The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. – George Bernard Shaw
Interior of a bar in the First Ward’s infamous Levee District, 1899, Chicago.
Have I ever mentioned I’m really into coffee?
My next product design project is going to be for the world of craft coffee, so in addition to recently launching my coffee journal Overextracted, I decided to run a coffee session at ORD Camp, an invite-only un-conference I’ve been attending for the past 4 years. The sessions at ORD Camp vary from the intensely geeky focus on a specific topic to dilettantish hobbies—this session probably fell right in the overlap of those two. So I threw on an apron and hauled all my gear on over.
I wanted to focus on the craft of preparing coffee—or more specifically the process of making great pour over. In a casual 60 minutes, I did a little education piece on the variables that you get to control when you’re brewing manually, I live narrated all the steps of preparing a Chemex, and finally I opened it up to the 30+ people in the room to come play with the dozens of coffee-related tools I (and others) brought for brewing. As an amazing bonus, Chris McAvoy brought his home coffee roaster, and roasted two batches of beans during the session. Between the 4 brew methods going at a time and the roaster, the room smelled amazing.
Since the attendees of the session brought about 20 punds of beans, I spent the rest of ORD Camp occasionally running a “pop-up” coffee shop in one of the common spaces, and finally got to live out my dream of being a barista, and creating a social coffee experience.
The world of craft coffee is something I’m super passionate about and I’m stoked to start making my product ideas physical, with an eye towards eventually contributing to the culture of coffee at large.
DRYHOP BREWERS IS GATHERING STEAM
Still aiming for a Spring launch, I check in on progress in Lakeview’s newest craft beer destination with owner Greg Shuff and a busy crew. See more of the progress!
Timeout for a late-summer memory. The story about the first, and hopefully annual Good Beer Hunting x Buckshot Sonny’s weekend away at Wandawega has been told far and wide this year. But never has it been captured so beautifully than in Camp Wandawega’s own yearbook — the Style Files.
Proud brewmeisters photographed with their “bock”, 1880, Chicago.
The barrels are hard to make out, but “Chicago” can be made out on the left and “bock” on the right.
According to the print on the back, the photograph was taken at a studio at 650 Milwaukee Ave, Chicago.
via Langdon Road
BEERPIPHANY: Michael Kiser
I grew up in Pennsylvania, so I was one of the lucky ones that always had a better alternative in Yeungling, or as we still call it back home: lager.
But my epiphany came during college when we’d drive 30 minutes to Williamsport, PA just to get Taco Bell. Seriously, my school, Lock Haven…
I got the cover of the January issue of Beer Advocate magazine! See more about it, and the Solemn Oath guys that inspired it here »
SWEDEN IS “ALL ABOUT BEER” — THE ALLT OM ÖL FESTIVALEN
It’s the start of winter, and Stockholm is snowing, so let’s grab a beer and think about summer for a bit, and one of Sweden’s best festivals.
