Journal — black

So here I am off on another adventure. I know…nothing out of the ordinary about that for me. I’m on another Amtrak train ride this time heading to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. My steward in Business Class is very attentive and all is well with my world. I’ve given him my order to keep my coffee cup filled approximately every hour for the duration of the 10 hour trip. This is really cool on one hand because in Business Class the coffee and beverages are free. Which is not any big...

You drink coffee! Nice! You do this for many reasons which may include:

1. You may be tired for whatever reason
2. You need to get many things accomplished today
3. You need motivation
4. You have a really long day or night ahead of you
5. You are addicted to caffeine
6. You’ve been drinking coffee all your life and now you are a connoisseur
7. You work in a café like Booskerdoo
8. or You ______________________ (fill in the blank).

For whatever reason you drink coffee, it’s your personal choice to do so and so is the blend you choose...

The average day for a Booskerdoo barista is filled with questions.  Questions such as,

• “What does this coffee taste like?
• Which one is decaf?
• Which beans make up this blend?”

One question I hear almost every day is, “How come the coffee tastes better when I get a cup in your shop than when I make a cup at home?”  The answer could involve many single or overlapping things: the grind is incorrect for your preferred brewing method, the beans are no longer fresh, or your coffee proportions are off.  Most of the time though, the...

Before you put milk in that cup of coffee...

There was a point where I didn’t understand the value of each coffee bean. I didn’t think about (or know) the fact that each bean came hand-picked from a farm hundreds of miles away and may be a group of people’s main economical resource and livelihood. It’s a heavy thought to sit with at any point in the day, especially when you just wake up groggy, vulnerable, and oblivious to most (or all) of your surroundings (depending on how hard you partied the night before).