Open Monday mornings/Coffee Column

Open this summer on Mondays 8:00a.m. - Noon
FYI: We're going to be fiddling with our hours a bit for this summer (yes, we'll likely be using the term "summer hours" in signage somewhere). Haven't entirely settled on everything yet, but one thing we will be doing is opening Monday mornings from 8:00 until around noon. Cheyenne will be running the shop while I'm busy doing other maintenance work.

Last Week Wednesday, June 11, the Herald Times Reporter published the first installment of my coffee column. We've received a truckload of very kind responses and comments on it, that are much appreciated. The HTR is calling the column "Spill the Beans"...a bit clichéd but serviceable nonetheless. The column will be published twice a month with half of columns being written by me and the other half coming from a small pool of other good folks.

You can click the image above to enlarge or go directly to the HTR site online to read it: http://www.htrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080611/MAN04/806110535/-1/archive

I would ask a favor of you: if you do read the articles at the HTR online site please leave a comment at the bottom of the page with your thoughts (for this and future "Spill the Beans" columns by me or the other writers). While a lot of people have been very vocal about the column to me personally, the HTR would also like to know what people think, and your feedback will help keep the thing going and may even shape what is discussed in the column.

Coffee Column

I've been working on a concept for a newspaper column for a while now, a regular (perhaps bi-monthly) column written by yours truly wherein I discuss certain and specific issues and subjects related to coffee, as both a commodity and as a cultural talisman of sorts. There's a good deal more to the basic concept for the column than I'll share here, but I have submitted the loose proposal to a handful of publications, including the Herald Times Reporter here in Manitowoc/Two Rivers. A few have expressed some interest, and I need to follow up with them.

The basic proposal I submitted to editors included elements of the following outline:

The specific topics that can be culled from the general subject of coffee are expansive and varied enough that there is no danger of undo repetition or staleness, and it is a subject that virtually everyone has at least some interest in, either as a casual consumer of coffee in their daily routine or as passionate aficionados

Besides the ever-interesting, albeit obvious subject of all of the various coffee producing countries and geographical regions (and what each specific region imparts to its particular coffee in terms of flavors, aromas, body, etc), other topics under the same umbrella include processing methods (and how they affect the final product); the cultural impact of coffee from both consumer and producer perspectives; the modern coffee culture as its own unique entity; and even the always fun drink mixology itself. We would, however, focus primarily on the different coffees from different regions and estates and what interesting and unique attributes they all have to offer.

We would not, of course, engage in any overt advertising or Stumpjack promotion in any of the columns.

I must give credit where credit is due, in that my idea for a coffee column was sparked by Todd Haefer's "Beer Man" column, which appears semi-regularly in our own HTR, among other publications in the state. Haefer does a great job with his column, creating a nice mix of opinion with factual information, in a well written and informal format. His column is one that I regularly look forward to reading in the newspaper. So, I thought, "beer column...coffee column? Of course!" And given my background in both coffee and writing...well, there you go! We would not, of course, mimic Haefer's excellent column. My style of writing is much different than his and I am not interested in talking about varieties of coffees alone, as Haefer does with beer by discussing a single particular beer each column.

I'll keep you abreast of what, if anything, develops with this. But it should be fun!