so, a short film was born of caffeinated highness and solis jake‘s superior technical abilities. bright lights. white backdrop. seven+ hours of shooting. plenty of juice. here’s a rough piece.

HD version here. more to come.

is panama’s famed esmeralda — now the subject of frenzied annual auctions and ever-escalating price records — the andy warhol of coffee? it’s a stellar, genre-bending, tell-your-neighbors kind of revelation, a cup this blog once offered to foldgers-only co-workers in full confidence that it would, in a sip, change their view of coffee. true.

but it’s also not 40 times as tasty as the ever-popular ethiopia idido misty valley, as the staggering price tag might indicate. in fact, this blog’s totally randomized aggregator of online esmeralda chatter (poaching mostly from twitter!) reports that tuned-in coffee drinkers overwhelmingly thought this year’s crop less amazing than past versions. (these people would be knowing and perceptive, but not *professional* cuppers. the point here being what serious coffee drinkers thought, as a proxy for specialty consumers, not what the credentialed cuppers said they should think.)

and so what’s to account for this year’s record-shattering price of $117 per pound — the same year most well-known western specialty buyers appears to have pulled back in the bidding? (for reference: 2008 prices)

to a dull and obvious blog like this one, ‘twould seem to be the marketing of esmeralda, as the world’s most expensive coffee, that confers this value. the name, the price, the growing notoriety, at some point, add to what pure taste is worth. the ever-higher auction prices could be spawning ever-higher auction prices!

which may not be bad for specialty coffee in the short term — we’re pretty sure this blog has previously argued somewhere on these interwoven nets that the notoriety and rising prices will surely benefit high-end coffee in general. but what if the Brand — the esmeralda cachet — is the herald of numerous future estate coffee niches … in which value is increasingly divorced from taste? in which marketability IS value?

warhol was, of course, a shape-shifter and cultural wizard with the acuity to pierce the consciousness of even magazine readers and soup-can buyers. but what he left in his wake is undeniably the commercialization of art — or even commercialization AS art.

it’s hard to not to be happy about sky-high esmeralda prices. it is, after all, an extraordinarily subtle and delicious coffee. but this blog wonders if the phenomenon doesn’t end up kick-starting an uneasy trend, at least for those devoted to taste as a measuring stick.

p.s. this blog is fully aware that pieces of this idea bubbled up on twitter WEEKS ago, and even on the slow-plodding blogs. so what? sometimes it takes us YEARS to come up with the right analogy!

p.p.s. yes, this blog was able to dip its amateur schnoz into this year’s top lots. our faves: the $27.50-per-lb caballeriza and $29 san jose, though the reserva DID offer some of the most delicate little twists of lily and lime we can remember detecting on our own …

UPDATE: further evidence that the esmeralda’s price can’t possibly be all taste-based: sweet maria’s is now selling one of last year’s top mesmeralda lots at less than half the original price — while claiming the beans “are fresh as they day they came in!” given the scrupulous storage method, this is probably true. so, what has changed from a year ago?

why should this blog explain to you the formative concepts behind this beverage — the infamous coffee and a donut — when its inventor pulls back the curtain so much more … dashedly!

it’s an off-duty reporter’s dream, really: loll on the free bar at the world barista championship, drinking james hoffmann‘s liquid genius and jotting down juicy, irresistible quotes as he slings beverages for a small gaggle. he’d used this drink, of course, to help win the u.k.’s 2007 barista championship, and it had long bewitched us for its sheer madcap-ness: morning coffee + fresh baked krispy kremes, in entirely liquid form. hoffmann still says it ranks as his favorite signature beverage evar.

he also said a few other things!

* “Signature drinks need a sense of humor.”
if you don’t have Sense of Humor, substitute seven feet of british barista.

* “Everyone likes it really, because it’s stupid.”
if that were true, everyone would have LOVED that wasabi mocha from the 2005 southeast regionals.

* The barista competition “is a game. It’s not about being a line barista.”
this blog’s line barista has certainly never liquified a donut on our behalf.

