What Makes Good Coffee?

I'd be lying if I said that no one has ever asked me what makes coffee good. But I'd also be lying if I told you that X, Y, or Z is what makes it good.  In reality, there isn't one, two, three, or even a mix of variables that makes coffee particularly good.  In fact, I'm not even sure how to properly define good coffee.  To me, good is such a subjective thing. I don't think it's possible to say that one coffee is definitively better than another. So I don't. Instead of, "That coffee's really bad," I'll say something like, "I don't really care for Coffee Bean espresso very much." I try and take it a step further than that by saying something like, "I don't really care of Coffee Bean's espresso very much because I find it to be fairly one-note, not enough complexity for my taste." So now I'm telling you not only what I don't like, but why as well. This, I think is much more fair than saying that a coffee is bad because let's be honest, what tastes good to me might not taste good to you and vice versa.  Additionally, I've come to realize that I'm a fairly finicky and particular person, especially when it comes to coffee.  When I'm feeling like a specific kind of flavor, I really want to taste that in the cup.  Maybe that means choosing a coffee that's not technically graded as high as another because I want a particular flavor profile - so be it. It makes choosing a "favorite" coffee impossible. It's more like, "This is something I'm really liking today."
Now, they are certain characteristics in a coffee that can make it more attractive to me, and there are certain characteristics that professional coffee tasters, or "cuppers" look for in coffee. I think I'll devote an entire post to the art of cupping a bit down the line, but for now let's talk about a couple major characteristics.) First of all, without a doubt, cuppers and I are looking for sweetness.  I'm not talking about the sweetness you get by drowning your coffee in 45 packs of Splenda; I'm talking about natural sweetness. If you really taste your coffee and look past the "coffee taste" you'll find a wonderful sweetness in a nice cup. The second thing I tend to look for is complexity - what exactly can I taste in the cup? Is it the same flavor throughout, or is there a nice mix of flavors that I can pick out? The third and fourth characteristics are less about the actual taste of the coffee and more about the sensory experience of drinking it but you'd be stupid to think that it doesn't affect the taste.  They are mouthfeel and finish. Mouthfeel is kind of a weird word but means exactly what it sounds like - how does the coffee feel in your mouth? Is it thick and syrupy or thin and light? Believe it or not, this can drastically change a cup of coffee, especially because mouthfeel is one of the first characteristics that a drinker experiences. Finally, the finish. Again, just like it sounds, the finish refers to how the end of a sip feels and tastes. Is it different than the front and mid of the sip? Is it a succinct, clean finish or more of a lingering one that sticks with you for a while? Just as the mouthfeel is really important because it is the first thing that you experience in the cup, the finish is super important because it's your lasting impression of the coffee.  Reminder: these are examples of characteristics that I look for in a coffee. I'm not especially particular to a specific way that these characteristics manifest themselves. In my opinion, they are not a way to grade coffee on how good it is.  Rather, they are a tool for how I distinguish between coffees, and thus the ones that I like and the ones that I don't.  Can you pick out these characteristics in a cup of coffee?

More About Coffee: Espresso

So for the last couple of weeks we've been drinking lattes and cappuccinos, and while there's always a time and a place for a good latte or cappuccino, I think it's time that we take a step back to expand our coffee expertise a bit further.  I wanted to take the next couple of posts to outline some different ways to prepare and drink coffee and what those differences mean to you.  In this first part of a multi-post series, I'm going to focus on the coffee plant and espresso.

First of all, what is coffee and where does it come from?  Coffee is a beverage than can be served both hot and cold that comes, essentially, from mixing coffee beans with water.  Coffee beans are actually the pit of cherries that grow on coffee trees.  Coffee is grown all over the world now, but it only grows naturally in Ethiopia - the so-called birth place of coffee.  Here's the process that most coffee beans will follow before they show up on the shelves for you to purchase:

1. A farmer will grow and pick the cherries off the tree
2. He might wash them and let the casings fall off so he's just left with the beans.
3. The beans will dry and get packed for shipment to a buyer like Starbucks
4. Starbucks will roast the beans so they develop the dark brown look we're used to seeing and they're ready to go.
5. You or a coffee shop will  grind the beans depending on the kind of coffee product you want, prepare, and enjoy!

