Category Archives: Coffee

Sniff It!

It’s probably the most distinctive sign of the beverage geek: the attentive sniff.

When you see someone taking a long sniff of a beverage (say, a cup of coffee, a pint of beer, or even a glass of milk), you just know that this person is an avid enthusiast of the sensory exploration that drinking can be. Of course, that person may also be wondering about some strange odour coming from that drink. But even that may be a step in the direction of beverage hedonism.  If the sniffer also looks intently at the beverage and takes a long time to concentrate on every sip, you know this person is a true geek. If that person also takes notes or even listens to the beverage, the geek meter should go off the charts.

Sure, much of it sounds really funny. And there’s often social pressure against this type of enjoyment, especially in cultural contexts linked with Calvinism or Puritanism.  Yet, there’s a lot to be said about experiencing a good beverage. Continue reading Sniff It!

Music, Coffee, Digital Life

“These are a few of my favourite things…”

I keep thing that music and coffee have a lot to do with one another. I’m also a wannabe geek. So I’m quite interested in the recently-announced Apple/Starbucks partnership to distribute music via wireless connections.

Apple – iTunes – Starbucks

Haven’t read much discussion about this deal yet. After all, the iPod touch is generating a lot more buzz. But I think this partnership can lead to something.

Makes a lot of sense, this deal. Brand recognition. Co-branding. New avenues for music distribution. “Physical locations” and computer networks. Music discovery through exposure. Impulsive buying. Selling an ambiance.

As it so happens, I’ve been a fan of many Apple products. I’m not a total Apple fanboy. And I’m certainly not an “unconditional” of the company. But I do tend to be overly enthusiastic about some products they release and the approach they’re taking. I did get contracts as a campus representative for Apple about ten years ago. And I have high hopes for the company. So, I think this can be a good thing for Apple and I’m looking forward to that, even if it doesn’t change anything in my life.

I’m also an ethnomusicologist and a musician. I care about people’s enjoyment of music. And I care about musicians making a living through their musical activities. Because this can mean increased music sales, “I’m all for it.” Of course, I have some reservations about the way the iTunes music store works. But the basic principle makes a lot of sense and is pretty much musician-friendly.

I care a lot about cafés. I do think they’re important locations for a lot of things to happen. I even take notes about what I think the ideal café would be for me. And I celebrate the opening of new cafés where I live. So I think my love for cafés is well-served by an association with music. I had been thinking about a similar system for a while now, thinking that cafés would be great places to “diffuse” music. So I can’t complain that this dream I had is being fulfilled.

The only thing is, I have a thing about Starbucks. Not that I think it’s the most evil company in the world. But I dislike a lot of the effects they’ve had on the world of coffee. Some of their business tactics are very close to bullying so I enjoy it when they lose to a café owner. I also find the quality of their coffee to be subpar. Contrary to what many people in the United States seem to feel, I don’t get the impression that Starbucks increased my ability to get quality coffee. In fact, because of Starbucks and other café chains, I feel that coffee has often decreased in quality and certainly in diversity since Starbucks started its “worldwide” expansion. I’m not anti-globalisation. But I’m against the bulldozing of café culture.

Not to mention that I prefer local initiatives to provide free WiFi connections to local communities to T-Mobile’s restrictive business model.

So, though the partnership between the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store and Starbucks should fill me with joy, I feel sad that Starbucks had to be the target of this deal. It makes a lot of sense and I understand Apple couldn’t have a more appropriate partner in the deal. But I would prefer a move toward broad partnerships across a wide range of people. Who knows, maybe this will spark a movement by online music distribution system (besides iTunes), wireless providers (besides T-Mobile), and cafés (besides Starbucks) to connect music listening and café-going in new ways.

It’s not the whole world that’s consolidating in a few multinational conglomerates.

Montreal Coffee Renaissance?

Just posted a message about my Caffè in Gamba, a new café in Montreal.

CoffeeGeek – Regional: Eastern Canada, Caffè in Gamba (Montreal Intelligentsia)

Because this café’s website isn’t online yet, I would need to repeat the info. The café is located in a new building at 5263 Park Ave., between Fairmount and Bernard. It’s first claim for fame is that it’s the first place in Montreal to have Intelligentsia coffee on its regular coffee menu. But I think it’ll become much more than this.

Owner J.F. Leduc is surprisingly soft-spoken for a passionate coffee lover. But I think he prefers it if the coffee “can speak for itself” instead of him having to hype coffee enjoyment out of existence. In fact, he has a bit of the same humble attitude you would notice in an actual barista in Northern Italy. They know what they like but they remember that they’re in the service industry! 🙂

I think Leduc can become a key player in the broader movement to make Montreal a real coffee destination.