* “This signature drink is always something I really enjoyed, even though it is a very wrong thing to do to coffee.”
turning hot krispy kremes into vomitous porridge, one could argue, is also a very wrong thing to do to a donut.

* “The fat in here is really ruining the foam.”
also, our languishing fatty pancreas.

stunningly enough, james also shared the recipe — foolishly opening the door for this blog to home junkie-ize the inspired madness. lacking a centrifuge, which we understand is the donut liquification Tool of Choice, we were reduced to mashing a dozen of the yeasty air-jetted tubulars with milk, then mashing and separating, chilling and straining, straining and chilling, for nearly three days.

breakfast grows less, and less, and less, appetizing.

the resulting milky liquid — or as we like to call it, “jus de bon-bon” — was somewhat greasier than the stuff james served us in atlanta, but still mostly devoid of the largest deep-fried globules of sin. chilled it, steamed some, poured it into a single-origin shot of rwanda gkongoro nyarusiza espresso, and …

meh. the initial eye-popping taste of perfect donut essence quickly melted into disappointment with how it paired with our coffee. tasted sort of muddy, like a burnt coffee frappe someone had tried to rescue with donut syrup. ration adjustments helped, but the beverage didn’t sing until we tried it with shots of toscano, pulled fairly short (25 seconds) on the gb5 at coffee and crema.

the donut actually hits you first and last. you think, “whoa, oven baked.” then spicy chocolate espresso in the middle and a loooong, lingering lipidic pastry aftertaste, doubtless from the fat. there’s something deeply disconcerting about the method it took to properly steam the stuff — loud and slurpy and nukey. there was also some reflex within this blog to add as little donut juice as possible, when in fact it was a larger portion that settled in and felt balanced. something like two parts jus to three parts spro. something tasted almost wintergreen up top, and something else tasted almost like baked peaches down low.

but perhaps we’re splitting hairs. the customers guffawed and slurped mightily. the home-bar visitors sat and marveled and asked for another. and this blog’s sacred container of liquid bakery is well nigh spent.

monument to james.

cleanses AND twists!

he can either wet his pants, or he can start pulling shots. this blog will let you know what how this crushing moral dilemma plays itself out.

UPDATE: he can either curl up in the fetal position with a fresca, or he can pull shots.

VITAL UPDATE: he can either pet a furby while sobbing softly, or he can pull shots.

STILL MORE PERSPECTIVE: also, he can pop in an old enya cassette. or, he can pull shots.

OR: he can hula hoop. with his sister. or else he can start pulling shots!

FINAL UPDATE: after much internal nausea and even some faux wretching, this blog toted its wobbly machine to the aforementioned gig and proceeded to pull shots. rows and rows of shots, toscano plopping happily into porcelain, the dusty-fine grounds mixing with the feverish oils on our bloghands and settling into a sort of all-night cologne. the machine groaning, the din drilling tin wires into our inner ear, the drain tube trickling, the ankles pulsating, the dry ice burning, the spirits rising as the crowd begins to thin and then falling because, “oh no, they’re gone.”

which is when a seersucker unicorn leapt through the room, lapped some espresso from some lady’s hand, and then we turned and gave our furby a little pet. sob.

this blog’s devotion to the coffee is growing downright hyperbolic.

having obsessively twittered — or tweebled, let’s say — our taste impressions, we can authoritatively assert: nougat! also, soft overripe apple (in a way that you want in your, uh, spro cup). plus, terrasage in the misty finish.

what’s more, this coffee had to deal with, you know, FARC. heroic!

signs the blogdaughter might be a future coffee cupper:

walks in the house with one of those gnarly sweetgum balls.
takes a deep, stale whiff.

