy stuff.

Posted on March 12, 2002 - by deCadmus

Standards?

I have been working like a duck to redesign Bloggle. It’s a venture that proceeds in fits and starts. Most of the fits arise from the frustrating state of CSS… it’s supported rather well by recent browser versions, supported poorly by older browsers, and supported not at all by most every development tool that I’ve used for the last several years. A full CSS/XHTML revamp will happen on these pages… it will, however, happen more slowly than I’d like.

Aside from the technical bits, the *design* progress, too, has been touch and go. I have been wresting with notions of simplicity, to the extent that the design process has felt far more like un-design — my efforts to simplify, simplify, simplify feel not only unadorned, but uninteresting and unappealing. It was only late this evening [er... early this morning] that I discovered the pebble in my shoe. I have been confusing simplicity with clarity.

This discovery has given me a significant new direction… now if I can just make it work.