I tend to come out the Gates of Summer roaring like a lion ready for fresh meat: new ideas, new people, new projects, new experiences. Two weeks into the semester the weight of the promised towers above me, curling and foaming like a bright green wave against the setting sun. "I do this every year." I tell myself as I crunch acorns under foot on the way home from class. "What happened to having time to read Dostoevsky and The Paris Review? What happened to daily yoga practice and PRing an October half marathon? What happened to blogging?" I glance up at our third floor apartment, windows glowing orange with the warm light within. These questions linger as I trudge up the stairs and turn my key in the lock.
Inside, the inimitably dressed Archie Goodwin banters with the wise and bulky Nero Wolfe who is downing a German pint as my wife bustles in the kitchen. "Ah," I think to myself, making sense of the inattentively gathered scents on the way of the stairs "we are indeed having fig and olive roast chicken for dinner!" I wander through the living room, backpack a-sway (I always forget I have it until that moment), and wrap up my Love in an embrace, soaking in her hue, smell, warmth, and flavor. "Hello my Love! How was your day?" "My day?" the question catches me off guard in a sense because I have to pull it out of my experiential flow, "it was good!" I go on to recount chronologically the events of the day, recalling agenda items as I wander from place to place with my voice. "Let me grab a pint and brain dump for a moment, Love."
Swinging off my backpack, I slide onto a chair at the kitchen table and pull out my moleskine. I'm a huge lists person. Lists remove things from my head and make them concrete and recallable for me on a page. I categorize under four areas: school, student orgs, work, and life. School always comes first on my list. I don't know why really, maybe it's because it's such an expensive area of my life. Maybe because I spend the most time there, but certainly not because I value it most out of all those categories. I pore over a page entitled "10/4-8: Agenda:"
Homework: check. "It's all reading, and I love reading. Besides, I'll have time for Thursday and Friday on Thursday morning. Oh yeah, that patent posting for Cyberlaw needs to happen. Damn business school class."
Note research and writing: "I won't ever really be done but it's progressing, I'll work on it more this evening. Thank God I get to choose the topic. Can't imagine having to spend this kind of time on something I didn't love. Hopefully I don't make it too philosophical for my editors. It'll be an amazing paper. Ooh, I need to talk to Kohler about the Dialectic of Community."
Student Organizations: "Public Interest Law and the coordinating Mock Trial are both taking more time than anticipated. Well, maybe not PIL. Treasurer is pretty basic and routine. It's all the meetings. They are killer. Mock Trial has been amazing, but rewriting the problem was a workload I didn't plan on. Ah well, it's good to be meeting with people and working on practical things."
Fizzy Media: "Man, I love web development and learning PHP/CSS/HTML5 but I wish it was my full time job. I could do this for a living. Well, I am actually. I just hate doing it part time. It's the only reason school is getting old: I hate working part time. All these apps and opportunities! It's a whole new language and I'm on the cutting edge. Can't wait to blend it with law."
Life: ...
Looking up, I realize fifteen minutes have wandered by and dinner is nearly ready. "I heard from the adoption lady today!" Annie says, her words full of light. "She said the birth mother from two weeks ago has thought about our book and would like to meet with us." Instantly my world is back in the here-and-now, heady-organic, ripeness overflowing of human life, married life. In the swift transition I recall Fr. Peter's homily from Sunday, "Do everything you do so at the end of it you'll be able to say, 'That was Awesome!'" If you do everything with that sort of energy, that sort of drive, that sort of overwhelming joy, nothing is too hard, nothing is too mundane, nothing can keep you from pumping your dreams full of adrenaline and flying them to the stars.
When you are done with your day, peering out of the cloud-wrack of this world, your body bearing man's smirch and sharing man's smell, steam rising from the murk and moil of vasty agenda, can you still say, "that was Awesome!"
Why not?
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Awake, and Live.