“smells like
gum and boiled eggs,
peaches,
a little bit of honey bake,
snickerdoodle cookies
silver spears
and golden shiny.”

wait, wha?

then again, coffee reviews can be too easy. blog filler, often. which is why we’ve quarantined most of our ongoing taste impressions to the twitter feed to the right. always a good exercise for this blog, the 140-character limit.

an exception to this policy: when an espresso sits in your mouth like a shimmering peach compote and goes down the same. there was the feel of the layer, which was thick and compote-esque, then the thin-and-delicate taste, which we initially assumed was peach. conflationary error! instead, the sweetness was stronger. it glimmered louder. a musky cantaloupe? a light-toned papaya? shucks, rambutan?

this was of course the special-release matrimony coffee shipped by those zombies in advance of their march nuptials. what an invite. also, what was it saying? twas a honduras gem, from the moreno family, of high-altitude pacas and bourbon coffees. pulled, as we are wont to do, as a cool espresso — 1.8 ounces in 27 seconds at about 200f.

“sweet,” “soft” and “stonefruit,” the label said. and how. with a base of nutmeg swirling underneath and ice cold mountain flars floating on top. to us, it said, “worth getting married over.”

while everyone else hobnobs in seattle, this blog was wandering morosely through a bookstore in a drafty house last night, reading charles simic with a mug of batdorf and bronson’s nicaragua isabelia french pressed like a 9,500 kg caesar 3 earth crusher might treat browning’s “slopes of verdure.”

said the man wielding the grinder, “want some cream?” a question answered in a way that you already know. and then, “how about some hot water poured in there? because, uh. it’s strong.” upon which moment this blog finally peered up from its simic.

and behold:

“oops,” said the fellow.

we’re talking here about one of those cups so strong that it goes all the way through being bad and comes back to semi-good again. like ceremonial ethiopian jebena brew, or the rare turkish pot, it recaptures through sheer force — in this case, forces of darkest chocolate, driest apricot, kickiest nutmeg.

and suddenly, we’d leaped giant pages of simic vocabulary in single retinal bounds and deduced the exact point of the universal fulcrum betwixt quotidian felicity and ethereal angst. which, charitably speaking, just might have been the point.

we don’t care that these taste descriptors are meaningless to you — other blogs brag about their coffee spoils all the time! and so, we hereby parlay an unprecedented stretch of excellent brew — a home junkie’s full house — into an ENTIRE WEEK FORTNIGHT of loquacious gloating. amorphous crack-metaphors for the romantics, cupping notes for the serious students and a 17-point scale for the churlish analytics!

home-roasted dolce: burnt to blisters, yet still too light for espresso use.

** bumper crop’s microcosm espresso blend already had us hopelessly in the tank, having first arrived during last winter’s brooding months and completely stealing away the blogwife through sheer force of agreeable sweet complexity. this blog learned to put its doldrums behind it in a hurry.

this second-ever batch presented itself with the barista-poet‘s recent jaunt through town, acting as a well-known sort of jon lewis calling card.

with hardened water, the badly nicknamed quintimicrocrux actually got softer, with the toasted sugar and clear fruits rounding out a bit — the opposite of the hard-water effect on our ethiopian obsession du jour. soft water shots brought more pronounced barley, less cream.

a raving 15. this coffee was an old friend and an energizing new presence. we only wish we could order some regularly, as a way of periodically reframing “sublime espresso” in our blogmind.

** and then there was the home-roasted version of vivace’s notorious dolce espresso blend, it of the obscenely pasty malabar coffee beans and wild honey flavors.

at least, that’s what it tastes like when the pros do the roasting. this blog, it failed hopelessly to turn anything worthwhile out of our limited supply of green beans. batch one: oh, yeah. there’s malabar in here. meaning the stuff was so far under-roasted, for malabar, that it sent this blog into convulsions and weak, warbling whines that could only follow a sip of liquid, gassy marmite. unthinkable as a beverage.

what was confounding was that even a roast to the point of scattered blisters (see pic above) left a blend essentially too yeasty and grassy to brew as espresso. we didn’t have enough to experiment thoroughly, but count this blog exasperated.

and so, the most dismal numeric score in this shameless stretch of braggy coffee swilling comes from this blog’s own roaster. a 3. we’ll leave the finer points of cooking malabar to the godfather.

we’re not calling octane’s ben and danielle evildoers, per se. or hex-bringers. or even snorking, over-unctious moldwarps. well, ok … we are!

