mie

sunny oslo on a sunday morning. got up late, trying to open my eyes while brewing an aeropress. my love-hate relationship with the aeropress is slightly moving towards more loving, less hatred, but now, well, i just don't know any more.

i have been thinking about writing something about the aeropress for a long time, to show my appreciation to tim wendelboe who gave me the best present i've gotten in a really long time. my own little aeropress kit. tim rocks. i spent the first part of my relationship with the aeropress to figure out what to brew in. found out that the "i am not a papercup" ceramic cup was perfect. i can also bring it on the bus to the roastery every morning. ok. so looks cool. the snaggle is that it tastes so very close to perfect, but there are so many things to think about and refine. ah.

just when i thought i got it right, i hear some rumours about turning the whole thing upside down and of course, i had to try it. after two attempts of down-dosing and water temperature control, but forgetting to keep focus on the assembling of the damn thing, i finally got it right. but there must be something about my grind. oh well. i want the method to be solid and fool-proof, and potentially bring out the best of the coffee. considering all my brave attempts, i still don't have it. the punch. because i just come up with more and more parameters to control. for example, i now have to add some measurement of the water dosage, because it turns out differently depending on how the coffee grounds reacts. more accurate, if it's super fresh and bubbly vs old and flat. i'll tell you when i know more. check out these blogs about aeropress'ing : barismo, wundeltimmers and the always delightful jimseven. enjoy !

awake from the dead : gauperaa and his coffee happiness.
welcome back !

the united barista championship of the states of america has been eventful, great fun and all in all a learning experience. i got to see michael phillips of intelligentsia chicago take first place in the usbc today, congratulations and salutations !! i want to write more about the finals - i tasted all the beverages, i had the best cappuccino i've had in my l-i-f-e (it's true!), i could be referring to so many interesting talks...

but right now, i'm just ready to crawl under the covers and sleep for like, 24 hours. i will write more later, michael phillips rocks and so do all the finalists of the usbc 2009 !

i'm heading out of oslo for a while, or actually almost the entire month of march. it's my month off work, and i've dedicated it to coffee. no surprise. first, i'm quitting my job in managing java and mocca for now, it's been many fantastic years, but i am no longer managing the stores from day-to-day (actually, i haven't been for a while), and it's such a bliss to have two of my favorite baristas taking over the responsibilities from day to day.

to celebrate life and enjoy each other's company, the entire java / mocca / kaffa crew is closing the stores early on saturday and taking into the woods outside of oslo for a sleep over in a cabin we've rented. wildlife, here we come...robert, mr b, rune and myself are going there as soon as we can tomorrow after work to have some male bonding and family time with just the kaffa crew, and then, everyone is arriving at some point during saturday. it's about one hour skiing from the tram, so it'll be fun seeing everyone arrive...i'll post some photos, promise!

back from the woods, i'll be home for one night and early next morning i'm taking off to portland to enjoy the usbc. ten days of non-stop vacation, can't wait to have my morning coffee somewhere not java. the end of the month will be spent in el salvador with my friends at the consejo for the coe prenational jury and hopefully some cerveza and ceviche as well. sonia promised to take me to the beach. yay. we've started to cup ethiopians a while ago and i'm excited about a washed one in particular - thus waiting for someone to explain me the about the availability of coffees through the new system.

she's only 18 and often named on my flickr as "oda almighty" - yesterday she became the new norwegian barista champion! she started first of the six finalists saturday morning at 10am - after a very impressive performance, the next 12 hours was a long wait for the new champ. her espresso was the esmeralda geisha from panama, roasted by bjørnar at KAFFA - all the top four contestants used KAFFA coffee, which we are very excited about. both oda, håkon who placed second and rasmus placed as number four works at kaffemisjonen in bergen. number three was jannicke from MOCCA - congratulations to all! i also have to mention that håkon is 22, jannicke 19 - almost a new generation of baristas finding their way into the norwegian specialty coffee scene.

today, i had five production roasted "las mingas" coffees on the cupping table. like christmas and birthday in one hour of cupping. perhaps because of all the work getting to those exact five coffees (we bought 14 micro lots all together). all of them are from nariño - la union, and i will post cupping notes on kaffa.no later today.

it's also the week of the norwegian barista championship, and i am really looking forward to it - hopefully we will see the future of specialty coffee perform in the bc. kaffa was generously invited to a cupping with wendeltim, but mr b is bound for that spot. fortunately, i think there will be lots of cuppings going on where the competition is held at because most of the roasteries in norway will be present. the bc will be hosted by the norwegian culinary academy, and they will even be represented with one of their sommeliéres as a sensory judge during the competition.

all kinds of people are expected to show up in oslo this week, and i'm of course very excited. in particular, i have high expectations about the crew from "kaffemisjonen" in bergen participating in the bc. my old colleague from java, håkon, placed 2nd in the bc last year and rasmus won the cup tasting competition. last year, everything was about naturals from ethiopia, so i'm curious what the hype of the year is for 2009. i have some geisha plans for the cupping table tomorrow morning, and mocca barista jannicke will be using the esmeralda for all her drinks - i can not describe the exerience in any other way than saying it's like someone is trying to make espresso out of earl grey tea. so, tomorrow morning, we will try to decide what roast she will be using. i wrote rachel peterson of esmeralda because we had some questions about how they decided the lot # at esmeralda, and she answered so thuroughly and quickly, i decided i need to work harder to answer all my emails in the future to follow her excellent example.

i just realized this might be my last proper dinner in a week, so i'm going to make some spaghetti with meat balls. tomorrow, team KAFFA will be out and about with the zoka crew. yay.

our manager and barista trainer kaveh left java one week ago to pursue a career in politics, so i started training our newest staff memeber a few days ago. along the way, i've forgotten how much fun it is pulling shots and how glorious and fantastic the customers are at java. some of them are even glamorous.

so, right now, i'm very focused on details including exiting subjects like cleaning, napkin policies and coffee logistics. even though this also means working 7 days a week, i spent an hour or so this morning walking around the neighbourhood looking for treasures. even though i didn't have much money to spend, i wanted to treat myself with something nice. my bargains were: thriftstore finds: piano notes: debussy "the cake walk" (or petit negre, which was the original title) and a biography of norwegian crown princess märtha who died in the early 1950s. so early, so sad. glamorous, and that was exactly what i needed. by the way, i'm a biography addict, and was in serious doubt whether antoher book should be purchased instead, about the soccer player ole gunnar solskjær. it's called "æ" ("I"). i browsed through some pages where ole gunnar was talking about the love of his life (his wife...) and soccer business in the early 1990s. kindof hoping it will be there when i'm done with märtha. he obviously knows something about life i don't. then, i headed into the hardware store, they had advertised cheap kitchen scales - i really wanted one for our kitchen at home. so i will be entertained the entire weekend for the ridiculously low cost of only 20$. then, pulling shots at java and sweeping the side walk. it's snowing and snowing, never seen anything like it in oslo.

the baristas at java had already decided to promote a washed ethiopia sidamo from adem bedane, processed at kombo, one of the operation cherry red coffees. it was on one of the grinders, like eating lemon candy. yum.