Coffee Novelist

Comparing coffee and wine

Coffee Novelist

April 3, 2023

Tulum, Q.ROO | Mexico

In my family of origin, I am considered the coffee guy. I was sitting in Brew Tulum experiencing a cafe Turko talking to another member of my family of origin. He was experiencing a Cafe de Olla, and in the family is considered to be the wine guy.

I once worked in the coffee industry and the other guy, my identical twin, works in the wine industry. No surprisingly , my twin and I look the same. One could say the same about coffee and wine. Both are liquids after all.

But that is where the similarity ends. Yes, my twin and I look the same. We were so hard to tell apart when we were younger that the only way that one could tell was to ask me to turn around to see the birthmark on the back of my neck. That trick, of course, was done only by folks who knew the birthmark was there in the first place. If you didn’t know, you guessed, or asked, or just gave up.

Maybe my twin and I chose career fields that are so outwardly similar, but inwardly different, in an unspoken, subconscious, twinpathic agreement to form our own unique identities. Probably not.

Anyway, the vine of the grape and tree of the coffee cherry had no choice but to be different. My twin brother and I still enjoy being twins but see more value in our differences. That day at Tulum I felt the coffee industry was trying to be more wine like. It shouldn’t. Take it from me, the confusion gets old after a while.

At the start of this post, I used the word experience instead of drink. Brew Tulum is a coffee experience to be sure. It is a warm, welcoming place and I recommend heading there when in St. Louis. Don’t get me wrong here, a coffee experience has it’s time and place. That morning with my twin at Tulum was just that, a memorable experience. Partly because I mistakenly put the sugared candy cube in the bottom of my cafe Turko. So first wave of me.

The barista sommelier server came over upon noticing my mistake. She smiled and gave me the explanation of how and when to apply the cube. My wine versed twin observed all this having started his coffee experience mistake free.

After some good natured humor at my expense, my wine experience twin noted that my coffee world had some catching up to do. Wine has been around for 8000 years, coffee merely 800.

Feeling fully superior to me now, he observed that Wine does better than coffee in spanning the space from everyday commodity to luxury product. He did not really say that. He confessed he took it from an article he had just read in a wine trade magazine.

I felt a bit clumsy, a little undercaffeinated, and ready to drink some coffee. I was not in the mood for an experience. So first wave of me, I know. But I’m always going to view coffee as more functional. It can be a great experience for lots of folks for sure, but just don’t put too much between my coffee and me.

For now, and for me, coffee is always going to be a part of something, not the point of something.

After drinking our experiences, and getting ready to leave, my twin did say that, according to the article, coffee is on it’s way to being a luxury experience. Fine for some folks but too confusing for me. Then again, maybe I just don’t like being the one being confused.

I think I just made up the word twinpathic.

You might possess a morningness chronotype if…

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March 25, 2023

10 questions to verify your morningness chronotype

The author of this post was up before me so he thought it was a good time for a re-post.

Morningness-eveningness or chronotype is an individual difference trait¹. This trait refers to the sleep-wake behavior (preferred bed times and wake times), as well as to times preferred for peak cognitive and physical performance and to psychological aspects, such as affect (e.g., the feeling after awakening). Some people are early risers that get up early, but go to bed early in contrast to people that get up late and go to bed late. Morning types (sometimes colloquially labelled as ‘larks’) usually feel refreshed soon after awakening and have their peak cognitive performance in the morning.

Like me, you might possess a morningness chronotype

If you wake up, roll over, see that the clock reads 5:58 and feel good because you’ve slept in. On a Sunday.
You enjoy the view from your front porch-before the sun is up.
You know the meaning of antelucan because it describes your favorite time of day.
When you’ve been up and writing for an hour or so before heading to work, and your start time is 6 a.m.
When your son texts you asking you to get him to the airport at 5:45 on a Saturday morning. And you text back ‘That fits into my schedule”
You’ve been up long enough on weekends to want a nap before Sunday Brunch.
You can verify whether it is actually darkest just before dawn.
It’s your job to wake up the “pre-dawn” hours.
You are up weeing before the wee small hours do.
You can observe and marvel at just how calm and beautiful this world really is.
Your start you day with a cup of coffee listening to “Music Through the Night”

I added a couple new items to the list.

