Super Solenoid

Pictures from my trip to Brazil.

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:00:13 -0500

Pictures from my trip to Brazil.

So, I was pretty bad at updating while I was in Brazil...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:43:00 -0500

In my defense, my internet connection was usually shaky, and typing on an iPad totally sucks.

I did, however, write a couple of blogs about my experience, and you can find them, and some pictures here:

Part 1

Part 2

If people have particular questions about what I learned, please feel free to ask. My inbox is open.

I can't believe I'm actually leaving for Brazil tomorrow...

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 23:12:35 -0400

I will update as often as I can.

Table Service

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 17:53:57 -0400

I’m not sure if this is just an issue where I live, or maybe just an issue for me, but I suspect it’s more of an industry wide thing.

I’m really quite sick of counter service. I still love coffee, and drinking it, and having it made by other people, and even paying for it, but I’m tired of every cafe feeling the same, and a majority of it has to do with the fact that there are almost no cafes in New Zealand doing table service.

I get that it isn’t efficient in terms of staff, but I think if you’re trying to sell a premium product, you should be offering premium service to go with it. We, as an industry, are trying to convince people to pay more than they have ever paid for coffee. Unfortunately, I don’t think quality alone is enough to convince them of that. I actually don’t think it should be enough.

You could find the most famous chef in the world to cook me dinner, and I still wouldn’t pay more than $15 if I had to wait around in line, find my own table and pay at the counter before I sat down. Why should anyone pay $12 for a cup of coffee if the experience is exactly the same as the one they had when they paid $3.50?

appliedcoffeetechnology: Not that kind of cupping, Linkedin.

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 17:23:02 -0400

appliedcoffeetechnology:

Not that kind of cupping, Linkedin.

Photo

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 17:21:30 -0400

Pictures taken by Daniel Minson @mintydan

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 19:23:00 -0400

Pictures taken by Daniel Minson @mintydan

So...

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 19:20:08 -0400

Turns out if you work for a coffee company, and you write a proposal explaining why it’s a totally awesome idea for them to send you to Brazil, they might just accept it. That’s right, I’m going to Brazil! I’ll be spending a week on the Coffee Science Origin Trip, and then another two weeks working on Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza (because WWOOFing on FAF is so much fun to say). Expect A LOT of blog updates about my trip, and some seriously photo-heavy posts in October/November.

"Ah well, a morning with weak coffee is still beaucoup better than a morning with no coffee."

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 04:36:52 -0400

“Ah well, a morning with weak coffee is still beaucoup better than a morning with no coffee.”

- (via thatcoffeehouse)

Do you ever have that moment when you’re dialing in first thing in the morning, and you don’t put a...

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 21:10:16 -0400

Do you ever have that moment when you’re dialing in first thing in the morning, and you don’t put a cup under the spouts because you haven’t set your grind right and you think it’s going to be a shit shot, but then it starts coming out and it’s like, the most beautiful shot you’ve ever pulled? And you’re like, “OMGWTFNOOOOOOOOO!”, but it’s too late, all the liquid-fire-magic-gold is down the drip tray.

I swear...

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 20:40:31 -0400

If you post a picture of some disgusting Starbucks monstrosity covered in whipped cream and syrupy grossness while gushing about how much you “totally love” coffee I will pee on everything you love.

This was heaps of fun. Thanks heaps to Lamason Brew Bar for...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 20:12:37 -0400

This was heaps of fun. Thanks heaps to Lamason Brew Bar for hosting and filming this. If anyone is interested in a geeky run down of what I learned, message or something.

I wonder if people will ever stop asking for their drinks to be extra hot? Or how long it will be...

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 19:15:43 -0400

I wonder if people will ever stop asking for their drinks to be extra hot? Or how long it will be before cafes stop preheating the cups for their filter brews. It makes me grumpy to have to wait extra long for a filter coffee to cool down enough to be able to actually taste it.

Go Aymon!

