PRODUCT REVIEW: Rancilio Rocky Coffee Grinder

PRODUCT REVIEW: Starbucks Anniversary Roast 2011

Starbucks coffees are really hit or miss, what with their massive supply line, and I briefly pondered whether the drastic increases in coffee prices would affect their quality. First, I can safely say that Starbucks quality is generally in-tact. I was surprised by the number of broken beans in the bag, but that could be a result of rough handling by anyone in the supply chain. Prices are significantly higher, though. The half-pound bag was nine dollars, and that makes the proposition of buying coffee from a local roaster all the more attractive. But this is neither here nor there. Neither over hill, nor over dale.

The 2011 Anniversary Blend is the annual release of a blend onto which they slap a brand. I haven't tried earlier versions, but I suspect that the blends are whatever is available in large amounts, and since the anniversary comes out at the same time every year, the blends are undoubtedly similar.

I like the new blend. I'm a bit disappointed by the level of the roast, as I usually am with Starbucks. Instead of relying on my grind level, I'm going to start referencing how much the beans weigh per level tablespoon of unground beans. Most roasts are in the 6-8g range, while Anniversary 2011 is 4.5-5g. That is quite dark indeed.

Luckily, unlike the incredibly disappointing Tribute Blend, Anniversary retains some flavor. It's dark, roasty, very mellow, and goes wonderfully in an espresso double. It's still darker than I would have liked, and the age of the beans is very apparent when extracting a shot: the crema is thin, thin, thin. While these would have been deal-breakers in most circumstances, Anniversary is perfectly balanced and such a good "standard" coffee, that I can't help but give it a thumbs up.

I finally have a siphon pot and pour-over setup, so I can give you more rounded reports of the flavor. Unfortunately for these beans, both pour over and siphon amplify their shortcomings. Espresso does very, very well with rich, simple blends. Truly, in most espresso cases, the simpler the blend, the better. The slow extraction of pour over make the most of vibrant, complex, lightly-roasted coffees. The age of the beans is again apparent with a near-nonexistent bloom. Still, as with the espresso, it's very good "standard"-tasting coffee. Complex? No, but it's leagues better than Folgers.

So while I was disappointed by the roast level, and thus the pour-over extraction, the rich espresso and good basic flavor make up for it. My only serious reservation is the price, and it's the reason why I'm hesitant to recommend it. Nine dollars for half-a-pound is a LOT of money, especially when you can buy excellent coffee fresh from local roasters like Updike's Newtowne or Coffee Exchange for less money. Worse still, prices might get higher, rendering Starbucks a non-option (Starbucks Reserve coffees, at $30 per pound, are already the domain of lunatics).

Price aside, though, it's a good coffee. I just hope that bean prices don't get any higher, or only a maniac would buy Starbucks.

Starbucks Anniversary Blend 2011: RECOMMENDED

A Series Of Latte Art

Latte art is always popular, probably because it looks cool, so here is a series of my latte art creations taken over the course of a few days. Cafes only ever show you photos of the best art they've ever done, which only one guy can do. This is how lattes should look every single time.

From The Watery Gourmet

From The Watery Gourmet

From The Watery Gourmet

From The Watery Gourmet

From The Watery Gourmet

From The Watery Gourmet

From The Watery Gourmet

Steaming Frozen Milk

When making a latte, I like to stick my milk-filled carafe in the freezer for a couple of minutes to get the temp down. Well, today, I forgot that I had done that and went about my business for about 45 minutes.

The milk was, as wouldn't surprise anyone, half-frozen. I tried to break it up with a spoon to not much avail. So, I figured, what the hell. I jammed my steam wand into the milky little arctic ocean and turned it on.

The ice faded very quickly, the whirlpool whipped up, and about twenty seconds later, I had a perfectly-steamed carafe of milk. It worked! Delicious.

So, yes. If you ever accidentally freeze your milk, don't worry. Just jam that wand into the frozen mess and turn that mofo on. There's no need to cry over frozen milk.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Starbucks Three Regions Blend

Starbucks is back. Last month they released their Tribute Blend, which was a disaster. It was a blasted mess of a bean, with nearly all of the terroir charred from the bean by an aggressive roast. I was doubly disappointed because I had just had Casi Cielo for the very first time, which was a fantastic blend. Starbucks has completely made up for it, though, with Three Regions Blend.

Open the bag and you're hit with a very strong bouquet of fudge and brownies. It's funny, since very little of this initial smell gets to the palate. Also nice, Starbucks' description of the coffee is rather accurate. It's a very toasty coffee, with a lot of bread, mellow roast, and just a small amount of spice. It does better the lighter your serving. A heavy espresso double was blowing out the flavors and delivering too much roast. A light double was good, and an espresso single was very good. Moreover, this isn't a very cremariffic coffee, so there's no real reason to use a double.

I'd imagine that drip coffee will simply blast the beans, since I found that they tasted best with a cooler brew. In this quest, pour-over, or my chosen brewing method, Aeropress are ideal. My favorite method was far and away the espresso single, which drew out all of the best flavors. There was a lot more terroir than in many other Starbucks blends and beans, which was probably helped by a comparably light roast. As I always mention, Starbucks usually needs a low grind on my Rancilio Rocky, sometimes as low as 3, with most good espresso blends needing a 9 or 10.

As far as Starbucks beans go, Three Regions blend is visibly lighter. There's a smaller amount of oil on the surface, and the color has more brown to it. Casi Cielo, still Starbucks' only legitimately impressive blend, required a 9. Three Regions needs around an 8. Still, the roast is more than light enough to give the beans character.