"But to the spirit which has stripped off for a moment its own idle temporal standards the grass is an everlasting forest, with dragons for denizens; the stones of the road are as incredible mountains piled one upon the other; the dandelions are like gigantic bonfires illuminating the lands around; and the heath-bells on their stalks are like planets hung in heaven each higher than the other. Between one stake of a paling and another there are new and terrible landscapes; here a desert, with nothing but one misshapen rock; here a miraculous forest, of which all the trees flower above the head with the hues of sunset; here, again, a sea full of monsters that Dante would not have dared to dream. These are the visions of him who, like the child in the fairy tales, is not afraid to become small. Meanwhile, the sage whose faith is in magnitude and ambition is, like a giant, becoming larger and larger, which only means that the stars are becoming smaller and smaller. World after world falls from him into insignificance; the whole passionate and intricate life of common things becomes as lost to him as is the life of the infusoria to a man without a microscope. He rises always through desolate eternities. He may find new systems, and forget them; he may discover fresh universes, and learn to despise them. But the towering and tropical vision of things as they really are—the gigantic daisies, the heaven-consuming dandelions, the great Odyssey of strange-coloured oceans and strange-shaped trees, of dust like the wreck of temples, and thistledown like the ruin of stars--all this colossal vision shall perish with the last of the humble." - GKC
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
A Cupping at Terrior Coffee
Hello Friends,
That post on El Vergel two weeks ago was picked up and retweeted by the company that produces that gem, among many other excellent single-origin coffees, Terroir Coffee. We tweeted back and forth a few times with the result that last Wednesday, I made the trek out to Acton, MA to cup this season's Kenyans with the owner, George Howell, the quality control ninja Jenny, two of the roasters Jacko and Doug, and a lovely couple from Quebec.
I managed to get lost in finding the nondescript headquarters building, but the smell of roasting coffee through my open window soon had me on the right track. As I walked in, George was just beginning a tour of their beautiful facilities with the Quebecers (one of whom was wearing Toms, as I was, and the other wearing Birkenstocks (I so need to visit Quebec: Toms, Birkenstocks, and a love of coffee? YES)). The facilities were immaculate and everyone was working in happy harmony as we wandered about learning about different storage methods, the idiosyncrasies of different countries and the wealth of information that only a legend in Third-Wave coffee can deliver. George has been in the coffee business for thirty-five years and really pioneered, in many ways, the high-end coffees that are available today. He brought this love and wisdom from the West Coast (*cough* where all things good and beautiful originate) to the East Coast and remains an influential player in the global high-quality, artisanal coffee arena.
I was able to meet the roaster responsible for one of the best coffee experiences I've had, Doug Sparks, who roasted the El Vergel I raved about. See, I have this thing for high-altitude Guatemalans and it takes considerable skill to bring out the lofty, bright notes in those coffees. There is a huge element of science but an even larger element of understanding the bean itself, it's potential, it's nature... only the best roasters can make such wonders sing. One such is Doug Sparks.
After the tour we gathered in the cupping room where ten different Kenyans were laid out by Jenny, who also had roasted them. The cupping process is one of carefully woven art and science. For each coffee offering there are six old-fashioned-sized glasses of grounds arranged around a table so all the cuppers can access them easily. There are several stages, all of which have their own ranking system for the purposes of Cup of Excellence rankings or buyer's analysis:
Aroma: first the grounds are sniffed as they sit in the cup, then the cupper shakes the cup to release the pent-up vapors in the dry grounds, keeping his/her nose close to the cup at all times. The third aroma-focused period is, after the water has been poured into the grounds and the crust noted, the cupper takes her/his spoon and breaks the crust, stirring 2-3 times. Again, the cupper should keep his/her nose as close to the surface as she/he can.
Using a spoon, the cupper will take a taste of each of the coffees, from all six cups, aspirating strongly for each one, so he/she can experience the full effect of the coffee on the senses. At this stage, the cupper is looking for several things:
Taste: as the coffee cools, different flavor profiles will emerge and decrease. A coffee that tastes decent in the beginning can become a favorite, while an initial favorite can decrease in the passage of time and drop in temperature. Not unlike a novel, no one can really tell if a cup of coffee is really good until it is finished. Rolling each sip over the tongue, allowing it to interact with each tastebud, this stage composes most of the cupping experience.
Mouth-feel: as apposed to taste, mouth-feel speaks to the way the coffee coats the inside of your mouth, the feeling that it leaves after it is swallowed (or spat out in the case of cupping), and the "weight" of the coffee's body.
The coffees were numbered and we quickly discovered that three coffees rose to the fore. Numbers 9 and 10 won out, and for different reasons. Nine had this beautifully keen acidity that sang high notes as it went out, but Ten had the completely coated mouth-feel of an epic Kenyan. A few of the other coffees were notably old, giving them a stale taste that grew as they cooled. Some tasted fine to begin with and slowly aged, others were okay, but not remarkable in any particular way.