Granted, I tend to be overly enthusiastic about such things. And I’ve been disappointed in the past. But I have a good vibe, especially after I got a chance to chat it up with Leduc.

I also notice something bigger, happening in town. There’s a number of Montrealers who really care about coffee. And Montreal’s ready for a new phase in its coffee history.

Veritas, in Old Montreal, is home to Anthony Benda, whom I consider the best barista in Montreal. They sell the Epic blend from Vancouver roaster 49th Parallel. My hope is that Veritas can help people understand the beauty that is West Coast style espresso in a culinary context.

Gamba has a different role, in my opinion. It may become a local hangout and certainly has the potential to educate people about the pleasures of espresso drinking. But my feeling is that it may spread other aspects of café culture and/or be part of something more specific to Montreal.

I’ll certainly go back to Caffè in Gamba in the near future and, as soon as they have their site up, I’ll link to it from this blog as well as other online venues.

In the meantime, maybe somebody can help J.F. set up his wireless router? 😉

Keeping Up With the Loshes

Elizabeth Losh has tagged me:

virtualpolitik: Pieces of Eight

I actually feel honoured. I met Losh randomly, on a rather high-profile blog she contributes to. I simply posted a comment. And here I am, tagged by a high-profile blogger (and, it seems, a very interesting person).

This “meme” seems to be about revealing eight random things about yourself. As silly as this may sound, I like the idea.

What Losh did was pretty neat. She used eight (presumably consecutive tracks on her iPod Shuffle as inspiration for her facts. Since I can’t get coolness points for doing the same thing, I’ll reverse the randomness factor by using Losh’s facts as inspiration for mine. I’ll then associate some music with every fact.

  1. My family has never been into partisan politics and none of us has been very faithful to a political party. I did attend, as a child, a meeting of Parti Québécois during the 1980 referendum. (Stéphane Venne, Le début d’un temps nouveau, Renée Claude)
  2. Though I’m not a sports fan by any stretch of the imagination, the only time in my life I skipped school was to see the parade when the Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley cup in 1986. There was a riot later that day, IIRC. (Dolores Claman, The Hockey Theme)
  3. I listen to a lot of podcasts and I archive episodes that I want to blog about. I only use a very small fraction of those archives. Guess I should find an easy way to nanoblog based on podcast episodes. Too bad iTunes doesn’t have any blogging/sharing feature. (Fabio FZero, Samba do Aeroporto, Gerador Zero)
  4. I pretty much never had a hero. My role models have been my mother, my paternal grandmother, and my wife. No wonder my “PersonalDNA” has me at the 72th percentile for femininity and at the 10th percentile for masculinity. (Claude Dubois, Femme de rêve)
  5. I never got my driver’s license. As surprising as it may sound, not driving hasn’t been so much of an issue for me, even in car-intense parts of the United States. (Tracy Chapman, Fast Car)
  6. The comment I originally left on one of Losh’s blog entries was about addictions. I don’t think that I’m addicted to anything. There’s a number of things I do quite regularly (drink coffee, play solitaire on a PDA, spend time online…) but none of them I ever feel compelled to do. (Robert Palmer, Addicted to Love)
  7. Though I haven’t been baptized, I’m culturally Catholic meaning that I probably behave like a Catholic by mere virtue of having been raised in Catholic Quebec during the end of the Quiet Revolution. (Jacques Brel, Les Flamingants)
  8. Among the first things which tickled my philosophical curiosity was thinking about an infinite universe. I kept thinking about what would lie beyond the Universe. I was quite young (10yo) and didn’t know much about (astro)physics. I still wonder about the grander scheme of things. (Nancy Hamilton/Morgan Lewis, How High The Moon, Ella Fitzgerald)

(Can anyone guess what took me longer while preparing this entry?)
Now, who should follow this meme? Here’s a list of people I’m tagging:

Sydney Hutchinson, Mireille Caissy, Jean Crawford, Yara El-Ghadban, Erin McLeod, Aurora Flewwelling-Skup, Hélène Recule, asphaire

(Notice a pattern, here?)

Let’s see who goes along.

Food and Social Life

Short blog entry by Jacques Attali on statistics about shared meals in “Western Civilizations.”

Conversation avec Jacques Attali: Dînons ensemble

The main claim is that France is still at the top of the list of places where people do enjoy shared meals. Still, Attali does mention some of the realities hidden by those statistics.