Three Regions Blend is a definite buy. It tastes fresh, and does very well in an Aeropress and a single. Just avoid making any doubles with it.

Starbucks Three Regions Blend: RECOMMENDED

Peet's Coffee WTF?!

I just went to Peet's Coffee for the very first time. I read a lot about coffee, go to a lot of cafes, and drink more than his healthy. I can say pretty definitively that Starbucks is the target of buttloads of animosity and is referenced derisively as Charbucks more often than not, while the other major chain, Peet's, is always spoken of in not-so-quiet reverence. The phrasing of this criticism is usually how only idiots go to Starbucks, and those who really know coffee will always go to Peet's instead.

Well all I can say to that is WTFUCK?! Their food selection was quite good. Better than Starbucks' currently is, even though the selection at the 'Bucks is a bit wider. If Peet's food has always been this good, then yes, their food was much better than Starbucks before they changed all of their recipes and food selections.

But it's the coffee that matters at a coffee shop, and it's here that had me shocked. For one, I was blown away, literally blown away! It was Boston. I was shot while waiting in line. But after getting out of the hospital a couple of months later, I returned and picked up the latte that I had ordered. It was a bit old, so I ordered a new one.

First off, Starbucks is lampooned by those in the know for using what are known as super-auto machines. These are the machines that grind, tamp, espress, and almost automatically steam milk. The problem with these machines is that while they can be operated by a trained chimp, the espresso is never as good as from a traditional grinder/machine setup, and the milk foam is never anywhere close. So color me surprised when I walked up to the counter and saw two super-auto machines pumping away behind the counter.

It was a Schaerer, a brand of which I know, but have never seen one in actual use. At least it's not the Frankes that Panera Breads use. Panera has some truly awful espresso. The espresso itself tasted alright. The machine was obviously well-calibrated and clean. The problem, though, is that a latte from Starbucks, when (...when) their machines are well-calibrated, they taste just as good. Worse still, just like Starbucks rather frequently, the milk foam was atrocious. Look at it!


That's terrible foam! I don't get commercial super-auto machines. I owned a Jura Capresso Z5 for years, and while it took a little tweaking, I was able to squeeze out some really good milk foam and espresso. These are commercial machines that frequently cost eight times as much and the product is either only comparable or inferior. Just compare that Peet's latte to this one, made with the $3,000 Jura Capresso Z5, and the next one, which was made with a $2,000 semi-auto espresso machine.




Peet's coffee is so far behind those two examples as to be akin to putting Jessie Owens in the Special Olympics. If Peet's Coffee is like this at every location, then I can safely say that those who mock Starbucks and espouse Peet's are the ones who actually know nothing about coffee. You can work yourself into a self-important, anti-corporate rage all you want; Starbucks isn't too bad.

Bitter harvest: White Material on DVD

Dogs cross a dirt road under headlights. A flashlight searches an abandoned house to find a man in military garb, a hole in his belly, lying wide-eyed and dead on a bed. Somewhere smoke roils through darkness and flames lap at a building. A woman climbs aboard a crowded bus, the sole white face among her fellow passengers (and how white it is, sprayed with freckles, looking papery-fragile against the red dirt and harsh sun). A peculiar flashback structure reveals itself, the first 15 minutes of White Material (2009) functioning as a vestibule, along which fragmentary scenes are arranged in a seductively disorienting manner, their cryptic fluidity heightened by Tindersticks’ prowling lighthouse beam of a score. Yet everything key to the narrative has been planted herein and will unfurl and amass volume from here on, honed by actions whose savagery cannot be softened by the narcotic lyricism of their delivery.

New from Criterion, White Material is Claire Denis’ third feature depicting whites in Africa, following her autobiographical debut Chocolat (1988), and her inspired transposition of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd into contemporary Djibouti in Beau Travail (1999). Co-written with novelist Marie NDiaye, the film centers on Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert), foreman of a coffee plantation in an unnamed country increasingly consumed by revolutionary (and counterrevolutionary) violence. Maria was to inherit the plantation from her ex-father-in-law (Michel Subor): she feels she belongs there, not so much entitled as embedded. When government emissaries urge her to depart (a helicopter even passes over at one point, commanding evacuation through a megaphone, raining down survival kits), Maria chooses to ignore them, staying focused on the harvest, for which she needs to rally a new group of labourers after their predecessors hastily quit: like the servants in The Exterminating Angel (1962), the staff knows it’s time to split long before the bosses. We see her speak to her black neighbours and employees as equals, blind to the fact that in their eyes the new crisis has reduced Maria to “white material,” just another vestige of the colonial past, less person than troublesome anachronism, a kind of ghost. The era that facilitated her forging a life here is rapidly closing, if not already long-gone with the wind, though Maria’s similarity to Scarlett O’Hara ends with her fierce tenacity. It’s the quality that defines her, and when it finally breaks nearly the film’s very end, it causes a violence to erupt within Maria that’s the stuff of Greek tragedy.

