Getting back into the groove - with a new website · Friday February 27, 2009 by colin newell
Apologies to my regular legion of reader… for my absence. I apologize. Have been crazy busy proofing the new coffeecrew.com website – well ahead of schedule thank you very much.
I had to borrow another domain name to set up and populate the new site – putting my music project – the two old goats – more or less on standby. Which was OK because that website gets very little traffic.
Which got me picking around for a test domain name… you know – just to play around with. And it came as bit of a surprise to find just how many people are sitting on domain names – I mean, all of them!
My goal, when helping others get an online presence – is to keep URL brief and to the point – but stay catchy and quirky (if appropriate).
And staying away from domain names like BigRedBunniesLeapingInMyFace.Com
Haven’t actually checked that one…
Too much typing. I am more into shorties like abcd.com or xyz.com where possible and practical.
Ah, the web. Which reminds me of 2 or 3 conversations I have had this week with folks eager to advertise on the new coffeecrew website – who are fairly new to the information superhighway – and want the leg up that a text link or banner on my popular website would provide… at a very reasonable cost.
The 3 folks reported spending, on average, over 10,000 dollars on a basic website with a simple shopping cart. Is this the average? When I stopped doing paid projects for folks around Victoria, I was charging (typically) under $2000 for a fully functional dynamic website with or without some basic cart features and a domain name.
So what the hell happened?
These days I do a lot of pro bono stuff – just to keep my hand in and feel good about it. I gave up doing paid web development because, by and large, I prefer the lack of pressure – even though I often deliver fully functional solutions within 72 hours of commencing the project. Yea, I guess that is fast.
Anyway – another couple of weeks or so… and I should be able to get back to the good stuff… right here…. on the blog.
Cafe culture Winter 2009 marathon post number four · Saturday February 7, 2009 by colin newell
On any given day or week I might discover 1 good cafe. If it is great I might come back again – actually, even it is a little bit sexy, I will come around for another shake.
At left – Stovetop Chambourd Coffee maker from BodumUSA.Com
Today was unusual. I stopped by The Parsonage/Fernwood Coffee Roasters and Khona Coffee in the same day. Each of these is going to get a blog entry all to their own – but for the time being, I will combine them in this mini-review.
The Parsonage eatery on North Park (off of Cook Street) in Victoria has had a devoted following for over a decade (if memory serves me correctly) – for its rustic approach to food and drink.
And when business partners, Ben Cram and Rob Kettner had the opportunity to snap up the Parsonage and leave behind their old jobs… they jumped at it.
Ben is a red seal chef with a colorful and successful career anchoring local haunts like Pescatores and the Bear Mountain Resort.
Rob is a professional journalist and videographer whose skill behind the lens has taken him to Afghanistan and beyond.
(Rob and Ben) – Two very different guys with a lifetime of friendship, they appear to compliment each other. These boys grew up in Winnipeg where espresso coffee was not exactly ubiquitous – but common in this City’s Little Italy.
The backbone of the Fernwood Coffee operation is a 23kg Deidrich Roaster which rests in a space formerly occupied by a bicycle courier business. The energy here is palpable but still in development as these “brothers in coffee“ learn the ropes.
Andrew Khoo has owned (and created) Khona Coffee for 2 years. He combines a zeal for cafe culture with a mastery of fundamental business principles – to push his creation to the leading edge of the caffeinated wedge. I first visited Khona Cafe today after an over-stimulated day of cafe visiting and talk story with Mark Engels of Bubby Roses Bakery. And walking through the door (of Khona) was much like walking on stage at a rock concert… while it’s in progress. Now that’s energy!
Not satisfied to just make coffee, Andrew makes education and inspiration a primary goal – to deliver knowledge to his customers, to make it fun and to make darn sure they are getting the best product possible. Oughtred Coffee of Victoria-Vancouver provide the raw materials (single origins) and Andrew (and his uber-skilled baristi) deliver the goods in a refreshingly new way; coffee brewed in French press or Aeropress! Oh yes, and the espresso coffee can be a single origin too if you want.
