Roastmaster's Blog

I turned off the air conditioner in my house five days ago.  Yesterday the temperature crept up into the nineties outside, and in my house, the insulation I so fervently felt I needed made sure to keep that thermal energy from escaping.  And so here I sit, sweating beneath the impotent, oscillating ceiling fans.  My body radiates in a futile attempt to generate a moisture barrier to cool my skin through evaporation, adding to the haze of humidity that permeates my lungs like second-hand smoke in a crowded bar.  I pick up where I left off on a dog-eared page of Out of Africa, hoping Karen Blixen will carry me off to a place where the heat seems justified.  And where I might crawl into bed under a translucent net to keep from the mosquitoes that so debilitated Henry Morton Stanley on his long trek across Tanganyika in search of Dr. Livingstone.

My legs are tired because my lungs don't work right because of this damned air conditioner.  And because I rode my bicycle 68 miles yesterday.  A twinge of pain in my knee.  And in my ankle, where I turned it on a rubber tire trying to reenact my youthful and more agile days of high school football.  And a scene drifts across my mind, as if a movie projected on the shadowy ceiling silhouetted by the outline of deer antlers, of Hemingway's gangrene-addled invalid adventurer in the Snows of Kilimanjaro.  

I've just finished another AA Cafe podcast, and I can still feel the hike and conversation with Steve Holt of Ninety Plus Gesha Estates on the farm, in the mountains, surrounded by rainforest, sweating in the unbroken rays of the midday sun.  Steve brings us up the mountain and around the largest Gesha farm in the world, describing the coffees of Panama; and across the Atlantic Ocean, across the dark continent, to the origin of coffee and of Ninety Plus to tease us with tastes of what's to come from Ethiopia this year.

Ethiopia is having a good year for coffee, and we hope to gather a nice crop from a variety of regions and processes (or of the influence of fruit, as Steve Holt defines it).  The newest of our Ethiopian coffees is from the Harrar region.  It's called Deep Blue, and it is a dry-processed coffee, which means the fruit had a large influence on the taste of the coffee.  This Harrar Deep Blue is a product of many very small farmers, who picked the coffee cherries when they ripened and laid them whole on mats and cement patios to dry and shrivel into coffee raisins in the high-elevation equatorial sun.  The coffee, from its terroir and its unique varieties and the weather that allowed the coffee to dry properly at each farmer's home, blends together to give us brilliant flavors of chocolate and blueberries and cinnamon.  So good.

Reminds me of an experiment we did back a couple years ago in Colombia, at the farm of Las Animas, where we asked Gabriel and Orfilia Escobar to let the fruit influence their coffee.  And I remember my visit last year to Concordia, when I rode in the back seat of a pickup truck over dirt roads, winding through coffee trees with no leaves bearing immature green fruit that would never ripen because of a fungus called the Eye of the Rooster.  We rolled up to Finca San Rafael, where Alfredo Correa tends his grandmother's coffee and has produced such an amazing product for us in the past, but instead of picking or milling or sorting coffee like Alfredo usually is during the harvest, we found him working on his motorcycle.  The Eye of the Rooster took 95% of Alfredo's crop and the sweat of all his years of toil dried up on the mountainside and was replaced with the sweat of a young man with almost nothing to show and no way to pay.  Somehow Alfredo produced one bag of super-high-end coffee this year that rivals the best washed coffees we've offered, and we have that bag.  It's a great example of fruit influence in a washed coffee.

I've just finished a cup and washed it down with a rinse of water and the taste instantly transported me to another sweaty time in college, working for my dad.  He is adamant that it must be hot inside in order to lay commercial floor covering, and so we worked on dirty concrete floors with scratchy carpets and heavy ceramic.  And all day long, we drank coffee out of the little metal-covered plastic lid that screws on the top of my dad's beat-up green metal thermos, on our breaks and in between our breaks; and when we needed some water, we would fill up that empty cup and the residual coffee would lend a distinct, mild, flavor to the water.  And the residual coffee in my mouth lent a coffee taste to everything.

