This Friday, 2 October, 7:30-8:30a, at Brown World HQ, 1702 W Kings Hwy in San Antonio’s beautiful Deco District.

Every drink on the menu=$1.  No limit.

Show up.  Meet new tech+coffee savvy friends.  Go to work HAPPY.

RSVP in the comments section.

Saturday 22 August at Brown World Headquarters. 9a-11:30a. We’ll be talking coffee in all its multi-faceted glory.  Free and open to the public but please RSVP as space is definitely limited.  These workshops fill up very quickly so don’t delay.

Just a little self horn tootin’ for a moment to draw your attention to an interview I did with my friend Colin Harmon from Dublin, Ireland.

Most of you who are “in the know” will recognize that name as belonging to a guy who won the Irish Barista Championship and the same guy who placed fourth at the 2009 World Barista Championship in Atlanta in April.  What a coincidence…it’s the SAME NAME for the SAME GUY!

I’ve enjoyed meeting Colin in Atlanta and getting to know him through the miracle of modern internet technology since and am trying to convince Colin it’s in his best interest to fly over to Texas sometime soon to make a grand tour of the growing coffee scene here.  (Ahem!) We’ll see how those efforts at getting him over here go.

Anyway,  here’s the link to the interview.  Enjoy.

In Luke 16 (it’s in the Bible) there is a story about a poor beggar man named Lazarus who lived and died in the shadow of a very wealthy man. During their lifetimes they each lived vastly different lives:  the wealthy man dining in luxury and comfort, while poor Lazarus having to eek out his very existence, literally, wishing for “what fell from the rich man’s table.”

In due course each man died, reads the text, and this is where it gets interesting (and where I want to focus the point of this post).  In typical biblical fashion, the author tells us that after death, upon each man opening his respective eyes, the tables had quite dramatically turned.  Poor, humble Lazarus, who had scrapped his way through life, was now enjoying his eternal rest for a life lived free of vice, while the rich man, who ostensibly brushed aside the beggar in their earthly life (though the text does not bear this out explicitly) now found himself in a place of unbelievable torment and agony.

(Incidentally, they say the thing about hell isn’t the heat and the fire, it’s having to live with yourself and your selfish, destructive earthly decisions forever.)

Anyway, the main word here in this passage, for me is “chasm.” Turns out when the rich man awakens to his fiery torment he can see Lazarus way far off in the distance, in the proverbial “bosom of Abraham” being comforted and generally relaxing and having a good time in paradise.  But when Lazarus calls out to Father Abraham for relief here is Abraham’s reply:

Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad

things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.  And besides all this, between us and

you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can

anyone cross over from there to us.  (Emphasis mine)

A “great chasm.”  Some translations call it a gulf.  Others, a deep ditch.  You get the gist.

My point here is that I see such a rift opening up in my corner of the coffee world, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.  Another way of thinking about it is imagining a group of cyclists in the mountains of the Tour de France or some such.  Everyone is plugging away to the summit, when all of a sudden a group or two or three guys simply up and pedal off, leaving the poor trudgeons to fall away in ignominy.

The gap I’m referring to is one I was thinking about Saturday in Austin at Caffe Medici, where I went to help judge a latte art contest.  About a dozen folks showed up, smacked down their ten clams and queued up to produce as good a set of tulips (this month’s theme) as possible.  Some were positively awful.  Others quite fabulous.  And I got to thinking that the really great ones sprang from the hands of those who worked at the elite shops in Texas, while the “latte amoebas” were being poured by shops that had little money, little exposure, little in the way of anything that could help them up their game and level of service to their customers.

Now, I know what you must be thinking right about now, and I agree wholeheartedly:  Latte art is by no means indicative of quality coffee.  You can have the prettiest stuff up top and nothing worth a sip beneath.  I know.  But I guess my larger point(s) is/are that the gap that seems to have opened up here in our small corner of the world is in some ways a small parallel to those happening in the wider world, where the “haves” have begun to quickly widen the gaps between themselves and the “have nots” in terms of equipment, economies of scale (i.e., opening second, third, etc., locations, often great distances from the original home base), training budgets, top barista competitors, etc.

What these events portend, I believe it’s too early to say definitively.  But my sense is that we’re on the cusp of watching these few large companies in our industry begin to grow and flex their muscles and form a middle tier monopoly as they leave the pond from which we all sprang (and where so many of the rest of us still remain) and jump to the lake, or the gulf, as it were.   Try as they might there is a real danger of corporatization afoot that I believe will be to the detriment of these great gems of our industry and to the rest of us.

Don’t misunderstand me.  I love the great coffee companies of the U.S.  They are a beacon of inspiration against which we often gauge our own metrics of excellence.  But for those companies and baristas who are just coming into the game, I hear the fear and awe in their conversations as I pass by, of how giant these outfits seem and how distant they are already feel.  The awe and respect is great–these companies deserve our admiration–but that cannot last forever and I fear it only can lead to disdain and these corporations begin to chain themselves across America (and possibly the world).

A friend asked me recently how big I thought Brown could get before the artisanal qualities of the “Brown brand” became diluted.  After holding forth for a while on Brown’s strategy for making people the cornerstone of every growth plateau,  I guess I thought that it’s definitely different for each company, but that surely if you grow beyond a certain size you run the risk of dilution and that means disillusion from the many coming up underneath you and a solidifying of that chasm betwixt indie us and corporate them.

