All roads lead to coffee

Hello world! This blog is about a journey that I have recently embarked on in pursuit of my love for coffee. It will involve me posting my best attempt at cuppiing different single origin coffees so bare with me. Please do not hesitate to give me any feedback or ask any questions. This is a learning process for me as I am definitely not a professional.. yet!

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Coffee of the day.

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Living the caffeine dream with my team. Opening day for the first Blue Bottle in Florida!!!!

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Teamwork makes the dream work! Prior to our wonderful grand opening last week, we were here in the cafe working hard to bring you guys our delicious coffee. It was so exciting having Zak the Baker in shop! Thanks again to Zak for sharing his craft with us and a special thanks to the Design District for welcoming us with open arms! ^_^

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Coffee of the day ^_^. Do you even stack bro?

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Coffee of the day. Unfortunately to go lol.

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Adventures with my team ^_^. Grateful for these experiences in foreign places.

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Blue Bottle Miami takes New York by storm. I couldn’t of asked for a better team. I love these guys!

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Coffee has introduced me to some of the greatest people I’ve ever met. Thanks for dinner Yo!

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Just keep swimming...

Looking back at the way the last few months have been going I can finally see my progress overall. Visibly seeing my personal and professional goals coming to fruition is helping to keep my mind at ease. Often, I feel overwhelmed. As if life itself has a vendetta against me and is indefinitely throwing shots I can’t keep up with; This year has taught me that I can.

Starting with my first love, The Grind Coffee Project, I’ve learned the ropes that have kept me so grounded as I progress in this industry. Had I not found them I would have never stayed in South Florida. I was on the verge of just giving up and going back home but The Grind gave me a chance. None of the few months that have followed would have ever been possible had the owner, Yoni, never seen that potential in me.

  Although I missed the coffee festivals I planned on attending this year, I was still able to travel. I went to Louisiana to visit a friend, which led me to Stumptown Coffee Roasters. (Phenomenal by the way.) Finding good coffee in foreign territory is so hard after you become a coffee snob. My newest love, Blue Bottle Coffee, has been so kind as to send the team as well as myself to California and New York for training. This experience has been an intense eye-opener for me as we explore different markets. We experienced the community head on; From commuting, to food, to working side by side with people and making new friends.

  This is just my little bit of proof for myself that I’m not remaining stagnant. All this struggle is towards a goal. I have to be all or nothing with this decision or it doesn’t count. My new motto thanks to my time in Blue Bottle is to do things with intention, commit to my decisions, and above all else.. believe in myself.

[coffeedevotee]

Just keep swimming...

Looking back at the way the last few months have been going I can finally see my progress overall. Visibly seeing my personal and professional goals coming to fruition is helping to keep my mind at ease. Often, I feel overwhelmed. As if life itself has a vendetta against me and is indefinitely throwing shots I can’t keep up with; This year has taught me that I can.

Starting with my first love, The Grind Coffee Project, I've learned the ropes that have kept me so grounded as I progress in this industry. Had I not found them I would have never stayed in South Florida. I was on the verge of just giving up and going back home but The Grind gave me a chance. None of the few months that have followed would have ever been possible had the owner, Yoni, never seen that potential in me.

  Although I missed the coffee festivals I planned on attending this year, I was still able to travel. I went to Louisiana to visit a friend, which led me to Stumptown Coffee Roasters. (Phenomenal by the way.) Finding good coffee in foreign territory is so hard after you become a coffee snob. My newest love, Blue Bottle Coffee, has been so kind as to send the team as well as myself to California and New York for training. This experience has been an intense eye-opener for me as we explore different markets. We experienced the community head on; From commuting, to food, to working side by side with people and making new friends.

  This is just my little bit of proof for myself that I'm not remaining stagnant. All this struggle is towards a goal. I have to be all or nothing with this decision or it doesn't count. My new motto thanks to my time in Blue Bottle is to do things with intention, commit to my decisions, and above all else.. believe in myself.

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Moving forward

I know all of my posts have been the same lately as far as being grateful. It's hard to stop saying it. This has been an adventure in itself.

One thing that's different now about my goals though is the direction. Of course I'm going to keep working hard to become a better barista overall. However, I'm more intrigued about roasting and visiting origins as I've ever been. For my next vacation I'm going back home... to Jamaica. It's time to really explore my possibilities.

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So happy to be a part of such an amazing family. I can't wait to work alongside all of you amazing people. Miami team is going to kill it!

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I am so grateful for the opportunity I've been given. Making new memories with a great team. Thanks guys.