*sigh* no, no. it’s not their fault this blog can’t hold its shot-to-shot consistency together under a seasoned gaze. or that they happened to visit as the thursday group was coalescing in the bloghouse. nor is it the crowd’s fault, though usually we have to fry an ear straining close to the grouphead to hear the gurgling hiss of our pre-shot water flush over the hub-bub. nor was it really the korate’s fault, though it’s been throwing daily curves. it wasn’t even the fault of danielle’s custom rippled tamper face.

the carping answer: it was (d) all of the above. the truthier version: parties are distracting fun, the korate’s acting finicky and serving a crowd while under scrutiny intimidates the sparky out of this blog. and so there was a roasty capp and then a hot lemon tonic for spro — not the korate’s prime attributes, you could say. determined to do better, and with little time to spare, we began to grind with the gnashing of our teeth, tamp with a clenched fist and pull scalding shots directly through our parted fingers.

penance. yet another way in which home junkie-ism in the hinterlands is like an austere monastic existence.

we don’t care that these taste descriptors are meaningless to you — other blogs brag about their coffee spoils all the time! and so, we hereby parlay an unprecedented stretch of excellent brew — a home junkie’s full house — into an ENTIRE WEEK FORTNIGHT of loquacious gloating. amorphous crack-metaphors for the romantics, cupping notes for the serious students and a 17-point scale for the churlish analytics!

** novo’s colombia la alondria is more like it! less ignominy, more pleasure. and possibly the first coffee whereby our own scribbled taste impressions ended up matching 100 percent of the roaster’s descriptors — still, there are only two!

buttery caramel, for sure. also, some light, agreeable spice … we’ll call it purple sage. not a knockout coffee, but all the more enjoyable after the jarring grassiness omnipresent in its other significant colombia. in other words, it was our rebound relationship, an adequate palate cleanser when it was needed most. and a 12.

meanwhile, (pant, pant) we tire of the coffee reviews. have we really swilled this much of note? are we more spoiled than our tapeworm? can we buy our soul back from the devil, in exchange for all this easy review filler? we see now why other blogs do it!

we don’t care that these taste descriptors are meaningless to you — other blogs brag about their coffee spoils all the time! and so, we hereby parlay an unprecedented stretch of excellent brew — a home junkie’s full house — into an ENTIRE WEEK FORTNIGHT of loquacious gloating. amorphous crack-metaphors for the romantics, cupping notes for the serious students and a 17-point scale for the churlish analytics!

blogging while enamored

** counter culture’s honduras finca el puente is pleasingly subtle — as opposed to maddeningly subtle … not unlike its farmers, actually, a couple of virtuosos whom this blog once met and whose personalities are now inextricably linked to our image of this velvety excellence.

a hard-water cupping unleashed the juicy plum, the fig and the slippery elm — the soft, plush and gradual taste experience leading them to dub this brew the “purple princess.” it demands your attention, your pause upon slurping, but then rewards this silence with definite and rich pleasures.

a soft-water french press brought more of an edge, oddly enough, with a light tangerine spritz, watermelon, toffee and lime. a 15.

** the kenya gaturiri, by contrast, offers a lot up front, and shape-shifts without warning. not nearly as fruity as the stuff we had from hoffmann’s hands last march, but still a sweet-ish dried fruit aroma, maybe with some powdered sugar dust on the front of each whiff.

if we hadn’t cupped it with a raging bell-pepper sumatra, we might have thought this was all over the sweet pepper end of things. as a result of comparison, however, we ended up calling it light, sweet zucchini on the back of the tongue, that steamy breadiness included. wet aromatic tobacco. prune. 12-ish.

yeah.

we don’t care that these taste descriptors are meaningless to you — other blogs brag about their coffee spoils all the time! and so, we hereby parlay an unprecedented stretch of excellent brew — a home junkie’s full house — into an ENTIRE WEEK of loquacious gloating. amorphous crack-metaphors for the romantics, cupping notes for the serious students and a 17-point scale for the churlish analytics!