The "coffee taste" can't be so easily generalized or genericized any more, as the variety of DoubleShot Coffees spans a breadth of flavors broader than all the Scotch of Scotland.  And even one coffee can become three (like the Holy Trinity) when extracted through different methods.  We are going to do just that.  One coffee, three brewing methods.  On June 28 at 7p here at the DoubleShot, we will premier Alfredo Correa's Colombia Finca San Rafael through pourovers, presspots, and espressos.  Three different stations will allow you to learn the method, pose questions of the barista, and enjoy the unique flavors that permeate each cup.  Alfredo's coffee has depth that is best explored through different types of extraction.

This event is brought to you by Coffee Illuminati, and proceeds will be used to build a swingset for the children at Ninety Plus Gesha Estates.  You can register for this event at the DoubleShot by talking to your barista or by emailing info@coffeeilluminati.com

It's Christmastime again. I've received a few cards in the mail. Most of them were not really cards, just dressed-up requests for money from one charity or another. That's irritating.
I remember when I was a kid, flipping through the JC Penny catalog, looking at all the toys, and I remember that unmistakable smell of the catalog pages and seeing pictures of such lucky kids getting to play with the coolest stuff ever, and I would find the letter that corresponded with the letter next to the picture and I would read all about the best ones. I would read the whole toy section of the catalog. And I remember writing down things I wanted and noting what page each thing was on, dog-earing the pages, so my parents could find it quickly and with the least amount of effort because less fuss maybe would mean they would find it easier and buy it for me and maybe since I made it so easy they would buy more stuff, as if they were on some sort of shopping time crunch. I remember always asking for a horse.
They bought us too much. My parents must've put on soft music and slowly filled my brother's bedroom with sleeping gas, where we were determined to stay up all night coloring in our coloring books, listening for Santa Claus, watching through the curtains for the red dot in the sky that was Rudolf and not some small aircraft flying over. And the next thing I knew, my brother would be waking me up on Christmas morning telling me that Santa had come while we were asleep, and I would run out and check to see if the milk and cookies we left for him on the table were gone because I knew if those were gone it was really Santa who had been there. And the living room was always filled with presents, wrapped in colorful paper and curly ribbons, so much that we had to tip toe around it all just to get close to the Christmas tree.
It seems hard to believe now, looking back, because now I know that we didn't have much money, and I just ascribe it all to my being so small and seeing things as being so much bigger and more plentiful then. I've no doubt that they spoiled us too much and suffered on our behalf in order to make us feel like we were special, like we were rich, like we were no different than everyone else. And it worked. My parents gave us more than we needed, and I can only guess how much they had to sacrifice in the course of it all. And, for the most part, we just felt lucky that Santa Claus was so generous.
So I guess this should be a time where we look back and think about the traditions we grew up with and smile at the silly memories of the Muppet Christmas record and Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas on the TV with the rabbit ears and the channel-change knob that sometimes had to be jiggled to keep the static away. And fighting over who got to put the first ornament on the tree, which, back then, still smelled like evergreen and dropped its pokey needles about our shag-carpeted living room.
Christmas should be a time to think about the people who have made us feel special and say thanks for caring.

This Christmas I want coffee.
Every year, we try to find unique coffees to sell over the holidays. This year we have two coffees to offer. One, we started selling at Thanksgiving and the feedback has been phenomenal. Kenya Peaberry Karimikui is a nutty, rich, savory coffee that lends itself amazingly well to traditional breakfast pairings. Kenyas have been hot coffees this year in the marketplace, and I selected this lot specifically because peaberries are unique anomalies in coffee, and my experience with Kenyas have taught me that peaberries are superior and I know you'll notice the difference in the cup.
The second coffee I'm offering this year is one you may have tasted by now. Tchembe is a coffee that was sourced by a company called Ninety Plus who is out working the front lines in Ethiopia, learning what makes coffee taste great, and implementing that knowledge for us to drink. Supplies of Tchembe are pretty slim because it's such an amazing coffee. Sweet, fruity, blackberry aromas emanate from the cup, accentuated by Belgian chocolate and banana esters like you'll find in Belgian beers. Definitely a smooth cup, one of my favorites, and a strong partner with desserts and fruity breakfast items.

