Wordpress Theme Demo » Leisure

Gotta Love Coffee!

administrator — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:40:48 +0000

According to The National Coffee Association, 54% of American adults, roughly 150 million people, drink 3.3 cups of coffee every day. To whom do they owe a debt of gratitude for their daily drink?

Goats.

Coffee

As one legend goes, a Yemenite mystic saw a group of old goats of leaping with “exceptional vitality” after eating a particular berry. The mystic tried the berries and got to feeling frisky, too. In another tale called “Kaldi and The Dancing Goats”, an Arabian goatherd observes gamboling goats, tastes the food they’ve been eating, and starts frolicking, too. Kaldi tells some local monks about his discovery, they take the berries, cook them to create a stimulating brew, and mornings become a lot easier to deal with for everyone from then on.

Horned animals aside, physical evidence suggests that coffee plants were cultivated in Ethiopia as early as the 9th or 10th centuries, exported throughout Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and later to India and Indonesia. The first known coffeehouse appeared in Constantinople in 1475, from where the concept spread across Europe and on to colonial America, where they eventually turned into the Starbucks across the street from you now. Or is it in your building’s lobby?

But of the billions of cups consumed worldwide each year, what makes one better than the other? Is it the coffee bean’s provenance? Harvesting practices? Processing? How it’s roasted? Brewed?

The answer is yes to all of the above says Steve Smith, Master Roaster at Fonté Coffee Roaster in Seattle, Washington. Steve blends and roasts coffee by hand to coax the best flavor out of each and every bean. It requires experience, skill and intuition, but not a degree.

What’s a Master Roaster? ”It’s not like a sommelier,” says Smith. “There’s no “Academy of Roasting.’ There are no certifiers. In the 90s there were a lot of people throwing money at coffee and at people who may or may not have had experience or interest in coffee. Some of these people called themselves ‘Master Roasters.’ Me? I’m just the ‘coffee guy.’”

Of course, that’s like saying Roger Federer is just the “tennis guy.” Smith is regarded as one of the most experienced roasters in coffee-crazed Seattle. He roasts and blends beans to order for clients including Wynn Resorts, Four Seasons Hotels, Los Angeles’ famous celebrity haunt Chateau Marmont, and top Seattle restaurant Crush.

Smith was one Starbuck’s first employees back in 1979, working with the original three owners. Wanting to pursue a more artisanal approach to roasting, he left in 1991 on the cusp of the coffee boom. A year later, businessman Paul Odom opened Fonté Coffee Roaster to create one-of-a-kind coffees and espressos, and Smith came onboard.

Odom saw a niche in the market, a lack of high-end coffees in the hospitality industry. “We wanted to continue the attention-to-detail and roasting techniques that were done best on a smaller scale,” Smith says. “Paul and I figured we could offer a range of high-quality coffees that would be consistent with the experiences that these hotels and restaurants offered to their customers.”

In other words, they would offer four-star coffee to four-star hotels and restaurants by creating distinct blends for each client. Two things made Fonté stand out: they shipped the coffee the same day it was roasted and their packaging had a special one-way valve to maintain freshness. By 1997 their wholesale reputation was strong enough to support a thriving online retail business for individual coffee-lovers, as well.

Smith is responsible for sourcing Fonté’s coffee beans by working with importers and visiting growing areas. He also holds “coffee cuppings,” similar to wine-tastings, and hand-roasts his blends in German-engineered Probat machines.

Smith says there’s no trick to roasting coffee, “but there are lots of interpretations. Coffee is a beautiful agricultural product that can express itself if done the proper way. One person’s dark roast is another person’s not dark enough.” He explains that “roasting is the process of creating variable atmospheres for the beans to enhance their flavor. You’re not enforcing your will on the bean. You put the coffee beans in a drum, you heat them up, and in doing so you’re creating the ideal conditions for a set of chemical reactions.”

Custom tastes are still being rediscovered in the US after the country industrialized coffee roasting during WWI to provide it for soldiers, ingraining a relatively bland brew in our culture. At the time, coffee production was mostly about price and convenience, and the brewing method of choice was the percolator coffee pot. Percolators expose coffee to higher temperatures than other brewing methods and re-circulate already brewed coffee through the grounds.

“A percolator is the worst way to make coffee,” Smith says. “I’d be hard-pressed to find a worse way to make coffee. As the water turns into coffee it goes through the coffee grounds again and again and again. It’s like saying, ‘Hi, I need my coffee ruined before I can enjoy it.’”

You get the impression that he’d rather drink Sanka.

But while most Americans were happy to buy coffee in a can, immigrants were bringing their own blends and brewing methods with them from across the sea. Italian espresso. Cuban coffee. Turkish coffee. French dark roasts. One thing they all have in common is that they were made on-demand. Starbucks was the first to take this concept and run with it.

Fonté’s roast-to-order strategy might not be the most efficient way to run a business, but it does let Smith create the best-quality coffees possible, and that’s the goal. But he’s not just roasting for luxury properties and coffee aficionados anymore. Fonté is taking its product to the streets, albeit on its own terms.

Its first retail space, Fonté Coffee Roaster and Wine Bar, opened this year in Seattle offering coffee, wine, a few beers on tap and food. The elegant, sleekly tranquil setting reflects the company’s reputation for high-end hospitality. If the part café, part wine-bar vibe works as it did for me, Odom and Smith may have found yet another niche in the market.

But is it just for coffee connoisseurs?

“No!” says Smith. “I look at it this way. I take my car to my mechanic for a tune up. He can’t believe I drive this thing. He says, ‘How can you drive this thing? Look at these struts, look at your spark plugs.’ I go inside and pour myself a cup of coffee from his carafe. I can’t believe he drinks this stuff. I go out and say, ‘How can you drink this stuff?’”