Do something which requires faith

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March 16, 2023

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing
our wings on the way down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

Do something which requires faith

I remembered this post while emailing an author acquaintance that I was going to sign the agreement to have The Trier manuscript made into a book. This process is not going to happen for free. My email actually contained the line “I’m putting my money where my mouth is.” However, I feel it more accurate to say “I’m putting my money where my mind is.”

After hitting send to the author friend, I went back to find this post. I read it just now. It made me feel even better for having taken the leap of faith I just did.

Putting my faith in a schedule outside me

For years now, I have had a day off during the week. My job has been one set up on a four day, ten hour weekly schedule. The ten hour days usually started at six or six thirty and often exceeded the scheduled ten hours. Draining physically and leaving nothing in the tank for the remains of the day, the four days could suck.

However that weekday off more than made up for it. It freed me to make appointments, clean the house, run errands, plan the calendar for the upcoming weekend and generally feel good about not going into work on a random weekday. Most importantly the day created time for me to write. To write in the morning. And I mean the ass-grabbing early mornings, often starting before five. I figured if I had to get up really early to trudge to work, then I could surely get up early to do something I really wanted to do.

Maximum Embellishment: VINTAGE CALENDAR JUNE 1910

I even came to understand that my physical body was not in charge. If I set the intention to write early on my day off, my mind woke me as reliably as any alarm would or could. Off I went to write. It has worked for years now, helping me write and rewrite “Back outta the World.” I wrote Tripio for the first, second and third times and launched a blog that has just recently hit 100 followers. My output was fueled by coffee and the certainty that the mornings were, as Maya Angelou said about her writing, “the only time I felt I was any good.”

Keeping the faith ain’t easy

Then comes the Pandemic. Don’t get me wrong. I feel fortunate, like somehow I had a ticket on the Pandemic Express and it blew past my stop. I kept my job, no one I know well has been hospitalized and I have kept a sense of normalcy in my overall life. Except that work changed its schedule. Not an uncommon response for these times. This meant a disruption to my daily life, and I felt, possible disaster to my writing life.

My weekday of assured, productive writing was gone. Like that. The time I knew, I knew I could write as well as I was going to write all week was gone. The reasons for knowing that time would be productive are baked into those one hundred posts I mentioned earlier. The quick and dirty message being that by the time one sits down to write it may already be too late.

Sure, I could write weekend mornings, but they have a different sort of pull to them. I have been getting up early again every morning before work but have only time to re-work Back outta the World– literally a paragraph at a time – then it’s off to the salt mines. As I write this, I have to smile to myself because this scene recalls Jay in Tripio, “bargaining with himself” for a couple more minutes of writing the same book, before he races out of his apartment to catch a bus for his shift at his Starbucks three decades ago. Whoever said, “Writing is mostly rewriting“, was not wrong.

Faith usually requires interior dialogue

“Just write in the evenings, dumb ass, you have the time these days.“

Easy for me to say. What if I suck? When I wake up, clear headed, free of the scattering five senses, I can easily access my wonderful, bountiful mind. Then and there when it is all so easily available, so effortlessly harvested. I have done this for years and know it works. Before all the rest of the day and the world find it and begin to take it from me. I know it works. I’ve seen it take shape on the screen in front of me. What if I won’t be any good in the evenings or even late afternoons?

I was left with no choice to change my tried and true method. My blogs were falling behind. Rick, T and Jay from Back outta the World were still stuck in the hills of Virginia on their way to Mexico.

I was still not quite ready to commit to any new method until one recent Sunday when I found myself on a friend’s porch on a beautiful humidity free morning. We were listening to and watching a religious service being live streamed. The message of the service was simple: that we live in a world where all the answers are at our fingertips, in our phones, laptops, podcasts and you name it. And with all that it is more difficult to do anything without knowing the answer, or most of it beforehand. The catch was that all that knowledge may not help us. It can, at times, be better for our mind, body, and soul to not know the answers beforehand.