Both of these coffees are extremely limited in their availability. We are selling both in commemorative 12-ounce quart cans, which are great for gift-giving and help to preserve the coffee from its environment, keeping it tasty. I only have 36 quarts of the Kenya and 85 quarts of Tchembe to sell.
There are two ways you can get them.
1) Take your chances and come in and hope we have some when the time comes.
2) Or guarantee yourself some by purchasing a voucher. Come in and pick one up at the counter or buy one (or however many you need until they run out) online.
Purchase your vouchers here for IN-STORE PICKUP after I roast:
Tchembe - http://doubleshotcoffee.com/store/index.php?productID=137
Kenya Peaberry Karimikui - http://doubleshotcoffee.com/store/index.php?productID=136

Of course, you can still order online and I'll ship them to you. But get it soon because both of these special coffees will be gone before you know it.

Happy holidays.
Brian

ps. If you're wondering what to get me, I like New York Strips (preferably dry aged) and I still haven't gotten that horse I've been asking for.

It's a bit wild on my porch. With moths flittering about and the tiniest hummingbirds hovering precisely, pointy beaks inside cone-shaped flowers three shades of pink. The three-foot-tall bouquet of green onion stems sprouting from my concrete steps. An army of green vines straight out of the Amazon, slowly marching across the entry all Summer long. One night a rat-tailed possum climbed the Crape Myrtle next to my green-cushioned love seat, and three brave and curious raccoons scampered up to try and make off with the round slices of venison sausage and club crackers that are so often my dinner.

But I love contrast, and so I sit smoking a Nicaraguan cigar, sipping Russian River Pinot Noir, listening to Mendelssohn and reading iPhone texts from my winsome girlfriend about the beauty of the moon (which is glowing from behind my arched roofline) and the bright planet hanging below (and behind a tall, tall tree).

Contrasts are important. All of one or the other and you might not notice either.

We had driven for hours along a graded dirt road strewn with rocks and the holes they dislodged from, occasionally passing another vehicle and its trailing red cloud of dust, sporadically stopping to look at a care-free elephant or a distant ostrich, a black orb overing on the horizon, or an almost-imperceptible serval cat with its over-sized ears, pouncing on a snake in the knee-high grass. We passed wandering Maasai warriors in tartan shukas driving emaciated cows and goats, and awkward, skittish, knobby-kneed giraffes chewing leaves of the thorny Acacia. The road became paved and began climbing and I nodded, fighting drowsy, motion-induced slumber. The plains turned to forests as we ascended the side of a volcano that was probably one of the tallest mountains on the continent of Africa before it blew its top and formed a 12-mile-wide crater. The cool green rainforest was a far cry from the brown, endless plain we spent days criss-crossing, pointing out perfectly camouflaged antelope and their predators. The smallest Dikdik, the fastest Topi, the ugliest Wildebeest, the sleekest Cheetah.

In high-elevation mist, Baboons sat on the road, licking the pavement and plotting, like Yogi Bear, to steal our pic-a-nic basket. And as we rounded a switch-back, our Tanzanian guide quickly stopped and exclaimed, "Oh look at this!"

Five lionesses and a great, maned, muscular beast walked down the road toward our Land Cruiser and warily but confidently skirted by, three feet from our faces pressed against the nippy windows. A wild kingdom. Our hearts raced, and we continued our windey, ascending drive. Until suddenly, the trees opened up before us, over the edge of the crater into the clouds below and the ridge beyond, and the wilderness transformed into a palatial hotel, colorfully-robed and kufi'd bellmen dashing here and there, fetching bags and escorting us, like foreign dignitaries, into a grand lobby. Marbled floors and huge, carved, wooden columns, exquisite lounge furniture next to glowing fires, under an ominous, thatched dome. We lived like royalty, sipping Scotch in the bar overlooking the crater, fine dining on white tablecloths, and escaping to our '70s-style quarters to where we were escorted by an armed guard, wary of the predators about.