I remember once hearing George Howell pontificating on the Ted Lingles of the world and their approach to quality.  Lingle used to say that the goal of the SCAA was to broaden the base to encourage as many as would to enter the bigger tent and thusly the quality standard was preached to a wider and wider  audience.  Howell, on the other hand (and not surprisingly) flatly disagreed.  He said the real work was way up at the top of the quality pyramid, pushing ever forward, even if the current picture was one of riders coldly leaving the pack for the summit.  Eventually, it was left for us to surmise, the benefits of that upward thrust by the few would trickle down and benefit the rest of the pyramid, and THIS was the way to draw people to our standards of quality first, quality always.

This post is obviously only half-baked; and I heartily welcome your pro and counters.  Should we celebrate that pack of great riders as they pull away and heap scorn on the cave dwellers left at the root of the mountain?  Or do those who blaze ahead have some responsibility somewhere to help bring others along, somehow, some way? (and what would that even look like?)  And is the gulf that is being fixed between the haves and have nots really even there?  Your comments below, please.

This is a coffee blog.  Usually.  Today I wanted to veer briefly off topic to share with you something profound that brought tears to my eyes.

I live in San Antonio and go to church in New Braunfels, a small bedroom community a short ride up Interstate 35.  On any given Sunday morning it is typical to see police running speed traps catching people heading north to Austin, Dallas or points beyond.  So I didn’t really think much of it when on an overpass bridge I saw three squad cars parallel parked with the officers standing down watching traffic pass.  A little unorthodox a method for gauging speed, I thought, but still, no biggie.  Then the next overpass came into view and this one had two parked ambulances, several police cars–lights on–and all the EMT’s and cops standing around, looking, waiting.  Hmmm.  At every subsequent freeway entrance I saw one or two police or highway patrol cars parked, each time with lights on.  Each time no one caught in their snare.  Just officers and public safety officials standing, waiting, watching.

On our exit off the freeway is when it all started to make sense.  Because there on the overpass and across to the other side and lined up along the sides of the road were not just official vehicles but throngs of human beings, some waving flags, many dressed in military uniforms, all of them clearly gathered on this route to await some momentous parade of some sort.

It was only as our vehicle slowed to a stop as we exited the freeway that I realized that these people were indeed waiting to see something special.  They must have been there to pay their last respects to the funeral motorcade of a fallen soldier as it passed by.

A frog quickly developed in my throat as I heard one of my children ask me why all those people were there with flags and dressed in red or white or blue (or all three).  And as I tried to explain this phenomenon I could hear and feel my voice crack, break under that wetness of my words:

“We live in the greatest nation on the earth, kids. Maybe the greatest nation ever. And we live in a country where we are free to do or become anything we want.  Sometimes soldiers go off to fight to help protect our right to have these freedoms and keep our nation great.  And sometimes, when one of them dies, people come out for miles around to stand and wait by the roadside to do what is called ‘paying your respects’ to the one who died and to his family.”

As my kids sat silently and digested this scenario my thoughts went to the movie I had seen a few months earlier, Taking Chance, where pretty much this exact scene unfolded.  I remember the same sad pride I felt watching that movie, just in thinking how awesome it is that people did something like that.  But I also remember thinking something like, I can see this happening way out west [where the soldier in the movie was from] but not here in Texas, and certainly not in many other places in our country, where the military and military service are seen as provincial and an embarrassing relic of the past at best, and a barbaric burden on “peace lovers” at worst. And I remembered thinking, then as now, Have we really become so sophisticated and cool and multi-culturally sensitive that good old-fashioned patriotism and pride of place are out of style?  Is that the new cultural norm for Americans? And I sighed a deep sigh and slowly rolled past the crowds toward our morning destination.

I consider myself quite a patriotic American.  And so it was both saddening and invigorating to see this scene unfold this morning and that I could somehow be on the sidelined periphery of it.  I just wanted to interject that little piece of my thoughtworld into the ether to say I don’t hate any other people or country or anything like that.  But I definitely would never be found dead in the camp of those who feel we need to tour the world apologizing for being great or strong or culturally important or anything like that.  Lead with humility, yes, but lead.  Someone has to.  I’m proud of the men and women who serve in our US armed forces, regardless of politics.  They deserve my respect and honor for their sacrifices, at the very least.  In life and in death.

Here’s the quick newslink that confirmed the procession as well as gave a bit more information about the soldier.

Thanks for your indulgence.  Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. (I do actually have some coffee stuff to discuss in the next day or two on this blog, so stay tuned.)

Homemade things are great in a small business. They put you into the game inexpensively with customized tools for your needs.  The only downside–the ONLY downside–is that they don’t go through the rigorous pre-release testing you pay so much for.  Pics on my flickr site of the smallish fire Big Brown just endured (which you can access to the right).  Nothing major at all.  No need for the fire extinguisher.  Just some smoke and it burned itself out pretty quickly.

Looks like the chaff collector filter is what must’ve gotten too hot from an ember of chaff and caught on fire.  It’s a filter for a wet/dry vac so it shouldn’t be too hard to replace.  That’s not happened ever with this roaster so I’m feeling somewhat safe to assume it was a fluke one-off.  But it’s always a drag having to spend the time afterward cleaning it all out and then you’re all timid the next time around or two.

Today is a momentous day at Brown.  It marks the end of a nearly two and a half year project involving vacuum sealing machines, freezers and green coffee.   I promise to talk more about this very soon–I can’t linger because the roaster is warming up–but for now I will say that it is very gratifying to visually inspect greens I vacuum sealed and froze way back in February 2007 still look and smell very crisp and fresh indeed.

Some of you old Brown fans will remember what I’m talking about with this frozen greens project.  Watch this space soon for some thoughts on how coffee degrades and what the average roaster who is concerned about quality can or should do about it.