Hurry up and Wait.

Some days that's how it is. Hurry up and wait. This morning was a mad rush. Then later today it kind of cooled off. I kept waiting with baited breath for an electrician to come and run some tests to see why our electric bill was so high, but he never showed. I've been Stood up.

But more people are utilizing the cafe' end of things every day and that's really cool for me, because you know, I'd like this to be a great downtown sit around "loiter all you like" kind of place. And they say in guerrilla marketing circles that it's good to have people hanging out. it says to the un-drinked public that "hey, there's folks hanging out in there, it must be pretty good. For instance, I've started blogging/doing research on my computer here, up in one of the black chairs up front. I mean it just makes so much sense on a number of levels. First of all, the aforementioned dubious marketing technique, (dubious?). Second, I have no stool behind the bar so I end up standing at funnt angles, which could be both bad for my back and on the eyes of unsuspecting public. Third, the sunlight is so natural and saucy and wonderful in the wintertime! Summer Sun is lovely, no dowbt many of the two of you, my reading audience prefer a toasty summer-sunlit day. But as for me, I've grown up in Oregon. I sort of like the rain. I like it when it's cool outside, when the air is a little moist, when the sun is out, but you can't quite put your finger on where. a little cloud cover, but not so much that's it's dreary and mildew-wrought.

We switched to french presses today. I think it'll be a good change and the last one we'll make to the house coffee for a while, anyway. To me a "Third Wave" barista, is always growing, always changing, always adjusting his or her technical knowledge, skills and proceedures. We've really done that with our basic house coffee at Slow Train. We've adjusted our bean with our roaster, (Mud River, here in Sheridan), we've adjusted water temperatures and exposure durations down to the degree and second.

My inability to please everyone is amazing to me. I guess it really is a bell curve, a few people will LOVE what I do, a few will hate it and most will just be okay with my abilities.

But come in anyway and try out the new pressed coffees. We'll be rotating our house coffee around a bit, between a few different blends and single origin coffees. These days we have a very exciting Panamanian coffee that reeks of nuts and caramel.

Remember too, dear friends that there's more than one way to skin a cat. I love espresso coffee and have devoted a considerable amount of time and effort getting it down just right. But there are a number of other tasty ways to bring the bean home, a few of my favorites are the french press, the single cup-drip, (melitta), and the Aeropress. I'll talk more about those options in the future, for in the interim, you should carve out a time one of these days to come and try them here! Come at, say, 10:00am, when we slow down a little bit, and I'll have time to go over the entire extraction process with you, show you the "in's and out's" of each method and we can have a little tasting.

Life at Slow Train

Life's good in Sheridan today. Not angelic, as they say, but good. The sun is shining, the air is crisp and clean and fresh. Not a trace of petrochemicals.

the sweet aroma of coffee and tea has set in, happily, it's begun it's entropic permeation of our walls, our floors, our very bodies. When at last I go home at the end of a day, as I embrace my wife and we exchange the details of a busy day, it's the scent of coffee, sweet essences of espresso, mint tea, cardamom, sugar and cinnamon that embrace her perhaps more tightly than I do.

Every day now, I hear from a customer or two who report a magnetic drawing, deeply in the underparts of their souls triggered by the incense wafting through the vents and door-cracks in our fine storefront.

Yes, it's fine in Sheridan today. I mean that in a very old fashioned way, too. When queer was quite queer, when cool was not quite cold, and a fine day was very fine.

There's an energy in town today, I can feel it. I can't put my finger on a reason why. It's probably because I'm listening to a very avant garde band called Baka Beyond playing some GREAT stuff. They call themselves the first "African Celtic Crossover Band". Love them. Love them. Can't recommend them highly enough.

Afro-Celtic vibes are lilting softly throughout the inner and outer Slow Train. I don't know how they do what they do. it's the flutes. it's the xylophones. it's the drums made with bits of real animal skin.

It's good. It's good. But it's insidious too. Something's not quite right. Can't put my finger right on what it is, but something.

I started twittering last night. Never have twittered before, it's not so bad. I forgot my passcode by this morning, however, and now I'm trying to remember it.

I went to a GREAT coffee shop in Vancouver, British Columbia the other day, it's called Bump n Grind. They use a synesso! Very exciting. No Mazzer grinders, instead they use Anfims all around. Interesting. I've heard great things about the Anfim, but haven't used one yet. The most I've seen them in use is as a backup or single-origin grinder in select coffee shops, almost always accompanied by the more traditional Mazzer Major or Rubur. Oh that Rubur. It's so beautiful. a full 28.5 inches tall. Beautiful, polished and efficient. This is the piano wire to my assassin. My weapon of choice. At 220v, it's 83mm conical burrs spin at just 500 rpms. Compare that to the relative speed-demonry of my current grinder, a mazzer major, whose same 83mm burrs spin at 1400 rpms. The concept is this; I want my coffee--your coffee-- to undergo as few stressful procedures between the tree and your cup as possible. Every time I expose your bean to something else naturally stressful, be it environmental heat, sitting on a dock in Los Angeles for 6 months, spending a lot of time lonely, sitting in a bag after being roasted, or grinding it poorly, every time one of these is perpetrated on your bean, it suffers. The slower, the cooler, the easier we can grind the better. So a very LARGE conical burr, (think new millennium millstone), spinning at very LOW speeds will produce a very consistent and low stressed ground coffee. I hope you understand.

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog. Here I'll be discussing Slow Train affairs, interesting customers, interesting drink requests, other coffee shops, coffee preparation & extraction, a little science, a little history, a little salacious gossip & a little theology. I hope you appreciate my attempts to stay connected with the outside world, and my witty style & expressive perspective on it. I hope to be able to add photos, video, information and perhaps, the occasional coupon, or ultra-special sale or something. Actually, I think I'll start right now. Come in and mention the blag special between the dates of 2/3/9 and 2/13/9 and you'll receive 10% off your entire order. Yeah. I'm that radical.