10.28.05
Posted in @ the Cauldron at 10:04 am by The Coffee Alchemist
Everyday I cup. Whether I cup the coffee I roasted a few days ago, a blend, a single origin, I cup. Conventional, or espresso, I cup. It’s my job.
Then there are days when I’m looking at my bean inventory and I realise I need to go shopping. Woohoo! We’re going shopping baby! CHAARGE (it)!
Not that there’s anything wrong or boring about the coffees that end up on the everyday cupping table, but the gold, the elixir of life, could be lurking in that express post satchel of samples. Oh, the promise!
…and the despair, I remind myself, of fool’s gold. So be still, pay attention, be open to everything.
Peanuts! Says one. Something purple juicy! Says another. Lemon juice! Coffee!
Hmmm… not exactly the universe in a cup. But I can work with these. So I picked out the one that screamed peanuts, and the one that squirted something purple juicy.
I’m off for some cauldron trouble. Now, let’s see…
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10.27.05
Posted in @ the Cauldron at 10:53 am by The Coffee Alchemist
Several months ago, Jill Adams from the William Angliss Coffee Academy asked if I could conduct a masterclass with the Academy.
Great, another learning opportunity…for me!
Though the shelves are bursting at the joints with monographs and journals on coffee, how does one compress and organise all the that headspace into one masterclass of a few hours? Which aspect should I ply, the passion or the science? Who should I pitch it to, the barista with sound skills and want further development? Or the hairsplitter who wants the precise organoleptic structure of Blend X mapped out by quantitative descriptive analysis?
Coffee has infinite space for both, and more.
The day (Oct 22) ended up being a lot of fun as we, coming from our own unique connections to coffee, attempted to reconstruct the espresso via tongue maps, other tools, and each other. I personally discovered quite a few new things about espresso.
And the conclusion? Well, I like to believe that with coffee there’s no conclusion. Just a lot of beginnings…
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