Its been a while :p

So, heres the deal...

When I moved back from Milwaukee to Michigan, I had a lot of plans.  These plans were going to define the rest of my life, and at this point I could not be happier that most of them did not follow through.  I have no regrets, and no hard feelings towards anyone, and I mean ANYONE out there. I get asked sometimes about Madcap, and all I have to say is that Madcap is AMAZING and recommend that everyone I know go there and get some of the best coffee in the world.  I learned so much from working at Madcap and could not owe more to a group of individuals.  

Now though, almost three months later by my unchecked approximation, I have my pour over bar business moving units and a super busy life once again.  I am happy, super happy and am really looking forward to my future here in Ypsilanti.  The picture below is of my business card... I am super proud :)

THE UGLY

So it is my charged duty at the Ugly Mug to train the staff and be quality control in cahoots with Ramiro and crew.  I have developed a weekly training session/ cupping/ testing lab to help our staff here grow as humans as well as coffee professionals.   This picture below is of Ethan and Sean Wray yelling madly at me after we cupped different roast profiles of the same coffees... It was a crazy week, people were flipping out, going crazy and getting tunnel vision.

The picture below is of our cupping session last week where we blind cupped nine coffees from Anodyne Coffee Roasters in Milwaukee, Stumptown Coffee in Portland, and our very own coffees from the Ugly Mug here in Ypsilanti MI!!!  We were doing varietal, origins, and profile analysis with this cupping... This had to be one of my favorite cupping sessions because it really changes peoples perceptions on the coffees.   Being that it was a blind cupping, I think the staff here really ended up loving the Anodyne (thanks again Steve, you are the ultimate best for sending out those samples!!!) coffee, it really just blew us all out of the water.  The Stumptown was good coffee and great for comparrison, and our coffee was delicious as per usual!!!

The next two pictures are of tonights lab that we had.  We were testing different toothpastes and the effects of SLS on how we tasted things... So we did a few things... First we tasted orange juice, coffee, and water as a basis for what we were going up against.  The toothpastes were Tom's SLS free, Colgate, Crest, and Jason SLS free toothpastes.  Between each brushing we tried the water, the orange juice, and the coffee to see how everything tasted. To our surprise we found that the Tom's actually made the orange juice sweeter, and the coffee taste better... where ass the Crest and the Colgate both ruined anything good about the coffee and orange juice.  Seriously though they both made the orange juice taste like rotten bitter nasty butt nasty bad bad bad! (that was my choice descriptors) And the Jason ended up distorting the flavors more than the Tom's but not nearly as bad as the other two.  My outlook is that SLS equals bad for a cupper's palate, someone trying to dial in coffees, or espresso... If you dont believe me, give it a shot and see for yourself.

Oh and a serious thanks to everyone on the Ugly staff for being so freaking dedicated to trying all my crazy ideas as well as Sanford and Foster from Comet, who dared to brave the drive from AA to the outskirts of civilization (Ypsilanti) to do some lab time with us...


I swear I will post more soon, I gots lots to talks abouts...