  

Now that we know how coffee gets to us, let's learn about one of the main ways that coffee is prepared - espresso. Most people don't make espresso at home simply because of the work that it requires, but you can find it at any self-respecting coffee shop.  I personally believe that home espresso, while it can be done, is more trouble than it's worth.  Espresso's such a finicky thing that it's near impossible to get really good espresso at home.  Quality espresso usually comes from commercial machines like this one on the right.  It may sound or look fancy, but espresso's nothing more than really concentrated coffee. Its origins actually date back to Italy where cafes started preparing "shots" of coffee for construction workers to get a quick fix of caffeine before going back to work.  Espresso is really interesting because you can drink it straight or mix with milk or chocolate to get a variety of beverages.  For example, using the same amount of espresso but varying amounts of milk can make the difference between a macchiato (3 oz.), cappuccino (5-6 oz.), and latte (8-12 oz.).  Add a pump or two of chocolate syrup and that latte becomes a mocha. Easy peasy.

Without a doubt, espresso is the most versatile of coffee drinks. That's probably one of the reasons why it's so popular.  Want to dive more into the world of espresso? No worries, we'll look into the proper way to taste and grade espresso in a later post.

How many of you have taken a shot of espresso before?

Step 2: Branch Out A Little

"Instead of a latte, why don't you try the more traditional sized cappuccino?" 

That's what I was asked one day at Intelligentsia in Pasadena.  It was a Saturday morning.  I get to the front of the line, order my croissant and small latte, and I get that back.  WHHHAAATT!? A cappuccino? Only coffee snobs drink cappuccinos.  Normal people just get lattes, right?  Besides, everyone knows that cappuccinos are like 90% foam, and I'm not trying to spend $3.50 on a cup of air.  Well, it turns that I'm wrong on most counts.  Apparently, you don't need to be a coffee connoisseur to order a cappuccino.  Ordering one doesn't actually make you sound that pretentious. Your everyday Joe drinks them too.  In fact, there's an added bonus of sounding less like a soccer mom.  Also, as it turns out, I've been mistaken in regards to the makeup of a cappuccino.  A true cappuccino (aka not the crap that you get at Starbucks) is a five or six ounce drink consisting of about one part espresso to one or two parts steamed milked.  You might have noticed that I didn't mention foam at all.  When a skilled barista heats the milk for a cappuccino, he or she will steam the milk in a way that creates something called microfoam.  Microfoam is incorporated into the milk so when you drink a cappuccino, you're not left trying to find the drink through a pillow of foam.  Instead, the milk is "textured" so it's slightly heavier but creates a well-rounded drink.  You can see it here - no pillow, slightly foamy.

The capp (I drink them now, so I can call them that) was amazing!  Coming from a latte, a cappuccino isn't a big stretch.  It's the same amount of espresso, but a little less milk, meaning the coffee stands out a bit more.  They're delicious.  If you drink lattes now, the next logical step is to move to cappuccinos - branch out a little.

So we've already completed Step 1 - getting our feet wet.  We haven't deviated too much into the unknown.  Rather, we've been trying to get more familiar with what we already know.  We've realized that there ways that we can expand upon what we've already been doing before we go out and try something completely different.  For me, that meant moving to the cappuccino.  What does that mean for you?