Keep doing things that require faith

“Do something which requires faith.” This line came out of the laptop at me like I was the only one listening. Thinking back, I was. My friend had dashed inside to refill her coffee. The service was being live streamed to an empty church.

At that moment, I knew that I had to go on faith with my writing. Do something that requires faith. I will write on faith. Any writer must, really. If it doesn’t come easily, I will work on it, find a way to access my writing mind. I will work on it while holding on to the belief and faith that I can find my wonderful, bountiful, distraction free, writing mind at a time that is not of my choosing.

It worked. I wrote The Trier- The Story of a Coffeehouse- since I first posted this. It will be available on Ingram & Amazon by Memorial Day.

The cost of coffee

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February 28, 2023

The cost of coffee

It had been over 20 years, at least a coffee wave or two, since I regularly bought whole bean coffee at coffee houses. I was spoiled by Starbucks at the start of my coffee drinking life. Yes, Starbucks was once a coffee company. They sold great varietals such as Ethiopian Sidamo, Celebes Kalossi, Costa Rica La Terrazu. I say spoiled because I received a free half pound of coffee every week just for putting on my green apron. I worked there long enough so that when I left it was hard for me to stomach paying for whole bean coffee from anywhere but a grocery store. Call me cheap. I ain’t mad.

Getaway Car by Razvan Vezeteu on Dribbble

A couple weekends ago, we are now two decades and at least two coffee waves on from my days wearing the green apron, and I just heard what my pound of Ethiopian Guji was going to cost me.

How much did that cost?

I had been in St. Louis for the weekend and had already visited the Northwest Coffee Company for to go coffee a couple times. On the way out of town I asked my ride to stop in front of Northwest so I could run in and buy some whole bean. I grabbed a bag of an Ethiopian, having fond memories of the African varietals. When I heard the price, my coffee life flashed before my eyes. The line of people behind me were not interested in watching with me. I felt like I had no choice but to leave with the coffee I had in hand. It was the reverse of a bank robbery. The car was running while I was giving the money away. I fled Northwest, jumped in the car, and we sped out of town.

Where the Wild Coffee Grows: The Untold Story of Coffee from the Cloud Forests of Ethiopia to Your Cup by [Jeff Koehler]

I had plenty of time to think as the reverse getaway car sped over the dreary midwinter landscape of central Illinois. The initial sticker shock wore off. I considered but gave up the idea of going back to work at Starbucks just for a free weekly half pound of coffee. They don’t sell coffee anymore anyway.

After some fabulous smash burgers at the Iron Skillet gas station restaurant outside Brazil, Indiana, I felt better. Lunch hadn’t set me back, I did say I was cheap, and I began to look forward to tomorrow morning’s Guji. My mind stayed on coffee, Indiana in January is not an engrossing landscape, and I remembered what I had read about Ethiopian coffee from the book pictured above.

The hard work cost of coffee

Coffee trees are not easy to grow. The original source trees for all the world’s coffee come from the Ethiopian cloud forests, named for the altitude and shade, which are both vital for the growing of said trees.

It is a growing environment that is not easy to replicate. It is not easy to convert the fruit, the coffee cherries into our coffee beverage. This is mostly hard work. And it is hard to grow a coffee tree, hard to get the fruit to mature, and hard to pick it once it does. That is why coffee was originally consumed by popping a coffee cherry into your mouth after it had fallen to the ground.

Additionally, the growing of the fruit of the tree is just the beginning of a long, complicated series of moving parts that bring our coffee, as we drink it, to us all.

That is my review of Where the Wild Coffee Grows. And that is why I don’t review books as such. If you read this book and drink coffee, you will not bitch about the price of a bag of whole bean again. You know, like I did at the start of this post.

The Guji was well worth it, by the way.

calling out coffee drinks

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February 8, 2023

Calling out coffee drinks

“Tall cocoa!”