A shocking change. But I don't think it would've had the same effect on us, had we not spent the previous three days in a primitive safari camp, washing in a gravity shower, eating in a mess tent, and zipping our door behind us at night to slumber with the sound of hyena calls.

We'll be exploring contrasts in coffees through a coffee tasting that you are invited to on Thursday, October 27 at 7pm. I'll brew a few of my favorite coffees for you, tell you where they were cultivated, how they were processed, and together we'll taste and smell and enjoy the variety that DoubleShot Coffee can offer.
Entry is $10 and we're using the funds through our 501(3)(c) not-for-profit, Coffee Illuminati, to give to projects that support coffee-growing communities.
Spots are limited, so register right away by emailing me at Brian@DoubleShotCoffee.com.

I once rode my mountain bike 180 miles from my parents' house in Galesburg, Illinois to where I was meeting my dad for work in Shelbyville, Illinois in the middle of the summer, down sometimes-sticky, freshly-oiled and pea-gravelled roads, long, undulating plains where all I could see was corn and soybeans until a watertower from the next town would appear on my horizon. I had no map, except for a crude printout of the towns in between, and I followed my instincts which led me to a dead end once but generally steered me south and east until I reached my destination. And then I went to work.

I grew up in a town and a time when kids could ride their bikes to school, and a lot of us did. It was that feeling of independence and self-reliance that I could ride my bike all the way to Farnham Elementary, past my older brother's middle school, when I would leave him and be truly free. Up over the bridge that spanned railroad tracks and down alongside the playground, past the grumpy old crossing guard who used to catch us climbing up the tubular fire escape during recess and send us to Mr. Douglas' office for detention. And then I would be late coming home on my metallic green Schwinn Stingray and my mother would worry and I would have to confess that I had to stay after school.

Bikes have always been a mode of transportation and a doorway to liberty. I rode my bike to little league baseball games and to my friend Wayne's house and down country roads to Spoon Lake where I was a lifeguard at a private club called Oak Run. And once I discovered that wheels were an accelerated version of walking, of hiking, I found my freedom in the vistas of Moab and the valleys of Crested Butte.

And I found my front tire on many a starting line, cross-country racing and 24-hour racing and adventure racing and rolling out of transition on my fastest leg of a du- or triathlon. After my 180-mile commute to work, I took second place in a Cat 2 XC race in Telluride and then watched the pros flow through the ribbons of singletrack that bucked me like a wild stallion. And their finesse and fitness inspired me like poetry. Like the first time I roasted coffee and discovered that it could be SO MUCH BETTER.

I found this again, much to my surprise, at Tulsa Tough. I've been at almost every single race every year, at first because I wanted to support a local event, but it got me right off, the speed, the power, the sounds of chains being turned by professional lungs and legs and the wind that blows my hair back when they pass. And two years ago, it inspired me to actually buy a road bike. And at the end of last year I upgraded to a really nice road bike. And now I'm about to compete in my first criterium races. Tulsa Tough is this Friday night, all day Saturday and Sunday morning.

So this year, not only am I turning over a new set of pedals, but we've teamed up with Tulsa Tough to bring you a special coffee, the Tulsa Tough Coffee Blend. It's a smooth coffee with notes of berry and nut and chocolates, and it's suitable for espresso or drip or presspot. We got you covered. I roasted it today and they'll be selling it for $20 a pound at the races this weekend. If you're doing one of the Gran Fondo rides Saturday, you'll have a chance to sample this limited coffee before you roll out. If not, drop by the Tulsa Tough merchandise tent while you're watching men and women pour their hearts into their pedals and pick up a pound to brew at home.