Hans Björkstam: My Social Bookmarking Soulmate

I have found him! My social bookmarking soulmate! Together, he and I will bookmark the digital world of coffee in a social manner! Ok, not really, but I have found someone with an interest in coffee who does a fair amount of social bookmarking himself.
Let me be frank and say that I understand the value of social bookmarking, but thus far have been unimpressed.  I'll concede that if you bookmark what you find interesting, tag it properly, and others do the same, you should be able to connect with users that share your interests and even find links that you wouldn't have otherwise.  However, in my experience, social bookmarking has never been that seamless.  Either I'm not tagging right or they're not tagging right.  Regardless, something isn't happening the way it should so the effect isn't ideal.  Hopefully Hans Björkstam can change that view for me.
I found Björkstam by running a simple search for people that have used coffee as a tag in the past.  Björkstam showed up as a hit on page two.  I decided to look more into him because he not only used coffee as a tag - he used espresso, beans, and brewer. Alright. I can get on board with this guy!
Björkstam is certainly an active bookmarker.  His most recent bookmark was 8 hours ago in fact (as of the writing of this post).  He bookmarks somewhere between five and ten items a week, and has been doing so since January 14, 2011.  (This just got kinda creepy.) Over the course of the last year or so, Björkstam has bookmarked 395 items.  The majority of them, 346 to be precise, are tagged coffee; 201 of them espresso; 107 - beans.  There are a couple things we know for certain - Björkstam has an interest in coffee and he definitely isn't new to social bookmarking.  But I have to asterisk the latter half of that last thought because while Björkstam may not be new to Diigo, I don't think he's really playing up the social aspect of the bookmarking site.  In the 397 days since he joined Diigo, Björkstam has accumulated exactly zero friends.  He neither follows nor participates in any public groups, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to assume he doesn't contribute to any private ones.  In the 295 sites he's bookmarked since he joined Diigo, he has not added any comments.  Björkstam's Diigo seems more than anything to be for him - a place where he can bookmark his favorite sites without any social interaction with other people.  It's simply a catchall for his internet findings.
This, I find is a problem with social bookmarking websites.  Users are only interested in using it as a place to hold their bookmarks.  They're not interested in sharing them.  Have you ever used a social bookmarking site?  Did your purpose for the site match it's functionality?

Step 1: Getting Our Feet Wet

Okay, team. This is our first foray into specialty coffee.  I've said it before - we're going to dive right in.  (But are we actually?)  What if we're afraid of the deep end?  What if the water's a little too cold?  Should we just plunge ahead and figure it out when we're completely submerged?  Sure, that's an option, but if you don't feel like doing a cannonball, I'm not going to push you in.  In fact, I'm actually a big proponent of the slow and steady work up.  First things first, go ahead and pat yourself on the back for making it this far.  You've decided to delve into the unknown and try something new.  Step one is to get acquainted with whatever new you're experiencing.  No, that doesn't mean Wikipedia.  It means, "Go out and actually get acquainted."  Listen up, this is how we're going to get our feet wet.
So you're an occasional coffee drinker, and by occasional I mean you pound back a mug or two when it's two in the morning, that deadline's coming up, and you've got nothing.  According to Malcolm Gladwell, if I asked you what you want in a coffee, you would probably say, "I want a dark, rich, hearty roast."  But in reality, only 25 to 27 percent of you truly want a "dark, rich, hearty roast."  Most of you like milky, weak coffee, so that's probably what you're sipping on come the middle of the night before the project is due.
My first bit of advice is "branch out from what you know," and when I say that I really am calling you to branch from what you know.  If you really like milky coffee, you're probably not going to order an espresso the next day and exclaim, "Damn, this is tasty!"  Instead, maybe start with a well made latte. (If you like sugar, put some in, but don't get too used to it because we're going to wane you off soon.)  A good latte is basically about 1 part espresso to 3-4 parts steamed milk.  Try the smaller 8oz latte so that the coffee stands out a bit more (whether you get a small or large, it's probably the same amount of espresso). So while we're not going to jump into the deep end quite yet, we're still getting in the water.
Now comes the post mortem.  What did you think?  More than just good or bad - how was the experience and why?  Did you want to spit it out after the first sip?  Did it start growing on you?  I recommend starting a journal the capture your experiences so you can see how they evolve over time.  Bring it with you.  It might seem silly to write about your latte as you drink, but looking silly and having a well-documented experience is better than looking cool with an empty journal.  I'm starting one of these.  They're great journals for coffee.
I would recommend frequenting the same establishment and getting familiar with whatever coffee-related beverage you started with.  After several times having the same drink, you should be expecting a certain taste when you bring it to your lips.  That signals that you should be trying the same drink at different establishments.  Can you distinguish between ABC's latte and XYZ's latte?  How? Do you have a preference of one over the other?  If so, why? Once you can answer all these questions, we're ready to move on to Step 2.  If you're learning coffee too, what kind of drink did you start with?  If you're doing your own thing, what was your first step?

