Journal — black coffee

My best friends Pat and Mike and I were traveling through Boston recently on another one of our adventures. We consider ourselves to be the modern day equivalent to the Lewis and Clark expedition when it comes to wandering around the country, except our expansion intentions are not to find passage to new territory, but to search unknown territories (to us) looking for new bands, clubs, cafes, food and drink, oddities, and cool experiences, connections, and memories to bring home. We have no REAL purpose to our explorations except to have fun, open our...

One of the most common methods for brewing excellent coffee at home is the French press. I went to a friend’s house for dinner the other night, and after dinner he made some coffee for my girlfriend and me in a French press and brewed it exactly right. I only ever drink drip coffee in our Booskerdoo shops, and I forgot about the differences you can taste in the same coffee, brewed differently. So, what's the proper way to brew coffee in a French press?

We start, of course, with your coffee of choice....

You drink coffee! Nice! You do this for many reasons which may include:

1. You may be tired for whatever reason
2. You need to get many things accomplished today
3. You need motivation
4. You have a really long day or night ahead of you
5. You are addicted to caffeine
6. You’ve been drinking coffee all your life and now you are a connoisseur
7. You work in a café like Booskerdoo
8. or You ______________________ (fill in the blank).

For whatever reason you drink coffee, it’s your personal choice to do so and so is the blend you choose...

The average day for a Booskerdoo barista is filled with questions.  Questions such as,

• “What does this coffee taste like?
• Which one is decaf?
• Which beans make up this blend?”

One question I hear almost every day is, “How come the coffee tastes better when I get a cup in your shop than when I make a cup at home?”  The answer could involve many single or overlapping things: the grind is incorrect for your preferred brewing method, the beans are no longer fresh, or your coffee proportions are off.  Most of the time though, the...

Before you put milk in that cup of coffee...

There was a point where I didn’t understand the value of each coffee bean. I didn’t think about (or know) the fact that each bean came hand-picked from a farm hundreds of miles away and may be a group of people’s main economical resource and livelihood. It’s a heavy thought to sit with at any point in the day, especially when you just wake up groggy, vulnerable, and oblivious to most (or all) of your surroundings (depending on how hard you partied the night before).