Tuesday, April 17, 2012 at 10:34AM
It's always nice to receive good service when you visit a café. This is how the barista served my espreso (at the table, no less!) when I visited the Arbor Lodge yesterday (read about an earlier visit is here). I thought the presentation matched the service. Nice work!
Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 3:16PM
It is no surprise that people love to drink coffee. The café experience touches all of the five senses, deeply.
Sights
We are attracted to beautiful things, and coffee is no exception. A great café encounter begins with an opening glance. Upon entering a shop, our eyes inform us of the quality of the coffee that is to come.
Seated at a corner table, we observe the café surrounding us. A skilled barista works efficiently behind the bar, her hands moving deftly between machine, milk and cup. She gently sways the milk pitcher as she pours its contents into the espresso, casting delicate sepia-toned rosettes on the surface of a latte. Velvety foam rests on top of a cappuccino, blanketing the drink like a down comforter on a cold winter morning. The thick, brown crema on the surface of an espresso glistens with the flavor oils trapped inside it.
On the pour-over bar, steady-handed baristas pour delicate, even streams of water in smooth spiral patterns, coaxing out the complex flavors contained in the mahogany-colored grounds. At one end of the bar, a vacuum pot sits on top of the counter, a throwback to an earlier time in this modern setting. Brought to life by a brilliant orange infrared lamp, tiny bubbles cling to the side of the pot as the water heats up, glowing in the neon light. When the temperature breaks the boiling point, the pot transforms into a cauldron of angry lava, bubbling and bursting on the surface. The vacuum pot mesmerizes all who gaze upon it and curious customers cannot help but stare in awe.
Smells
Coffee has a bouquet of fragrances that attract people to it, and a good café delights your olfactory senses with the smell of freshly-ground coffee. The aroma is sweet and fruity, smoky and earthy. When the barista grinds a new batch of beans for the brewer, a wave of aroma washes out across the café. The smell envelopes you, enticing your taste buds in anticipation of the first sip of a freshly-brewed cup.
Sounds
Beans rasp loudly as they fall from brown paper bags into the grinders’ hoppers. The grinder whirrs aggressively, growling out the fresh coffee into the basket below it. A loud thud reverberates through the café as the barista knocks spent espresso out of the portafilter Steam bursts out of the wand into the milk with a thump, then hisses and whooshes as it whips the milk into a cloud of frenzied bubbles.
Nearby, a miniature metal spoon scrapes the side of a ceramic cup, clinking softly as it mixes sugar into espresso. In some cafés, the din of a bulky black roaster dominates, and customers must raise their voices to be heard by the people across the table from them. Lovers longing to whisper secrets or engage in quiet conversation content themselves to communicate with their eyes and expressions. Coffee beans pop and crackle as they flow out of the roaster’s drum, each bean still burning inside. They calm quickly, as fresh air pulled by powerful fans is drawn across them.
Touch
Your hands gently cradle a cup that is too hot to hold securely. The crema of an expertly-poured shot of espresso is silky smooth, lightly coating your mouth with a delicate film of flavor that keeps the memory of the coffee on the tip of your tongue. When you lift a cappuccino to your mouth, your lips note the warm smoothness of the ceramic mug, followed by the billowy softness of the milk. It is like burying your face in the soft, warm crook of a lover’s neck. The flavors of a full-bodied French press coffee swell inside the mouth, continuing to expand even after the coffee has long since disappeared.
Taste
The climax of the coffee experience is the moment when the coffee finally reaches your mouth. Single-origin coffees can be refreshingly simple, with notes of stone fruits or berries or citrus. Blends are more complex, defined by the regions from which they came. Certain coffees are earthy, like the leaves that cover the ground in the fall. Other coffees are chocolaty and luscious. Some remind you of nothing more than coffee, but the flavor brings back something from your past, perhaps time spent with an old friend. Great coffee, whether it is brewed, poured or combined with milk delights the taste buds, sends them into ecstasy.
Sensory and sensual—both words describe the ideal café experience. Coffee satisfies the craving that began when you walked into the café, or perhaps when you rolled out of bed with coffee on your mind. It stimulates your senses and sometimes, even your soul.
Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 4:31PM
This was the cappuccino that the artist at Case Study made me today. It was so beautiful I wanted to share it with you.
Made with lots of care
The espresso was a single-origin from the Duromina region of Ethiopia. It was ‘juicy’ (citrusy), and even with the milk, the acidity came through. Overall, quite nice.
Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:15AM
It’s been a slow week around here for posting articles. I have had my head buried in a couple other projects, including learning everything I can about cold coffee, a summertime favorite.
Speaking of summer, it came and left this week. Hope you enjoyed it.
The biggest coffee news of the week in the Portland area was the fireworks-caused fire that caused thousands of dollars of damage to Barista (the café) on Alberta Street. http://bit.ly/pnjMNB The fire didn’t keep the shop closed for long, thanks to Stumptown, who loaned Barista its mobile coffee cart until the café is repaired (photo here).
This New York Times article discusses the growing market for iced coffee. Stumptown gets a mention for its new “stubbies”. http://nyti.ms/nYo8Dy
Investors in the stock market know the difficulties of trying to pick the correct companies for investing. An article from CNBC yesterday presents the arguments for and against buying Starbucks stock. One of the analysts interviewed was quoted as saying that “Starbucks needs to clearly define their long-term vision ‘to become a food conglomerate rather than merely coffee.’” Hmm... http://bit.ly/pbyihq
Is the use of the internet for news taking us back in time? The Economist compares interactive online news with the coffee shops of the 18th and 19th centuries. http://econ.st/pLH1Bc
When you go to a coffee shop, do you notice the art on the walls? Apparently, some coffee shop art in San Francisco has stirred quite a debate over what should and should not go up on the walls of a café. http://bit.ly/p2MZAA
Speaking of coffee shop art, I saw this not too long ago on a café wall around town. Rubber chicken art.
Let the debate commence.
Friday, June 10, 2011 at 9:47PM
[To find out why I am writing all these #Trust30 posts, click here]
Imitation is Suicide. Insist on yourself; never imitate. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Write down in which areas of your life you have to overcome these suicidal tendencies of imitation, and how you can transform them into a newborn you – one that doesn’t hide its uniqueness, but thrives on it. There is a “divine idea which each of us represents” – which is yours?” –Fabian Kruse (the Friendly Anarchist)
Emerson’s quote is a pretty absolute statement. By trying to be someone else, you lose yourself, and you might as well no longer be alive. The great ones know this. They are inimitable, with a style that sets them apart. As soon as Elvis opens his mouth to sing, you know who it is.
The concept reminds me of learning to play the guitar. At one time in my life, I aspired to be a musician. I spent hours trying to play songs in the same way that Eric Clapton and others did. I grew frustrated when I couldn’t reproduce the sounds I heard. My fingers moved too slowly, my tone was not clean enough and eventually I gave up trying.
Looking back, I would approach music very differently.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 at 11:41PM
This evening I accepted the Trust Yourself Writing Challenge that was sent out by Seth Godin’s Domino Project. It is a pledge to write or create something (and share it with people) every day for 30 days, based on a prompt sent out by a famous (or semi-famous) author. The challenge is in honor of the 208th birthday of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his book Self Reliance. Each day for the next month, I plan to create something and post it on this blog. Some days it will be short and others it will be long, but I will post something every day by midnight relating to the challenge. In addition, I will continue to write about coffee and art and other topics.
Today’s prompt was this: “You just discovered you have 15 minutes to live. Set a timer for 15 minutes and write the story that needs to be written.”
As soon as I clicked the I accept button for the challenge, I immediately had some doubts about my ability to complete the challenge. Why would I want to do something like this? Would I really be able to do it? What was I thinking? Then I told myself to shut up and get to work. There’s no time for doubt, only creating.
I recently read Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, an excellent book that I wish I would have read fifteen years earlier. Had I learned and applied the principles in the book, I am sure that I would have been able to be more successful in reaching my goals in life. The most memorable section for me was the part where Pressfield talks about becoming a professional. One of the things that Pressfield says about professionals is that they do not overidentify with their jobs, meaning that although what they do may be important to them, at the end of the day what they do is not who they are.