I tried an espresso, an almond macchiato and an Aeropressed Sumatra: The espresso’s were single origin and the Sumatra was amazing – again, a full review is in order and will be delivered shortly.
Needless to say, I am still buzzing.
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Cafe culture Winter 2009 marathon post number three · Friday February 6, 2009 by colin newell
We drink the Kopi Luwak so you do not have to. Then again, you might want to anyway.
It is the job of the CoffeeCrew.Com writers to put their palates on the line to get the story. In an upcoming review we tackle some Island culture with our first ever Canadian review of Kava root.
Thanks go out to Kona Kava Farm on the Big Island of Hawaii for supplying us with a sample bag of some of the finest ground Kava root. Kava has been used in Fiji for 6000 years – as a social drink, as a catalyst of conversation, and part of the very fabric of Island life.
For some strange reason, in Canada, Kava is forbidden from re-sale; in Health food stores, in Herbal stores and other locations that sell tried, true and tested healthful products.
Not that I am an expert or anything – but I think it is a little odd that the Federal Government (with the backing of the Pharmaceutical industry [Big Pharma]) has stamped out Kava in this fashion.
Apparently there have been 3 cases of liver toxicity with Kava use (in Canada) – and that alone warranted the pull from the shelf order.
Liver damage eh? Doesn’t excessive consumption of beer and wine do that too?
Yea. I thought so. Anyway – stay tuned for our report.
In other news, yours truly is writing for Eat Magazine and (hopefully) will be a regular fixture in that wonderful publication.
Cafe culture Winter 2009 marathon post number two · Thursday February 5, 2009 by colin newell
The other interesting thing about this particular sample of the ECM Cellini Professional… is that it was dropped about 10 feet… onto concrete. Yup. It had its face pushed in quite seriously. I have given it a semi-pro fix while it waits for some replacement steel components. Which makes an important point: This machine is built like a tank!
read more of the article
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happy coffee trees have good haircuts · Thursday February 5, 2009 by colin newell
Tropical vegetation growth is steady year round – if one species has a dormant month, there’s another one ready to take its space immediately. For a tropical farmer it means a never-ending battle against nature taking control: cutting, weeding, whacking, clearing, ripping, mowing, pruning, breaking, picking. Vastly different than in the temperate climate zone where distinct seasons allow, even demand, more organized work.
What’s called ‘pruning season’ in Kona coffee land is actually a matter of life and death for the trees. A coffee tree can kill itself by overbearing, and our region is known for producing the highest amount per tree and the largest beans anywhere in the world. So in this very unique, more than ideal Kona coffee tree climate one doesn’t destroy, but creates by cutting things off.
The last beans are picked, pulped, dried and securely packed away in the storage rooms to age for a few months. The trees look literally wasted – many branches are stripped of leaves, sporting barren, broken twigs, a few forgotten coffee cherries dangling somewhere at the top, mostly dried up to what we call ‘raisins’. New green shots sprout on those old, bent over, spent arms. If left to themselves, cultivated kona typica trees will soon return to be tall, wild unsightly shrubs with lots of new wood, but little coffee to harvest from.
It’s the way a tree grows on its own and a coffee farmer tries to tame this very nature year round to make it behave ‘unnatural’; meaning giving more fruit than it would need to produce to help its species survival.
Not much different from a vintner or apple orchard owner: The plant should conclude that it’s best to produce as many fruits as possible. Every year. We farmers fool them into thinking that there is an abundance of fertile space, water and right amount of sun around, by carefully pruning, fertilizing, watering and adjusting shade trees. Keeping the right bugs around and the wrong ones away. Protecting the soil from erosion and the winds from breaking its branches. Bringing in beehives to pollinate or even observing moon phases to up the yields in spiritual ways, if one is so inclined. All comes down to that if the tree is happy, you’ll harvest some very, very happy coffee beans from it.