It was my shift. My morning at the controls of the elevated four group La Marzocco espresso machine. It was an espresso bar as theatre stage, a relic from the days before Starbucks customized and cranked out location after location. It took two steps up from behind the bar to reach the controls of the unit, which I then handled during the four hour, 800 customer rushes on Saturday mornings. However busy it was, one did feel safe up there, far from the madding crowd.

I recall one fine spring day when the entire population of Lincoln Park had decided to get a coffee from the new coffee place called Starbucks. This was 1991.The madhouse that was a Saturday morning at a pioneering Starbucks store was something to behold. This was not the time nor the place for latte art. But seriously, it seemed like the line would never end and it wore you down.

Calling out a drink incorrectly

One customer sticks with me all these years later. I remember calling out the drink as tall cocoa when I knew I had put a shot of espresso in the cup, right on top of the chocolate, swirled it, then slowly added steam milk. Then topped it with the whipped cream. It was a tall mocha.

But I called out the correct drink incorrectly. The customer would not take it even after I promised it was the correct drink, just my mistake calling it out.

I insisted. She refused.

I promised. She refused.

The doors kept opening only to let even more customers in.

I remade the drink, called it correctly, looking directly at her, and she left happy.

This encounter sticks with me all these years later because I knew I was right. The customer didn’t believe me because of what I called the cup of coffee.

The Coffee-House: A Cultural History by [Markman Ellis]

The book that gave me the list below.

What I accidentally called a cup of coffee is mild compared to what the owners of taverns and alehouses of Restoration England called a cup of coffee. They were trying to stop folks from drinking this new, customer stealing drink called coffee.

Calling out coffee in the 1600’s

They came up with some great derogatory names for coffee in an attempt to stop their customers from leaving the alcohol serving establishments. The new beverage called coffee was quickly gaining popularity and the coffee houses becoming full of their former customers. Maybe not as full as my Starbucks on that Saturday morning. But too full for the tavern owners.

Below are some examples of the ways they described a cup of coffee. I found these amusing and revealing on their own when I read them. Hope you do as well.

My customer was lucky I didn’t’ make them one of these instead.

warm water boiled with burnt beans
hot hell breathe
boiled soot
made with the scent of old crusts, and shreds of shoe leather burnt and beaten to a powder
black, hasty, hell-burnt liquor
syrup of soot
a Satanic tipple
a horse pond liquor
Anybody want a free tall cocoa?

Howard Schultz’s partners

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January 24, 2023

My old partner

Howard Shultz and I were partners once. The Starbucks Coffee Company in my historical fiction novel Tripio was, in real life, far and away the best workplace I have experience, before or since. There have been a lot more workplaces since I hung up my apron than I care to admit. My point is, it has been a while.

I left Starbucks behind many times in the since years. My physical body left in 1994. I left it behind emotionally and editorially a second time when I finished writing Tripio. It is impossible to get the company entirely out of my system since one sees a store practically every time you leave the house.

But, I haven’t actively followed Starbuck either. Not that I need to. Family and friends send me articles about Starbucks quite often. And so that is how I came to read the NY Times article on why Howard Shultz is taking the attempts to unionize Starbucks so personally.

I referenced my novel Tripio because that time (1990-1994) is mentioned in the article in the following expert, “Mr. Schultz wrote that an employee making $20,000 per year in 1991 would have been able to cash out 1991 stock options for than $50,000 in 1996.” Not to question the Times accuracy but Howard would have never used the word employee, it would have been partners. It is how Howard always, always, always referred to folks who worked at Starbucks. It is how he referred to me when he shook my hand and gave me my Bean Stock Bravo Award.

I felt like a partner at Starbucks, not an employee.

I feel like Howard would be happy to hear that. It is want he still want to hear from everyone who works at Starbucks today. Problem is, Howard, ol pardner, it is no longer possible.

One question I leave out of Tripio that I still ask to this day is, Why didn’t Starbucks just stay a small, regional company? And a great place to work? Why does getting bigger and bigger have to be the goal? When is enough enough?