Trifecta

Hello, World

Hi. Welcome to Morning Dial In! You might be wondering what you're doing here, or what I'm doing here for that matter. It might seem like this blog is about coffee - and it is. But that's not entirely what it's about, and to be honest with you, I'm not even sure that it's the focal point. What this blog is really about is an experience - it's about us learning about and trying something new. But before I get into that, let me introduce myself a bit more and talk about how I got into specialty coffee. I'm a college student living in Los Angeles. About a year and a half ago, I discovered a new coffee shop in Pasadena called Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea. A Chicago-based company, this was Intelligentsia's third foray into Los Angeles after opening shops in Silverlake and Venice Beach. It was great - good coffee, nice staff, they served drinks in mugs so you could stay and hang out for a bit. I started going every weekend, then a couple times a week - pretty soon, I was there just about every other day.
I've always been a bit of a coffee junkie, but I'm new to this world of specialty coffee that Intelligentsia touts. But what is specialty coffee exactly? Truthfully, I'm still figuring that out too. I can tell you that diner coffee is probably not specialty coffee, nor is the coffee you stock up on when it's on sale at Target. Some people would call Starbucks specialty, but I probably wouldn't. I suppose specialty means different things to different people. For the purposes of this blog, however, I'm going to define specialty coffee as coffee that's not treated as a commodity. (We'll explore this concept in more detail later.)
I'd like this blog to be a forum where we can explore in more depth the world of specialty coffee. What I'm particularly interested in learning about is how specific factors contribute to what we ultimately experience when we enjoy our coffee. I'm not as concerned with how we drink our coffee (espresso, cappuccino, latte, brewed coffee, etc.), but I've gathered that different preparation can yield drastically different results.
What I'm really excited about is how we get to take this journey together. Remember, this is as much a new experience for me as it is for you. Something that I haven't mentioned at all is how we're going to do this. I'd like to test a hypothesis that the best way to experience something new is to just dive in - so that's exactly what we're going to do. That being said, we don't just want to experience the coffee, we want to understand more about it. That means lots of research. We're going to be reading books and researching the interwumbles, but perhaps most exciting, we're going to be hearing personal stories - we'll be interviewing coffee professionals and talking to "caffeine addicts" and exploring why we drink coffee.
Basically, we got a lot of cool stuff going on. I'm super excited because I'm a nerd for coffee, but if you just like the occasional latte or even if you can't stand the stuff, you're going to want to stick around for more.  I’d love it if some of you shared your experiences with us as we take this journey.  I will end ever post on this blog with a question (denoted by the color orange) that can fuel some conversation.  So without further ado...  What are some new things that you want to experience?

Profile

James Hoffman, to me, perfectly embodies what a blogger should be. Based on how he writes and what he writes about, one can deduce that he's fairly internet savvy.  While this certainly isn’t a requirement in today’s Web 2.0 society, I can appreciate following someone who knows his way around the internet.  A seemingly irrelevant detail to his writing, Hoffman’s savvy allows him to better find topics to discuss or repost on his blogs. His prose is succinct but his thoughts are detailed, complete. Hoffman is, without a doubt, a coffee expert and an even bigger coffee geek. A resident of the UK, he won the national Barista competition in both 2006 and 2007, and went on to win the World Barista Competition in '07. He writes two blogs simultaneously:  one Blogger, one Tumblr.  I like both of them but for different reasons.  Let’s tackle the Blogger first – jimseven.com.