When I walk out there to trim the old branches from our 2,500 trees it’s the dry season in Kona. Sunny days from dusk to dawn with barely a gentle breeze. None of the usual afternoon clouds rising from the ocean along the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano. One wants to catch the first light at 6 AM till about 10 when it gets really hot. And after 4PM till 6 when it cools down again. Because it is hard work, and it needs careful, concentrated examination of each trees’ unique constellation of branches: Which ones to cut and which ones not to. Then a short burst of energy with a very sharp handsaw to cut the 3” wide, about 5‘ long old or withered branches off. Selecting one or two new shoots, which should not be damaged by the saw blade. The other ones are being broken off at the base, or ‘suckered’ as they call it here. Then it needs dragging the cutoff branches out to the nearest path, two or three at a time, mostly uphill over rocky terrain. Stumbling, cursing, getting scratched, a tad more cursing. Piling them up where the wood chipper can reach them easily.
After ten trees, twenty or so branches one is drenched in sweat. Then it gets nasty with the crab spiders, which love to spin their orbs in this season. And they cling to a sweaty neck or forehead when dragging the branches out. Short legged arachnids they are, their pea size bodies accumulate mostly underneath ones shirt collar. Where they decide to bite you. Somewhere in pain level between a mosquito and a bee; but no visible redness or swelling. Those come from the spider mites, which fall down from the top of the dried branches and itch for days after having burrowed into your skin.
In a while the tangled mess of the post harvest orchard opens up and one can see the spacing of the trees, the beautiful, shy kalij pheasants running around, find a forgotten wooden picking hook from the harvest season, an empty burlap bag which was never filled with coffee cherries, slowly deteriorating in the rains.
On a good day I prune and sucker about hundred trees. And drag, pile up the branches where the chipper can get to it. Then my concentration wanes and I make mistakes by cutting off a wrong branch, or missing a few. The beauty of farm life is that there’s always something else to be done, screaming for attention, a different muscle to use, a different way to focus, or something stupid or repetitive activity for a change. Should I deal with HTML code on our website or the jeeps transmission fluid problem? Mow the lawn or prep the soil analysis for the Ag Service lab?
A well-pruned coffee tree gives an optimum amount of coffee cherries. It utilizes the air and space surrounding the leaves and branches fully. Pruning is to understand the inherent architecture, the metabolism of the tree; foreseeing the next few month’s growth and the next 2 year’s direction a branch will take; helping bent over branches to steady themselves by weaving them into the adjacent twigs. The thick gnarly, many times altered stump of an old growth Kona coffee tree is a piece of art in itself. A tree cut back over 120 pruning seasons simply is a bonsai piece in its own way: Full of cuts, swellings, holes, stumps, twirls and turns – a symphony in wood. They say ‘form follows function’, here the function is shaped by forming, shaping the growth. A coffee tree is pruned at knee height, from where the branches are easily bendable towards the pickers during harvest. The first generations of Japanese Kona coffee farmers preferred climbing on ladders and let the verticals grow up to 10, 15 meters. Accidents by toppling down with a thirty pound basket of coffee cherry strapped to the waste was common. It’s not a cushiony fall on Kona lava rocks and an hours worth of work is spilled between the dirt, stones and leaves. Those days on the ladder are gone thanks to more finessed pruning methods their children developed when they took over the farms. It still isn’t easy labor, but looking at a happy, smiling coffee tree sporting it’s new seasonal hair, err… ‘branch’ cut is very much so.
Joachim Oster is a coffee farmer and owner (with his lovely wife Demetria and daughter Athena…) of Blue Horse Kona Coffee Farm in Kealakekua, Hawaii (near Captain Cook). His writing will periodically grace the pages of the CoffeeCrew Blog – and for that we are eternally grateful!
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