** bumper crop‘s guatemala de sola was a stealth plant by the barista-poet. untouched during his jaunt through the bloghouse — there was so much to pull — its finally emerged through a groggy fog one morning as this blog, typically one-dimensional and junkie-esque in its brewing methods, chucked some into the grinder and pretended as if it were intended for spro.

tangy, hard-to-tame cherry. steamed white rice. maple syrup. some shots randomly hard to mute, others suddenly winey and mellow. medium body. classic guat fruit. not a favorite, not an obsession, but easily a pleasure. worth, say, a 13. (we’re beginning to despise these numbers games … more than we already did!)

** bumper’s yemen mocca sanani, meanwhile, demanded that we wrassle it to the ground for a rough helping of dirty cocoa and muskier, dried cherry. almost a sun-dried-coffee-husk flavor to it, very quishr-esque. a sticky, lingering mouthfeel hung around, like some mascarpone-based yogurt-ish signature beverage. but then, ha-ha, we’ve never really heard of such a thing!

having recently roasted through 10 pounds of a strikingly similar yemen without anything remotely like pleasurable espresso, drinking this sanani was instructive for our continued hack efforts: hmmmm, nothing wrong with dirty fruit. maybe target the shoe polish for elimination. that yemen, it befuddles your normal roasting radar, progressing slower, burning faster, popping louder and distracting you with that relentless blizzard of chaff, calling your craven amateur bluff like so much feinting clownishness.

a vacillating 12. not that you could get any if you wanted. neither of these offerings appears on bumper’s online coffee list. it being a small-time idaho outfit, we suspect this is a necessary part of the charm.

we don’t care that these taste descriptors are meaningless to you — other blogs brag about their coffee spoils all the time! and so, we hereby parlay an unprecedented stretch of excellent brew — a home junkie’s full house — into an ENTIRE WEEK of loquacious gloating. amorphous crack-metaphors for the romantics, cupping notes for the serious students and a 17-point scale for the churlish analytics!

korate to blog: “eat me.”

** crema coffee’s ethiopia sidamo korate is perhaps the third coffee ever to turn this blog into a stark raving evangelist. it makes you want to EAT. one whiff, and you reflexively — no kidding — begin to chew, whether in an effort to contain the drool within your vacuous longing bouche or in an involuntary effort to EAT THAT BURBLING BERRY SAUCE.

the korate is like a monstrous mixed berry torte smeared viciously with creme fraiche. it’s like a milky, sweet pipe tobacco drowning in a loganberry reduction and port wine. it’s all the berries you can think of, at various stages of sipping. it’s mind-blowing in a way you never realized you wanted your mind to be huffed upon. it makes you scrutinize the granules to see if, perchance, they are soft and bursting with juice.

“what’s korate?” we said. and still, we’ve seen none few* of the big quality roasters offer this coffee (though a few lesser knowns are). we were less than enthused when c-n-c’s shannon trotted it out, a new offering from his new small-time n.c. roaster. shannon, we guess, hadn’t even tasted yet.

meanwhile, the barista-poet was traveling in our direction as people across the southeast tried to distract him by offering stellar coffees in our comments section. of course, we panicked. “what does this blog have to offer?” we moaned. “he’s not coming from the PNW to drink vivace dolce on the home bar.”

from such ignominy a glory such as korate must arise. at least, that’s what abe lincoln said. with mr. barista’s choice in our home, himself towing a wealth of stunning brews, the korate arrived, from an ethiopian place we’d never heard of, through a start-up north carolina roaster via the cash register at the local coffee kiosk, which is situated in a log cabin, on the prairie ….