I'm going to keep riding and roasting. Because it's possible that the bike brought me to where I am today. Bikes and coffee. Ask any real cyclist. It's possible that the faster the cyclist, the more they love coffee. I know why, but I'm not telling you.

Tomorrow is my birthday.

I drew a diagram... (You're welcome)

Yesterday I walked across the room and around the corner and into an old dream. There, at the sofa, sat a Caucasian man and two Asian men, all wearing business suits. I don't know why. And not a word was exchanged between us. I'd only seen them once before, in my sleep. Insignificant details. But I dream a lot. And my dreams become reality.

I once was visiting my cousin, Greg, and we were both probably around 10 or 12 years old. I was always fooling around with cards, maybe because my parents weren't allowed to play cards growing up and so there were cards all over our house. And we were fascinated by card tricks and fancy shuffling techniques. But card tricks weren't my forte; that was my brother's thing. So I shuffled the deck with a simple riffle and bridge and told Greg I wanted to show him a trick. "Pick a card." "Look at it and memorize it and put it back in the deck, anywhere you want." He stuck it back in the middle. And I shuffled the deck some more. A lot more. An unreasonable amount. So much that Greg became bored and annoyed. I shuffled and shuffled, and then I spread the cards like a fan and pulled one card out of the middle, and showed him the card and said, "That's your card." He was shocked. How did you do that? Do it again. Tell me how you did that. But I wouldn't budge.

Because I knew the one thing about card tricks that no one ever thinks of.

Even if you don't know any tricks, you still have a one-in-52 chance of being right.

To say, "This doesn't always work" is an understatement.

But that's not the only card trick I did growing up. My friends and I were determined that we could learn to do things that other people couldn't. We spent parts of our lives trying to teach our brains extra sensory perception. Focus. Concentrate. I see the card you have in your hand. Was it the card I could see or was it the mind of the person holding the card? Could I see into the future and know the next roll of the dice? And where did we cross the line between being right by a 1-in-52 chance and being able to know the card without looking? Was it a child's exercise in futility? Or did I learn something you don't know?

The average person only uses 10% of his brain, we were told. And we wondered what the other 90% was capable of. Statistically... we didn't keep track. Our goal was to be right every single time. We didn't know what we were doing. We just figured if we did it enough, we'd get better at it. Like learning Spanish. When I was right, I'd focus on the same thing again. Or was it the lack of focus? Having an open mind? Or focusing on the mind of my confederate? Or were we just practicing statistics?

"I'm a good guesser. That's how I got through high school." It was a catty remark I used to explain my uncanny ability to guess right. This has been an ongoing theme in my life.

I have always dreamt a lot. When I was a child, and we had moved from my birthplace to a town in red dirt country, I remember having a dream that I was a superhero and I was fighting crime and criminals, and I vaguely remember glimpses of the dark hallway and my shadowy parents and then the next morning, waking up to find out I had been sleepwalking through this dream. And the sleepwalking plagued me, finding me wide-eyed and nightmarish, wakeful but asleep, flying through the colors between mesas and struggling to avoid the big fall, straining, flailing. And playing basketball in the hallway of a hotel during a school trip to Washington D.C., in front of a roaring crowd at Madison Square Garden, schooling Dr. J and throwing up that jump-shot to win the game, and then waking up to my schoolmates standing around my bed with the teacher over me, asking me if I knew my name and if I had been taking drugs. But I also had dreams about conversations, about people I didn't recognize, foreshadowing real events that seemed to take place later when I would remember someone I had known for a short time in that dream before I met them, and the words coming out of their mouth would already be in my brain, because I had already dreamt it, already experienced it in my sleep, and my responses were already written down for my recital. Brief glimpses. Many people. New friends from old dreams. And I was told that my grandmother used to dream about people before their ultimate demise. A forecast of death. A foreboding shadow. But maybe it's hereditary. Her grandparents were Native American. Do the Indians have special powers?

You laugh.

But my dreams come true.

Can I penetrate your mind? When I look into your eyes, what do you feel? I know what you feel. I feel it too.