Interestingly enough, several of the comments on this entry are about other parts of the world where food consumption is an important social activity, including parts of Asia and Africa.

To me, a basic part of ethnography has to do with groups formed at meals. In some cases, it might be a group of relatives considered as a “household” or “family unit.” In other contexts, meal sharers might consider themselves to be part of the same social group, as when all members of the same age-set eat together.

There’s also the shared consumption of non-nutritional items like tea and alcohol. Perhaps because of my passion for both coffee and beer, I find the process of having coffee or beer with someone else one of the most pleasurable experiences one can have. The complex aromas of those drinks do enhance the experience and the fact that their nutritional value isn’t the main point of their consumption makes the event less utilitarian than socially consequent.

No idea if there are statistics on shared consumption of drinks but they clearly represent an important domain for the study of social life.

Intro to Post-Starbucks Coffee

A podcast episode on coffee, with Karen Blumenthal, George Howell and Corby Kummer.

On Point : Coffee Buzz – Coffee Buzz

Blumenthal, author of a book about Starbucks, isn’t mentioned in the show notes but she seems to have set the tone of the show, to a certain extent.

In the rest of the show, I quite like the dynamic between the three main participants: the host, Tom Ashbrook, along with Howell and Kummer. Howell often tends to sound much more forceful in his opinions than he did in this show. And the different takes about Starbucks were quite nuanced.

The show does put Starbucks in the centre of the coffee revolution in the United States and then focuses on newer developments. The current period in the history of coffee in North America is sometimes referred to as the Third Wave, in which is imagined a world of openness and transparency in the coffee-related industries.

As I got my taste in quality coffee from a very different source than Starbucks, I hope that we can now go beyond the Starbucks mentality. In fact, I also hope that we get out of the wine comparisons. Not just because they’re boring but because they miss the point about coffee as a diverse drink. It’s not a very American thing to say but knowing coffee isn’t just about being to tell what is the “best coffee ever.”

One thing the coffee world could import from the wine world, is the idea of pairings. It actually works better for beer than for either wine or coffee, but it can work quite well with coffee, especially with different brewing methods.

BTW, I have nothing against wine. I just think that much wine tends to be much less satisfying than several other drinks including coffee, beer, tea, cider, mead, juice, milk, and water.

Brikka Notes

Brikka

26/1/05 8:10

108g water

5g grounds

96g coffee

26/1/05 8:25

96g water

6g grounds

85g coffee(26/1/05 8:30)

28/1/05 8:43

98g water

6g grounds

89g coffee

Too strong!

28/1/05 8:51

94g water

4g grounds

78g coffee

Still too strong!

29/1/05 10:21

77g water

7g grounds

35g additional water

100g coffee

29/1/05 12:46

109g water

6g grounds

42g added water

77g coffee, huge spill

29/1/05 12:57

29/1/05 15:17

95g water

6g grounds

36g added water

410-284g=124g coffee, small spill

29/1/05 15:29

31/1/05 8:10

112g water

8g grounds

42g added water

132g coffee plus small spill?

As if boiled

1/2/05 10:09

86g water

6g grounds

38g added water

97g coffee

1/2/05 10:19

1/2/05 18:43

92g water

8g grounds

23g added water

103g coffee

1/2/05 18:53

2/2/05 18:23

106g water

6g grounds

29g additional water

110g coffee

3/2/05 8:36

101g water

8g grounds

26g added

86g coffee +spill

3/2/05 8:50

3/2/05 12:18

105g water

6g grounds

31g add

huge spill

5/2/05 8:30

101g water

7g grounds

20g added

73g coffee spill

5/2/05 8:37

5/2/05 14:07

83g water

7g grounds

17g added

93g no spill

5/2/05 14:19

5/2/05 18:18

96g water

6g grounds

23g added

2g ginger

93g coffee

5/2/05 18:27

6/2/05 12:49

102g water

8g grounds

19g added

101g coffee (almost no spill when take right away)

6/2/05 13:01

6/2/05 17:12

96g water

5g grounds

13g added

91g coffee,took as was getting done

6/2/05 17:22

7/2/05 8:35

88g water

7g grounds

19g added

more heat

7/2/05 8:50 still more heat

7/2/05 8:51

90g coffee

no spill, off as ready

7/2/05 18:20

97g water

7g grounds

24g added

7/2/05 18:31

Comes up a bit

7/2/05 18:34

Taken off before

82g coffee

8/2/05 10:38

104g water

7g grounds

21g added

more heat,closed pot

102g coffee, some spill

8/2/05 10:46

10/2/05 9:06

90g water

7g grounds

17g added

+pot

285g water

10g grounds

31g added

12/2/05 12:19

100g water

8g grounds(coarse, mill weirdness, fresh batch)

