All Right!

There she is, Baby Barista. 8lbs, 12 oz. Home birth, Mamma's happy, baby's happy, Papa's happy, even big sister is happy. She's less than an hour old in this pic, I think.

Truly amazing.

Oh, and I saw the Transformers movie, too. Very good, as long as you don't care if there's a cohesive plot; you like giant robots and John Turturro. I say yes to all 3.

Oh, and coffee content... I can't imagine helping with a birth without a cup of joe. If you're up in the wee hours of the morning pushing on your wife's back during contractions, it's pretty freaking sweet to sip on an amazing Costa Rican coffee in between. Sweet, and essential. Caffeine is definitely of the essence: Honestly, I would have taken caffeine pills if I'd had to, but the Costa was much better.

-Papa Larry

This is our new ride, (pictured on the left) the La Marzocco FB-80. It replaces our almost new, but still out-dated La Marzocco FB-70, which looks almost the same (pictured above). Most of our customers didn't notice when we switched them out.

Basically, the FB-80 has the same internals, with a few twists which make is ridiculously temperature stable. The resulting espresso taste, once you get the temperature dialed in correctly, is ridicuously wonderful every single time. The old machine took a bunch of tweaking to get it temperature stable, and it never gave the same taste twice. That was a bit fun, but not really a desirable trait.

The old machine was klunky and noisy--in a very endearing way. The new machine is earily quiet: I can't tell if it's on or off, except that the "on" button blinks. Never had that "trouble" with the old one. I miss the noise.

The steam wand is a bit improved--it takes less wrist movement to turn it on and off, just 1/4 turn. Yet it feels so familiar that there was no break-in time needed: perfect foam from the get-go. Another nice improvement is that the wand dial moves away from the machine as it closes, and towards the machine as you twist it open. This seems to solve the problem on the old machine where the dial would sometimes get stuck in the off position.

What the freak?

Ok, I've been scrolling through a lot of the other blogs out there... Most of the people blogging are freaks. And I'm not talking about freaks like me. I mean freaks more in the sense of this photo to the right here, which I pulled off of a Spanish language blog, which, apparently is typical of Spanish language blogs. Which brings me to another sub-topic: What is going on in Hispanic cultures that leads these people to create such disturbingly bizarre blogs? These blogs are crazy! (And this is coming from a Spanish speaker and admirer of Hispanic culture (usually).) Special kudos goes out to the Portuguese language blog which consisted of translated Brian Adams lyrics.

Yes.

The world needed that.

This is my day:

I start by cupping some amazing Costa Rican coffee. This stuff is really complex--I can instantly differentiate anise, tobacco, and green bell-pepper. Other more subtle flavors slowly reveal themselves. I love coffee!

Then...

Customer: "I'd like a big coffee with caramel syrup and cream."
Me: (Gritting my teeth, I destroy that same Costa Rican, covering all the unique and wonderful flavors with caramel syrup and cream. )
Customer: "Thanks!"

A bit later...

Customer: "Can I have this coffee grinded?" (He says as he hands me a bag of coffee, clearly marked as a light roast.)
Me: "You may have it ground, if you'd like."
C: "Yeah, do that. It's a dark roast, right."
Me: "No, it's very light roasted."
C: "Oh."
Me: "We only dark roast the beans that we really don't like--that way we destroy any unique taste the bean
has."
C: (Nervous little laugh, wide eyes.)
Me: (Condescending glare)
(The customer pays and leaves, a bit hurriedly.)

Somewhere in this conversation, Jake the roaster walks in, and I can tell he's laughing quietly. Not so much at the customer as at my pain. Thanks Jake.

Next customer: "I'm looking for dark roasts."
Jake: (Hides his face and giggles.)
Me: (Resigned silence, pained look on my face.)
Jake: (More giggling.)

By the way...

Greeting me by saying "Grande latte" is not going to win you any favors...

Start with "Hello" before you order.

That's the polite thing to do.

Usually, doing the polite thing ensures that I will be fairly nice to you and give you a tasty beverage in a timely fashion.

And while we're on the topic of little rude things customers do without realizing that it's rude:

Don't talk on your cell phone when you're talking with me. Don't answer your cell phone while you're ordering. The other day, someone did that in the drive-thru, so I left. Came back in about 4 minutes. Clearly the call was more important than our conversation, and I had other things to do... like muttering rude words to myself.

Dear Old Condescending British Ladies...

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry as the eldery, brown toothed, Brit asked me for black coffee.

"Black Coffee: that means 'without cream or sugar' dearie."

Reminded me of an old Scottish lady I met once. I told her my name was Jesse.

"Oh, that's what we name the girls in our country."

As my Scottish father-in-law pointed out, I should have retorted "Yes, but they name the gents Beverly there as well." (True)

Guest Blog!

All right you foolios, what follows below are the misguided ramblings of one of my (former) customers, Dirty Mick, who is currently moving to California. Please enjoy: They are not half-bad.

Recently I have been in transit, and, in an attempt to recover a sense of place, a moment of warm comfort, I have been walking into coffee shops or sitting down at restaurants and–at first with polite hesitation and now more with a sense of righteous criticism–ordering macchiatos. I have been met with questions, polite refusals, condescension, and blank stares. As I reflect on these caffeinated moments, I will try to appropriately channel our mutual barista friend and steal a little bit of that ole’ Larry thunder.

Macchiato #1: May 29th, Portland, OR.
I wish I could say that this macchiato was from Stumptown (Oh! Stumptown you’re so awesome. We need you Stumptown. Stumptown, love us with your charmingly aloof barista ways and your toasty, magical beans.), but I can’t. Sitting in the Portland Airport, waiting to catch a red-eye to New Jersey, my first on-the-road macchiato was politely prepared by a shaggy barista at Coffee People, a smallish coffee company which, according to their website, has five locations, all in the Portland Airport. This, and the fact that they pride themselves on a coffee called “Weiner Melange,” does not bode well for the company’s street cred in the world of coffee geeks and caffeine hipsters, or a lot of other people for that matter. They do insist that wiener is pronounced veen-er, but whether that is better or worse I will leave up to you.
The barista did politely confirm that what I had ordered was espresso sized and included a small amount of milk on top (he is probably the nicest barista I have met during my current travels). He graciously prepared my drink in a small paper cup and even handed it to me with a slow, dramatic reach so that I might appreciate the iridescence of the marble sized bubbles adorning the surface of my espresso as it traveled through the air towards me. However, I have discovered that the politeness of a barista often has nothing to do with the quality of coffee that one receives at his or her hands–the politeness of a Barista may in fact be directly and inversely related to the quality of coffee a customer receives (a hypothesis that I will subjectively support in any future guest blogs), and I discovered that the airy fluff on top of my drink managed to do little more than highlight the bitterness of the burnt doppio beneath.
I have found some rays of hope since, and I am certainly glad to be distanced from Larry’s caffeine infused bitterness, but one of his smooth, balanced macchiatos ( he does occasionally pour them) would hit the spot right now.

– Dirty Mick