I feel it while I'm roasting.

The coffee beans, inside the drum, roasting. Hotter and hotter. Cracking. I feel their personalities and their emotions. They want to be roasted, but not too much. And I felt the rock was alive when I was a rock climber. I could feel that it wanted us on it. Or it didn't. I feel the objects you accuse of being inanimate and always fill my life with interesting chairs and sticks and skulls and saddles with stories and old paintings, everything old and interesting, because when they speak, I don't want to be bored. And as the coffee beans near their final moments in my roasting drum, I feel their anxiety and I connect with them through my hands in the cooling bin, caressing and helping them cool, because it's so hot, it's so hot. And I cried when I saw the 60 kilo hipster machine at the coolest coffee bar around, with its auto-loader and conveyers and I could feel the loneliness of the beans and I said what they told me: "This is where coffee comes to die." And everyone was having such a good time in that sanctuary, that mortuary, laughing and drinking PBR and name-dropping and one-upping each other through passive-aggressive backstabbing, oblivious to the pain and sadness which lived in that hall.

I touch your coffee. And it touches me.

Finding good coffees is always an ordeal. Getting samples from brokers or farmers and roasting them in my little 2-barrel Jabez Burns and tasting them and making notes, and then tasting them again and comparing them, trying to decide which is best or which is delicious or which is interesting. And then deciding how much to buy. And hoping it tastes good when it gets here- as good or as interesting as it did when I tasted it on the cupping table or in our sample trials. Is it luck? Just hitting the odds? Maybe I'm still a good guesser or my sixth sense is honed in...

We have some new coffees that have just arrived and more on the way.

A new Rwandan from a lady named Epiphanie Mukashyaka arrived yesterday, and I roasted it straight away. That's what I'm drinking now. It's good. Different than the last Rwanda we had. This one has spice and nut and it's a full, sweet cup. I think it's going to be a big hit. Also on yesterday's pallet we received a new crop Brazil from Fazenda Rodomunho. We had a dry-processed coffee from them previous to this, but the new coffee is a pulped natural, which means they ran the coffee through the pulper to take the cherry skins off and then they dried the coffee with the mucilage still attached. Compared to wet-processing, this tends to lend a bit more sweetness and slight fruit tones to the cup. The Brazil PN is nice - with traditional nuttiness, but added sweet molasses and a buttery finish.

More coffees on the way. I bought a washed Sidamo that I like. Complex, mild berry and citrus and chocolate. I also committed to buy two micro-lots from Costa Rica. One from Tarrazu, the same region as La Minita, from their regional mill called Dota in a town called Santa Maria, where I once rode my bike over the rolling mountains and sat in the park in front of the church, watching school kids mill around the square playing soccer and fraternizing. The other is a honey process coffee (which is another way of saying pulped natural) from the West Valley, of an old variety of Bourbon known as Villa Sarchi, which was grown and processed at the Genesis farm by Oscar and Olga Mendez. Pretty exciting stuff, and I'm roasting more samples today in search of more.

But all that is nothing. Just wait til I tell you about some other dreams of mine that have come true...

Writing instead of pacing.

Pacing while thinking.

Thinking thinking, the neverending stream of thought: of wonder, of hope, of concern.

Like the Labyrinth of endless possibilities, my Minotaur mind rambles through scenario and logical conclusion and back again in every direction and every twist and turn. Looking through the concentric, jagged paths of a shattered windshield on a cold, rainy drive back to where I started. Round and round. Round, like Botero's Colombian family mistress. Like when there aren't the right words, and you talk a lot hoping to at least surround it. To lasso it.

I think because thought is mine, solely mine. I am the master of my thoughts; I think what I want to think and those thoughts become belief and reality. They become my essence. They transform me as heat transforms a coffee bean, as the aromatics from washed Ethiopian's lemon and jasmine and bergamot and darjeeling transform the air around me, as boots stomp through muddy roads high upon the mountains of rain-soaked and roya-infested Colombia. You can't hold me. I think what I want and who I am and what I do, and only I can decide what that is.

