Via a link we came across on Twitter this morning:
From 2000 to 2011, the price of a cup increased 25.3%, with the average price of an Italian coffee now standing at €1, and as high as €1.50 in Milan.
Every day, the nation drinks about 80 million coffees at the bar. Assuming a price increase of 10 cents, that amounts to €8 million a day, or an incredible €2.9 billion more a year.
An astrophysicist observes her LIC barista do a pour-over and blogs about it for Scientific American. The takeaway: always be extracting.
"I'm going to work in a circular motion, starting from the center and making bigger and bigger circles around it. By doing this, I'm controlling a few different things. One, I'm controlling the time of the extraction [the time that the water is in contact with the grinds]. And two, I’m controlling the distribution of the water. If I fill the water all the way up, I can speed it [the extraction process] up. If I only put a little bit [of water in], I can slow it down. What I don't want is for the water to drop below the coffee because any coffee that's not touching water is not extracting."
Richie adds two ounces at a time, each one in an expanding spiral pattern. Gravity draws the water down through the grounds, dissolving them along the way, and drawing their rich flavor out and into the glass below. After the third spiral pour, he puts the kettle down and picks up a teaspoon. He gives the mixture a stir, creating a small vortex. "This little whirlpool here is going to keep the coffee grounds in the center and off of the side of the walls. The most important part about the brewing process is that all the grounds be in contact with the water," he explains.
Beautiful and moving little video by our friends Aengus and Jen. So much to learn from listening to the earth and making conscious choices about what kind of food we buy. Time to start the healing. You can buy organic espresso!
Returned from business trip to Florida to find my lovely wife picked me up a little surprise...
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Found this at a tradeshow in Orlando. You can choose your roast and beans which are then ground and turned in to a very fresh cup of Starbucks coffee. You can swipe a credit card for true self service. I wonder what the Barista union 405 thinks about this?
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Got that Farmer's Market Cafecito Organico hookup this weekend. Sitting way on top of the Illy. Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
In America, serving Espresso with a twist of lemon zest on the saucer is often seen as a "classy flourish." It is done in North America and sometimes in France, but not in Italy. Outside of Italy, this is called an "Espresso Romano." Italians are mystified at this. In Italy, it is only done when you're ill because the belief is that doing this will make you throw up (and therefore feel better.) To Italians, the appearance of a piece of lemon zest beside an Espresso appears to be an invitation to throw up in the restaurant.
Very interesting. Hopefully I have not lost valuable street cred with my Italian friends for posting this. This clearly brings new meaning to the term digestif. In any case, the shot above is of a double espresso that I desperately needed before lunch even came just to keep my eyes open.
Well, here's the Serge clip (Bronson Pinchot):
I went into "the city" for lunch today (an odd habit I've fallen into--those who live in NYC but in the "outer boroughs" refer to Manhattan as "the city"--leaving us in some sort of in-between ne(i)therland, neither in the city nor outside it really).
Met two fellow Cornell math grads for lunch, one of whom works in lower Manhattan and is something of an espresso conoisseur. He'd taken me after a previous lunch mtg to an espresso spot on New St (the little alley parallel to Broad and Broadway, south of Wall St), but today, after enjoying Sam's falafel in Zucotti park (the plaza SE of the WTC site), he walked us over to the Zibetto Espresso Bar, on Fulton St at William.
It's literally just a bar, with no seating in the spot aside from two stools in the front window. One just walks up to the bar, is served a small glass of water (to cleanse the palate?), and places one's order. My friends had a single and double shot, respectively, whereas I went with a latte. I don't claim to be a coffee conoisseur, but I certainly enjoyed my drink.
A visit to ZibettoEspresso.com reveals that there is a location in midtown as well.
Bought like an 8 pound stash of this stuff for emergencies...like this morning...when the last of the Illy and Lavazza is gone and the Cafecito Organico is a distant sense memory on my palette. I thought, how bad could it be? Trader Joe's caters to mainstream snobs like myself. It's not the best espresso, folks. No crema. In fact, it's like the Sanka of espresso. I need to get serious and get some real beans.
I took a look at the site Trader Joe's Fan for a review, and one person actually saw merit in the fact that it did not "taste like tea". You can't make this stuff up.
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