pulling shots

I hadn’t wandered around coffeegeek.com for awhile until I came across Jason’s post on their current charity auctions. Essentially, there are a lot of cool products up on the site and 100% of the proceeds go to Coffee Kids, the charity that benefits Mexican and Central American coffee growers and their families. Some of the highlights up for auction? A pink Coffeelab tamper from Australia in support of breast cancer month down under normally not available to the purchasing public; signed bottles of Matt Riddle (2006 USBC Champion) Davinci syrup; a limited Espro tamper with piston built to spec and with a very rare red handle (good call on that one Chris!); and my personal favorite, a 3 hour training session at my cafe with my boss, Arthur Wynne, WBC judge and world class latte artist.

So, if you get a chance, peruse the site! It all goes to a cause worth supporting.

The boil water advisory was lifted yesterday! But that didn’t stop snow from piling up here at UBC. A tree managed to knock out power to the whole campus too so we were left without heat, water (because we still had to boil it at the time), light and well, power. Here’s a photo of the cafe, just when the real snow started to come down on Sunday morning.

It’s been a very busy few weeks at school. Everything all comes together for the end of term, translating to a big mess of assignments, projects and tests. Oh well.

The good thing about all of this though is that I have an excuse to drink more coffee. This student refuses to drink Folger’s to stay up. No no, I sip on the likes of the El Salvador CoE #2, or the recent farm release from Guatemala’s El Injerto. Or I bus it down to the Elysian Room and try their offerings.

The El Salvador CoE, Los Planes, farmed by Sergio Edmundo Ticas Reyes, was bought up by Small Axe. My beans were roasted by Intelligentsia three days before I pressed them. The remarkable thing about this lot was that it’s price was higher than the number one CoE. It was, I believe the first time it happened in the history of the auction.

So, the coffee. It was great. Los Planes is a pacamara, one of my favorite varietals, and showed it with big flavor, medium body and a decent acidity. (One of these days I will start writing my tasting notes down… sigh.) All I can say is that it was a great coffee, as it should have been.

In other news, many of you may have heard, but Vancouver is still dealing with a boil water advisory due to very high levels of turbidity in the regional water supply. This affects nearly a million people in the Vancouver area. It also affects my coffee. I don’t really have the money to purchase bottled water and the effort to pick up the cheaper stuff (in the reuseable bottles) is too much for my busy schedule, so I have to press my coffee with the tap water (after being boiled of course). It’s amazing how the suspended particles really do affect cup quality. It is intuitive of course, but still. I imagine shops of good repute here will be changing their filtration systems after all of this is done.

Hey all…

After drooling over jimseven.com and now Stephen Morrissey’s new flyingthud.wordpress.com I too have made the decision to switch to WordPress. Now you can find me at Pulling Shots so please update your feeds, your bookmarks and links to my new page. It’s amazing how much better it is over there!

Cheers,
Peter

So I had a raw milk cappuccino the other day (and no, it’s not on any menu in town). It was pretty crazy! The milk is a lot more dynamic than your standard pasteurized and homogenized milk. It’s a whole lot different than even the Avalon Dairy organic milk I have once in a while. I’m not sure where I stand on its place in coffee drinks. One side of me thinks that it is awesome that you can have a drink where the milk is just as influential, or close to it, as the coffee, but the other side says that the coffee should remain the dominant characteristic and shouldn’t be modified too much by the milk’s flavors. In a raw milk cappuccino you can definitely taste the cow.

Also, I am a full supporter of raw milk and related products (as long as they are treated properly by the producer). This is a message to governmental food inspectors: let young raw milk cheese in from France! Let it in!

In other news, I made a trip down to Go Fish, a local fish and chips shack owned by a couple of restaurateurs with other popular restaurants in their portfolio (the Bin family of tapas bars). They are literally a shack adjacent to Granville Island at the False Creek Harbour Authority. The first time I went involved halibut and chips and they were excellent. These were easily the best chips/fries I’ve ever had, generously salted and perfectly fried. The second time involved their tuna tacones which were also most excellent, lots of stuff in them that I couldn’t quite identify but they were well flavored with a balance between the subtlety of the tuna and the various vegetables and herbs used. Now I just need to catch their risotto that shows up on the specials board and I will be satisfied. It’s a great little walk from the cafe after work too, so it’s becoming a bit of a habit! Check them out if you haven’t already.

So I had a raw milk cappuccino the other day (and no, it’s not on any menu in town). It was pretty crazy! The milk is a lot more dynamic than your standard pasteurized and homogenized milk. It’s a whole lot different than even the Avalon Dairy organic milk I have once in a while. I’m not sure where I stand on its place in coffee drinks. One side of me thinks that it is awesome that you can have a drink where the milk is just as influential, or close to it, as the coffee, but the other side says that the coffee should remain the dominant characteristic and shouldn’t be modified too much by the milk’s flavors. In a raw milk cappuccino you can definitely taste the cow.

Also, I am a full supporter of raw milk and related products (as long as they are treated properly by the producer). This is a message to governmental food inspectors: let young raw milk cheese in from France! Let it in!

In other news, I made a trip down to Go Fish, a local fish and chips shack owned by a couple of restaurateurs with other popular restaurants in their portfolio (the Bin family of tapas bars). They are literally a shack adjacent to Granville Island at the False Creek Harbour Authority. The first time I went involved halibut and chips and they were excellent. These were easily the best chips/fries I’ve ever had, generously salted and perfectly fried. The second time involved their tuna tacones which were also most excellent, lots of stuff in them that I couldn’t quite identify but they were well flavored with a balance between the subtlety of the tuna and the various vegetables and herbs used. Now I just need to catch their risotto that shows up on the specials board and I will be satisfied. It’s a great little walk from the cafe after work too, so it’s becoming a bit of a habit! Check them out if you haven’t already.