In keeping with its geographical ambiguity (the film was shot in Cameroon, but could be numerous places in French West Africa), White Material’s overt political scenario is largely peripheral to the main action: the child soldiers swarming the countryside, the pro-insurgent DJ narrating the rebels’ advance over the airwaves like Supersoul in Vanishing Point (1971), and, though based on Thomas Sankara, the film’s rebel leader, known only as the Boxer (Isaach de Bankolé), remains a mysterious, iconic figure throughout, though, in a wonderful detail, we glimpse a tattoo on his arm that reads “Jamais K.O.” or “never knocked-out,” which seems bitterly ironic until Denis’ eloquent final image implicitly applies this bit of bravado to the spirit of Boxer’s cause, rather than his mere mortal existence. (An amusing coincidence: the name of Bankolé’s character is echoed in the matchboxes Bankolé’s nameless protagonist collects in The Limits of Control, released the same year.) But White Material’s internal politics play out vividly in the stray destinies of the Vial family. Maria’s ex-husband André (Christophe Lambert, his voice reduced to a Gallic growl since his Highlander days) has married and had a child with a black woman and lives in a house right next to Maria’s. He’s now selling off the plantation behind Maria’s back to pay off his debts. Maria and André’s son Manuel (Nicolas Duvauchelle) meanwhile has grown into a lazy, aimless young man, born and raised in Africa but an outsider nonetheless, who suddenly finds a dubious sense of purpose by identifying with the child soldiers, disposing of his blonde hair, and attempting to position himself as their prospective leader by gleefully and recklessly bribing them with goods. As with Maria’s final wrathful act, something about Manuel’s transformation feels a little more symbolic than real: our agrarian heroine’s offspring is but a different sort of bad yield. Yet I can’t honestly say that these initially jarring, metaphorically-minded dramatic shifts spoil anything essential in my deep engagement with White Material, partly because the performances of Huppert and Duvauchelle are so superb, and partly because their actions do finally feel of-a-piece in this unforgettable work from one of our greatest directors, who, as always, rigorously follows her own elliptical, idiosyncratic muse.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Starbucks Tribute Coffee

Starbucks' new Tribute coffee, celebrating forty years of life, is ironically appropriate. But before I get to that, a peeve. Starbucks has not been around for forty years. Yes, the very first Starbucks was founded in 1971, but it is so distantly related to the current permutation of Starbucks as to be significant in name only. They didn't sell drinks until 1987, when Howard Schultz bought the chain from the founders and rebranded his own burgeoning coffee chain, Il Giornale, as Starbucks. Thus, the Starbucks of today is actually Il Giornale with a different name. I've posted the original logo so you can see the strong similarity between it and Starbucks' current logo. Basically, the Starbucks name is forty years old. Starbucks as it is is only twenty-four.

Now on to the coffee. After my last roast review of Casi Cielo was such a success, I came into this one with high hopes. Sadly, I have had my hopes run through a grinder like so many coffee beans. I said that this coffee is ironically appropriate, and by that I mean it is ironic that a company that has been so known for burnt coffee as to earn the moniker Charbucks should celebrate its anniversary with a blend that is burnt indeed. It is further ironic that a company that made its name and fortune with expensive espresso drinks should celebrate with a roast that doesn't go terribly well in espresso.

As a semi-objective measurement of roast level, I use my grinder, a Rancilio Rocky, and the required grind to get a perfect espresso shot. Most good espresso grinds like Black Cat require grinds in the area of 10 on my grinder. Casi Cielo required a 9, the darkest Starbucks I've ever had required a 4, with most Starbucks coffees requiring a 5. Tribute requires a grind of 5-6, so it's right in line with their other offerings. Amazingly, it tastes darker than this would indicate. I can taste almost nothing but roast. Smooth, yes, but roast nonetheless.

I'm left with some confusion. Until Casi Cielo, I always assumed that Starbucks was actually incompetent, but I now know that they aren't. They can produce an excellent roast if they want to, which means that this coffee is a conscious choice. Why would a company knowingly create a dark, blasted husk of a bean (I mean that in general, not to Tribute specifically)? What flavor profile are they shooting for? To what demographic are they trying to appeal? I'm very confused. Regardless, this was a disappointing coffee. Their standard espresso roast is much better for espresso, and I've had better pour over with a multitude of their other blends and single origins. It's certainly not disgusting, and in less-gourmet times, I might give a thumbs up. But in the face of stiff competition from local roasters and even Starbucks' own selection, I can't recommend this coffee.

Starbucks Tribute Coffee: NOT RECOMMENDED

PRODUCT REVIEW: Starbucks Casi Cielo Coffee

I just bought a half-pound of Starbucks to get me through the snowstorm and gave their seasonal roast, Casi Cielo, a shot. I am legitimately impressed. I knew I was in for something different when the usual setting of "4" on my grinder was way too fine. The darker the roast, the finer the grind, and Starbucks ain't called Charbucks for nothing.

After two blown shots, I was amazed to find the coffee requiring a grind in the "8-9" range. Holy crap! So, I knew it was going to be different, but good? I was about to find out.

It's good! Like, really good! This is easily the best Starbucks coffee that I've ever tasted in espresso. Whereas other times, I bought Starbucks because my Black Cat hadn't arrived in time, or I was unable to make it to Updike's Newtowne or Coffee Exchange, with this, I don't feel as though I'm missing out by drinking it. It's very rich and smooth, always good for espresso, but actually has some fruity bite to it. It's an excellent choice for espresso, be it doubles or singles. I haven't tried a triple, but if it works in a double, it usually does well in a triple, too.

Now, I know that I'm late to the game with this. Starbucks introduced Casa Cielo over three years ago. But that knowledge only leaves me more confused. If Starbucks knows enough to make this, why haven't they applied this to their other coffees? Or their in-house espresso? While I still prefer my favorites (UpTowne, CofEx, and B-Cat), this is a legitimately good coffee and everything Starbucks makes should be like this.