no, wait. lest hyperventilation ensue, we’ll consult more empirical sources of judgement: in ethiopia, the korate handily outscored the famed idido yirgacheffe and the sidamo biloya. it grabbed a beefy 94 points from a certain notorious coffee reviewer. it “blew the doors off” jon lewis’ green espresso truck back in idaho. and, it turns out, our favorite green coffee supplier now offers a wet- and dry-process version, each carrying a hefty score.

we’ve got 60 pounds in the mail, the cypriot and this blog.

on the cupping table, it stood up to counter culture’s esmeralda, aroma-wise. pulled with soft water, it was a sort of drier, fluffier, filmier fruit spritzer, with a hint of biscotti dough. mineralize the water a bit, though, and an 18-gram, 199-degree, 1.8-oz. double espresso reminds us of …. wait, didn’t we just write a post on this?

sparky. give it a 16.

p.s. the 17-point scoring scale invented for this week of unbridled bloggy braggadocio is, it should be noted, of a completely arbitrary breadth. but no less so than any other static numeric score! context is everything …

UPDATE: * this blog stands corrected. stumptown, using a different spelling, appears to offer the stuff.

UPDATE 9/3: it stands to reason! having flogged the stuff relentlessly, octane’s ben and danielle came to town, only to find … meh. at least, that’s what this blog got from the looks on their faces. for some reason, the crema coffee-roasted korate was more muted today, more “mango” in danielle’s words, more barley-esque to this blog’s palette.

at least one of them was sympathetic, having dealt with an extremely finicky dry-processed ethiopian at this year’s national barista competition. looks like we need to know how far out of the roaster the stuff is, in order to brag reliably.

strangely, the aroma wafting from shannon’s hopper was more massive, juicy blueberry than ever …

we don’t care that these taste descriptors are meaningless to you — other blogs brag about their coffee spoils all the time! and so, we hereby parlay an unprecedented stretch of excellent brew — a home junkie’s full house — into an ENTIRE WEEK of loquacious gloating. amorphous crack-metaphors for the romantics, cupping notes for the serious students and a 17-point scale for the churlish analytics!

** novo’s colombia la josefina espresso has got to be one of the most dramatic letdowns we’ve encountered in some time … sorta like assuming certain well-heeled presidential candidates are a lock for the nomination only to discover — no, oh no — they’re toast!

ah, yes. for the confluence of oblique denver jokes, this blog apologizes.

toast. definitely some of that, charitably speaking. funnily enough, novo’s own description of this spro isn’t all that far off from our exasperating experience. just substitute “dandelion” for “sweet grass” and “bitter cacao seed” for “chocolate,” and you’re almost there. add also, severe hoppiness.

desperate to find the sweet spot, this blog even e-mailed some folks with product experience, to no avail. we dosed high and low, pulled hot and cool, tight ristretto and slightly gushing espresso, as well as combinations thereof. the grass and hops, it just didn’t go away. the blogbrother was in town the weekend we wrassled the stuff — a pricey gift from a denver bud who lives above a novo — and, ultimately, we went in search of another coffee. even the cappuccinos tasted flaxen.

still stranger: the best shot we had, by a mile, was this week, more than five weeks after the roast date, when we chucked the remaining bits into the grinder on a whim and pulled some uber-tight, 17-gram soft-water ristrettos at about 199 degrees. the hops had mellowed slightly to barley tones, while huckleberry and unripe rhubarb glimmered through. the mouthfeel and freshness, of course, had long since departed.

give it an 8.

p.s. whew! just discovered “la josefina” is an actual place in colombia. this blog was half-scared this coffee was a monument to, you know, swashbuckling people named joseph! that was close …

we don’t care that these taste descriptors are meaningless to you — other blogs brag about their coffee spoils all the time! and so, we hereby parlay an unprecedented stretch of excellent brew — a home junkie’s full house — into an ENTIRE WEEK of loquacious gloating. amorphous crack-metaphors for the romantics, cupping notes for the serious students and a 17-point scale for the churlish analytics!