When you identify too much with what you do (the amateur mentality), you become so invested in it that the fear of failing paralyzes you. Professionals look at what they do with a cool rationality and as a result, can focus on improving their craft, not worrying about how many failures they have along the way..
I can see how the amateur’s attitude affected me when I used to play basketball. Basketball was so important to me that each missed shot during practice was a sign of a personal failure. Putting this type of pressure on myself to be perfect was counterproductive and led to a lot of self-doubt and negative thoughts. Had I taken more of a professional’s mentality, I would have looked at each practice session as an opportunity to improve my skills, instead of a judgment about how I was.
Trying to be perfect and then getting upset when you are not is not going to make you successful. Working like hell to learn your craft, while continually learning from your mistakes is. This is a lesson I learned way later than I should have, so as I look forward to this 30-day challenge, the goal is not to be perfect, but instead to create something that I feel is worth creating and to improve my writing every day. There may be some hits and misses along the way, but come what may, I’m going to put it out there, because writing is something that I do, it is not who I am.
This is the story that needed to be written today (though I admit it did take a little longer than 15 minutes to write).
Monday, May 23, 2011 at 9:15PM
Here are three examples of some animal art seen recently around PDX while looking for some coffee.
Does anyone besides me find this first one a little creepy? I don't know if it's the color of the owls or the manner in which they seem to be confronting the crow, but the whole scene is unsettling.
Have you seen Hitchcock's The Birds?
This toro was seen outside a Taquería on E. Burnside.
Ferdinand, perhaps?Anyone a fan of George Orwell's Animal Farm? These were the pigs that were 'less equal than the others.' They eventually left the farm to go look for fortune elsewhere. They found it on NW 23rd (I don't really know that, but it makes a good story).
Insert humorous caption here
Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 10:26PM
Does this ever happen to you? Last night I was so revved up by a book I was reading that I had a hard time sleeping. The book, by Steven Pressfield, was called Do the Work. It is a sequel to his book The Art of Work, which Seth Godin calls “the most important book you’ve never read” (I haven’t read it either).
The main theme of Do the Work is that you can be successful as a creator (entrepreneur, artist, writer, musician, etc.) if you are willing to overcome your own Resistance and—you guessed it—“do the work.” He pushes you to be creative and to do it now.
Pressfield writes about how Resistance holds you back from doing the things you know you should do. Do you ever have the feeling that deep down there is something that you have been holding back, some great project you could do if only you would stop hiding from it? I have that feeling all the time, though I don't like to admit it. Pressman gives that feeling a name—Resistance—and says that it is the most powerful obstacle we face when trying to be successful. He personifies the resistance as an actual force that actively works to hold us back, a dragon we need to slay to gain confidence and earn our freedom from our own minds, minds that we often let bully us into believing we are not good enough or talented enough to do something great.
The book is geared toward authors, screenwriters and others who create art for a living, but it is also appropriate for entrepreneurs and anyone else who wants to improve what they have been doing. Pressfield wants readers to overcome their Resistance to whatever it is they want to do. He wants to give us not only inspiration, but also a strategy for dealing with the Resistance.
Do the Work left me with my mind buzzing. I was left with a sense not of worry or dread, but of opportunity and possibility, two of the most exciting words in the English language. When that happens, it’s hard to get to sleep. Do you know what I mean?
[Do the Work is the first publication produced by the Domino Project, a new publishing venture that Seth Godin has undertaken in order to revolutionize the publishing industry. I am still not exactly sure what the Domino Project is doing that is so unique, but I trust that it is. General Electric sponsored the book. Perhaps this is what makes the Domino Project unique—they find sponsors for books, then give them away for free, at least the Kindle version. If you are interested, you can get the Kindle version for free too by clicking here (if you don’t have a Kindle, you can download free software from Amazon and read it on your computer).]
