Bloggle

Or, how I spent my time at the 2008 SCAA conference and expo.

Day 1. Depart Burlington International and arrive at LaGuardia. Hike between terminals to change airlines. Send a prayer winging to the airline gods that my luggage makes the same trek. It does, but at a cost… as I pick up my luggage in Minneapolis my back makes a *twoing* sound. [Oh, crap.]

Arrive at hotel and am shuffled immediately into a lovely cocktail reception with many familiar faces — and some soon to become familiar — from Green Mountain Coffee, Transfair USA, Sustainable Harvest, Grounds for Health, and Root Capital, as well as friends from origin: Peru, Colombia, and Kenya. Have exceptionally productive conversations about content sharing, and the like. Eventually I have to make my apologies, take a muscle relaxer, order coffee from room service and fall asleep before I can drink it.

Day 2. Do the registration shuffle. Am impressed that SCAA is *really* taking the “green conference” thing to heart… it’s the first time in a long time I’m not saddled with a worthless bag of swag and paper I don’t need.

Begin the day with a press conference featuring Green Mountain’s Lindsey Bolger and Dr. Jane Goodall. Save the day (or at least make the presser go more smoothly) by solving a potentially devastating A/V issue. Why yes, that is a spiffy way for a geek to start his day… I nearly forget that my back is out. By the way, Dr. Jane is just about the sweetest, most present person that I think I’ve ever met. [I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan.]

Briefly visit the ongoing competition at the U.S. Barista Chamionship. Wow… the USBC has become quite the hot number: stadium seating, cheering crowds and a video crew catching every moment, and webcasting it live. Chat with Doug Zell who is hyper excited about the chances of Intelligentia’s barista team. [As well he should be… eventually Intelly’s Kyle Glanville will take home the top spot in the USBC.]

I ponder Kenneth Davids‘ questioning the practice of using a coffee’s origin as a primary key in the tangled taxonomy that is coffee’s sensory vocabulary. Determine that I disagree with him on many points. [There’s a blog entry in my future, here.]  Fail to see Don Holly’s well-reviewed A Brief History of Coffee because I’m stretched out on my bed in my hotel room with an aching back, shaking my fist at vindictive airline gods.

Dinner with Lindsey Bolger, Don Holly and Carl Staub got cancelled. Bummer. Briefly do the evening cocktail reception, sans cocktail… I’ve taken another little pill for my back. Sample a little Ethiopian food and a lot of Ethiopian coffee, while visiting with fellow [former] altie Marshall Fuss. Spend some time with Bill Fishbein, congratulate him on his “retirement.” I pass on Intelly’s shindig at the Mill City Museum to make an early night of it. Brew a cup of hotel coffee in my room. By the smell — somewhere between wet cardboard and wet dog — the hotel coffee is crap; fortunately I fall asleep before I have to actually drink any of it.

To be continued…

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There was new-fallen snow on the summit of Hunger Mountain today — I think it’s Hunger Mountain… I can’t be sure; we flatlanders are notoriously peak-challenged — and flurries in the air, still, on my drive home through the greens this evening. Here we are, the cusp of May, and old man winter still won’t let loose his grip. Mean ol’ bastard. It must be time to take a break, and search for warmer climes.

How about… Minnesota?

It’s time for that once-a-year caffeinated spectacle — the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s conference and expo, this year in sunny [please?] Minneapolis. Maybe I’ll see you there… somewhere between the barista jam and the hotdish.

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I’ve two new blogs to add to the short list of links I keep over — thataway. [Imagine a disembodied hand waving toward the rightmost column of the page you’re looking at. Thank-you.]

The first of these — Daniel’s Coffee Blog — by Daniel Humphries, another Seattle-born coffee guy, who for some reason chose NYC over Vermont when he got restless leg syndrome (the old-fashioned kind… not the “malady” they try to sell you drugs for on the nightly news). On occasion I’d drop by Daniel’s LiveJournal pages to find amazing things like this photo collection from a trip to Ethiopia. Here’s hoping he finds lots of inspiration with his new digs.

The second is another blog on writing — Ecstatic Days — by fantasy author Jeff Vandermeer. I have at least one of Jeff’s books in my reading pile [Shriek, if you must know] and, while I haven’t yet opportunity to get beyond the first few pages, I expect good things. All the more so after following a link to this post — Evil Monkey’s Guide to Kosher Imaginary Animals — by way of Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s Making Light.

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The economic downturn is beginning to get to folks’ bottom line — their coffee money.

Java junkies looking to pinch pennies are sipping less expensive coffee drinks, brewing at home or going cold turkey altogether. The shift is hurting both small-time coffee shops and giants of joe such as Starbucks, which said Wednesday that it expected lower second-quarter profit and full-year earnings than it originally projected because in-store sales and traffic had declined.

Historically, coffee is one of the last things to go from consumer budgets… but that history of spending doesn’t necessarily account for a more modern affectation: the five-buck-a-cup über café latte.

Those who haven’t given up the coffee-shop routine are buying less expensive drinks: drip coffee rather than a caramel macchiato, or an iced coffee instead of a frappuccino.

“Fancy coffee has had its run,” said Dean Trucco, owner of Stir Crazy, a boutique coffee shop on Melrose Avenue.

While brewed coffee — both at home and in the coffee house — should be poised to make a come-back, what might that mean for the five-buck-a-cup Clover-brewed single origin? We’ll see.

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