the s&p 500 urges you to brew at home
August 8, 2006 – 10:24 amscintillating, charbucks-earnings-drop-related thesis: “the cost of living well is rising more rapidly than the cost of living.”
which holds a certain ring of truth for this blog. it was only last week that the meager writer’s salary failed to cover the cost of beaufort special reserve french import cheese for the first time ever! congruously, there seems to be a trend among snobs i know not to shop at all the places everyone else thinks are trendy, instead haunting the local organic foods chain over the mainstream outlet of the perversely gleaming zucchinis.
for the mermaid, of course, both of these factors mean that a sizeable share of its core customer base no longer cares to dole out $5 for a carton of singed peat bog extract. ‘twould seem a fine time to make use of cutting edge internet finance tools to justify fine espresso brewed from home!
p.s. if hoffmann doesn’t curb the feigned disgust with home ‘spro, he might single-handedly deflate this movement before it gets started! “the mess,” james? the fuss? might this snootiness be because you haven’t invested in a dedicated home bar, or because the accomplishments of a competition-circuit barista tend to be directly proportionate to how threatened he feels by the abilities of amateurs? this blog’s home bar is a model of polished, efficient, always-on professionalism!
p.s.s. photographic proof, you say? er … hang on a sec. i’m not cleaning up, i’m whipping up no-mess, no-fuss drinks faster than your full-time neighborhood barista! why … what home junkies have you been hanging around with?
p.s.s.s. hoffmann cautiously repositions — cognizant, perhaps, of the damage that poo-pooing home-junkie-ism could do to his renowned humble-barista image!
we jest, jim.
still, does the clarification do the trick? closer scrutiny reveals a still-lurking notion that “espresso at home is having a positive effect on the industry” — but that it’s obviously better at work. is this necessarily true? and isn’t such segmentation — we like you, amateurs, but stay at home! — every bit as dangerous as telling women they shouldn’t join the workforce? i think it is! particularly when you have amateurs promising to alleviate the tyranny of mechanical limitations, and seasoned pros hitching on their wagons. hoffmann mentions this, but i get the sense that perhaps there hasn’t been much real exposure to home purism, aside from the online forums. time for some reverse colonization!
p.s.s.s.s. CI repositions itself! hoffmann easily slaps down our exposure-to-amateurs comment by noting he “came from a home user background.” ah, well. guess that makes him just “spoilt.” though i still don’t understand how pulling shots at work is any cleaner … unless hoffmann has somehow appropriated the technology behind those patented euro sidewalk bathrooms that self-clean after you shut the door. last spring, on the streets of paris, this blog almost ruined its maroon velvet blazer in one of those.
Point taken – http://jimseven.com/?p=223
dang, jim. that was quick. i understand the position, and have no quibble with it per se. you have the convenience and resources to do a better job at work.
but why should the primary benefits of home espresso purism be limited to pushing the commercial establishment to improve, as you write? why can’t it be an end in itself? and why can’t pros believe that the coffee can, indeed, be that good?
I have no doubt that the coffee can, more likely – is, that good. (sorry for bad grammar).
I really do not want to think that any of my comments have come across as casting home espresso in poor light.
I got into coffee selling domestic Gaggias in a department store. I learnt about grinding, dosing and good extraction from the net and then moved across (not up!) to commercial machines and then on to where I am now. My job was as much to sell as to teach buyers how to actually use the kit.
I don’t have a great deal of space in my kitchen and, as we’ve already discussed, I think a bespoke space would change my attitude to the usability side of things.
If I didn’t do it for a living I think I would be delighted with my setup and be more than happy to work with it. As you say – I am “spoilt”. What I’ve overcome recently is the feeling that it would be easier to wait until I go to work to brew coffee where I am supposed to make mess, where there is boundless coffee and everything I need just to hand. It took the aeropress to do that but it has meant I’ve gotten back into home espresso.
I think my comments about the home user pushing things forward was more to do with their being a higher quality of coffee amongst home users and with that more exacting standards that are starting to create pressure – the GS3 is the most obvious example of this. Would it exist without CG, Home barista and the blogosphere? Maybe – but it would probably be a different machine. Same with the new S1 that is coming…
>I have no doubt that the coffee can, more likely – is, that good.
cool. but i’m not saying you should just accept that. i’m saying that a rigorously minded pro should constantly be testing that, to see if it’s the truth, instead of gradually slipping into a sort of elite-speak that unconsciously reflects an attitude that “this is all there is.”
i’m not saying you did that (though i certainly ran with your remarks, partly in jest). but i seem to see a lot of it in the rarified coffee places online.
a lot has been advanced — very quickly — in the professional/competition realm, and has deservedly wowed people, opened eyes, etc. there are a lot of us junkies who watch all this, get ideas, sharpen one another in forums and pursue similarly new heights from home. how would one know this unless one is constantly rubbing elbows in all of coffee’s niches?
that’s what i mean about being rigorous and fair-minded.
if you have such interaction and are open to the quality being produced by envelope-pushing home junkies, then great. i just didn’t see it reflected in your original post.
a reminder: exclamation marks, on this blog, are an indicator of facetious hyperbole.
perhaps better yet, would be the the home barista who, while avoiding the elitism of the establishment, takes his skills on the road to serve and educate the public ‘chez eux.’ say, espresso catering for example.
CI edit: heh.
i knew i was missing some sort of transcendent, catch-all argument …