Archive for category ‘mad coffee jaunts’
Saturday, January 13th, 2007
not what you like to see on the home bar of the entremanurial chicago blog-brother:
proof of fervency or inexcusable shot ruination? this blog reports, you decide. trust us, bro: this hurts us WAY more than it hurts you. (inexplicable CI kindness alert: we deliberately chose not to publish photos of ...
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Friday, January 12th, 2007
milwaukee's alterra: trippily good -- except for the shift manager!
it doesn't cast a favorable light on this blog to admit that we hadn't mapped milwaukee's establishments of merit in advance. it's, you know, milwaukee. but the discovery was all the more scintillating when, cruising along lake michigan, we saw the ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts | 13 Comments »
Monday, January 8th, 2007
the depths of yesterday's morbid bloggy myopia, explained here!
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Sunday, January 7th, 2007
proving that an elongated road-jaunt need not go entirely without detours toward superlative coffee nexuses, this blog is once again headed into the soul-less midwest (so soul-less, in fact, the people there need both james lileks and garrison keillor to defend the region on a full-time basis) for shot-poundage, baby! ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006
sad but true: caffeine's counter-soporific wiles hold no clout over this blog. there's simply too little blood in our caffeine system. add our unshakeable tendency to drift while driving, and you get a dire need for alternative stimulants on the road. seriously, we have occasionally resorted to the extreme periodic ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts | 3 Comments »
Monday, October 2nd, 2006
nagging serbc remainders, bulleted for easy culling.
* exhaustive coffee innerneck trollers already know that this blog's primary spro-progenitor is profoundly broken -- not unlike a barista competition! no, wait. the comparison applies to the other machine, the antiquated levered wonder that requires a painstaking amount of wiping, bleeding and ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, screeds | 2 Comments »
Saturday, September 30th, 2006
get your exhaustive southeast regional barista imagery here, produced by people with a supremely better vantage point than this blog.
extra credit: find daryn berlin's egregiously branded steaming pitcher! also: lem's granny specs and flame-throwing device. and lastly: alarming signs that some repeat competitors just don't get it.
Posted in mad coffee jaunts | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, September 27th, 2006
roughly on par with its usual logical pace, this blog just discovered what it REALLY meant to say about, you know, larded corporate zombies winning all the barista competitions. slog through all 72 76 77 80 88 89 comments, or go straight to the economic analogy!
this blog is calling ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, screeds | 5 Comments »
Wednesday, September 27th, 2006
through a miracle of digital retrieval this blog cannot begin to fathom, the cruelly lost video footage of this weekend's serbc has been, er, "found." the resulting public service almost moves this blog to tears. alas, you've read the performance notes -- now live the finalist routines yourself in vivid, ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, video | 23 Comments »
Wednesday, September 27th, 2006
clearly, this blog should learn its lesson and never write anything serious again. from here on out, it's only innoculating self-ridicule and vague, unassailable snark! still, there are transformational barista performances to relay. thus, in a totally craven effort to run for cover and make everyone happy with us, we ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts | 6 Comments »
Monday, September 25th, 2006
someone wondered aloud a mere five months ago if the prospect of sleeper barista champions was dwindling with the times. of course it is. you know the drill: to be a champeen barista person, it takes dedication! passion! a calloused distribution finger! and money, it turns out, is the proxy ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts | 89 Comments »
Sunday, September 24th, 2006
there's crow. and then there's your large-breasted, turkey-sized raven, fluffed to the size of nick cho's hair, embalmed with liquified mr. crow, marinated in compote de crow-chick and basted in its own nest. i'll take a full helping of the latter, with some jus de crow as a digestif.
because despite ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts | 14 Comments »
Sunday, September 24th, 2006
SERBC winners:
1. Nick Cho
2. Daryn Berlin
3. Lem Butler
UPDATE: we weren't going to bother with the live-blogging ... until a certain rival junkie started gloating that he was going to "beat me to the punch." placed a call to friend jake, i did. let him hear the results over the ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts | 4 Comments »
Sunday, September 24th, 2006
did we mention that we're obtusely bent on getting to the serbc today?
even though it rained in our car, and the morning kick-starter is being levered as we speak in soul-piercing darkness?
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Saturday, September 23rd, 2006
still more gratuitous signs of this blog's indefensible dedication in getting to this weekend's serbc:
that grass if off the chizzain. we will, however, NOT be mowing it this weekend.