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 22:32:49 -0400

Go Aymon!:

In other news, it’s really cool to see more people from producing regions in the finals.

drawcoffee: Close up of an evening chemex. (Taken with...

Sun, 27 May 2012 21:54:05 -0400

drawcoffee:

Close up of an evening chemex. (Taken with instagram)

Are you a coffee person?

Tue, 22 May 2012 21:13:21 -0400

You should totally go here and submit any ideas you have for coffee research. It’s rad.

theatlantic: NIH Study: Coffee Really Does Make You Live...

Wed, 16 May 2012 19:39:27 -0400

theatlantic:

NIH Study: Coffee Really Does Make You Live Longer

Caffeine addicts, rejoice: all the coffee you’re downing over the course of a day could be lengthening your lifespan. For real.

According to research published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, people who drank four or five cups of coffee a day tended to live longer than those who drank only a cup or less. The benefit was more pronounced for women, but men also stand to gain somewhat from pounding joe.

Read more. [Image: antwerpenR/Flickr]

Really terrible photo, but interesting article.

Having said that, I don’t drink coffee for my health. I drink it because it’s delicious. And correlation does not equal causation.

Another response blog...

Tue, 15 May 2012 20:17:38 -0400

I promise I’m not trying to make a habit of writing posts in response to the things I read on Jimseven, but I just happened to be having a conversation with a coworker about supply and demand about an hour before I read the newest post.

What really jumped out at me in what Mr. Hoffman wrote was this rather throw-away comment:

are you able to deliver product where the value and price match up? If the answer is no then a piece of the business puzzle is wrong. Wrong place, wrong offer or just not a viable idea.

The conversation I had been having before was specifically about non-pressurized coffee in New Zealand, and how poorly it’s been selling. NZ is big on espresso, and it’s been an uphill battle for the last few years to convince the average kiwi that filter isn’t just a slightly fancier version of instant.

One of the things we were talking about is how many brew bars we had seen open up which were unable to sustain any meaningful amount of customers interested in trying filter coffee - that is, they would open a cafe with a three group espresso machine, hire one or two baristas who have never touched a paper filter in their lives to run it, and expect to sell loads of filter with only one humble Chemex, a steaming jug to pour and the espresso machine’s hot water tap for brew water.

Not only does this mean their non-pressurized offerings are likely to taste quite bad, if more than one or two people want one, they have no means of supplying it. In the last place I worked before I started training, management was constantly pushing us to try to sell more filter, but the reality was there was only one Chemex and a couple of Swiss Golds available, and there weren’t enough staff on to be able to make it well anyway.

To me, this seems to send a message to the customer that non-pressurized coffee is something of a gimmick. A fad that will eventually pass, leaving trusty old espresso as the reigning queen. This is made even worse when non-pressurized offerings aren’t served in a way which implies value (same cups that espresso is served in, offering milk and sugar, low prices etc).

I don’t think brew bars in New Zealand are an inviable idea. In fact, I think they could thrive. I think James Hoffman is quite right when he says that “…people like nice things.” Well made filter coffee is extremely nice. However, it will never catch on if we keep treating it exactly the same as espresso.

I’m not quite sure what my point was, now… I think I’m saying if you want to open a five star restaurant, you don’t hire one fry cook, one teenager as a waiter and serve your food on paper plates… This is particularly important if you’re opening your restaurant in an area which has never had anything but fast food.

Photo

Mon, 14 May 2012 21:29:52 -0400

some more thoughts on coffee and gender

Mon, 14 May 2012 01:37:00 -0400

Since writing my very first post, and then that other one after it, I’ve been involved in an awful lot of discussion about women, and women who make coffee, and men who work with women who make coffee, and every other variation of the combination of coffee and gender. Some of it has been fascinating, and some of it has been frustrating, and a whole lot of it has been from women wanting to thank me for what I had written, and to let me know that my experience was not unique, and that they appreciated someone finally talking about it.

