This one evokes a certain time and place for me, and always brings a smile to my face because it was a favorite of my son back when he was a wee little lad. Also I love the rhythm section on this banger, and singing along with it (at full volume – badly) in the car while listening to it 21x in a row.
And here’s a bonus song o’ the day that’s been making the rounds on the twitters this week in celebration of Rick Moranis’ birthday. Those of a certain age will get it, particularly those of us who can still quote dialogue from every SCTV episode, but you youngsters may stare and blink and wonder what’s going on here and, you know, is it supposed to be funny?
Embedding is disabled for this one, so just click on the link above or here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JLbhEUE_5U
As I’ve posted recently, I’ve been very lucky this spring to travel to Arizona for baseball spring training, and to Portugal with my family. Last week I enjoyed one more very special trip, driving in the US south, and of course visited some coffee places. I neglected to do my usual rounds of picture taking, but we may be better off without them.
I’ve been a big fan of Red Rooster Coffee for a while now, enjoying their coffee at some of the best DC-area cafés. Their coffee’s flavor profiles are often bold, but offer layers of complexity that make them more interesting that just smacking you in the face. I’ve wanted to visit their café and roastery, but Floyd, VA is a bit far from where I live, I’m not a bluegrass fan so a visit to Floydfest isn’t in the cards, and Floyd hasn’t been on the way to places I’ve gone before. This trip gave me the opportunity to route myself in their direction, so I built a stop into the itinerary.
Here are a couple random things bouncing around my mind. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll understand why I apologize in advance if this comes across like an old Larry King column in USA Today.
Houston, hello!
I shuddered watching James Vowles, Williams Racing’s new team principal, explain on Netflix’s Drive to Survive that he only has caffeine on race day, because daily intake means the caffeine boost only takes you to a regular state instead of an elevated state. This continues to haunt me.
A current pet peeve is businesses that don’t accept cash, and that I only seem to find them when I want to pay with cash.
My social media feeds are full of ads for Cometeer, a company that flash-freezes specialty coffee that you reconstitute in hot water. I wasn’t interested until I looked at their website, where some of my favorite roasters’ coffee is available. Now I’d like to give it a whirl, but they ship only in boxes of 32, which I’m finding a high barrier to trying it out. #firstworldproblems
The algorithms have also decided I would be interested in this. Heavy emphasis on pulling in investors isn’t exactly a draw, let alone the idea of “friendly robot baristas.” I for one am not ready to welcome our new robot overlords, but if you decide to try it you may want to speak with Old Glory Insurance first.
I recently returned from an amazing week’s vacay with my family. Now I understand why everyone has been there, is there, is planning to go there, or wants to go there. We were blessed with mostly magical weather, manageable crowds, terrific food and drink, and very warm and friendly people.
We were mostly in Lisbon and Porto, with a few other stops. I had great coffee, though unfortunately I didn’t have the opportunity to visit as many places as I would have liked in Porto. To spare my family I didn’t go through my usual picture taking frenzy at cafés, so here’s a list interspersed with the usual tourist pics – those of you who follow my social media accounts have likely seen these – and a couple non-coffee things.
First, a tip for anyone traveling anywhere in Europe, European Coffee Trip is *the* guide you need to find specialty cafés and roasters. It quickly became my primary coffee resource for this trip.
Let’s wrap up the Phoenix field report. Two cafés left to cover.
WINDOW COFFEE BAR (Melrose)
where’s Frank? Dino? Sammy? Joey Bishop?
from the second you pull up to the Royale complex, which houses this outlet of Window Coffee Bar, you’re awash in 60’s Vegas cool and invited to find your inner rat packer as you relax in a bright metal chair on the astroturfed courtyard
the café is bright and colorful, and it took a lot of willpower not to take home one of their really cool mugs
great coffee, teas (I went back for pictures and got a really good iced herbal tea), and pastries – another fine pop tart, this one raspberry and pear
I recently met my brother in Arizona for spring training baseball. It was my first visit to the Grand Canyon State, and while we didn’t venture beyond the Phoenix metro area we did see and do a lot. Of course, for me that included visiting a lot of cafés.
I came in without expectations one way or another about the coffee scene in the Valley of the Sun, but I was pleasantly surprised with the consistently high quality. I guess that shouldn’t be a surprised, given the city’s official logo looks like latte art.
If you look at my café guide, you’ll find that all 10 places I visited made the list, 9 of which earned the Coveted Asterisk of QualityTM. Rather than indulging my usual proclivity to babble on and on (and on), I’m going to lean more on the pictures to tell the story, with an occasional touristy intervention. Let’s go!
I could probably write a 2,000 word think piece about this song (which I love) and how batshit crazy it is and how almost everything related to this song is batshit crazy and how all that craziness makes it great, and how this song could never be made today, let alone be a big hit, and….. well, just listen to it yourself, maybe 21x in a row, and you’ll see.
This winter I was starting to get annoyed at my grinder. More and more it was making a mess, to the point I thought there was something wrong with it or that the inner part of the collection cup had somehow disappeared. I always weigh out 16 grams of beans, and was losing as much as seven tenths of a gram in the finished product. Then one day out of the blue my college friend Tony sent me an article about the Ross Droplet Technique.
The idea behind it is adding very small amounts of water to beans before grinding reduces static electricity, resulting in reduced flyaways, a neater grind, and much higher retention. Makes perfect sense, then, that I was seeing more problems in winter. I live in an area that has high humidity for much of the year, with a significant drop in humidity in winter.
I gave it a try with one very light spritz from a spray bottle, and I’m now a convert. Much less mess, much higher retention. I’m not sure if it is improving the brew, but anything that combats channeling is going to lead to more consistent quality. I did find that too much water, particularly with oilier beans, could gum up the grind a bit.
Similar to the Weis Distribution Tool, it’s a case where I hadn’t know this existed, but since learning of it I’m seeing it in almost every Instagram clip of a barista making coffee (follow enough coffee shops and roasters, and you too will see tons of espresso making and latte art mastery). I’m going to have to watch them more carefully to see if there are other touches I should be trying. Bottomless portafilter? Dosing funnel? Distribution tool? Spring-loaded tamper? I’m game for anything that helps make better coffee.