** stumptown’s panama carmen is like the cute little pixie who WON’T SAY ANYTHING, even when you coax. pleeease? not even if we do the cross-eyed, tongue-nostril touch? don’t get this blog wrong: it’s a fine, fine coffee, with some of those now-notorious panamanian aromas of lily and honey. once wetted, though, the berry notes and sweet lemon noted by others just don’t fully materialize. we’d say “watery,” except that would imply a dosage problem. so instead: muted, maddening, inscrutable, lightweight.

for charity, we tried soft and hard-water formulations, various french-press ratios, etc. always a hint, never enough flavor to grab. we’d doubt our sensory abilities on this one, except that we roasted the 2006 carmen ourselves and found it extraordinarily complex and rewarding — even on a table with lady ez. let’s say 12, eh?

points for the nifty package insert.

UPDATE: it’s been noted that we procured this coffee quite some time ago. surely the oldness of the coffee isn’t to blame for the above-mentioned muteness? rest assured: this blog consumed the stuff weeks ago — from one to 14 days after the roast date — and took copious notes.

we don’t care that these taste descriptors are meaningless to you — other blogs brag about their coffee spoils all the time! and so, we hereby parlay an unprecedented stretch of excellent brew — a home junkie’s full house — into an ENTIRE WEEK of loquacious gloating. amorphous crack-metaphors for the romantics, cupping notes for the serious students and a 17-point scale for the churlish analytics!

** primavera’s ethiopian harar was the sort of rocket shot from nowhere in alabama that transfixed all the more because of that context. the barista-poet brought it, recommended it and nodded mystically while drinking it. always a good sign!

unlike more bodacious harars, this stuff offered not the classic rockin’ blueberry, but more of a toasted berry vanilla and warm blankety bread slice comfort sip. maybe some husky prune hints. anyway, it was good. a 14. like a hot fruited milkshake that sort of makes you elongate your swallows — for extended tastiness enjoyment! or something.

buy some, for kicks. if it makes you feel better, they associate with atlanta’s octane and listen to sufjan.

we don’t care that these taste descriptors are meaningless to you — other blogs brag about their coffee spoils all the time! and so, we hereby parlay an unprecedented stretch of excellent brew — a home junkie’s full house — into an ENTIRE WEEK of loquacious gloating. amorphous crack-metaphors for the romantics, cupping notes for the serious students and a 17-point scale for the churlish analytics!

*** counter culture’s panama esmeralda, lot 8 (the $13/lb batch, according to our hierarchy of worship), somehow staggers and stultifies at the same time. as if your favorite sour apple jolly rancher had gotten stuck to the fuzzy corolla upholstery, then peeled off and re-sucked. technically still your favorite, no? but somehow, not the same.

we’ve written obscenely verbose essays to lady ez, engaged in humiliating public poetry on her behalf, and now come to this: always shocking day-lily-like aromatics. a hot lemon tonic in the beginning, then — at some precise cooling moment — sour muscadine skin. not unpleasant, but like a day-old red wine. then orange tea. fresh pine. clover honey. (hard-water cupping results.)

in an annual jowl-freezing ritual, attempts to pull soft-water espresso shots made speech impossible, due to lockjaw. on the other hand, the spare shots easily obliterated this blog’s bathroom odors, when placed in a strategic decorative pattern:

how about a 14? ol’ mesmeralda managed to confound and STILL remain the most beguiling coffee on a cupping table. every time. even four weeks later.

UPDATE: it’s bothering us. was it a funky roast? the lot number? our overly exaggerated memory of esmeraldas past? hard to know. fortunately for us, there’s a place where you can order lots from four sections of the farm!

alas, our favorite mid-afternoon haunt for the kind of spro fixes vital to surviving cubicle land has become a dungeon of very, very dark liquid arts. this blog, of course, has a long tradition of needling the fellow publicly when the spro gets po’. consider this a recommence!

wherefore art thine snobby prideful tastes, sarkis?!