Willamette Week is SO on top of the scene, putting The Oregonian to serious shame in that department, although kudos to Luciana Lopez for her astute covering.  One of these days we'll meet, as promised mutually...but a nice stroke for us of Portland Cello Project to see a bunch (4) of our fave collaborators make WWeek's top 10 local list

http://wweek.com/editorial/3426/10966/

I'm still amazed that Amy McCullough and gang had the foresight to arrange the video of the Weinmark coffee cupping with mbilly (scrolldown the article).  It is no surprise that Adam sold out all of the special java on their recent NW tour...what better way (outside of buying La Lamentor and other releases, of course) to take a piece of the band home....

Well, I hadn't intended on making this the subject of my first blog entry ever...impressions of the book "The Devil's Cup" by Stewart Allen were to go first....but reading the recent NY Times article about the Japanese siphon bar at the Blue Bottle Café in San Francisco, the Clover explosion, etc. truly made me gag.  What the HELL is going on in the coffee world? Had Bush's certifiable state of the union speech not come AFTER this article appeared I would have assumed IT had unleashed so many Pandora's boxes full of java fetishism.  I guess the facts just speak for themselves and context RULES.  I feel as angry at these fetishists as I did at Robert Parker and Michel Rolland in  "Mondovino".  Sure, their qualifications are impeccable and their hubris and fortunes excessive, but their elitism is nauseating.  'Nuff said.  The american Monstera continues to roll over every xoloescuintle in its path.  Hell, we friggin' INVENTED great coffee out here in the Pacific Northwest, like, uh, ten or twenty years ago, didn't we?  Who reads history, anyway?

I love having access to the great coffees of the world and the ability to roast those beans to a degree of hedonistic drinkability, then share it.  I know growers who go through extraordinary circumstances to share the fruit of their land with me and my customers.  I don't need or want the hipster mavens with scanty life experience resumes around town (Portland) to ever tell me what great coffee is; it's actually quite obvious.  Kudos to those who love coffee and wish to explore nuance, but make up your own damn minds. You'll probably survive even if you don't pick up the jasmine, ugli fruit, burnt toast, barnyard and stone(d) fruit; look for the smell of COFFEE.  Get that first, and last.  I know the Clover is capable of producing a nice cup of coffee, although a certain shop in town ruined a potentially wonderful cup of excellence Brazil in my second-ever cupful.  My third was at CoffeeFest in Seattle, a truly wretched experience (right on the heels of a great espresso shot at the 49th Parallel booth) with the nouvelle "natural decaf" from the normally incredible Daterra people.  Oh well.  But what gonzo caches of coffee you could acquire for $11K...hell, $10,800 for beans and the rest on a Technivorm, and ya could be just as happy as the woman on the farm who picked ripe cherries ALL DAY to earn, MAYBE what ya just spent on that cup.   I'm happy for those in the business who are profiting nicely, even according to the manufacturers $$$ analysis, but please don't riddle me with any excessive bullshit, por favor.  The first two layers are more than enough.  But at least the Clover dudes don't have to spend months learning how to stir water on the correct zen path.

The world seems awash with coffee, good and bad. Badbeard's is all about choosing and roasting only exceptional beans, and insuring that the far-flung growers whose lovingly-cultivated products we sell get their fairest share. It's no longer enough to merely tout buying organic & fair trade products…it's put up or shutup. We in the roasting community can seriously impact some of the world's most remote and impoverished agronomic enterprises. To this end, Badbeard's heartily supports the Café Femenino Foundation (see Café Femenino) and buys superb green beans from the Organic Products Trading Company ("Optco"), a direct importer of coffees from Café Femenino projects in Peru, Mexico and Guatemala. Optco's tireless, hands-on works with these growers/producers not only ensures great coffee but social balance, sustainable farming practice, and quality of life. We have consistently found the best coffees to represent a higher-conscience from grower to roaster, and consumers of our java will notice the difference in every cup.