Starbucks Casi Cielo Coffee: RECOMMENDED

P.S.

And just for fun, here's a picture of some latte art that I poured into a cup of Casi Cielo. It was tasty.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Black Cat Espresso

Black Cat espresso is the flagship product of the now officially world-class cafe, Intelligentsia. Because of its fame, widespread availability, and quality, I think that calling it the bar by which other espresso blends are measured is not an exaggeration. I'm a big fan of Black Cat and buy it quite frequently and this product review has been something of a late comer.

First thing that someone coming from Starbucks or grocery store coffees will notice is how light the roast of Black Cat is. I'm not entirely sure what it was, but for whatever reason, America has grown accustomed to super-dark coffee roasts. This has benefits and detriments, of course. Dark roasted beans can make anything taste acceptable, so that's good, but it does that by erasing the terroir of the beans, which for good beans is bad.

The best espresso roasts are loaded with sweetness, chocolate, caramel, with the roasting process creating not char, but the flavor of lightly toasted bread. You don't ruin this with a dark roast! Go try local roasters and their espresso roasts. You'll find that many of them, if not most, will have espresso roasts in the city to full-city range, with some even including roasts as light as half-city. Again, the exaggerated flavor of the espresso process brings out everything the beans have to give, so more so than any other process, espresso demands good beans.

Black Cat is a case study in this. It's rich and smooth, and even when you screw up shots it tastes pretty good. When you get it right, it tastes amazing. I must admit to preferring my espresso a bit richer than Intelligentsia shot for. They obviously want a bit more complexity, which they openly admit, whereas I am totally happy to have espresso marked almost exclusively by chocolate and caramel. This is not a knock against it, obviously, since they are skilled roasters shooting for a specific flavor profile and they achieve that goal with aplomb.

That being said, there is one thing that pisses me off about this roast and that is how easy it is to screw up. It's a very light roast and this means that your espresso machine is going to be hyper-finicky with it, frequently side-channeling and wanting you to change your grind level from day to day. It can be a major pain. It's aggravated if you have an already pissy machine, like my La Spaziale Vivaldi II.

But that's my problem, and yours if you choose to use BC, and the only thing that is a true knock against the beans are the price. They are rather expensive at well over $1 per ounce. You can buy them cheaper from other retailers (Like NeedCaffeine.com) than through Intelligentsia... for some reason... but it's still far more expensive than other famous blends, like Stumptown's Hair Bender or local blends like that which can be had (in Rhode Island) from Updike's Newtowne or New Harvest.

To put a point on this whole discussion, Black Cat is a high-quality espresso. It's worthy of its fame, and, while expensive, tastes fantastic. You would be well-served to drink this if you like espresso.

Black Cat Espresso: Highly Recommended

http://www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/about/black-cat-project

PRODUCT REVIEW: Kicking Horse Espresso

Well, this is sorta' a product review; Kicking Horse makes many varieties. I discussed my disappointment after opening my 1kg (2.2lb) bag of espresso, which lists as a medium roast, to find it very dark indeed. Just to give you an idea, lighter espresso roasts like Black Cat or New Harvest require a grind setting of 9-10 on my grinder. Darker roasts are lower. Crappy supermarket coffee is usually so dark and dry that it requires a setting of 2-3. Starbucks is usually 4-5 and, drumroll, Kicking Horse is 6. A 3-4 grind difference from other medium espresso roasts reveals just how much of a chasm there is.

So it came as no surprise to find that the espresso also tastes very dark. There's more there than Starbucks, but not too much. Very roasty. It's not terrible, and if you prefer darker roasts for your espresso, this is quite good, but if this is medium, what the hell are their dark roasts? A bag of black powder? I'm drinking it, and enjoying it, but I think that calling this a medium roast is an inaccuracy. It makes me hesitant to recommend it even though I will because it is a good dark roast. If you buy, expect it dark, because it is.

Kicking Horse Espresso: RECOMMENDED

Working Knowledge: Král catalogues the quotidian

Petr Král, with Jana Bokova

It was something I’d been meaning to pick up for months, yet Petr Král’s Working Knowledge (Pushkin Press, $16.95) ultimately found me precisely when I most needed it, which was about ten days ago, just as I was settling into this large, half-empty, half-lived-in house in rural Saskatchewan, the semi-abandoned home of a friend, where some arguably misguided notion had prompted me to pass some weeks in solitude. The book was the last thing I bought before leaving Saskatoon, my last chance to soak up city life, and heading farther east. It’s been among the wettest Junes in provincial history, the house cold and damp, the surrounding fields too marshy for strolling, so I’ve spent many of these hours seated at this big wooden table, trying not to let my brain go completely soggy. I needed to try and remain alert to the world, to not retreat completely and morbidly inward, and Král’s eloquent, charming little book, his “strange and beautiful existential encyclopedia of the everyday,” as Milan Kundera describes it in his brief introduction, served to help me keep my focus.