As we finished up, George explained that he would roast the coffees again, do another blind cupping of all ten, and based on the results of both, he would place his orders. A complex and lengthy process, but one that results in the best coffee, from the best and most careful farmers.
After the cupping I headed home, three bags of coffee in hand, a better understanding of the current state of Kenyan coffees, and a place and faces to attach to the Terroir I often find in my hand.
That post on El Vergel two weeks ago was picked up and retweeted by the company that produces that gem, among many other excellent single-origin coffees, Terroir Coffee. We tweeted back and forth a few times with the result that last Wednesday, I made the trek out to Acton, MA to cup this season's Kenyans with the owner, George Howell, the quality control ninja Jenny, two of the roasters Jacko and Doug, and a lovely couple from Quebec.
I managed to get lost in finding the nondescript headquarters building, but the smell of roasting coffee through my open window soon had me on the right track. As I walked in, George was just beginning a tour of their beautiful facilities with the Quebecers (one of whom was wearing Toms, as I was, and the other wearing Birkenstocks (I so need to visit Quebec: Toms, Birkenstocks, and a love of coffee? YES)). The facilities were immaculate and everyone was working in happy harmony as we wandered about learning about different storage methods, the idiosyncrasies of different countries and the wealth of information that only a legend in Third-Wave coffee can deliver. George has been in the coffee business for thirty-five years and really pioneered, in many ways, the high-end coffees that are available today. He brought this love and wisdom from the West Coast (*cough* where all things good and beautiful originate) to the East Coast and remains an influential player in the global high-quality, artisanal coffee arena.
I was able to meet the roaster responsible for one of the best coffee experiences I've had, Doug Sparks, who roasted the El Vergel I raved about. See, I have this thing for high-altitude Guatemalans and it takes considerable skill to bring out the lofty, bright notes in those coffees. There is a huge element of science but an even larger element of understanding the bean itself, it's potential, it's nature... only the best roasters can make such wonders sing. One such is Doug Sparks.
After the tour we gathered in the cupping room where ten different Kenyans were laid out by Jenny, who also had roasted them. The cupping process is one of carefully woven art and science. For each coffee offering there are six old-fashioned-sized glasses of grounds arranged around a table so all the cuppers can access them easily. There are several stages, all of which have their own ranking system for the purposes of Cup of Excellence rankings or buyer's analysis:
Aroma: first the grounds are sniffed as they sit in the cup, then the cupper shakes the cup to release the pent-up vapors in the dry grounds, keeping his/her nose close to the cup at all times. The third aroma-focused period is, after the water has been poured into the grounds and the crust noted, the cupper takes her/his spoon and breaks the crust, stirring 2-3 times. Again, the cupper should keep his/her nose as close to the surface as she/he can.
Using a spoon, the cupper will take a taste of each of the coffees, from all six cups, aspirating strongly for each one, so he/she can experience the full effect of the coffee on the senses. At this stage, the cupper is looking for several things:
Taste: as the coffee cools, different flavor profiles will emerge and decrease. A coffee that tastes decent in the beginning can become a favorite, while an initial favorite can decrease in the passage of time and drop in temperature. Not unlike a novel, no one can really tell if a cup of coffee is really good until it is finished. Rolling each sip over the tongue, allowing it to interact with each tastebud, this stage composes most of the cupping experience.
Mouth-feel: as apposed to taste, mouth-feel speaks to the way the coffee coats the inside of your mouth, the feeling that it leaves after it is swallowed (or spat out in the case of cupping), and the "weight" of the coffee's body.
The coffees were numbered and we quickly discovered that three coffees rose to the fore. Numbers 9 and 10 won out, and for different reasons. Nine had this beautifully keen acidity that sang high notes as it went out, but Ten had the completely coated mouth-feel of an epic Kenyan. A few of the other coffees were notably old, giving them a stale taste that grew as they cooled. Some tasted fine to begin with and slowly aged, others were okay, but not remarkable in any particular way.
As we finished up, George explained that he would roast the coffees again, do another blind cupping of all ten, and based on the results of both, he would place his orders. A complex and lengthy process, but one that results in the best coffee, from the best and most careful farmers.
After the cupping I headed home, three bags of coffee in hand, a better understanding of the current state of Kenyan coffees, and a place and faces to attach to the Terroir I often find in my hand.
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