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Day 5 in Cali on a mission

It’s always a wonderful feeling when you realize the culture of an area has changed your overall outlook on your purpose in learning. We’ve only been in this foreign city for five days and I feel like so much has happened that I didn’t expect. Originally I only wanted to come to study coffee further. I had no idea that the people I would be working with as a whole would have so much of an impact. I feel like we are all living and breathing coffee as one unit. Which is comprised of so many different interesting components.

 Everyday is a race to push myself out of my comfort zone and into a new one. Although my anxiety tells me nothing is perfect, that these steps towards bettering myself are really steps down and around, I know that’s not true. I know that my hard work will be recognized. It doesn’t need to be recognized by others, what really matters is that I see my progress personally. And that every day I strive to be better than I was the day before. Everyday is a precious gift and it deserves to be treated as such.

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New beginning, same adventure.

Long time, no blog(for good reason). Within these past few months so much interesting stuff has happened all in the pursuit of coffee. I won’t go too much into detail of all the boring stuff that doesn’t really pertain to coffee.

In my last post, I wrote about how I’ve been getting sick consistently the past few months and how its been affecting my financial state. Due to all of that I ended up working about 7 weeks straight with 3 different jobs to bounce back. During that time I did get both my finances and health stabilized, which is great. All the while I never stopped my pursuit of coffee; I was in dire need of a full time coffee job. After several interviews with an amazing company, I finally received an offer.

Now let’s fast forward to today and what’s going on as of recent. This wonderful company not only extended an offer for employment to me but has also sent their team of new baristas to California to train at headquarters. I cannot begin to put into words how grateful I am for this opportunity. It’s really beginning to feel like I’m making strides in my career.

Recently, I had a blind taste test where I identified 2 out of 3 coffees. This moment was magical for me as I realized how much progress I’ve made. When I first created this blog I couldn’t even drink a coffee without cream or sugar and now I can’t imagine drinking a coffee with either. Working hard really does pay off. ^_^

[lavenderandhoneyespresso]

Bringing coffee to the people.

PC: @angelinaoh

#lavenderandhoney #espressobar #itswhatwedo #alldayeveryday #shoplife #baristdaily (at Lavender & Honey Espresso Bar)

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I love it!!!! 😍😍🤗

[ludmillatyihorova]

With moisture content, it is basically the residual moisture that is left behind in the cherry from the processing stage. There are two components to the moisture content. We have free bound moisture content and we have chemically bound moisture content as well. It is a by product of the processing of the coffee. Also, coffee is a fruit, so it has a natural moisture content to it. Moisture content in green coffee is very, very important. We need to look at this as part of our quality control practices when all new green coffee comes into the warehouse. The main thing to think about it what’s acceptable in terms of stable coffee. For washed coffee we would be expecting the coffee to land between ten and twelve percent moisture content. For natural processed coffee we’re looking between ten and thirteen percent. One of the things we’re really wanting to understand is to ensure what we’re getting is in spec and is at a stable level. If the moisture is less than ten percent we can have a lot of problems on our hands as a roaster, that being that we may have past crop coffee that’s arrived. It may mean the coffee has not been dried correctly. When the fruit is less than ten percent it’s going to show lots of signs of aging in the cup and this is something that’s quite a concern for us. Anything that arrives to us and is above thirteen percent - we tend to find that more of a risk for those kind of coffees that particularly here in Australia that would be coming from New Guinea or Sumatra or Indonesia growing areas and that aren’t packed in grainpro bags. If they are coming in at a higher moisture content, this will mean that the coffee is going to roast very unevenly. It’s going to be a little bit unstable in the roaster for us. It does create a different set of difficulties for us to get that evenness to it. My recommendations, if that is the case, that your coffee arrives at a higher moisture content above thirteen percent, is to leave it standing in the roast house and let that coffee naturally settle down below thirteen percent. How we test for moisture content is basically a moisture meter. This is a really basic, entry level one and I think it’s really quite good because it runs off a couple of nine volt batteries. It’s very transportable. It’s very good, particularly if you want to take it to origin - chuck this in the backpack as well. It’s really quite handy. It’s very simple to use. We just take a sample of the green coffee. We screw the top off, like I’m doing at the moment. We add the green coffee level to the top and drop the lid back on. Then we screw it down so it’s firm and then quite simply turn it on, hit the test button here on the front and then we allow it to go through it’s testing process. The best thing to do is take three separate samples and average them. That will give you a reasonably accurate sample of what the moisture content is like.

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👍🙌☺️