I do think Howard Schultz has the best interest of the current Starbucks partners at heart when he goes to work every day. Now there are just too many of them these days. 35 years removed from Tripio, Starbucks is a massive global entity. That must have been part of Howard’s plan. But the cost of all that is losing the partners he had in getting him there. Now, he has employees, like every other CEO out there.

Bummer.

Take the time, it passes anyway

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January 10, 2023

Take the time

We live in a world where brevity is prized. Hacks, links, flash fiction. I could think of more but I just don’t have the time. Ha. Ha. If you can say it quickly enough it doesn’t even have to make sense, like a tweet.

Seriously though, if the prize or reward doesn’t cost time or thought, its not worth having. Or it has no enduring or lasting value, so you want another one, and another and another. While that is a great set up for the folks on the other end, telling you how great it is to use, have, or experience something so easily that you barely have to think, it actually diminishes the experience as a whole.

Feel the pain

I’m taking a stand on my blog. I am calling to reverse this trend. Take the time to think, consider, review. In short (a joke) just take the time to feel the pain, inconvenience, effort of doing something because that is what makes it worthwhile, creates a lasting appreciation for what you have just experienced. Not my idea, it’s just the human condition people, so work with it.

I’m starting small in my crusade against the inanity of brevity. I have a list of words that should not be shortened. Without further ado, unless you want to take the time, feel the experience, of clicking the provided link and learn where that idiom originated, here goes:

Pod- Short for podcast. But without the cast part, there is no podcast. It’s like casting your fishing pole without the hook and line. Or bait.

Fest- An oldie but a goodie. It brings to mind infestation, and other not so pleasant events.

Appointment- Please keep using this word. It flows well, can’t really be confusing unless you call to cancel it, then you have nothing to cancel.

There you go. Short, sweet and hopefully it cost you at least a little time to read.

I do like blog, which is short for web log.

Don’t write trash, pick it up instead

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December 13, 2022

Don’t waste your time writing trash

Don’t waste your time writing that trash you write. Hey, I should know. I’ve written more than my share. It took four seconds to find an example from on old file. See below:

Mid-step brooding was halted for an instant though as Altonstreet realized that Philpatrick would have already been seated, sipping his coffee significantly.

Trash clipart Vector Art Stock Images | Depositphotos

One person’s trash is NOT another person’s treasure

I’m not going there with this post. What I am saying is that it may be a way better use of your time to pick up trash rather than write it. David Sedaris does it, though in the link below, it says he does his “thinking” when he’s doing it. But, he is writing.

I know this because I have seen it work over and over and over. I consciously step away from the keyboard to allow my subconscious mind to take over my writing. I then take my five senses and conscious, at the keyboard “writing” mind, and go do the dishes, feed the cat, grab more coffee. When I sit back down, boom, I’m writing. Or more accurately, filling in the blank page, acting as a conduit between minds, between the cluttered day to day world and the limitless subconscious mind.

It doesn’t have to be trash

I seen it work. I first saw this work on long drives. I was given the names of long forgotten baristas from a Starbucks I worked at 30 years ago. I would write early the morning of my drive and about 50 miles in, conscious mind and 5 senses engaged in the task of driving, the name I needed popped into my head. I wasn’t picking up trash, but all our minds work alike.

Since then, I “give it to my subconscious mind” instead of writing trash. Of course I’m not talking about line editing or proofreading here. It is more the realization that what you need is ALWAYS THERE. I believe that with patience, time and an intentional distraction, such a driving, taking shower, mowing the lawn, that the answers will be there.

For further evidence, I attached this list of the greatest books of all time. I can list the utilized distraction that helped make the book a great one:

Moby Dick – Melville stared at waves on the Pacific Ocean for months

War and Peace –Tolstoy watched snow fall and ice crack

Don Quixote – Cervantes rode a donkey around the arid plateau that is La Mancha

100 Years of Solitude – You think that he could have written a longer book

The trash picking up in the interview below is in the latter part. But the whole interview is a great look a writer, who still has doubts about his work, even after all his success.

David Sedaris on finding a story anywhere and everywhere – 60 Minutes – CBS News

The post is part serious, part funny. I hope you can tell which is which.

