Does anyone, that is reading this, know of any jobs that are available in the Toronto area. If you know of anything that doesn’t require some form of Uni qualification, then let me know as soon as you can.
Swe is in need of a job and we are open to pretty much anything at the moment. We need money to pay rent otherwise we’ll be homeless.

Thanks and keep your eyes open.

Matthew

I think this was from my first Vistrix raid and it went sooooo smoothly.

As we give people our suspicious look, you know with slightly squinted eyes and maybe just a bit of a side glance, many people become paranoid. We are just giving the look because we want to, yet their brains start to tick and they try to think of a reason as to why we might be suspicious of them. “Are you suspicious of me today because of this…?” as to which we reply “we’re not actually suspicious of you, we’re just giving you that look today, but NOW we have a reason to be suspicious of you.”. Enter the raise of an eye brow as you gain the upper hand and now we have a new pawn to move around the board. Interesting. Name no names (Simon).

Today I also had my first ever direct complaint. It was regarding my milk and wasn’t actually a complaint, but an observation as to me doing something wrong. This has made me paranoid since I always steam my milk the same and I feel that I’m very consistent with my steaming. So am I always making peoples drinks wrong? The observation came from a large latte and the fact that whenever I steam the milk, the drink feels lighter. “This is a latte, not a cappuccino, know what I mean?” Not a complaint, he was just telling me. So every milk after that I was checking and getting people to double check them too let me know if I was making them to foamy, and none were at all. I put alot of air into the milk and give it a nice thickness, but there’s barely any foam. GAH! I’m now going to be paranoid about this forever, I guess I’m not taking criticism very well today.

We were enjoying some Detour coffee today, I think we’ll start to stock it as a local roaster once we get prices and things set-up.

That is all for now.

Matthew

He walked in and asked for a drink. He really didn’t care what he had as long as it did the job.

The bartender does this, that and the other and fires a shot glass down the bar. “Quad-ristretto! If that doesn’t do the job, then, well, I don’t know what will…”

A few seconds to cool, sip, sip, and finish. Overwhelming intensity. Sweet golden syrup body finishing with emulsified fruit extracts clinging to the back of his tongue. “I think that will do it, I hope.”

Today is the day of the final battle. That big push to end the Endless War. The tyrant will fall and peace shall be restored to these lands. One can dream.

“One more before I go Tanis, I’ll need to keep my senses keen this day”

*psssssssssssssssssssssssssssst, thunk, ccrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, thunk, thunk.*

*clinck, clinck*

“Take care of yourself out there Ummon, this ones on me and our people.”

I can feel it warming up my heart, I can feel the vigor rising and my mind turning. Today I will be a Champion for the living, a rogue to the dead.

Daggers sheathed, hood wrapped tight, I disappear into the morning shadows.

My infrequent updates have led to frequent questions. Maybe not.

To say things have been quiet on the coffee side is very untrue. Work has just been so busy the past few weeks that I havn’t really had much time to play with anything. Sure I’ve tried a few new coffees, but I havn’t been able to really test them out.

I love to play with temperature and pressure, pre and post infusion, dose and grind. These are just variables that I can’t play with when the cafe is bustling. I need to build a coffee lab to play in.

We’re getting our 3 group head Synesso installed today and our patio will also be opening very soon, so it’s going to get even busier at Crema.

The organic espresso was really bad at the end of last week. A really watery body with barely any flavour, I wasn’t impressed at all and had to switched to the Epic for the weekend. I hope this doen’t happen again with this current roast date.

I’m not sure what my favourite 49h coffee is at the moment, I don’t think I have one. I’m still leaning towards the Ethiopia Kaharian on french press, but it doesn’t seem to hold up so well on the Clover and is a bit to acidic for a straight espresso, though it does make an interesting cappuccino. I’m a fan of the Sammy Piccolo WBC espresso blend, but it’s pretty expensive and I can’t play with it too much.

We’ll have to see what coffees come in over the next few weeks, I’m assuming we’re going to go through a change in seasonal beans soon.

At home we have Intelli’s “Bolivia Anjilanaka, bourbon, caturra, typica grown at 1700-1900m. Smooth and silky on the tongue, with notes of green grapes and figs. The finish is long and lingering with notes of cocoa and cane sugar.” I’ll open it today and see what I make of it on my siphon. Tastes good on a press and the Clover.

Matt, fairly random poster.

espresso walk

I think I’d already had far too much espresso by the first Dark Horse. So I kept to Queen St for most of my journey home and skipped some of the “good” cafes that I could have gone to if I’d gone north or south here and there.
I had some great shots, some ok shots, some terrible shots and even some Red tea espresso to boot. The usual suspects (Mercury and Dark Horse) topped my espresso charts, but no suprise there. I just can’t see how people can go to some places that are pulling thin, sour shots. I just can’t comprehend how they have a thriving business. I couldn’t even finish the shots in a couple of stores, they made me feel sick. All in all, I got to say hello to lots of people aloing the way and stopped by many cafes that I’ve never been to.
My last stop was Vesuvios for a meat ball sandwich, which is now helping to settle my coffee filled tummy.

Ah yeah, the whole walk took me about 6 hours to complete and I was kept company by lots of European Death/Thrash/Grind metal. Arsis, Arghoslent, Moonsorrow, Napalm Death, etc…

Matthew

Woooooooooooooooooo

Next, WBC this week. I’m sure I’ll watch it via uStream or something when I get the chance. I’m hoping that Geoff can bring back some nice presents for us. I’m not sure what coffee I want him to bring back, just need to check out who has stalls there.

No new photography projects this week. Although I have been offered several spaces to exibit my work, I can’t really afford the initial printing and framing costs though. Sucks.

I seem to have signed up to twitter this week aswell. I’m not really big on social networking sites, but I guess it’s cool to follow status updates. We’ll be updating a crema twitter page as often as we can to keep people updated on whats going on and even just what we are serving every day.
Follow me at www.twitter.com/ummonshadow and crema at www.twitter.com/cremacoffeeto. I added the twitter thing to the top of my website aswell.

Matthew