Friday, April 1, 2011 at 4:41PM
The sun is fighting valiantly against the clouds
Good news for coffee drinkers in the Windy City! Stumptown is planning to open another roastery this year, in Chicago. It will be the company’s fourth city with a roastery, after Portland, Seattle and New York. Will Intelligentsia reciprocate in Portland? We'll see. link
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 10:06PM
Here’s some creative writing that I did for a contest for Trazzler, a travel website that relies on readers to describe their experiences at various places around the world. Entries for the contest were supposed to be less than 120 words and written in the “Trazzler style.” I chose to write about Coffeehouse Northwest. The entry didn’t win anything, but it was still fun to write. Thought I’d share it with you.
Dreaming of Brazil in Portland, Oregon
Looking for relief from the gray Portland winter, I slip in the back door at Coffeehouse Northwest.
What cure for the blues do you have on grind? I ask, knowing that the ever-changing espresso lineup always offers something sublime.
A Brazilian coffee from Serra Negra, the barista replies—a “black saw” to cut through the doldrums. I order a double. It has hints of strawberries and summer sun.
Sip by sip, my spirits rise. Over the speakers, the Girl from Ipanema is swaying down to the sea, and my escape to Rio is complete. Refreshed, I slip out the back door, ready to face the gray once more.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at 9:03PM
Any art or design enthusiasts reading today? Today’s post is about art and how artists include symbolism in what they create. I took a class on art history when I lived in Boston and was fascinated by the Italian Renaissance. I enjoyed learning how artists like Brunelleschi, Uccello and Rafaello (my favorite) created beautiful art while subtly placing symbols in their work. Here is Rafaello’s School of Athens:
The fresco is a celebration of knowledge and wisdom. Raphael filled the scene with many important artists and philosophers (he placed his rival Michelangelo front and center), and even slipped his self-portrait in along the right edge. (You can see a larger image if you click here, and Wikipedia has a good description of who some of the characters in the painting are here.)
Staying with the symbolism theme, I thought I’d share a little bit about what the Caffeinated PDX logo stands for. If you are a fan of art or “symbology” (the fictitious discipline that Robert Langdon studies in The Da Vinci Code), you might enjoy hearing about it. The logo is more than just a bunch of lines on a page and has at least five layers of meaning in it (though I’m not trying to say it compares to anything that the Renaissance masters have done). Hopefully, when you look at the logo from now on, you will think of what it stands for and remember that there can be a lot of meaning hidden inside simple things.
Before I describe it, though, I’d like you to study the logo for a minute and think about what you might see in it. Then when you’re done thinking, jump below to peer inside the mind of the artist.
The first meaning is all about the coffee. You can see a wisp of vapor rising above the rim of a coffee cup. This is a warm, comforting sight when you grab a cup of coffee on a cold day. You might also see that the steam looks like the profile of someone’s face, someone who could be taking a sip from the cup. Or you might see that the steam looks like a winding path. This represents wandering, something I’ve done quite a bit. In addition, the steam looks similar to a quarter note rest on a musical score written backwards, reflecting my interest in music.
Finally, if you take another look at the rim of the cup on the bottom part of the logo, you can see how it looks like a subtle smile. This represents the little pick-me-up that people get from their coffee or, hopefully, from reading this blog ;). That’s our goal here at Caffeinated PDX—to bring you that subtle smile every time you come by for a visit.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 9:04PM
It was a beautiful crisp fall day here in Portland yesterday. After rushing to get a week’s worth of laundry done, I needed to get out of the house and go look for stories (and of course, some good coffee). When I walked outside, I noticed two things: First, it was much cooler outside than the day before—fall is here—and I was glad I had elected to wear my fleece. Second, I could hear an outdoor concert taking place at the PSU campus. That piqued my interest, and I decided to go listen for a while.
It’s pretty common to have lunchtime concerts at PSU. They usually take place once a week, weather permitting. I’m not sure who decides what group gets to play on stage in the commons, but the concert series is a great opportunity to perform and be heard by anywhere from several hundred to a couple thousand people. Up and coming bands who are looking for exposure can put their music out into the public eye (ear, rather) and see what kind of reaction they get. As you can imagine, the talent level and quality of the music varies greatly from week to week.