Starbucks books for Starbucks fans

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December 11, 2022

Books for the Starbucks fan on your list

A while back I read How Starbucks Saved my Life by Michael Gates Gill. In the interest of full disclosure, I read it out of curiosity, as opposed to organic intellectual interest. In other words, I read it to see how that memoir compared to my historical fiction novel, Tripio. I may offer a full review in a later post. But for now, I will simply offer a comparison of “How” to Tripio, ingeniously using coffee as the yardstick.

How Starbucks Saved my Life = Blonde Roast

Lightly roasted coffee that’s soft, mellow and flavorful. Easy drinking on its own and delicious with milk, sugar or flavored with vanilla, caramel or hazelnut.

Tripio = Espresso

A complimentary blend of beans of differing origins: it is intense, deeply flavored and when brewed correctly leaves a lingering sweet aftertaste.

From Barista to Boardroom: Lessons about Life and Leadership from a Career in Coffee

I am also following up on my intention to find other books about Starbucks. I was curious to see if there were other novel length works of fiction out there with a Starbucks flavor. Ha, ha. I found the list below via Christine McHugh who is a Starbucks alum and author of the soon to be released From Barista to Boardroom. I will admit that I have yet to read any of the titles below expect the aforementioned. I have pre-ordered from Barista to Boardroom after speaking with author by phone. Both Barista and How can be and probably categorized as memoirs. Below are others worth a look that I have yet to read:

Coffee for Dummies by Major Cohen

Taking Responsibility: Heart mind and Soul by Jeff Hamill

It’s Not About the Coffee and The Magic Cup both by Howard Behar

Work Freely: Love your Job, Love your Life by Nancy Richardson

The Multiplier Effect of Inclusion by Tony Byers

Female Firebrands by Mikaela Kiner

Steady Work by Karen Guadet

Pour Your Heart into It and From the Ground Up both by Howard Schultz

This is a repost. I have since read and liked Barista to Boardroom.

National Espresso Day

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November 23, 2022

Have an espresso today.

Today is National Espresso Day. I have a doppio everyday. If you don’t know what a doppio is, then its fair to say you won’t know what an espresso is. If you read the link above then you will get a good idea of what the drink is.

The most relevant point in the article for today is that espresso, in the form we celebrate today is a product of a process of brewing. The water in your home brewer or any drip format, is contacted with the grounds slowly and under no pressure. Well, there is always a little when you need that first cup. Joking aside, the water goes around the grounds on it’s way to the pot or decanter.

What is espresso ?

In creating espresso, the water is under true psi pressure and is forced through the coffee grounds. That is the difference between a cup of drip coffee and an espresso.

Back to my everyday doppio, which means two, or double. I have one everyone morning created on an old Krups espresso machine.

I sit with my doppio and make a few journal entries as a way of waking up the nerves and mind. In that five or ten minute span, I note the time of morning and quality of my doppio. Here are just a few entries.

Tuesday July 5 5:45 a.m. Strong ass doppio.
Tuesday August 2 4:43 a.m. Slightly better doppio
Friday September 9 6:16 a.m. Great doppio-rich, creamy, full flavored, damn good
Wednesday November 2 5:30 a.m. Fab doppio
Wednesday November 23 5:17 a.m. Good ass doppio

This is an espresso. There is no drink called expresso.

Don’t try this at home. I was a barista for many years. One can’t just fall out of bed and make sweet, full bodied espresso topped with golden crema. I’m the exception.

If you look around your local coffee house you may see an Espresso Roast, or be asked do want that ground for espresso? And any bearded roast master worth his out of season knit toboggan will have his own espresso blend. Confusing?

Not to worry. Just know that today is for the drink espresso. It will be served in a small cup, which should be warm, with a saucer. Prepared properly it will should fully flavored with a sweet finish. I would tell you what to expect to pay but have no idea since as you now know, I always make mine at home. Good luck!

The article in the link says espresso last an hour. It is best consumed moments after it is served. Why didn’t they just ask me?