But thought is a fickle fellow, sometimes a rope around your ankle and sometimes around your neck, a tie tied too tightly. And sometimes it's a vast reflection into a river valley, coasting on the wind and on the back of a white horse, peering down to the winding ribbon of Cauca below and up the greenest grassy slope to the stand of trees hiding my dream of a house with no road, no trail, no way to reach it except on this horse. And my thought, my mind, my spirit becomes ensconced in love and fantasy, dreaming of waking up to these things I see, happy every day, in love, (in love) in love with the land and never taking for granted what surrounds me or who touches my left shirt pocket, calming the racing beast of a heart in my chest, never worrying so much that today becomes unimportant. Unimportant even though now I cannot see my love, the wrinkles in her grassy slope that smiles so earnestly and feels so soft against my thumb and my fingers, surrounding her and caressing her, but it's not just her features I love. It's her that I love. Her coffee trees that bear fruit through the joy of service, of labor, of helping and trusting and producing something you don't understand because someone asked you to.

It's the coffee I love. Coffee, the product of so many hands, on a tree, on the ground, on a ship, in a roaster, in your coffee brewer, in your cup and in your mouth, she feels so sweet and full and alive and we all feel grateful that today marks the most important day of this coffee's lifecycle, pleasing me in every way. Today.

But some desires are afar and outside, and yearning and longing sometimes can't change you, even though my mother always told me to be careful what I wished for because I might get it. That's what I want. To be careful. And to wish. And there are coffees out there, like that house on the hill in the stand of trees with the big shade tree just down the slope where I wanted to put a big leather chair so I could sit and read and watch my love smiling and bristling my fingernails against the inseam of her blue jeans, that I wish for and I just don't know. But I hope. And they tell me it's unavailable. You can't have it.

But I thought I could.

I thought the roaster that wanted it had decided he didn't want it any more and it was available again.

And I was given the tiniest bit, but the soul of it, the smallest 75 gram sample, and I roasted it so carefully and I was so gentle with it, so expressive with my experiences and deliberate in my affections for it, and I knew this coffee. I knew it from my youth. Not that I had known it before, but that I had dreamt of it, created it in my mind when I was but a boy and that creation created me. My deep desire and longing for this coffee created a man who could appreciate it, and the sample was but a whispering love song in my ear (had I no eyes, but ears, my ears would love that inward beauty, and invisible) and I knew instantly I wanted it and it wanted me, and we tasted one another on that cupping table (or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move each part in me that were but sensible), her body lay sweetly on my tongue (though neither eyes nor ears to hear nor see, yet would I be in love by touching thee), the perfume of her natural essence so destroyed my concern for her cost or with her previous engagement with the other roaster because her aromatics tore down the walls around my heart, and the little lookout I had left there in the tower of this fortress came to the king with the news that she had finally come and the king knew this was true before the words were even spoken (but what if the sense of feeling were bereft me and I could not see nor hear nor touch and nothing but the very smell were left me? Yet would my love for thee be still as much for from the still'tory of thy face excelling comes breath perfum'd that breedeth love by smelling).

And I thought she was mine. I thought her suitor had given her away, that he didn't want her any more, that he loved another coffee, and I let my heart be taken.

There are coffees that change my life. Some in small ways and some much bigger, teaching me how to drink and taste and smell and appreciate and to understand from where they come and how they came to be what they are, and all along the way wasn't it just preparation for the day when the one coffee came to me, so that I would recognize her and know how to care for her, how to roast her, how to cup her? And then I was told that the original purchaser decided to take the coffee after all. Maybe he just wanted it because he realized someone else wanted the coffee, and he felt the pangs of jealousy that motivate men to act. And my heart was pierced. And I say be careful what you wish for because you might NOT get it.

But this is a familiar scenario to me, my bleating heart lowing in the flat field of discouragement, looking up to that house on the hill, on the mountainside, toward the clouds where the vantagepoint is victory. But thought is mine. And my thought is the thought that creates me today, and I cannot be defeated.

