Perfect Coffee: Art or Science
I washed the kitchen dust and airborne greasiness from the vacuum brewer perched on the counter this morning. Occasionally, I'll use it for a special coffee. The Hawaiian Kona is a very soft and fragile bean...different in the french press. I started thinking about the pursuit of the "perfect" cup of joe. I've had some I felt brush past like a kitten's instinctive and imploring lean into your shin over the years.
I'm going to give you the spoiler. Perfect Coffee: Art or Science...It's both.
Take a look at the road. Analyze scenic overlooks and rest areas. For the sake of simplification, I'm not going to include the complicated steps to get the coffee beans to your cupboard.
1. Some of the puzzle pieces to perfect coffee:
Coffee Country of Origin
Date of Roast
Whole Bean (until moments just prior to brewing)
Burr Grinder
Size of Grind Particles
Roast Level (Light, Dark)
Brew Method
Water Temperature
Duration of Brew
Coffee/Water Ratio
2. Control and systematize each step.
At this point, the path becomes more subjective. Subsequently, less scientific. Still, though, if one does defer to the valued judgement of those in the know, one should necessarily reap the tastiest rewards. Practice optimal brewing techniques and purchase the best equipment you can afford.
3. Qualitatively evaluate through standardized tastings.
More on this in a few lines from here.
4. Record quantitative statistical data.
Data will provide a benchmark you can modify as you improve the coffee you brew over time. For example, some coffee will taste bitter if you brew it at 200 degrees, Fahrenheit. But, pristine at 195 degrees.
Now then. To the fairy dust. The above number three is organic. It moves on the palette, yours and mine, to be judged. And therein lies the rub...the treasure. You can discover your perfect coffee, but you will have to rediscover it again and again.
Coffee is...
...abstraction
...Voluptuousness...interpretation.
...momentary...peripheral.
not nearly White-yin hot- shade yang Black
A cup of art in Cooperation.
Chunk of Life.
Essential-Nonessential joy.
The Great Gatsby
What do you geek?
You know budgets are tight. Your local library is feeling it too. Stop in, thank them for their hard work and check out a book--then see what you can do to help them keep their doors open.
Geek the library at http://geekthelibrary.org
"He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey." -from The Great Gatsby
I finished F. Scott Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby for the first time. I don't know how I managed to avoid reading it for so long. The story, set in New York in the roaring twenties, goes...a charismatic, self-made man returns to the city of his youth. He rekindles an old romance with an aristocratic woman who has married a man in her own social class. She has suffered years of shame, though, because her hubby has been brazenly involved in an affair with another woman. When Gatsby (the aforementioned love of yesteryear) returns to her world, she is captivated...inspired to justice...to be the gander, at last, privy to the same satisfaction as the goose. I wont continue with the details in case you haven't read it, though, it's likely I'm the last person on the globe who hasn't.
It's a smallish novel laden with some of the most imaginative, thoughtful prose I've read. The fact that it is brief, but contains so much about the complexity of the human condition confirms its high regard in American Literature. Its a story of privilege and taste: of passion and mystery, candor and inference. I don't often revisit books, but this precious, dewy rose has much to take in, so I will.
The cover art for the first edition by Francis Cugat is magnificent, and a careful reading of the book coupled with the picture solicits more intriguing questions.
HELP
Do you like flavored coffee? If so, I would love your input. I want to add one or two flavored coffees to our product offerings on http://www.worldmixcoffees.com. Would you send me your favorite flavor?
Coffee Game Winner!
On a wintry morning...
Stumble toward the kitchen. Four scoops of coffee... grinder...heat the water. What's that warm yellow glow through the window?
Bouncing off the shiny espresso machine. Crystals jumble together...thinning out as I glance up the windowpane. So perfect... icy flakes in snake rows.
Cold train. Gold rays bent on a glassy palette. In a moment, it will be different. Changed.
Snatch the digital eye. Captured. Glowing-- close up.
We have a winner!
Thanks for your guesses. I'll try another one soon.
The Coffee Game
Take a guess at what this picture is. The photo is my own original and wasn't tampered with. If you are the first to answer correctly, I'll ship you a free bag of whole bean, freshly roasted World Mix Coffees. (This is an overt marketing tactic I devised to draw your dollars into my hands. It's the first step toward your eventual passionate dependence on our coffee.)
New Midlake Album and Others Worth Mentioning
Midlake has a new record out. The 2006 record, The Trials of Van Occupanther, was solid throughout. They come across as a band with a ton of headphone time from some 70's pop bands like Bread or America. The reviews for the new record, while not as sparkly as ...Occupanther are still very solid for the quintet from Denton, Texas.
The most interesting record for the month is Joanna Newsom's album, Have One On Me, due out on the 23rd of February. You must hear her Y's album, co-produced by Van Dyke Parks. Her voice is a challenge for bubble gum ears, but for me, she gets it. She absolutely gets it. She plays piano and the harp. The new album is apparently going to span 3 cd's.
Yeasayer's, Odd Blood is due out on the 9th. Their debut, All Hour Cymbals, landed on a few uploads to my ipod.