Jimseven has just posted another blog about Coffee and Gender, and it seems like this topic is going to be an ongoing ‘thing’ for a while now. On the whole, I think I said what I wanted to say, and it sparked a lot of interesting discussion, which is what I wanted it to do. There are a few things that keep coming up, though, which make me feel like I need to write some more.

Coffee isn’t sexist, people are.

I’ve been reading/hearing a lot of discussions in which women say they don’t like a particularly sexist aspect of the coffee industry, and for one reason or another their statements are dismissed. It seems to me that a lot of the time it’s because a lot of the issues being spoken about are just issues with sexism in general. I think it’s a little naive, considering the overwhelming amount of sexism and prejudice within human history, to assume that a lack of women participating or excelling in a particular field has nothing to do with sexism. I don’t think there are very many people in the world, for example, who would argue that sexism is not the primary reason there has never been a female POTUS.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I certainly don’t expect the coffee industry to smash the patriarchy. I do, however, expect those with privilege to own up to the fact that they have it, and do their best not to trample on those who don’t. Tackling sexism within the coffee industry is just the same as tackling sexism within any other industry, which is just like tackling prejudice within any facet of our society * - if you only treat the symptoms, you’ll never cure the disease.

If you’ve never been divided, you don’t get to decide what’s divisive.

I hear a lot of people saying things like, “I don’t pay attention to gender, race or sexuality. I just think of people as people.” and that I shouldn’t talk about gender or prejudice because it calls attention to things which are ‘awkward’ or uncomfortable. I don’t want to be rude, but 9 times out of 10 these statements come from white, middle class, able-bodied, intelligent, educated, straight cis men. I have yet to meet a woman who ‘doesn’t see gender’ or a Person of Color who claims to be ‘colorblind’.

These kinds of statements are incredibly dismissive, hurtful, and they absolutely reek of privilege. It is usually those who have never been seen as ‘other’ who have the privilege of ignoring gender, ethnicity, ability and sexuality. Until society is able to treat me as an equal, I am at least partly defined by my womanhood, and the marginalization it has resulted in. Until I can live a day in which I am not reminded of my status in society, I will not be told by others that I shouldn’t speak about it for fear of being ‘divisive’. It is prejudice which divides, not the discussion of it.

Hopefully this doesn’t come off as me saying, “shut up forever if you aren’t a girl.” I understand the sentiment, but I feel like in reality statements like these do more harm than good. They perpetuate an environment in which the realities of privilege and prejudice don’t ever have to be acknowledged, and the real experiences of those affected by these things can be ignored under the guise of ‘equality’. They stifle conversations which must be had if true equality can ever happen.

There is a very big difference between Affirmative Action and special treatment.

A lot of people have accused me of wanting the WCE or SCAA to extend some special olive branch to women, which would let every girl in the world know that she was extra-super-welcome at the barista competition. This seems like something of a straw-man argument, and it’s one I don’t particularly care to address.

I do want to talk about having been told I shouldn’t enter the NZBC for the reasons I entered. My primary reason for getting interested in competing was because there weren’t many women in my country doing so. As a female barista, I felt like I could do something about that. Don’t get me wrong, I had plenty of other reasons for entering, too. I enjoyed competing, and I learned an awful lot while training for it. I feel like I came out of it a better barista, more connected with the New Zealand coffee scene, and I feel really good about competing next year, for reasons which have nothing to do with gender. However, that doesn’t change the fact that it was gender which got me motivated in the first place.

I have, and will continue to encourage other women to compete, volunteer and judge. If I am ever skilled and lucky enough to place well, I hope to be a role model for other women who want to compete. I don’t expect to be given special treatment, and I don’t expect more or less praise because of my gender. What I want is to encourage a group of people who have, historically speaking, been given very little encouragement.

I think that’s all for now.

*Just to be clear, I’m fully aware that in the grand scheme of prejudices, I have it pretty damn good. Please don’t confuse that statement with me saying sexism within the coffee industry is exactly the same, or even comparable with other forms of marginalization. My only point is that it’s naive and dismissive to treat something as systemic as sexism within a particular industry as an individual problem.