Ranging in length from a few pages to a single sentence, Working Knowledge catalogues dozens of meditations on things known and most commonly taken for granted. Though I can hardly verify this, the translation sometimes strikes me as poor. Thankfully, Král’s is the sort of poetic yet mostly spare writing that can weather an awkward rendering or two. The book opens with ‘Coffee,’ immediately awakening our senses with its “residue of night,” before slipping into ‘The Shirt,’ considering ‘Dawn,’ that “washed-out, ashen period in which all things are reborn into doubt,” assessing the distinct values inherent in two kinds of breakfast, exploring the miniature offerings of self-recognition that lay waiting in every act of shaving, and reminding us to cherish the glaze of sleepy morning stasis: “…we are never closer to a state of grace than on those mornings when we lie in bed, half-awake, allowing ribbons of thought and itinerant dreams to drift idly through our minds. We are as yet no more than pure potential… sending out feelers and drawing them back again, between the shadows and the flares of light which occasionally reach us from between the closed curtains…”

Not all of these writings are so serene. One piece considers the unease raised by retrieving your luggage from the airport’s conveyor belt and wondering where it’s been or who’s been inside of it. Another is a strident defense of the word “cunt.” There are a number of rousing declarations threading through Working Knowledge, which sometimes read as so out of left field as to constitute enigmatic one-liners. “Only visiting mothers truly makes it possible to get to know a foreign city,” he writes at the top of ‘Mothers and Daughters.’ Yet as the book continues Král engages with his topics less as platforms for such pronouncements than as opportunities to ask the reader questions, as in his pages on laughter, where he wonders when did we first truly laugh, or whether true laughter is instinctive or learned. The prose seems cleanest when considering concrete items with a minimal number of words, yet I think the most wonderful passages are the longer ones which, while en route to some other assertion, pause to offer some tantalizing fragment of some other, larger story. These micro-narratives include references to ex-cons from Guyana who build their houses facing the prison as a reminder not to go back, to a mountaineering conductor who takes a catastrophic fall, to Lenin asking Trotsky for a cigarette even though he didn’t smoke, or to Luis Buñuel, who was hard of hearing, spending his final days rising at dawn to listen to the wind in the trees off his Mexico City terrace.

Like Kundera, Král, a poet, essayist and one-time surrealist, is a Czech living in France since fleeing his homeland back in 1968. It’s tempting to attribute his sensitivity to small things to the exile’s condition and its implied nostalgia—after all, there is in Working Knowledge a tribute to Czech Christmas fish soup that’s as brimming with affection as anything else in this book—but I’m fairly confident that Král would have written about such things anywhere and under any circumstance. Though often writing as though of universally shared experience, his perspective is unapologetically specific—male, white, heterosexual, European, art loving, and at times a little old-fashioned in his adoration of women and notions of gender roles—yet it’s this specificity that elevates Working Knowledge to something inspired, bold and funny, and necessarily particular, rather than aphoristic. I’m certain that this book is best read slowly, or even randomly, at one’s whim, but my present conditions compelled me to gobble it up over only a couple of sittings. It’s the sort of thing I read first for pleasure, secondly for work, and, perhaps thirdly, out of a lingering suspicion—or desire—that to live with a little more alertness to quotidian experience might make us better human beings, or at the very least slightly more pierced by the rush of living as it passes us by.

Latte Art Wallpaper

I uploaded a Latte art wallpaper at my fō-tō-gră-fē blog. I'm re-posting it here in case anyone would like some beautiful coffee forever tempting them on their desktop.

4:3 ratio

From fō-tō-gră-fē Wallpapers

16:10 ratio

From fō-tō-gră-fē Wallpapers

Absence makes the art go yonder: The Missing Person on DVD

John Rosow (Michael Shannon) used to be NYPD, now he’s a Chicago PI and a strong candidate for a DUI. He’s woken from some state close to comatose by the proverbial ringing phone, requesting his services to tail someone all the way down to LA. Initially the gig seems conspicuously easy, with the subject hiding in plain sight, taking the train, not bothering to disguise the fact that he’s a middle-aged white guy traveling with a handsome Mexican boy. Things gradually become more arduous. The technologically impaired Rosow has to buy a phone that takes pictures from a gentleman named Boo Boo (Mark Ventimiglia), pay a Serpico-obsessed cabbie named Hero (John Ventimiglia) $500 to let him hitch a ride in his trunk, and ward off the amorous attentions of an altogether fetching cougar named Lana (Margaret Colin) who sleep-talks to her mother about blueberry pancakes. But nobody told Rosow switching professions in your mid-30s would be easy.

Writer/director Noah Buschel’s The Missing Person is loaded with pronounced eccentricities, but its also loaded with amiable, detailed performances, thanks to an impressive cast of film, television and theatre veterans who unanimously seem to jive with Buschel’s kooky, decidedly unhurried neo-noir. Genre tropes are dusted off and tickled back to life, with Rosow regularly knocked unconscious, dreaming of some lost lover, or trading banter with good-cop/bad-cop feds who mysteriously turn up in the motel parking lot. At times it’s a little cute, a little cartoonish, all the coffee and jazz and smokes and booze and abundant anachronisms. Personally, I like coffee and jazz and booze, but besides it’s all leading somewhere, all in the service of a thoughtful narrative arc that exchanges noir’s foundations in postwar despair for a post-9/11 dispersion. This is a story about going missing, staying missing, and liking it, about being missing as a state of grace, and helping others to disappear for their own good.