I have danced with discouragement, living each day as if today were the day and finding denial after denial after denial all day long and hearing the word no so much that, even though it never ceased to surprise me, I became dulled by it as a sword striking stone. And each night it became dark outside and in, and I realized it was not the lack of hope that kills a man, but hope itself. Hope and disappointment, repeated, unexpected failure, over and over again, tearing at the heart of who I was, of what I thought I could accomplish, and each night I would pray to whatever god might be listening that I might wake up in the morning without hope and give up on my dreams. And the next morning I would wake up with renewed hope. Hope beyond hope. More hope than the day before, believing THIS would be the day and I would charge into battle to be destroyed and demoralized just as I was the day before and this cycle continued for months, every day. Every day. I was dying. And hungry. And one day I was dealt a blow bigger than any of the other days before it, one so big I didn't know if I could recover. But that weekend I competed in a 24-hour mountain bike race at Roman Nose State Park in Watonga Oklahoma, and I was a good mountain bike racer in those days. But half-way through the race, in the darkness and approaching storm and cactus and sleep-deprivation and accompanied misery, I quit. I DNF'd. I dropped out of the race. And when I drove home, I wondered what happened to me.

I never DNF.

I never quit.

And I thought of all the obstacles and the difficulties and the problems in my life and the fact that my friend Jason dropped out before me, and that just shows that it was a hard race. And I drove home and went to bed, troubled. But the next morning I arose and went behind the house to a 1/4 mile dirt singletrack and started running. And I ran around that track, thinking, around and around thinking, 60 times around that track I ran, and I wondered what happened the day before, what would happen to me while running around that 1/4 mile dirt track, and then the answer came to me.

I DNF'd because I decided to quit.

And I could keep running around that 1/4 mile dirt track as long as I wanted, until I decided to quit.

Because I learned a very important lesson that day. That I cannot be defeated. No matter what happens to me, what obstacles come my way or problems arise or no matter how I feel or who wants me to stop, I stop when I decide to stop. Quitting is ALWAYS my decision. And the rest of the world can kiss my ass. I cannot fail because I am always in control of the outcome, whether I keep trying or I decide to stop. All else is a matter of time and time is irrelevant to a patient man.

And so I kept going, and I didn't give up and eventually it worked out because I didn't give up.

No one can compete with my resilience and persistence. These are my decisions, and mine only.

And the coffee came back to me.

And fruits from my journeys into the hills and mountainsides. Our coffee has come, and I declare it ridiculous. Delicious. Coffee should not be this good. But I dreamt of it and I prepared for it and I recognized it and I grasped it by the very essence, our spirits at once recognizing one another and intertwining forever. Forever. She is mine. Forever.

But you can taste my coffee.

The coffees of the holiday season are the sickest selection we have ever had. There are three (3). Nekisse is back, and you know how I feel about that, her natural Sidamo berry flavored, juicy, fantastic. Kemgin, another Ninety Plus offering from Nekempte Ethiopia... this is THE coffee. I have written about her before. If you don't get this one, I think you are making a huge mistake. But who am I? I am in love with Kemgin. The third is another natural from Colombia. I found her on the cupping table last week in the mountains on a white horse by my house in the stand of trees overlooking my reading tree. This is one of the best naturals I've had, sweet and clean, also not to be missed. Be prepared. We'll be selling these coffees in metal quart cans. You won't find better coffees. But who am I? I am no one.

This holiday season I hope you get what you wish for and it turns out to be what you want.

Never, never, never, never give up.

 

The Tulsa Run is tomorrow morning. It starts downtown at 9a at 4th and Boulder and completely surrounds the DoubleShot, so the streets all around us, including Riverside Drive will be closed tomorrow morning probably from 8a (when we open) until 1030 or so. But don't worry; we figured out a way for you to get here for coffee.


Below is the 15k Tulsa Run Route: