A spooky article

I started to write my second post a long time before now, and realized that it I would have come across as very negative. While I believe that the coffee industry has way farther to go than most of it would like to admit, I don't like to really bother with negative thoughts and feelings - especially when so thinly veiled.

Bellingham is really a one-horse town when it comes to coffee roasters and retailers. That's about to change soon, and I look forward to seeing what happens.

That said, I just stumbled across an article about the unscrupulousness of the food-service industry at http://en.epochtimes.com/news/6-6-19/42846.html. The article discusses one cook's horrible experience at a restaurant that pretends to quality, but really just serves the same old crap to customers.

I don't link to this article as a slam against the Black Drop, the only place I've worked in the service industry. However, since the artisan coffee industry has so little public recognition, nothing at all prevents the modern coffee shop owner from passing "crap" off as quality.

Which brings me to the Fair Trade situation. While I haven't cupped as many coffees as I'd like (I think I've probably only cupped a total of twenty, twenty-five coffees in my life, out of probably fifty consumed), I definitely have an experience of three different types of coffee:

1) godawful coffee
2) pretty OK coffee
3) "holy shit I'll be back with all my friends for more of this" coffee.

I also find that the gulf between each type of coffee seems fairly large to me. Every time I bring a bunch of friends up to the Elysian Room in Vancouver, BC, they leave with jaws summarily dropped. The best I can do in Bellingham usually involves a thoughtful nod - the kind people usually give when unoffended by a cup of coffee, but not really inspired either.

I've come to predict the "godawful coffee" category before I put it in my mouth, thankfully. Sadly, this means I drink a whole lot of inoffensive drip coffee in an attempt to avoid the typically over-roasted and poorly processed espressos of the world.

This post turned out a little negatively anyway. I mostly have envy for the places that know they can serve as good a shot as the barista wants to pull, as opposed to working all day to serve a shot that doesn't taste like the tarp it got dried on. That said, I'm overdue to visit my mentor with some great coffees and great beers. Perhaps I'll come back inspired enough to write more than once every quarter.

ALSO: Cheers to Blogger! Not only do they allow edits in raw HTML, but they also notified me that I'd forgotten to close my above link tag.

The beginning

I just got home from Seattle sporting a pound of Black Cat and 8oz. of Streamline. I drank some of both today, as well as a new blend by Victrola (Triborough, apparently mostly Sidamo based). While I was there, I got to sneak into this morning's cupping at Victrola to get a few slurps of the Panama Esmeralda Especial - the one that auctioned for $130 a pound, green. Soon, this will be a coffee possibly available at retail for $250/lb. Four pounds of this roasted coffee, for an event like Stumptown's coffee pairings, will be worth $1000 at retail.

$1000 for four pounds of coffee. Or $15, possibly $20/cup.

Let me first say that "effervescent" is too gaudy a term for this coffee. This coffee is somewhere between a firework and a rose; it just pops on the palate, but its brightness isn't the usual bell-like clarion call that heralds a really good Central - it's got this beautiful softness to it, like a disco ball viewed through frosted glass. The flavors start sweet and a little prickly, with sweetness akin to fruit or candy; and then they turn a little tannic, reminiscent of the flavor of a whole coffee cherry - accompanied with a brothy, juicy mouthfeel. It's definitely got the delicate refinement I've experienced from excellent Panamanian coffees. I really look forward to seeing if I can get my hands on some of John Sanders's coffee from the Carmen Estate (#5 this year), seeing as it's consistently amazing as well.

In other words, it continues to be a coffee that really speaks for all coffees, just undeniably superior, like the Fazenda Santa Ines last year. I'm still not sure whether it's so priceless as to warrant the same price as the next what, fifteen or so lots on the list - but it is definitely a treasure to the world of coffee.

Speaking of the Cup of Excellence, props to my friend Edwin Martinez for taking his coffee to #8 in this year's Guatemala CoE. Superior methods indeed! Here's to topping the charts next year!

Anyway, hey everyone - Richard Hartnell here, a ronin barista from Bellingham, WA (on the I-5 corridor right between Seattle, WA and Vancouver, BC). This was intended to be an introductory post, but I got caught up talking about coffee - which is basically very close to the way many of my conversations end, since my friends usually avoid talking about coffee around me for fear of a tangent. Fortunately, most of my close friends think it's at least interesting, at least for a while.

I've been thinking about starting this thing for a while, but I quit my old coffee job right after I started getting really serious about coffee, and I only just recently got back into the biz. Bellingham's an interesting place, especially considering a few factors:

1) We have more coffee shops per capita than anywhere except three other U.S. cities

2) We're right between Seattle, WA and Vancouver, BC, two meccas of specialty coffee

3) We have a liberal population especially interested in agriculture, trade, and sustainability

So there have been some issues I've been considering lately, which led me to finally decide to start up this blog. I think my next post will be a little bit about the setting of Bellingham specialty coffee so as to provide some context for my current and future adventures in search of the perfect coffee.