Jimseven.com posts consist of graphics, polls, opinions, and explanations of all things coffee.  The content would be of interest to anyone who drinks coffee or finds science remotely interesting. He recently uploaded an unlabeled line graph and challenged his readers to figure out what was being graphed (the rate of bean mass temperature increase during roasting, in case you were wondering). But Hoffman doesn't just blog about coffee stuff that he finds cool. He posts what he does to encourage thought and discussion about coffee, and he does a pretty good job of that. His readership spans from coffee professionals (including the heads of roasters and retailers) to average Joe's like you or me just trying to learn more about coffee.  The site’s Technorati rank is 8041, which is fairly respectable, I think.  Jimseven.com is right in there with two Top 100 blogs – one about food and the other about baseball. I was initially kind of shocked by the number of comments Hoffman receives on many of his posts (sometimes upwards of 50 comments), but I've realized that his blog is as much about his readers' comments as it is about his comments.  He includes two widgets on the blog – one that lists recent comments from readers and a “Popular Threads” list that includes some of his most commented on recent posts. I'm new to Jim's blog, but I've become inspired by how he connects with his readers. I hope to accomplish something similar here.

Jimseven.tumblr.com, in contrast, is devoted to all things not coffee – in fact, he titles the blog “not about coffee.”  On his Tumblr, Hoffman writes about the effect of a life of exercise on your muscles and reducing the “digital clutter” in his life.  It’s difficult to gauge the popularity of Hoffman’s Tumblr as Technorati has no data on it and he hasn’t enabled comments, but I get the feeling that his Tumblr in no way receives the same traffic that his Blogger does.  In fact, the Tumblr feels like more of a diary, as if Hoffman’s saying, “This one is for me.”  His posts consist of musings more than anything.  More importantly, Hoffman isn’t afraid to share his personal opinion about something on his Tumblr while he seems more impartial on the Blogger.  Here’s a quick example:  On Tumblr, you’ll see Hoffman write something like this, “…I believe in paying for things I like and services I appreciate.”  Hoffman is clearly articulating an opinion here.  He’s imploring (wait for it, high school English buzzword coming…) ethos, implying that something is probably wrong with us if we don’t pay for things we like and services we appreciate.  (How unethical of us to use readily available freeware alternatives!) He even includes a link to a pay service, as a call to action, in case we’re overcome with shame and must spend money on a useless tool that will be obsolete in a week.  Obviously, I kid James Hoffman. I genuinely have a lot of respect for him both as a coffee professional and as a writer of things coffee and not coffee on the internet.

I’d like to revisit the content of Hoffman’s Tumblr for just a minute.  You might be wondering why I spent a good chunk of this post reflecting on a blog that doesn’t even have to do with coffee.  Well, my reasons are two-fold:  1) Hoffman’s Tumblr and this blog are more alike that you may think, and 2) To illustrate the power behind the connectivity of the internet.

Let’s remember that while I’ll be talking coffee in every post, this blog isn’t actually about coffee – it’s about experiencing something new.  For me that something new happens to be coffee because it’s something that I’ve recently become very passionate about.  But this approach to experiencing something new, I hypothesize, can be applied to anything.  Hoffman, on his Tumblr, is constantly writing about applying new techniques to his habitual regimens and tweaking his workflows to discover new ways to experience what he already does. He recently wrote about reducing “digital clutter.”  He has deleted his G+ and Facebook accounts and trimmed down his RSS feed because he found that rather than helping him concentrate on what he likes, they were just getting in the way. Already he’s seen the difference as the focus has shifted to what really matters to him.  Like Hoffman, I’ll be experimenting with new experiences, trying to find what works for me.  I hypothesize that it can work for you too.

The second reason why I wanted to profile Hoffman’s personal blog is that I wanted to shine a light on the shear power and beauty that is the blogging community.  I wanted to show you that even though at first glance jimseven.tumblr.com looks like it has absolutely nothing in common with my blog, they’re actually quite similar.  I’m going to attribute this to the fact that James Hoffman and I are similar people.  Maybe not in profession or life experiences, but we both have a passion for coffee.  Through this shared interest, I was able to find a creative outlet unrelated to my original search that was exactly what I was looking for.  Were you expecting that?

Voice

When you're reading about specialty coffee on the internet, or anywhere for that matter, you're bound to run into scientific terms, industry jargon, maybe little to no personality, and overall fairly "flat" writing.  In my experience, authors writing about coffee are more interested in talking about the coffee itself and its characteristics, rather than their thoughts or revealing their personality.  At best, they might post about how they believe different methods affect brewing.

So as I perused the internet for some evidence of voice in coffee writing, I initially came up dry.  There's a great blog called Dear Coffee, I Love You, but even DCILY tends to write about coffee and coffee products and coffee professionals and all other things coffee in a fairly dry tone.  By the way, there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I kind of prefer it personally.  But other people may like or expect to see some show of personal thought or opinion when reading blogs.

However, I did find a recent post on DCILY that I wanted to profile for its voice.  It's about the return of 2008 WBC Champion Stephen Morrisey, and you can find it here.  The title of the post initially grabbed my attention - "The Quiet Sound of A Flyingthud." What the heck is a flyingthud? Turns out, that's the pseudonym under which Morrisey writes on the internet.  I'm still not entirely sure what that means, but I can tell you that when I hear the sound "thud" I'm definitely not thinking "quiet."  The post, written by "bwj" is littered with other dry humor.  He begins with:

"While everyone was fawning over the New Year return of James Hoffman..."

In the world of specialty coffee James Hoffman is kind of a big deal, bwj completely belittles the coffee community's obsession with Hoffman.  The implication is that Hoffman simply isn't worth fawning over.
As he introduces Flyingthud's return to blogging, bwj writes that Morrisey is writing again:

"after nearly 20 months of silence."

Oh my goodness! Twenty months of silence?! It's almost like he died! Oh wait, Morrisey is just as active in the coffee community as he's always been.  bwj is bringing attention to this fact, highlighting its sheer absurdity.  There's a wonderful image that bwj includes further into the post:

"Like a small gift left unopened behind the Christmas tree..."

I really enjoyed this analogy that he makes in reference to Flyingthud's return to the internet.  I felt this sort of mild excitement when I learned that Morrisey was once again blogging, and it seems like bwj felt similarly.  There's this sense of joy that you get when you realize that there's one more little present that you forgot about.  Have you recently discovered an unopened gift behind the Christmas tree?

Voice: DCILY

When you're reading about specialty coffee on the internet, or anywhere for that matter, you're bound to run into scientific terms, industry jargon, maybe little to no personality, and overall fairly "flat" writing.  In my experience, authors writing about coffee are more interested in talking about the coffee itself and its characteristics, rather than their thoughts or revealing their personality.  At best, they might post about how they believe different methods affect brewing.

So as I perused the internet for some evidence of voice in coffee writing, I initially came up dry.  There's a great blog called Dear Coffee, I Love You, but even DCILY tends to write about coffee and coffee products and coffee professionals and all other things coffee in a fairly dry tone.  By the way, there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I kind of prefer it personally.  But other people may like or expect to see some show of personal thought or opinion when reading blogs.

However, I did find a recent post on DCILY that I wanted to profile for its voice.  It's about the return of 2008 WBC Champion Stephen Morrisey, and you can find it here.  The title of the post initally grabbed my attention - "The Quiet Sound of A Flyingthud." What the heck is a flyingthud? Turns out, that's the pseudonym under which Morrisey writes on the internet.  I'm still not entirely sure what that means, but I can tell you that when I hear the sound "thud" I'm definitely not thinking "quiet."  The post, written by "bwj" is littered with other dry humor.  He begins with:

"While everyone was fawning over the New Year return of James Hoffman..."

In the world of specialty coffee James Hoffman is kind of a big deal, bwj completely belittles the coffee community's obsession with Hoffman.  The implication is that Hoffman simply isn't worth fawning over.
As he introduces Flyingthud's return to blogging, bwj writes that Morrisey is writing again:

"after nearly 20 months of silence."

Oh my goodness! Twenty months of silence?! It's almost like he died! Oh wait, Morrisey is just as active in the coffee community as he's always been.  bwj is bringing attention to this fact, highlighting its sheer absurdity.  There's a wonderful image that bwj includes further into the post:

"Like a small gift left unopened behind the Christmas tree..."

I really enjoyed this analogy that he makes in reference to Flyingthud's return to the internet.  I felt this sort of mild excitement when I learned that Morrisey was once again blogging, and it seems like bwj felt similarly.  There's this sense of joy that you get when you realize that there's one more little present that you forgot about.