20g added

100g coffee

12/2/05 12:32

good musky, some sweetness, bit “lighter roast” aroma/taste, some acidity, body fair

12/2/05 13:14

84g water

8g grounds(still coarse)

18g added

82g coffee

12/2/05 13:26

12/2/05 18:53

112g water

8g grounds(still coarse)

18g added

12/2/05 19:07

>heat

12/2/05 19:08

spill

13/2/05 11:56

85g water

9g grounds(fine)

13g added

bit > heat

13/2/05 12:08 turn up

76g coffee, right away

15/2/05 13:14

86g water

7g grounds

23g added

15/2/05 13:27

85g coffee

some spill

Moka Pot

30/1/05 16:41 (moka)

280g water

10g grounds

105g added water

327g coffee

full pot

30/1/05 16:59

31/1/05 8:37(moka)

288g water

11g grounds

79g added water

open pot

277g+(full cup)

full pot

31/1/05 8:53

1/2/05 10:27 (moka)

327g(?) water

9g grounds

56g added water

281g+ coffee(full cup)

50g remainder

5/2/05 8:52 (moka)

316g water

12g grounds

57g added

280g coffee plus(spills as pours)

34g more

kind of light but flavour

6/2/05 13:25

269g water

11g grounds

36g added

263g coffee. Long brew..

6/2/05 13:41

7/2/05 8:01(started before)

272g water

11g grounds

60g added

264g coffee

long brew

7/2/05 8:12

7/2/05 21:20 (moka)

308g water

10g grounds

35g added

>heat

7/2/05 21:30

267+25g coffee(full cup)

 
 

A Good Cup

This is more of a typical blog entry, I guess.

Went to bed at 9 p.m., last night. Was exhausted, after teaching (2:45 to  5:30 p.m.). Usually go to bad at 1 a.m. or later but, last night, I was just out.

Woke up at 4. Yes, 4 a.m.! That’s not really me. But seven hours of sleep is rather decent so, I eventually decided to stay up.

Did a few things such as respond to emails, manage some class-related matters, responded to Jess about social bookmarking, looked at some observation reports from my “intro to culture” class…

And, eventually, made myself a cup of coffee.

Now, coffee really is a passion, for me. Like beer and music (which are, to me, all related). I’m quite intense about coffee. It’s not that I need caffeine. It’s that coffee is a major part of my sensory experience.

One of my posts on CoffeeGeek has generated hundreds of replies. In fact, I was going to post a new message in that thread to revive it, yet again. But the coffee I’m having was not brewed in a Brikka, so it’s somewhat off-topic for that specific thread.

Three days ago, I roasted some Javan Domaine, some Ugandan Bugisu, and some Ethiopian Sidamo. About 105g each. All the green beans were bought at Terra. All roasted to some point during second crack. None of them really dark but some were pretty much at the silk level.

That blend was ok but not yet to my liking. Something was missing to give it depth, balance, roundness. Can’t remember the specifics (I forget my less-favourable experiences, which does make me happier). But it wasn’t doing it for me.

So, yesterday, I roasted some Costa Rican Spring Mountain to blend with the rest. The Brikka cup I got soon after that was quite good. Very complex aroma. Wild.

This morning, I got some of the same aromas in my moka pot cup. Oh, it’s nowhere near the best cup I’ve had. It’s even flawed, in some ways. But it fits. Ideal for today. The first whiff I took was a very pleasing experience and the memory of that whiff remains with me. It changes everything.

Well, ok, not quite. But, at least, it motivates me to post a coffee-related blog entry.

As luck would have it, someone will probably reply with their own coffee experiences.

That’d be nice! 🙂

Jobs and Satisfaction

This one is more of a web log entry than my usual ramblings.

Executive Summary: Life Is Good.

Continue reading Jobs and Satisfaction

Plug a blog

Hey, blog-brothers and sisters!

Feel free to put a plug to your blog, here. Doesn’t even need to rhyme.

Got the idea from YULBlog last night and thought it might be neat. (Besides, it’s a shameless attempt at getting more comments and/or pings.)

Otherwise, if you came for stuff about craft and homebrewed beer, homeroasting and other coffee geekery, or musical diversity, do browse and comment.

I also have two blogs on music. One for a course in the anthropology of music, the other Thinking Globalisation Through Music.

Though it might not seem so obvious, I’m longing for comments… 😉