While out I met Suzanne for lunch and a friend of hers stopped by. He has some interesting pursuits. He grows spirulina, which is a type of algae, in large fishtanks in his back yard. He cultures it in a water saturated with baking soda as the main nutrient. Several dozens gallons of incubation capacity yields a harvest of 2 oz. I’m not sure how often he is able to reap this quantity. He processes it into a tasteless green paste which is ‘reputedly’ very healthy. He was an interesting guy, in town from San Francisco.  He seemed quite knowledgeable about chemistry and molecular organization. He grows coca leaf and extracts cocaine in small quantities, as a hobby. He makes little cubes of sugar, tea extract, and lightly processed, presumably organic cocaine which you suck on for a little energy boost late in the day. He’s like someone out of a Phillip K Dick novel!

Michael, a co-owner of Anisha, where Kate works, and his brother are building a cart from scratch, much in the same manner which I have done. Custom trailer bed, 2×4 stud walls, a pitched roof with shingles, and a full little kitchen in a 7 by 16 foot space. They will make Polish dumplings and serve ionized water to the New Seasons shoppers across the street.

Hunting around in the New Seasons for lunch, Suzanne pointed me to the truffle box. The beef and cheese caught my attention, but the espresso was the real winner, made with Joel’s coffee.

The coffee is steeped for 2 or 3 minutes in a pitcher. I weigh out the grounds and water. Sometimes Joels coffee is so light I have to use double the amount, or steep for longer.

I rinse the paper filter out before using to neutralize the taste.

It takes about 2 minutes to drain. I think I’m doing this mainly to fool around. Grinding to a certain grit using the espresso grinder would help, as well as not using paper, but only metal.

I met Elle and Lindsey downtown for lunch at Violetta, a food cart at SW Taylor and 8th, in director park. This is a new park, and it’s stunning. It’s one large seating area for Violetta, which will soon be opening a little restaurant in the park. The food is American comfort food, very similar to McDonalds (or perhaps I should say Burgerville), but it’s local and delicious. Elle got a lentil burger, Lindsey got squash and coconut soup, and we all split freshly fried beignets with chocolate sauce for dessert.

Joel is opening a coffee shop! It’s in the old half and half location, at W Burnside and 10th. As you can see, he’s in the demolition phase. I was offered a snack of some pasta when I stopped in, but I had just eaten.

In the bathroom are many little cartoons of various figures peeing and pooping. I love this one. Unfortunately I’m sure it’s destined to be repainted.

Chris and I spent two days this weekend camping and hiking around Cummins Creek. It was a wet and misty wonderland. We hiked in on the Cummins ridge trail then returned by hoofing it down the very steep ravine, into the creek bed. We made slow progress as the vegetation was thick.

For coffee we brought along a new Brazilian Serra Negra, which Joel had roasted. It’s a very light coffee and was refreshing mid hike. For dinner the first night I made sauteed potatoes with shallots and garlic, and a steak grilled over the campfire. Lunch and breakfast consisted of ryvita crackers, salami, carrots, and apples. Dinner on the second night was sauteed apples, garlic, and shallots with cous cous.

Joel uses a cargo bike built by Human Powered Machines to deliver his coffee. The cargo bed had recently broken and since we were driving through Eugene we dropped the bike off at the manufacturer to be fixed. On the return trip when we picked up the bike we got a tour of the shop by Jan. Afterwards he turns to me and asks, ‘are you the guy starting the food cart?’ I say yes, and he leads me and Chris into another room where he has set out a loaf of bread, baked by him just hours before. It was excellent bread and a great snack, especially with liberal amounts of butter. It was struan bread, made with leftover wild rice and barley.

Before picking up the cargo bike at the agreed upon hour we watched The Green Zone and then had lunch at the Hideaway Bakery. They make very tasty potato donuts. They also have an amazing wood fired oven that can hold 45 loaves of bread. What you don’t see in the photo is that the oven is about 12 feet deep.

The horizontal is seconds, the vertical is ounces. The steep slope is a shot with the brew water at 190˚. You can see it’s flowing much faster. The two on the right are shots with water at about 202˚. The graph is useful, I think, but is very tedious to produce. For instance, it’s interesting that the flow rates don’t curve gently upward, but rather have distinct moments of increased flow. On the 202˚ shots, at about 18-20 seconds you can see that the flow rate suddenly doubles. Why is this? (The bumps in the lines are from the fact that the espresso is flowing in big, goopy drops.)

I’m trying to find all the variables that go into producing a consistent shot. The big ones are temperature of the brew water and the amount of grounds in the puck. All 3 shots used 0.75 ounces of grounds. The only other variable, I believe, is the pressure used to tamp the puck. There is a device for this. It utilizes a mechanism similar to a torque wrench.

At Pastaworks today, Dave the butcher was telling me about a dish he had at 3 Doors Down, called ‘the crouton.’ It’s a thick slice of ciabatta sauteed in olive oil, covered with a mushroom/sherry/cream sauce.

After doing some analysis with my espresso machine, measuring out exact amounts of espresso, taking temperature readings of the water, weighing the espresso as it flowed out, I was able to answer, hesitantly, a question Joel put to me. Does the espresso come out quicker or slower at a higher temperature? It comes out slower at a higher temperature, I have observed. His Ethiopian is also very tasty.

I picked up a Japanese on demand water heater today. Installation will be difficult.

Kate picked up a glass tea strainer, which I immediantly latched upon for brewing coffee. On the bottom you can see cuts made in the glass with a very thin saw blade. Unfortunately it didn’t work so well. The water outside the glass was not infused with the coffee, so it ended up a bit weak.

I’ve been experimenting with time, weight, and water volume in my french press. For instance, I just made some cowboy coffee using 1.5oz Papa New Guinea, 20 oz water, steeped for 8 minutes. This might be a little too long, but it’s a very light coffee and I had made the coffee/water ratio very high. Medium acid. Roasted barley and malt flavors. Very delicate and light. Low fruit levels.

I’ve got my espresso machine up and running again! Today when I picked up some beans from Joel he was cleaning out his afterburner where the chaff collects. Apparently the garbage and recycling, or possibly the yard waste, was not being picked up by the garbage men. So I offloaded some chaff for him and threw it in the compost. As I shoveled, hot musty odors of compost were mixed with clean coffee drafts.