None of which screams box office gold, I suppose, and thus, in this country anyway, The Missing Person makes its debut at your local video store rather than your local cinema. It plays well on TV, even if Ryan Samul’s HD imagery is a little annoyingly heavy on ostentatious filters. It also plays to the strengths of Shannon, an actor whose very particular peculiarities won him an Oscar nod for Revolutionary Road, not to mention plum nut-job and/or jerk-off parts in films by William Friedkin, Sidney Lumet, and Werner Herzog. He’s really quite ideal for the strange, haunted, lumbering hero of The Missing Person, so withdrawn he could initially be mistaken for the title character. Shannon shuffles and groans through most of the film. I had to laugh at certain shots that play out with the sole item on the soundtrack being Shannon’s amplified wheeze. But it’s a wheeze with a soul, from a face like yesterday’s unrefrigerated lunch. Despite intermittent voice-over, we learn only fragments of Rosow’s past, but we finally know everything we need to know just by spending time with Shannon’s sardonic grin, bleary confusion, and seemingly outsized figure. They speak of a primal wound, one we can trace back to Philip Marlowe, to Jeff Bailey, or to Al Roberts. It’s a feeling that transcends time and genre, even when the setting is as winky as this.

Illy Needs to Check Itself Befo' It Wrecks Itself.

Giorgio Milos, a master barista from Illy, and apparently ambassador to the world for Italian-style espresso, has a few choice words for American espresso. Thankfully, I have a few choice words for him.

His article is vaguely elitist, but not too bad. No more elitist than anyone writing about some food about which they know too much. But he makes mention of the "authentic Italian technique," which I found funny. First off, espresso has gone far beyond little Italy. The most renowned, successful, award-winning cafes are all outside of Italy. An Italian Barista has yet to win the Barista World Championship. The Clover was invented in the US. Psychotically complex syphon pots for making coffee are more common in Japan than Italy. Global espresso consumption was fundamentally defined by an American company. Italy... is small potatoes.

Second, he says that if these foundations that "that international associations agree on" aren't met, it's not espresso! What International associations? Ones of Italian origin, perhaps? Truthfully, I have no idea to what organizations he's referring, but I think it's ridiculous no matter what. Food stuffs evolve. It's like saying that just because we added chocolate chips to vanilla ice cream, that it's no longer ice cream.

He then uses the "some people think that" trick for which Fox News is so famous. As in, like Fox News uses the line "some people think" and then simply states its own opinion as though it's supported by others, he critiques beverages from "cafes," as though ALL American cafes have the same problems, then proceeds to talk about roasting like others don't know. Strange, even in little Rhode Island, the quality, taste and style of drinks varies wildly from cafe to cafe.

He talks about cafes using, gasp, 20-25 grams of espresso for a drink. First off, I have no clue where the hell he went. I have never encountered a cafe that does that. Upwards of 20grams? Yeah. More than that? Never.

Finally, he assaults poor grinds. I find this freakin' hilarious, but also telling. I use pre-ground Illy when I'm lazy or my grinder is out of commission, so I'm well-acquainted with it. I now know why it is absolutely impossible to get a perfect double: the grind is aimed at singles, the virtues of which Milos can't seem to extol enough. It's pretty easy to nail 9-bar and 25 seconds with a single, unless you tamp with a metal press, getting the same 9/25 espresso out of a double is impossible. I've gotten close! But not quite.

I can grind the slightest bit finer and nail 9-bar in both a single and a double easily. And even in Italy, doubles are a thing! It's not like no one in Italy drinks a freakin' doppio (Italian for double) now and then. And it's that that makes Milos wrong. He attacks the grind more than anything else, and yet, Illy's grind could use a little help.

And, frankly, any company who produces these:


Has NO room to speak.

A Winning Formula for Traditional Espresso (The Atlantic)

Continuing Adventures in Latte Art

I was able to grind out some pretty good pieces of latte art with my old Jura Capresso Z5. But it was never meant to do that. It took a LOT of work and fiddling to get it done. Still, I managed this, and also these. Not baaaad, I'd say. But still not barista-level work. Now you can see the difference between a machine that's just playing around, and one that's meant to be used and abused.

New Starbucks Machines.

Starbucks' roll-out of their new espresso machines is finally hitting the more rural locations that I usually frequent. Apparently, the machine should be in around 75% of locations, on its way to 100% some time next year. It's part of Starbucks continuing effort to change its direction by staying exactly the same, but saying that it's trying to be different.

I don't mean to bash Starbucks, I actually like them, but their efforts at turning around their fortunes are laughably poor. Instead of unleashing a torrent of business model experimentation, they're doing the same thing. Their food selection is decent, but overpriced and limited. Their WiFi is still limited. Their coffee selection is still limited. The list goes on. The design of the new machine is now on that list. What's the big difference? Well, it grinds beans as opposed to using pre-ground coffee packs. That's good. And it's also shorter! Oooooooh! This means that the barista has a better "connection" with the person ordering the drink by blocking "the visual sight line the customer previously had to watch the drink being made, and for the intimate experience with the barista." If there was ever something that the customer didn't care about, it's that.

But enough about that. How's the machine? First off, it looks different than the picture being passed about. The sides are a copper color and it melds in with the Starbucks aesthetic better. And the baristi are universal in their love of the machine over the old Thermoplans. The big difference that they're reporting is temperature stability. Apparently, under heavy load, the old Thermoplan machines would suffer from pretty bad temperature fluctuations in the shots. I'm assuming that this explains the wide differences in drink quality I've encountered at Starbucks...es.

The biggest difference that I've noticed is the milk steam quality. I haven't had a crappy steam job at any location with the new machines, whereas I've had numerous poor lattes on the old boxes. It's still semi-automated, which means no latte art-ready foam, but it's velvety and feels good on the tongue. Starbucks does a good job of talking up the machine at this online Flash app which also gives you the best view of the machine apart from actually going.