Posted in mad coffee jaunts | 2 Comments »
Thursday, September 21st, 2006
... in order to get to this weekend's southeast regional barista competition.
assuming the other strut doesn't blow, and the detours to charleston and clemson don't devolve into disaster, and i get my video camera back, and its emaciated batteries hold up, why, then i'll post video of sunday's final round. ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts | 4 Comments »
Thursday, August 3rd, 2006
reader mikep sends this image to remind us why our recent fixating junket through the midwest fell far short of comprehensiveness.
mike helpfully annotates the image here, identifying the sliver o' scalp behind the la marzocco as usbc finalist fritzen himself. it's like having our very own lurking paparazzi in bloomington, ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, mad coffee jaunts | 1 Comment »
Monday, July 24th, 2006
best brew yet outta muddy waters, the gutsy charleston, sc, start-up joint (gutsy because it's a beverage-focused place, with nary a sight of the profit-inflating flakes of charbuckian dough). the title "south carolina's best" is increasingly deserved, though technically it earned the moniker upon opening its doors and tamping with ...
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Monday, June 5th, 2006
the bitter juicy dregs at the bottom of my lemony cuppa yirg, clover-brewed, at chicago's newest intelly. also: nate the finger tries to share.
if, say, you were a quality espresso heavyweight, one of the few nicely profitable trinitarian-wave companies with the ability to snap heads around and effect the sort ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, screeds | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, May 31st, 2006
signs your coffee joint is comfortably profitable: orange-paneled la marzoccos and flat-screen order displays looming overhead -- even though the order taker is about as far away as a technical judge at a barista competition.
somewhere after the clover-brewed yirgacheffe, before the capp-to-go and in between the macchiato and random ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, screeds | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, May 31st, 2006
the city of chicago: spending taxpayer millions on controversial public art? ... or spending taxpayer millions propping up intelly's newest nearby location with the most gargantuan display of subliminal advertising known to mankind?
this blog reports, you decide.
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Friday, May 26th, 2006
how does this blog respond to the peppy fan mail professing a daily affinity for CI snark? why, it lazily punts for five days straight!
actually, we are meandering through the unenlightened midwest, where one has a better chance of finding hydrogenated corn-based bio-diesel than decent shottage. a ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, screeds | 5 Comments »
Monday, May 1st, 2006
kite day at the beach, from which one might correctly infer a short-lived stay. something about nine-month-olds' ears not tolerating such windspeeds without grave, tedious consequences involving garlic oil and cotton balls... salient gist: more time to cafe loll, chez the rapidly improving muddy waters so recently joshed in these ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, subjective swilling | No Comments »
Saturday, April 22nd, 2006
if this blog can't spin a wee bit of intrigue out of the just-posted usbc competitor rankings, then it shan't ever more speak the name of "spuma".
* obvious mystery-heightening story line: if not for the judging error re: ryan dennhardt, then eventual champ matt riddle apparently wouldn't have made it ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, mad coffee jaunts | 13 Comments »
Wednesday, April 19th, 2006
the further the scaa bash recedes, the grumpier this blog gets ... at least that's my excuse! mostly because fond memories have a vexing way of being drowned out by pestilential chest-thumpers and profit mongers.
curmudgeonly cause the first: what could be worse than the deafening levels of taunting and self-promoting ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, mad coffee jaunts, screeds | 4 Comments »
Sunday, April 16th, 2006
rocks, sticks, bling ... now popcorn. a kernel showed up in a puro scuro roast today, oddly enough. which sounds sort of like a caragay special, when you think about it.
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, playing with (roaster) fire | 2 Comments »
Friday, April 14th, 2006
thursday: best shot all day was scraped from the cypriot's counter. it was just one of those days, where all your limbs feel like warm putty, and if you roll your eyes more than a half-turn to the left you can discern by the intensity of the ache just how ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, screeds | 2 Comments »
Thursday, April 13th, 2006
andy schecter, his grinder, his pressure sculpting device (white box), and the synesso to which it was hooked.
to be frank, i was somewhat taken aback at the lack of theorizing over home-junkie andy's pressure-sculpting device. then again, he's had it running for a mere two weeks or so. i've posted ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, screeds, video | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, April 12th, 2006
does this sound, to you, like someone is making profane comments about this blog? mmm-hmmm. we thought so too. what else could "vinnaren fick" mean? or even "har snyggat," for that matter? see what happens when you suddenly have an audience? this blog misses the old days, when all it ...
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Wednesday, April 12th, 2006
sure, there are other people who offer vast and well-composed flickr galleries of close-up championship action. but why go there, when you can endure tiny video frames of truncated competition footage so jerky that you might be advised to insert your old retainer to keep from chomping your tongue? at ...
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