How To Pack for a Road Trip

administrator — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:39:38 +0000

Years ago I discovered an old-fashioned device that not only helps me pack up the car, but also makes adjustments and suggestions if I’m doing it wrong.

The device is known as my father-in-law.

Somewhere in your family or Facebook you’ve got a similar device. If you don’t know who it is, think about who gives you turn-by-turn directions whenever you fire up your grill, or try to bowl.

If you’d rather not know who it is because you prefer packing the car by yourself, that’s fine. But just in case, consider these road-tested tips on having a better-packed and more comfortable car.

Do it the night before.

Unless you’re renting a car the day of your trip, give serious thought to packing up the car the night before, especially if “you hope to make an early morning getaway a reality,” says Susan Foster, author of “Smart Packing for Today’s Traveler,” who figures she’s packed and unpacked more than 5,000 times over the last three decades. If you get that early start and happen to have young children, Foster and travel writer Beth Blair suggest loading the sleeping tots directly into the car, perhaps bringing the pillows from their beds to ease the transition.

Load in and out properly.

You know the big suitcase your family shares for plane rides? Leave it in the closet. It won’t be easy to pack around, repack, carry, or access, especially for any emergency wardrobe changes. Sturdy soft-sided bags are not only easier to load and unload, but letting your older kids pack their own bags will teach them travel skills and curtail their complaints about what you brought, Foster says.

Have everyone bring their stuff to a central gathering place so you can do a mental inventory and “decide where things should go in the car based on when during the trip they’ll be needed,” Foster says. The basic strategy for loading car cargo is “last in, first out,” she says, “so the things needed at the hotel for the first night should be packed last.”

And if everyone packed his or her own bag, that doesn’t mean you can’t shuffle and consolidate their clothing, especially if you want to limit the number of bags you carry into the hotel, says Blair. “When traveling [between hotels], everyone can have their own suitcase,” she says, “but insist on family members sharing suitcases to be brought to the hotel room packed with one-night necessities — pajamas, change of clothes, toiletries. That way you’re not hauling four or more suitcases in and out of the car every time and the room isn’t crammed with luggage.”

Pack differently for one-stop trips.

If your road trip involves staying at just one place like a vacation home, alter your packing strategy, “devoting a quick hour or so to shopping for what you need to set up house once you’re settled” rather than trying to bring it all, says mother of three Mary Fiore, noting that over the years she “spent way too much time obsessing over what to bring, to the extreme discomfort of the entire family. We packed so much stuff that there was no room for comfort in the car. An hour into the trip, no one was happy and everyone was uncomfortable and cramped.”

Speaking of comfort.

If you allowed your sleepy passengers to bring their favorite pillows, get in on the act, perhaps with a personal travel pillow. “The one I carry is down-filled and it can overcome otherwise uncomfortable motel beds,” says RoadTripAmerica.com publisher Mark Sedenquist, who has spent 35 years and nearly a half-million miles on the road in North America. Another item he prefers not to hit the road without is his folding chair, which “can be set up and taken down with one hand in about 10 seconds,” he says, noting that there’s “nothing like being comfortable and away from the car for either a planned event, like a concert, or while waiting for fuel pump to arrive.”

Sedenquist also likes to pack what he calls a rescue bear. “It may sound corny” he says, “ but a teddy bear or other comfort animal can provide needed solace in an emergency, especially — but not only —to kids. The rest of the time, the bear can be your road trip mascot.”

Check your weight.

While you won’t encounter an airline staffer itching to slap “Heavy” stickers on your bags, you should still be mindful of your car’s payload capacity, or gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR), which is the maximum combined weight of all cargo and passengers that the car is designed to carry. The GVWR is usually indicated on a sticker on the driver’s door. Planning to stow luggage on top of your vehicle? AAA says to limit that load to a maximum of 18” high and no more than 100 pounds.

Always, always have full bars.

A fully-charged cell phone is a given on any trip, but also bring plenty of backup. Pack all available power sources for your phone – a spare battery, an alkaline or lithium battery-powered charger if one’s available for your phone, a USB cell phone charger that can be plugged into your laptop’s USB port, and, above all, a cell phone charger adaptable for your car’s lighter socket.

Consider keeping your cell plugged into the car socket during all your driving time, advises Blair, “since cell phones are likely to be constantly searching for a connection as road trippers drive in and out of service and the battery is using more power.”

For additional peace of mind, consider carting along a hand-held CB radio, Sedenquist says. Aside from enabling you to communicate with fellow radio owners in an emergency, many CBs permit you to tune in weather reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), he says, best known for broadcasting advisories via its National Weather Service.

Pack these handy holders.

If you’re bringing an ice chest, Blair says to ensure it has “a working drain plug at the bottom to get rid of the melted water.” And almost nothing beats a laundry basket for versatility, she says, noting that it can be used for “beach toys and towels, transporting items between the car and hotel room, and of course, laundry.” She adds that the basket’s easy to pack, too. “Just place luggage inside the basket, or flip it upside down on top of the luggage.”

As receptacles go, there’s perhaps no item handier for traveling parents than disposable, gallon-sized zip-top bags, says mother of three Suzanne Rowan Kelleher, co-founder and editor-in-chief of family travel site WeJustGotBack.com. The bags “always come in handy for storing half-eaten fruit, almost-finished juice boxes, or anything else that’s messy or wet,” she says, adding “I know this is gross, but they also make excellent barf bags if your kids are prone to car-sickness, since they keep contents, including smells, hermetically sealed until you can find a place to pull over and throw it away.”

No matter how you pack, what you pack, or how much, there’s one more thing that should always be in your car, says Foster: a folding luggage cart. It’s a gift that keeps on giving when you get home, too.