This is possibly the world's shortest post, but I'm really, really enjoying (at least learning) developing applications for iPhone. It's such a beautiful platform and SDK. I've already one app approved (pending contracts) and about to submit my second after only two days development time. That's not from cutting corners or bad coding, but because so much of the work is done for you by Xcode. I've taken the week off work to do some serious coding, so I may be off twitter for the next few days, but at least now you know where I'll be :)

I was pleasantly surprised after heading home from Open Coffee Lisburn tonight, to find a nice email from Apple telling me the Exile Coffee "Find Me Coffee" app was now "Ready for sale"

Unfortunately it's not that simple, I seemed to have overlooked part of my banking setup on iTunes Connect. I'll get that sorted out right now, but hopefully the app will be ready available soon. If you're developing for the iPhone yourself, take heed from me, don't cut corners, fill in details properly and you'll be a 59c millionaire before you know it!

Open Coffee Lisburn meets tonight at 1900 hours, upstairs in Ed's Express up by Lisburn Omniplex. I wouldn't normally announce Open Coffee every week, Russell already has that covered, but I wanted to share a few things that are on my mind:

1. First off Javagate, obviously. I hope it doesn't hi-jack the whole meet-up but it seems to have been the proverbial straw which broke the camel's back and has infuriated up a lot of local people. The bureaucratic incompetence and "it's all about who you know" attitude in Lisburn City Council seems to get everyone's goat.


2. Secondly, the fact in trying to organise a meeting on a Tuesday night in a "city" we suddenly couldn't find a venue, apart from in what is now a burger bar. Even if we had waited until Wednesday night, Market Lane Cafe closes at 7pm with only Cafe Latte staying open late (Wed-Sat until 9PM). Why can't we have late night openings every night? Speaking from experience, (and you can check with many other business owners) the council and police are only interested able to focus on areas with a high footfall (and high amount of existing civil disturbance) namely the Omniplex. Outside the complex and you are completely an utterly alone. Don't count on the security cameras either, we're not even sure that they work and when they do are only pointed at the ATMs.

Too many animal metaphors in one paragraph, apologies.

Coffee is a passion for me, anyone who has talked to me, knows I could wax lyrical about it. I thoroughly enjoyed being at last month's Farmer's Market and spent the following four weeks looking forward to it, preparing new beans and telling everyone that would listen about how great it was to have something like this in Lisburn. Yesterday, despite being there to sell BEAN AND GONE coffee beans I was told, mid-market, to stop giving away sample drinks, because it was affecting the business of another trader. Annoyed and offended, I sent out a quick tweet and was shocked by the near instant support of the local online community. Russell (@wiseguyrussell) has posted about it on his blog and others @blackconfetti, @odle2, @maramgrass, @stuartgibson, @wiredbob expressed their indignation, both in person and online.

People have been talking about free trade and the unfairness of having a market that allows no duplication. I signed up for the market knowing this and accepted that I couldn't sell coffee drinks and only give samples away. I wanted to write a detailed timeline of what has been happening and allow everyone to make up their own minds.

• October 18th 2008
  The first Farmer's market in Castle Gardens, I popped in while walking past, thought it was great to see in Lisburn (and still do), I even bought a coffee from Javaman.
  Bumped into Sharon from Soupernatural (responsible for creating and organising the market), who suggested I come along to the next market held at:


• December 2008
  I Had planned to attend selling coffee beans, even contacted the council (the organiser being Suzanne Lutton) to get forms, however the fact that the council required a Risk assessment form the length of your arm and Public Indemnity Insurance put the brakes on that. Paying out around £80 on Insurance in what was thought, at the time ,to be a one-off seemed like a bit steep, add to the that the cost of the pitch, being nearly double that of the likes of St George's market.
  I stopped by the market anyway, bought some nice food, (noticed Javaman wasn't there this time) and again talked to Sharon from Soupernatural who told me I should have came along anyway and let their insurance cover me. She told me the market was going to start back and go monthly from:


• February
  I saw a banner go up for the Lisburn Farmer's Market on 7th March and contacted Sharon to see if it was ok to come along.
  I got a call back the next day, from Suzanne Lutton from Lisburn City Council, telling me that although they'd be happy to have me at the market, I wouldn't be able to trade using Soupernatural's insurance. Understandable really, so I arranged my own, as well as ordering in green beans, packaging, signage etc, only to get another call back from Suzanne telling me that Phil from Javaman had expressed concern about me selling coffee drinks. An arrangement was made that I would only sell beans and equipment, so as not to affect his business and comply with the non-duplication terms of the market. With all that sorted out I got ready for:


• Saturday 9th March: First Monthly Market
  Although it was a freezing, wet and overcast day, we had a successful day and as I mentioned above, a lot of fun. So there was no doubt that we planned to go back in:


• March
  I got back in touch with Suzanne at the council just to check everything was ok for the next market, she told me it was and checked that I was fine with only doing samples. From here on out I'll break down what happened on the day:


• Saturday 5th April
  0815
  Setup my tent outside the main marquee, got completely soaked and had a short chat with Javaman, I should add that nothing was mentioned about us selling coffee beans


• 0930
  Was asked again by Suzanne "are you only serving samples" despite having already answered this repeatedly. Suzanne's exact words were "he (Phil from Javaman) saw you carrying in an espresso machine and is freaking out"


• 1100 (ish)
  Several customers expressed annoyance at not being able to buy a coffee (drinks) from us, although as before I let them know they could buy from Javaman at the back of the tent. It was also noticed that all the other market traders had been provided with printed signage.