The thing that keeps running through my mind is that, if this machine is as good as they say it is, why does Starbucks insist on using only ONE bean blend? Their current blend is adequate, in that it tastes like coffee and isn't too bitter, or sour, or dark, or anything. It's just this bland thing sitting smack dab in the middle of a dark-roast flavor profile. It's crema level is very poor, and there's simply a lot of room to open up the variety.

Having one blend at Dunkin' Donuts or McDonalds is fine. They're not a coffee shop. But Starbucks is a cafe. They should have half a dozen coffees, at least one more type of espresso, and other ways to explore the coffee world. That's why a cafe exists! If I just wanted a high-quality cup of joe, I'd make it myself. As it stands, local cafes are whomping the 'Bucks in this department.

If Starbucks really wants to push the envelope, which I'm beginning to think that they don't, they should make a machine that can espress multiple bean types. Because until they do that, there's nothing bringing me to Starbucks over Coffee Exchange or Updike's Newtowne save for convenience. And now that I've got a new machine, even that's fading.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Archer Farms Pre-Ground Espresso

Imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered that Target had their own house brand of pre-ground espresso beans. Targets are everywhere, while places that carry Illy are... not. Better still, the grounds were contained in the same metal tin as Illy. Similar size, shape and price. Everything seemed to indicate that Target was targeting Illy quite directly.

Usually store brands are at least comparable to the name brands, and since I'm still getting used to my new espresso machine (read: screwing up shots) I figured saving a few bucks was worth it for the sake of experimentation, even if the final product wasn't quite up to snuff.

So, I was already going into this with low expectations, and I'm happy to report that Archer Farms espresso missed even those. First off, it's not the slightest bit comparable to Illy. The blend is way off. It's more acidic and not in a good way. The texture of the grinds is also different. Illy has a powderyness to it, along with the slightly larger bits of coffee. Archer Farms is certainly super-fine, but is completely missing that powder texture.

This is the only thing that explains my problems with the shot. I tamped my shot, began the pull, and water flowed through the shot like shit through a goose. I got slightly strong, bad, coffee. I assumed that I had simply tamped too lightly. It happens. Did it again, with a deliberate, strong tamp. Same thing. Next step, doubling my tamp pressure. I pushed down with at least sixty pounds of force. Same thing.

I blew through five shots. Every one was the same, regardless of what I did. This grind is nowhere near Illy and completely useless for espresso. The package is a complete lie. I would imagine that if you had a moka pot, Aeropress, or even French press, then this would work fine. But in a real espresso machine, that applies real pressure, this is laughably off the mark.

Archer Farms Ground Espresso: NOT RECOMMENDED

A Proud Father

I am a proud new dad...

Of an espresso machine. Same deal, really. It takes forever to go to sleep at the end of the day, produces lots of brown stuff, requires a lot of cleaning, cost a fortune, and I have to put it through college. I'm so happy. My very first pro-level espresso machine. And to think that it cost a cool grand less than the Jura Capresso Z5 I had been using.

Now, you may not know it, but you're looking at an incredibly special machine. This is one of the very few pro-sumer espresso machines that are generally available that rock TWO boilers. Usually, high-end consumer espresso machines will use a heat exchanger, where the boiler only heats the steam boiler, and hot water for espresso extraction passes through pipes that pass through the steam boiler, thus flash-heating water as it heads towards the group head.

That's actually a really great way to wedge everything that's needed to make good espresso into a compact package while also making it affordable. It does have some disadvantages, such as a long recharge time between drinks. After pressure and temperature drop in the steam boiler from both a pulled shot and steamed milk, it could be multiple minutes before you can do anything else. Conversely, if the steam boiler sits for awhile, all of the metal around the boiler heats up, thus dumping too much heat into the water as it heads to the espresso.

It's a complication that is pretty easily dealt with once you understand your machine, but if you plan on hosting guests or run a light commercial operation, that extra time and effort is unacceptable. Thus, we have the wonders of the dual-boiler machine.

These have their own problems, as many in the recent past who have tried to run a pro-sumer dual-boiler machine in their home have discovered. In theory, it's perfect. In practice, though, there are some serious issues. First, there's the weight and cost. Dual-boiler machines can be upwards of twice as heavy as a comparable single-boiler machine, and they can cost an equal percentage more.

Worse still, even if your wallet and biceps are up to the task, your house may not be. Dual boilers draw an enormous amount of power, and usually require 20-amp socket to function correctly. Even if the manufacturer claims that the machine can run on a standard 15-amp socket, it probably does so poorly.

But my machine is different. My machine is special. Somehow, through some weird, Italian magic, La Spaziale has made a 15-amp dual boiler machine that actually works. Better still, if you ever install a 20-amp socket, all it takes is a small switch inside to turn the machine into a 20-amp monster.

I've had the machine for a few days, now, and all I can say is "WOW!" I'm loving it. Freaking loving it. The extraction is what you would expect, but the steam power out of this bad boy is just incredible. The joys of a dual boiler are not lost on me. Without a doubt, this is the best at-home steam machine I've ever used. It's the absolute equal of a commercial machine.



The drip tray is deep and large. The accessibility of the water tank is just fantastic. Unlike other pro-sumer machines that are basically rejiggerings of pro setups, the design details of the Vivaldi reveal a machine truly meant to be used in a kitchen, and the water tank is the jewel of those details. You can access the tank by simply taking out the drip tray and then removing the water tank. Piece of cake.