I have listened to many of these concerts over the past two years, and I like to watch how the crowd reacts to each band. Most of the time, people sit down for a couple minutes and then move on (if they even stop in the first place). Once in a while the band is good enough that the crowd grows over the hour, but most of the time the people don’t stay around for long. They’ve got too much to do, and the music is not compelling enough to keep them around (Hmm. . . sounds kind of like blogging). Sometimes you can tell that a band has brought a core group of followers—they stand up close to the stage and dance or applaud wildly after each piece.
Saturday, September 25, 2010 at 10:50AM
What does an artist have to do to capture a listener’s attention? To give you an example of what captures my attention, I have embedded the video of The Killers singing “Spaceman” on Saturday Night Live in 2008 (it might take the video a while to load—sorry, it was about the only site I could find that had this performance).
I happened to be watching SNL that night, and it was the first time I paid attention to the Killers. Watching Brandon Flowers, the lead singer, I could not to take my eyes off of him. He was wrapped up in the moment. Watch his eyes as he sings. They are intense. You can tell that he’s giving himself to the music and the audience. He starts out a little slow and builds up to the chorus. Around the 1:00 mark, he is hitting his stride and the music has taken over his body. Flowers has great range, and he sweeps through the high tones with flair. I don’t know if the band would say this was one of their best performances, but it was enough to make me a fan.
Saturday, August 21, 2010 at 6:06AM
On the second leg of our trip to Inner Mongolia, we went to Datong, in Shanxi province. Datong is a very important city in China because it is the center of a very large coal-producing region. The abundance of coal has allowed the city to prosper, and it was obvious while we were there that the small town of three million (small by China’s standards, at least) was changing fast. According to our guide, the Chinese government is worried that the coal in the region, which they have been mining for thousands of years (that’s what he said), is going to run out soon, so the city is trying to transition from a resource-based economy to a tourism-based economy. The city is razing huge swaths of the town in order to construct a massive stone wall that surrounds the city, in hopes that the spectacle will bring tourists in. We watched a set of excavators tearing apart a large, aging apartment complex and I expect that a set of new apartment buildings will replace it. All over the city, new high-rises were being built, and I could easily see why some economists are worried about a property bubble in China. Who is going to live in all of these massive, expensive new lodgings?
When we pulled up next to the hotel at Datong, I don’t know if I have ever seen a happier group of travelers. After sleeping poorly in a bunch of cold yurts, facing the stomach-wrenching odors of the filthy bathrooms, riding horses for two hours on the wind-blown prairie and spending four hours on a bus, seeing that we were going to stay at four-star hotel was the sweetest sight any of us could have asked for. All we wanted to do was grab a shower and take a rest before heading out for a group dinner of traditional hot pot. The shower was splendid and the bed was comfortable. Our bathroom even had a western toilet, still the only one I’ve seen since I arrived in China. It’s the small things in life that make it tolerable. . .
Happy travelers waiting for the bus in Datong
Sunday, August 8, 2010 at 7:32AM
According to Seth Godin, “art” is a gift that you give to someone that causes something in them to change. An artist, therefore is someone with the ability and willingness to create such a gift. An artist actively seeks not only to share part of himself, but he does it with a purpose. An artist wants to share his own emotions, but if these do not have an effect on others, it is nothing more than yelling in the proverbial forest where no one can hear the sound of a tree falling. It is only talking to hear himself talk. While this can be therapeutic, it is narcissistic and is not art. Art must be received by others if it is to be called art.
Seth Godin wrote about this in his book Linchpin, and while the book’s organization is not very good, the content resonated with me like few other books have (Shop Class as Soulcraft is another recent read that I would recommend). In fact the book gave me the encouragement to start this blog. I know that the blog has a long way to go before it is where I want it to be, but this is going to be one of the mediums I use for my art. For now, I want to use it to give you a better feel for what China is like (and later, wherever I land). Maybe it will help you see something in a different light. I hope it at least makes you laugh once in a while. Whatever it ends up being, I assure you that it will continue to grow and change. Norman Bodek, a friend and philosopher (among other things), always says that “all we can do is put our energy into something and see where it takes us. the most important thing is to keep growing.” And so I grow, as does this blog.
