Archive for category ‘screeds’
Monday, June 12th, 2006
surreal, really, to discover that the same bush-bred brother who mere months ago was roasting in a hand-woven wire basket and grinding with a mortar and pestle now boasts a set-up mechanically superior to my own -- though the homemade espresso bar (complete with hand-hewn bamboo trim!) did flex a ...
Posted in screeds | 9 Comments »
Friday, June 9th, 2006
as a general child-rearing principle, this blog favors toys that teach:
Posted in screeds | 6 Comments »
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 »
Sunday, June 4th, 2006
it turns out there are some very productive ways to write crime copy in a vacant saturday newsroom -- ways that tend to make one quite popular with the straggling weekend colleagues and produce the metabolic edge to stay ahead of the competition.
fervent thanks to the bioluminescent cypriot for allowing ...
Posted in screeds | 2 Comments »
Friday, June 2nd, 2006
to this blog's crushing chagrin, its, ahem, "day" job actually has it toiling late into the eve and hurling itself out of bed at the butt-crack of dawn -- even on saturday -- in order to chronicle the grisly details of a national crime story unfolding in its back yard ...
Posted in screeds | 2 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.
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, screeds | No Comments »
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 »
Sunday, May 21st, 2006
insta-bloviating on the wbc's final scores:
* does it seem to you like there are intangibles associated with the danish competitors that so consistently put them over the top? it does to this blog, too. an earlier comment might have touched on why this is.
* not having seen scores from previous ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, screeds | No Comments »
Sunday, May 21st, 2006
mark prince calls him a dark horse. chris tacy thinks he could finish second. you decide.
Posted in happening elsewhere, screeds | No Comments »
Thursday, May 11th, 2006
the latest sign that the home espresso volume has burgeoned decidedly out of control:
the brew screen, it hath been profoundly compromised of calcified poo. which is of course highly embarrassing -- a violation of purist clean-machinery triple-waveism and all that. ("you've been doing what for cup improvements? whining about whom?") ...
Posted in bioluminescent cypriot, screeds | No Comments »
Sunday, May 7th, 2006
the yawning silence, this blog assures you, has more to do with an excess of bloggable events -- resulting in (a) a severe time lack and (b) decisionary paralysis -- than blog-fatigue (or, even better, a trip to origin. this blog feels so left out.). the topical choice: now-local french ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, screeds | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006
at least someone is asking questions about the groundbreaking pressure-sculpting device with the potential to free us from the "tyranny of mechanical limitations."
but where's the robust public discourse? it's been 52 days!
Posted in happening elsewhere, screeds | No Comments »
Saturday, April 29th, 2006
the basic boiler insulation job: not the results i thought. should have done this long ago, of course, but now that i've wrapped the flaming canister in a rubber-and-foil parka, it seems to hyperventilate. "please. not so much heat that we can't breathe."
which was the point. coat ...
Posted in screeds, subjective swilling | 2 Comments »
Saturday, April 29th, 2006
if cigaragay hadn't already written a tribute to himself, i might be so inclined. this evening: the blueberry spice-dance, a bowlful of brebbia mix no. 50 and some mighty fine belle and sebastien streaming through the surround speakers -- beatific.
of course, there would be a chopper clattering over head. what ...
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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 »
Wednesday, April 19th, 2006
for conspicuous barista mag droolers this will be old news. but as this blog was doing a bit of janitorial reading to sweep up overlooked tidbits from the latest issue, it couldn't help but gape a bit at blogger jimseven's staggering championship score of 822.5 -- out of 900 -- ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, screeds | 2 Comments »
Monday, April 17th, 2006
returning to this blog's primary pursuit of needling the cypriot, let us take this opportunity to inquire: whose auspicious profile, exactly, were you attempting to portray?
this blog has its suspicions, but hates to name any names for fear of embarrassing the individual. let's just say it's a quasi-recognizeable espresso/roasting ...
Posted in bioluminescent cypriot, screeds | No Comments »
Sunday, April 16th, 2006
wonder how the conventioneers would have handled this -- a cruel 92 carolina degrees with no sign of the proverbial april showers. all swelter, no rain. like an idling e61 sans flush. plenty of brew temp without the brew. like schecter's french-roast blend at 5.5 bar. (do we need any ...
Posted in screeds, subjective swilling | No Comments »
Friday, April 14th, 2006
ahem. see this? how does one start demanding, exactly? if industry "oldies" are intent on ignoring podcasts, blogs and forums, there ought to be a more expedient way.
Posted in screeds | 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
bitter dregs:
* how does one make off with "bags" of coffee? all i got was a vac-packed two-pound brick of mass-produced italian poo from the isomac booth-lackey who was trying to atone for his total lack of functional english.
* heard from several people: chris coffee will soon venture into roasting. ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, screeds | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, April 12th, 2006
if tonx knew i was going to name-drop him so much, he surely would have never talked to me. BUT! an extremely passing comment of his jolted a barrage of caffeinated thought. not in the "holy-schnaikes-you've-got-wheels-on-your-shoes" sense (which he did). but in the, "duuuude, that's deep, maaaaaan," sense (did we ...
Posted in mad coffee jaunts, screeds | 2 Comments »
Saturday, April 8th, 2006
...but another member of barista magazine's select, three-blog 'community' is conspicuously praising the latest issue. including teme's recent ravings this makes two of the three! waiting on you, dutch barista!
but that's just for fun. i've been tempted to write, many times, about the shock one gets upon attending the ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, screeds | No Comments »
Monday, April 3rd, 2006
this blog knows you don't care about knockboxes. which is why the recent decision to spring for a new model would have gone unmentioned ... until it morphed into a bona fide Saga.
i say, e-mails like this are a great way to earn my undying brand loyalty:
From: "Dreamfarm Information" ...
Posted in screeds | No Comments »
Monday, March 27th, 2006
what if all the ugly grunting noises from the general direction of bolivia pan out, say, and we gain another latin american enemy in the vein of 'socialist revolutionaries' like castro or chavez -- dictators looking for a reason to antagonize, looking perhaps for an excuse to monkey with america's ...
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Saturday, March 11th, 2006
hmmm. is coffee-blogger teme's breezy review of the latest 'barista magazine' a barely veiled sign of quid pro quo for the extra linkage he now gets on the magazine's 'community' page? it's not like the mag only lists three carefully selected blogs in an environment of at least a couple ...
Posted in happening elsewhere, induced tangents, screeds | 6 Comments »
Friday, March 3rd, 2006
from the local importer of award-winning but odd-as-espresso zimbabwe coffee so recently the subject of dosing theory:
Zimbabwe's vice-president has said the country's remaining white farmers would be spared eviction if they toed the line and respected the law, local media reported on Thursday.
"We cannot remove every white man ...
Posted in screeds | No Comments »
Saturday, February 25th, 2006
this blog is preparing for a group cupping tomorrow (or later today, as the case seems to be), that will include the bioluminescent cypriot, nate the finger and other characters. this evening has consisted of the above pictured 'dry run.' said cupping is widely expected to segue toward sundry spoils ...
Posted in screeds | 1 Comment »