Conveniently, the machine actually streamlines my drink production for tea and coffee. The hot water spout produces buckets of 195 degree water for pour-over or french press coffee, and is the perfect temperature for black tea. Previously, I had a kettle on the stove and a large Brita water filter on a shelf. I now have it all in one machine that takes about eight minutes to start up. About that, that's eight minutes on 15 amps. That's great! I'd imagine that 20 amps would reduce start up time to a mere five.

despite my accolades, the machine isn't perfect. I would have liked manual controls. The auto function is nice, but sometimes I want to call a shot as I make it. Worse, there is no way to get a pre-infusion option on any given shot. You can either install a pre-infusion piston, and thus get pre-infusion on every shot, or uninstall it and get pre-infusion on no shots. It's annoying to say the least, especially when the plumbed version of the Vivaldi II gets the option automatically. I understand why this is the case, but I wish they could have managed something, anything, to give me the feature.



I would have also liked a rotary pump. Usually, rotary pumps require pressure to work. That's why they're usually found in direct-plumb machines. But I've seen quite a few machines that use a reservoir and still manage to use a rotary pump. As far as performance is concerned, the end result is similar. I've heard that rotary pumps create a more even pressure and thus produce better crema, but I've never noticed a difference. The biggest difference is noise. The video I've posted makes the machine sound a lot louder than it actually is, but it's still louder than the quiet hum one gets from a rotary box. It's a bit comforting to me, since my old Jura Capresso Z5 sounded identical.

I was aware of these limitations before I bought, but I wanted ease of operation, and this was the only machine that offered that sort of push-button operation at this price and still provided everything else that I wanted. I could have gone for a machine with a full E61 group, but since my most important drink is the one that I make in the morning, being able to press a button and immediately fall asleep on the floor for a few minutes was important.



The machine comes standard with a four-hole nozzle for milk steaming, which is wildly overpowered for my small milk carafe. I steam the milk in five to ten seconds. Needless to say, but I will anyhow, that's way too short to develop good milk foam. If the machine had a standard steam valve, as opposed to the lever-operated version, I could set a smaller amount of steam. But as it is, the machine is basically all or nothing.

This is the only part of the machine that I regret. I didn't even think about it. So, sadly, the only way I can control steaming power is via different nozzles. It certainly gets the job done, but it's not exactly convenient or user-friendly.

Long story short, I'm very glad I bought it. The limitations of renting a house were what drove me to this machine. If I had my own kitchen, I would have bought a direct-plumbed machine and integrated the machine in with the kitchen. But since maintaining mobility of the machine was important, and I wanted that push-button functionality, this was the machine for me. I think it's swell.

PRODUCT REVIEW: Starbucks Ice Cream

My first product review of some Häagen-Dazs ice cream motivated me to delve into other brands of ice cream that, without said motivation, I would have never otherwise purchased.

I love coffee, but have never been the biggest fan of coffee ice cream. I've always liked my coffee hot and anything below 130-degrees Fahrenheit seems like a crime. But I like Starbucks. Starbucks seems to make decent supermarket products, so I figured, what the hell. This is Starbucks ice cream after a product refresh that happened earlier in the year. They dropped their ice cream bars, which weren't terribly good, and also jettisoned their more complex flavor concoctions like Mud Pie. Perhaps Starbucks' new-found focus in quality and product will result in something a bit more worthy of the name?

A little surprisingly, it's good! Not amazing, but very good. Coffee ice cream is a flavor that can be easily borked. Unlike vanilla, which regardless of other peccadilloes like poor texture is always just vanilla, can be seriously nasty if done wrong. The first area is the aftertaste. So many coffee ice creams have this horrid, bitter finish, and with ice cream savored, it's the finish that spends the most time lingering on your tongue.

Our taste buds don't work very well at low temperatures, which is why soft-serve ice cream tastes stronger than hard, scooped ice cream. So when eating hard ice cream, the majority of the flavor really emerges after both your mouth and the flavor compounds in your mouth have a chance to warm up. It's in that process that all the ass-like flavors of bad coffee ice cream come to the fore.

In Starbucks coffee, though, that after taste is a smooth, rich, deep caramel that truly reminds me of fine coffee. There's very little chocolate in it, but the fact that I can pick out any flavor notes is worthy of applause.

The swirls of espresso and coffee are a bit of a gimmick, I found. There's no Starbucks Espresso Concentrate on the ingredients list. Still, Starbucks coffee has a fair amount of coffee bite to it without that nasty bitter flavor. I just happened to have some Turkey Hill Colombian Coffee in the freezer, so I performed a taste test. Turkey Hill is, in my opinion, the best mass-market brand you can buy, so this is some good competition for the 'bucks.

Obviously, the Turkey Hill's texture is inferior. There's a lot more air whipped into the Turkey Hill, resulting in a 66g per 1/2 cup compared to Starbucks' 100g. But as with all Turkey Hill, the flavor is a home run. Very good for the price. It's smooth, sweet, with caramel and no bite. Definitely one of the best coffee flavors in the freezer. The Starbucks is a lot denser and more interesting to chew. It's got a stronger coffee bite to it and carries the aromas from your mouth into your nose much better. It's a more subdued flavor, as well. I assume many people would like this, but the stronger primary taste in the Turkey Hill is very pleasant and I wish the Starbucks had it.

All things considered, this is one of the best coffee ice creams on the shelves. I would not hesitate to recommend it to a fan of the flavor.

Starbucks Coffee Ice Cream: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED