If you didn’t know, when I’m not obsessing over coffee I’m working on a masters in applied cultural analysis at Lund University. Lately I’ve been researching mobile photo sharing as a practice that is changing our relationship to ourselves, our surroundings, our daily lives, and more.

While taking pictures of your dinner might seem trivial and fun, it also reflects the changing nature of modernity, consumer culture, capitalism, and identity. But I need help gathering information, so I’m excited to start recruiting participants for my study! You’ll be asked to write a journal reflecting on everything you do with the app. I promise it’ll be interesting and hopefully fun, too, so please give the project a look.

Read more & Sign up here! bit.ly/imgculture

I hope you’ll participate, and I would greatly appreciate it if you shared the link in your social networks!

Thank you!

Don’t take it personally, barista friends. :) At FRSHGRND.com we try to showcase companies and individuals that are passionate without undue pretense or unwanted judgment. Nevertheless, the stereotype is amusing and it’s always good to make sure you’re not crossing the line into self-caricature when you talk about coffee.

Video by Sprudge.com, filmed at Four Barrel Coffee.

Read more over at Modernist Cuisine’s blog, where they are trying to figure out why coffee with cream cools 20% slower than plain black coffee. Apparently anyone that wasted their money on Coffee Joulies would have been better off just ordering a latte or adding milk to their coffee.

One big change – I’m increasing the photo size throughout the site, so for a while all the old posts will look weird until I get around to changing the source files and re-formatting the posts. (And if I end up being too busy to bother with fixing the old posts, I hope you’ll forgive me :)

Pardon the mess, hopefully things will be more stable from here on out.

Posting here will be pretty light for a while as I move and settle in, but I have a number of reviews remaining from Seoul, plus around 6 cafes to post from my amazing time in Tokyo. Look forward to that!

Also, it’s come to my attention that Google thinks this site has malware or something. I think that’s a mistake and I’m trying to figure out what to do about it. If you’ve noticed anything feel free to contact me and let me know.

WATCH IT LIVE – CLICK HERE!

Wednesday June 23
5:30PM – 2:00AM – Round 1, Day 1 (Competitors 1-30)

Thursday June 24
5:30PM – 11:45PM Round 1, Day 2 (Competitors 31-54)
(2010 Korean Barista champ An Jae Hyeuk is second up, competing at around 6:00PM)

12:15AM – 1:15AM Announcement of Semi-Finalists

Friday June 25
5:30PM – 8:00PM — Semi Finals Round (Semi-Finalists 1-12)
10:30PM – 12:55AM — Finals Round (Finalists 1-6)
1:15AM – 2:00AM — Awards Ceremony

You can also visit one of the “Go Live” partner cafes and watch it live in a coffee shop.

Our friends Seung Jin and Diane are blogging their way through a gastronomic exploration of Seoul’s culinary landscape, which led Claire and me to a nice Sunday brunch at the Grand Hyatt last weekend. The food and setting was very nice, and perhaps it was just the company influencing my perception, but I’d say the food and price at the grand Hyatt were the best overall of the three pricey hotel brunches I’ve tried in Seoul (Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, W Hotel). Everything tasted fresh and most of the items were well executed. But I’ll leave the food blogging to those more capable.

My first thought when we set the brunch date was that the food would be awesome. Second thought was that the coffee was going to suck. There’s always this mismatch between the food and the coffee preparation at nice restaurants. So, rather than enjoy an awesome meal and then finish it off with nasty coffee, I looked at my bag of Guatemala Finca Isnul (2009 Cup of Excellence) roasted by Republic of Coffee, and started thinking about how I could bring it with me.

The Aeropress stood out as the best tool for the job – light, self-contained, and easy to deal with the mess. Pre-ground coffee* stored inside with the plunger down, then just extend it and remove the filter, pour in water, steep, stir, flip, press. I asked for tea to get some hot water to brew with, and it was probably way off in temperature by the time I got it, but the coffee still tasted much better than the other options available.

The Finca Isnul 2009 COE is a really rich coffee, it tastes like a blend of what I’d thought were characteristics from Central America and South East Asia; sweet red wine-like acidity and chocolate notes very nicely integrated with prominent earthy, smokey, tobacco-ish flavor. Is this complexity characteristic of the hybrid Pacamara varietal? I don’t know; still got much to learn about the agricultural side of coffee. Regardless, it’s an interesting flavor, I enjoyed it a lot.

It was a bit of a risk trying to improvise and do an upside down Aeropress at the table; I was half expecting to spray hot coffee on everyone. But it worked perfectly, and filled two tea cups with great coffee to share with each side of the table!

*Looking at the spent coffee puck, my Kalita hand mill obviously produces a lot of fines. Maybe I should sieve it. Also, I think the grind was a tiny bit too coarse, but whatever!

I also got some coffee from Finca (Farm) Santa Teresa, in Panama; and Finca Matalapa, Guayabo, in El Salvador. I haven’t gotten into the Santa Teresa yet (I like to focus on one coffee at a time, trying different grinds and alternating between V60 and Aeropress), but the Matalapa, Guayabo is really nice – intensely tart fruity sweetness, definitely reminiscent of cranberries as mentioned on Intelli’s tasting notes. It’s really in-your-face, distinctive. As it cools it’s more like juice than coffee.

I’ll try the Santa Teresa at work tomorrow and update this post. :)

UPDATE:
Tried the Santa Teresa, Panama today on Aeropress and V60. The tasting notes on the label are spot on, “devil’s food cake” and “blackberry and concord grape.” To me it reminded me of a dark chocolate infused with merlot wine grapes you can buy at the convenience stores here. Really a nice, rich, layered coffee. I believe this is a blend of washed and pulped-natural/honey processed coffee from the same farm.