A lot of my time these days is spent on managerial stuff. I like learning the business, and trying to run the café as best I can, but it adds up. Ordering, inventory, banking, staff & schedule issues have sort of crept up to take up most of my week.
So, it's a really nice change of pace to just work the bar for a while. I had to cover the morning shift today, no real managerial duties, just pulling shots and steaming milk for six hours.
It still astonishes me, how many areas I can still improve on. Speed, consistent art, cap texture are all things I was working on today, but the big thing is dosing. Getting a method where I can grind, dose, distribute, tamp, exactly the same, with minimal waste, every time, is really something I've been focusing on. It's hard to practice in vacuum, so it was really nice to just have dozens of shots, one after the other, through the morning rush. I also want to figure out the combination of equipment and technique that will allow me to brew shots at the temperature that tastes the best, but that's a more involved post for later.
Working morning bar brings me back to the 3 reasons I've stayed in the coffee business, instead of going back to school for philosophy or whatever: the coffee itself, the physical act of making espresso & steaming milk, and serving customers.
Some days I feel like I kind of have to hide how much I like this aspect of my job. The finished product is something I could be obsessed with whether or not I'm making it. The physical act of making espresso has this level of complexity, subtlety, sensuousness, that I find really absorbing. I like working with my hands, generally, but particularly where I can see and evaluate the results. With espresso & steaming milk, I've been getting obsessive about one factor or another for years now, and trying to maintain my standard of excellence while preparing multiple drinks in a hurry is something that is kind of like meditation for me.
The customer side of it is huge, for me, and it's nice to just serve drinks instead of being the trouble-shooter all day. When I first moved to Buffalo from my tiny town in the sticks of PA, I was more than a little nervous about city-life, but, boom, first day working at Elmwood, I was thrust into this community, this village, on both sides of the bar. Getting to know regulars, chatting about crap like the weather, having these conversations that take place in 2-minute intervals everyday--really makes me feel like this is where I ought to be.
And it's just really gratifying. A paycheck is great, but the feeling of making a tangible product, handing it out, seeing them enjoy it, getting genuinely thanked a few times an hour--that is one of the big reasons I've stuck with it.
Of course, when I'm working the bar these days I can't help but notice things I'd change or tweak if it were my show. I wish there were a way to steer people away from 20oz, ludicrously sweet drinks. After making a string of as-close-to-flawless-as-I-can-manage lattes and caps, the unavoidable drop in quality when I have to make a 4-shot drink with huge amounts of syrup is just kind of a bummer. I understand that we make a lot of money on those drinks, and I've made my peace with serving blender drinks; I also notice that we get very few repeat customers on the sugar-bombs, whereas the regular lattes and cappuccino drinkers come back every day, like clockwork.
But, quibbles aside, a really good day. Then, at the end of my shift, I remembered that Michael had some samples in from Royal that he wanted me to come try, so I got to end my day (well, almost) with a cupping.
We had three coffees from the Pacific region to try today. I've never had any coffees from Timor before, so that was interesting--nothing too weird, just what I look for in a decent Indonesian (lots of body, low acidity, not too muddy). New crop of Bali is in; it isn't last year's honey, alas, but it's still a good coffee, unusual Indo, tons of flowers on top of earth. I was most impressed with the Papua New Guinea sample, which had this real caramel sweetness that was colored with some surprisingly snappy, apple-like brightness that came out to something almost juicy as it cooled.
I've still got to post my notes from my last day in Boston, and there's a bunch of exciting coffee stuff on the horizon. Stay tuned.
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