Espresso Yourself

I am not sure when I developed a taste for coffee. Sometimes in my 30's. I wasn't that discriminating in my taste and also was primarily drinking it to fuel my work-outs. It took awhile to figure out that I shouldn't drink it late afternoon as well as to appreciate coffee for more than just an adrenaline booster shot. 

Now I am firmly in the clique of coffee snobs. Almost as insufferable as wine snobs. 

My Dad likes to remind me at times of my judging him and others for drinking coffee and getting jacked on Joe as a moral failing. I was high-horsey with beer and coffee for a pretty long period of early adulthood. 

Then, I turned to the dark side. I fell hard. Especially espresso.  So.....

Friday morning was another Comp Day off of school. It was rainy and cool. Not a good day to skateboard or other outside activities. Thus, I decided to adventure over to Rustic Cup, a new coffee shop in downtown East Prospect. Not that there is really a downtown or an uptown. Just a typical Pennsylvania small town.  The rain made it Seattle-ish. 

In coming back from L.A., there has been the inevitable readjustment back to reality. And the daily grind. Speaking of grind, look at the coffee grinder in the shop:

Purists swear that one needs a Conical Burr Grinder for coffee beans. Apparently it creates an even level of grind with the coffee versus the cheaper blade types that hack the beans into misshapen sizes. I have not yet come to buy a Conical Burr Grinder but it may be on the horizon as my effeteness continues. We'll see. Stayed tuned.  90 different grind settings on this bad boy. 

The Espresso maker below costs about 16K new from what the owner Kris told me. It is a cool machine for certain.

He bought it broken and used for half-price and found a repairman in York who only fixes high-end coffee machines. I think I know what I want for Christmas.  There are a lot of variables at play when making espresso and I had the opportunity to see espresso-making in action and then taste the results. Ideally, the brewed espresso should weigh  two times what the water did alone, 1:2 ratio. Less or more indicates underbrewing or overbrewing.

So after drinking a full cup of 12 ounce coffee and sipping off of several espressos, I finished up with a latte. Got to see how to make a design with the milk foam. Apparently soy does not foam well and neither does whole milk or non-fat milk. Two-percent is optimum. 

        

 I had lived up to the spirit of the poster that I saw when I first walked into the shop: 

I was shaking like that girl in that Eddie Money song. Hmm, now that I think about it, that lyric probably is reference to something else... 

We started drinkin', weren't thinkin' too straight
She was doin' 80 and she slammed on the brakes
Got so high we had to pull to the side
We did some shakin' til the middle of the night

Maybe they were drinking espresso?  

As I slowed down on drinking the coffee, Kris and I got in an interesting discussion about what has been termed the Third Wave of Coffee where we all drank crappy coffee, then moved to Starbucks, and now are more interested in independent coffee shops, with organic and fairly-sourced coming into the discussion, along with the varieties of coffee from all over the world. His favorite is Nicaraguan. I am still  partial to Ethiopian. 

This is analogous of what is happening in the craft beer market. More players and diversity of styles, less lowest common denominator mass market. 

We then drifted into a conversation about following one's dreams and how it a lot like making espresso. Talent is the coffee beans, the tools are our training, but the pressure is what creates the crema. We discussed how hard it is to be successful in something one loves, whether it is making coffee (his gig) or writing (my gig). Entitlement, expecting excellence without the time, effort, and downright suffering, is too common. Show me excellence and the story is about sacrifice. Letting the lesser go for the greater.   

Kris came out of I.T. and said he didn't want to spend a lifetime of his career seeing customers porn when they bring their computers in for repair. He has only been at the coffee-making for about a year but he has both the technical mindset and the artistic trait which typically creates cool products and services.

His shop remains coffee-first and everything else in the shop has to fall in line with that focus. No donuts in other words. It was a fun morning. Next week I will write about the visit later in the day to a wine-tasting shop which was the perfect antidote to too much coffee. 

P.S. While  you sip your coffee or wine, ever think about sipping on my book?