Coffee Grinder From Long Ago
I found this in Dahlonega, Georgia in an antique shop. I love old coffee gadgets. This one happened to have my name on it. It's an old burr mill grinder. These have been around for MANY years, and always grind better than the new processor type grinders utilizing a sharpened spinning blade. Burrs tear coffee beans into uniformly sized particles and don"t overheat the flavor filled oils.
Check Out My Recent Blogroll Additions
I have added blogs and sites of friends and colleagues to the blogroll on the right. Stop by for visit, and tell them where you heard about them.
I also added a couple music sites that I like to keep up with.
Why Bother?
"The world may burn for aught I care, so long as I am all right."
- The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
...in the dead of night.
Hello Blogland. Let's start with some irony. I want you to read this crap, but I despise the hoop jumping needed to placate your interests. So if I anger you, but you return to see what I v'e written next, I have moved you and am striding toward my goal. If you take the extra effort to write back, whether you're livid or in love, that's a bonus. If I rock a religious boat or two you think worthy of a hearty, "Amen!," you may want to check in and see if I have managed to write something that gives you an arm full of squeaky blackboard induced goose bumps. Religious bones prop up more thin skin than we realize, or are willing to admit.
I'll be ranting and raving about great music and books, and the pursuit of perfect coffee in the postings ahead. If any of these things interest you, then hang around for a ride on my roller coaster. You get to choose where to get off. I doubt you can sway me to your drivel, but I hope you'll place your perhaps flabby, westernized belly up to the bar for a go at it.
Transparency is paramount, and I expect it from those who choose to dialog with me in the blog. I'll try to reciprocate.
Let's get something straight. I am spoiled. I want it, when I want it, because it's been that way my entire life. My parents are blue-collar workers from blue-collar workers who did without, so that I could have. If you’re fifty years old or younger, you may be able to relate, or you may just want to tell me to grow up. I don't have a clue what it's like for a kid from the third world who truly knows the meaning of lack. They smile at me from my 55" LCD TV screen behind a supplicating 1-800 number and a pristinely lovely celebrity who implores me to commit my monthly life saving donation. "All you have to do is MAKE THAT CALL.... Visa, Mastercard, and Amex accepted." I might call, but the fuzzy, fluorescent orange glow on my nacho cheesy chip fingers will get on the phone, so... maybe next time. On a side note, have you seen the pink-haired church lady in hi-def 1080p at your house? Don't adjust the hues. It really is pink! Cotton candy hair would have been cool on Lucy when she flew through the sky with diamonds, don't you think? If that doesn't make you want to hide from the religious church today, I don't know how much further you can shove your ostrich long neck below the sand.
Let's get back to my own unattractive stuff, shall we? I am compulsive, and if I deem I deserve it, I’ll break into the Louvre, drop through the sky light, and dangle on a nylon cord risking life and limb to have it my way. The exercise of doing without that which I desire, on purpose, is on par with a canoe ride down the river Styx for me. How about you? Do you ever "put your flesh under'?
Cynicism breeds in the slovenly soul of a man. Who said that? I may have, just now. Perhaps it's a bit of, "idleness is the devil's workshop", kind of thought. My real worth on this beautiful blue orb in the third of eight (or is it nine-Pluto?) places from the sun, relates directly to my value to the human race.
I ramble about, from truisms and tallish tales to trysts of interest and quotes from folks that make me seem wiser to you than I am, so it may be a real challenge for you to puzzle through my muse, i guess. But that's part of what makes me, me. My birthmother writes all over the page when her lines fill up the page; from the margins, and in different colors and with vertical lines, so keep some fair perspective when you gripe at me from your desk chair. I won't spend every letter I write in the blogs to come relating my imperfect qualities to you. Realize your own. Then realize, in identifying them, you may see your proximity to...anything that is anything- from "here, there, and everywhere"(thanks, Macca.) Now you aren't as lost as you were before.
Why bother letting you all know just a small part of the things that cause me to run headlong into my destiny? Selfishness, disorder, cynicism, and compulsiveness are in me. So are the opposites, and the journey from the dark side to the light is best undertaken with those who recognize their need for help along the way.
My seven year old is waiting to extricate my head from my shoulders in Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare on the PS3. Why is he able to assassinate me so matter-of-factly? I didn't pass on any sniper genes. In fact, caffeine-my drug of choice, is a horrid hurdle if you intend to murder with precision. I'll stick with the melee weapons from close range, or cowardly poisonous elixirs in tonic that debilitate and shut the body down, over long periods of time.
The next blog entry may include more of the things in me that confound my wife and friends. Don't miss it!
SO, I shall bid you, Adieu.
Ciao for now.
Cezart. (I don't know what that means, but I like the sound of it.)
o.k.
guy
This week, I heard a great new record for free, once through, on lala.com. check out Charlotte Gainsbourg's album, IRM, on the link below. I am reading Dostoevsky's, The Brothers Karamazov. Your thoughts?
Lala.com is not my sponsor. I like the site.
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