Blog Profile: jimseven

James Hoffman, to me, perfectly embodies what a blogger should be. From his presence on the web and the content of his work, one can deduce that he's fairly tech savvy. His prose is succinct but his thoughts are detailed, complete. He writes two blogs simultaneously. jimseven.tumblr.com is devoted to all things not coffee. On the other hand, you'd be pressed to find a post without the word "coffee" mentioned at least six times on jimseven.com. Jim is, without a doubt, a coffee expert and an even bigger coffee geek. A resident of the UK, he won the national Barista competition in both 2006 and 2007, and went on to win the World Barista Competition in '07. His posts consist of graphics, polls, opinions, and explanations of all things coffee.
The content of Jim's posts would be of interest to anyone who drinks coffee and finds science remotely interesting. He recently uploaded an unlabelled line graph and challenged his readers to figure out what what being graphed (the rate of bean mass temperature increase during roasting, in case you were wondering). But Jim doesn't just blog about coffee stuff that he finds cool. He posts what he does to encourage thought and discussion about coffee, and he does a pretty good job of that. His readership spans from coffee professionals (including the heads of roasters and retailers) to average Joe's like you or me just trying to learn more about coffee. I was initially kind of shocked by the number of comments Jim receives on many of his posts, but I've realized that his blog is as much about his readers' comments as it is about his comments. I'm new to Jim's blog, but I've become inspired by how he connects with his readers. I hope to accomplish something similar here. What will be different though, and I've mentioned this before, is that I'm, by no stretch of the imagination, an expert on coffee. I'll be learning right along side with you. But, hey, that's what's going to make it fun.

Hello there...

Hi. Welcome to Morning Dial In! You might be wondering what you're doing here, or what I'm doing here for that matter. It might seem like this blog is about coffee - and it is. But that's not entirely what it's about, and to be honest with you, I'm not even sure that it's the focal point. What this blog is really about is an experience - it's about us learning about and trying something new. But before I get into that, let me introduce myself a bit more and go over some fundamentals. I'm a college student living in Los Angeles. About a year and a half ago, I discovered a new coffee shop in Pasadena called Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea. A Chicago company, this was their third foray into Los Angeles after opening shops in Silverlake and Venice Beach. It was great - good coffee, nice staff, they served drinks in mugs so you could stay and hang out for a bit. I started going every weekend, then a couple times a week - pretty soon, I was there just about every other day.
I've always been a bit of a coffee junkie, but I'm new to this world of specialty coffee that Intelligentsia touts. But what is specialty coffee exactly? Truthfully, I'm still figuring that out too. I can tell you that diner coffee is probably not specialty coffee, nor is the coffee you stock up on when it's on sale at Target. Some people would call Starbucks specialty, but I probably wouldn't. I suppose specialty means different things to different people. For the purposes of this blog, however, I'm going to define specialty coffee as coffee that's not treated as a commodity. (We'll explore this concept in more detail later.)
I'd like this blog to be a forum where we can explore in more depth the world of specialty coffee. What I'm particularly interested in learning about is how specific factors contribute to what we ultimately experience when we enjoy our coffee. I'm not as concerned with how we drink our coffee (espresso, cappuccino, latte, brewed coffee, etc), but I've gathered that different preparation can yield drastically different results.
What I'm really excited about is how we get to take this journey together. Remember, this is as much a new experience for me as it is for you. Something that I haven't mentioned at all is how we're going to do this. I'd like to test a hypothesis that the best way to experience something new is to just dive in - so that's exactly what we're going to do. That being said, we don't just want to experience the coffee, we want to understand more about it. That means lots of research. We're going to be reading books and researching the interwumbles, but perhaps most exciting, we're going to be hearing personal stories - we'll be interviewing coffee professionals and talking to "caffeine addicts" and exploring why we drink coffee.
Basically, we got a lot of cool stuff going on. I'm super excited because I'm a nerd for coffee, but if you just like the occasional latte or even if you can't stand the stuff, you're going to want to stick around for more.