An interesting conversation was happening on Twitter this afternoon involving pricing and creating an espresso café culture here in the Twin Cities that more closely resembled Italy. Due to the fact that I’m not very good at checking Twitter, my response is almost certainly beyond tardy, but also this is a topic that deserves much more than 140 characters.
It may just be human nature, but anything we do repetitively – no matter how simple – has the possibility of becoming quite technical and complicated, and it becomes important to step back, breathe, and reassess the situation. It was in this spirit, that our new coffee brewing method (debuting at our new space) was born.
On Monday, my wife and I took my nephew to Sweetland Orchard to do some apple picking. It couldn’t have been a more gorgeous fall day.
I was reading in the paper today about the ongoing saga with Surly Brewing and its “destination” brewery. Cities are falling over themselves to court the company, while Surly remains coy about its plans.
This is all well and good, I suppose, but one quote from the article struck me. The owner of Surly’s described the ventures as “something people are going to travel to… It’s not like it’s just a neighborhood tavern.” What is so disconcerting about this statement is the lack of interest in place, as if being part of a neighborhood somehow degrades a product. And seems to imply that location is just another asset to be assessed be the numbers people.
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Last week I was reading the Dining & Wine section of the New York Times. There was a wine article about Barbera wines written by Eric Asimov.
While I enjoyed the entire article, one phrase really stuck in my head. He described a wine as “an easy-to-swallow lesson in how wine could be both pleasurable and thought-provoking, while performing its basic function of making food taste better.” (italics mine).
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Every weekend at the shop we do something we call Brew Bar, in which we take one coffee and explore a slower brewing method. The results are a brew that is really quite awesome, and – even better – can easily be done at home.
Another year has come and gone, which means it’s once again time for a Rick Love art installation at the shop. While a lot of art is content to simply hang on the wall, Rick’s like to move in and live in the space. Perhaps some regulars remember his neon “Clean is Not Perfect” and video loops from years past.
All this got me thinking about the ways in which we both allow and deny people access to our space and lives.
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Today I started training for my latest employee to work the espresso bar, which is an awesome time to reflect on what I’ve learned about espresso and coffee thus far in my life.
There was a recent opinion piece in the Star Tribune about waste and resources that used my industry as an examples. While I respect the author’s point with regards to making recycling rules simpler and more streamlined in order to decrease the amount of waste we throw into our nation’s landfills, I think there was essential failure of imagination about the way in which we produce and consume things.
Last month I spent a large amount of my time helping out at the local green (coffee) bean importer. It was an awesome experience and prompted me to think a bit about the experience of taste.
At the importer is a cupping lab where all the coffees that come in are supposed to be assessed for their quality. The intention of the lab is to provide a space free of distractions where they can accurately judge each incoming coffee. This makes sens, however, it prompted my thoughts to wander.
It almost goes without saying that we believe the best analysis is done “without distraction” or with our “undivided attention”. In many ways this is true, however, it’s also important to get out of the lab and taste things in other places… because place matters.
Where we are, what we’re feeling, these things aren’t always distractions from flavor, but in many ways, they create it. Amongst those of us who seek to get more out of food than simple nutrition, there is a misconception that because a lab may be a great environment for assessing quality, it follows that it must also be the place to best experience flavor and taste. However this rests on a flawed assumption that somehow by creating a boring environment, we’re eliminating the influence of it, when in reality, we’re simply creating another environment that affects us equally, although not always positively. We’re always someone who is somewhere, we can’t get away from that fact, even if we choose to ignore it.
It seems better to embrace this. Instead of eliminating influences, perhaps we should increase them. We should experience things in a myriad of settings with as many people as possible. This is how we “know” things in a relational way. I don’t (or, rather, didn’t) go on dates in labs, rather, I met people in various settings to truly see who they were.
John O’Donohue wrote of this kind of knowledge is respect to matters of the soul (of which I believe the taste experience is one). He said, “The light of modern consciousness is not gentle or reverent; it lacks graciousness in the presence of mystery; it wants to unriddle and control the unknown. Modern consciousness is similar to the harsh and brilliant white light of a hospital operating theater. This neon light is too direct and clear to befriend the shadowed world of the soul.”
We who seek out flavor are quick “to unriddle and control the unknown” in our pursuit of perfection. We pick apart our experience until there little is left to enjoy. It’s a good reminder to leave the lab and step our into the world of raw, wild experience. Though we may not know or be able to explain why, enjoyment – our ultimate goal – may follow.
Andrew Kopplin creates some of the most brilliant coffees, tasty teas and delicious hot chocolate in the Midwest. His café, Kopplin\'s Coffee, has a comfortable and modern aesthetic make for a popular meeting spot in the Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul, attracting a micro-culture of friendly people from all over the Twin Cities.