Sunday, February 17, 2013

The art of espresso

Yesterday evening I saw this great quote at a pastry shop in the Mission:




Heh. I was recently getting excited at the idea of getting an espresso machine at home. With this on my mind, I just read James Freeman's (founder of Blue Bottle) chapter on espresso making in the new Blue Bottle coffee book I bought.

What a daunting process. It sounds really really reaaalllly hard to get right, minute changes in grinding need to be made when your coffee is of different ages or the room temperature is more or less humid... wow. Becoming even decent requires thousands of pours of practice & a real motivated dedication to the craft. (Sounds like that Frank Lloyd Wright quote above.) :)

I finished the chapter with a huge appreciation for the ferry building blue bottle coffee magicians, and a strong desire to leave it to the pros, for now. Since I get paid to write computer software, I think I'm gonna keep my hours focused on that. And next time I'm at blue bottle, I'm gonna watch the magicians at work a little more closely, and realize my $2 is incredibly well spent, supporting the art of espresso.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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