• 1215
  Sharon from Soupernatural (not the council organiser) came over to our stall and told us we would have to stop giving out samples as it was affecting Phil's trade and there just wasn't enough footfall to justify two traders with the same product. She said that Suzanne from the council would be over to speak to me soon:


• 1400
  Not exactly "soon" and having turned away dozens of customers looking for samples I finally got to speak to Suzanne by going to find her. Suzanne explained the same reasons as Sharon, however she agreed that we should be allowed to give out samples but in small espresso sized cups only. We asked to have it in writing and the following month be inside the main marquee, she said that would be fine.
  We brought up the issue that the market would never grow, or be competitive while they still had a no duplication policy, Suzanne told us she had at least another 6 traders lined up to come (which I think would be great) but they can't as they overlap with existing traders.
  On the issue of the printed banners which the other traders got, we were told that we hadn't one because our spot was outside the main marquee and they wouldn't survive well outside. This was understandable and it was pointed out the other outside spot (for which the trader didn't show) didn't have one either.


• 1445
  Sharon came back and informed us that Suzanne (from the council, official organisers etc) should not have told us that we could give out samples at all and that an espresso size sample of filter coffee would stop people buying shots of espresso from Phil. I want to point out here that the standard of coffee and the culture of the UK and Ireland is that someone will not buy a shot of Espresso, unless they truly are a coffee lover, in which case a "shot" of filter coffee would not suffice or even be considered as the same thing. We were also told that we should not have been at the market at all as when I had first request to come in February, Phil from Javaman had said he would not be happy with me being there at all. Sharon says she passed this information back to Suzanne (although up to that point I had been dealing directly with Sharon) and that the fault was Suzanne's and the Council's for letting me come. She also pointed out that the banners were only printed for the other traders, whom she had invited and arranged with and that our roastery tent outside was nothing to do with her, it was between me and Suzanne. (This contradicted not only Suzanne's earlier reason for us not having signage, but also Sharon's own arguments about who had the say in the running of the market. One moment she has the authority to arrange things, the next we are "nothing to do with her"). It was left that, we had affected Javaman's business so much that he probably wouldn't be back and that it would damage her reputation as a trader as she had given her word that there would be no duplication, the direction of the conversation was thought the right thing to do would be to leave as us even attending the market was a mistake.


• 1530
  I packed up, paid my fee and was told  by Suzanne that she would be in touch, after having spoken to Sharon, so who knows what will happen next?

About Our Ratings

Our ratings are not intended to cause offense, but instead hope to promote quality and good practice in the coffee industry, directing business owners to the areas that need improvement, providing a better experience for all.

As such, the breakdown of our reviews, based on the sampling of a small cappuccino, is as follows:

Taste - Pretty self explanatry, how the coffee tastes. Marked out of 10, most fresh generic coffee's will receive a 7 or 8, outstandingly fresh and exciting coffees will be higher, with stale coffee (usually caused by filling the doser with ground coffee and leaving to sit, or not cleaning group heads between shots) will be lower.

Texture - The texture of the milk, also marked out of 10. Consistently smooth milk with little or no bubbles, known as microfoam, is the goal here. Frothing milk until it is bubbly and dry tends tomake it sour and points will be lower accordingly.

Temperature - Leading on from milk frothing, the coffee temperature, again out of 10 with 10 being the perfect drinking temperature, not too hot not too cold. Extreme heat (hotter than your hand can touch, around 140F) not only makes the milk sour, buttwill get you lower points; no one wants their mouth burnt!

Technical Ability - Marked out of 10, this is a look at the skill and training of the barista preparing the drink. Are they following industry best practices, or ritualistically sticking to bad/incorrect training. Also taken into account are the proportions of the drink, ie the ration of espresso to milk.

Appearance - Marked out of 5, this is not how the staff look, contrary to popular belief (you know who you are!) but is how the coffee is presented, if it is finished with any latte art, if there have been spills etc.

Atmosphere - The atmosphere marks relate to the cafe environment itself; is the establishment billed as a "coffee shop" but the main priority is food and a high turn over of customers. As it is not a major issue it is also marked out of 5.

The final score is calculated by adding these values together and doubling to give a mark out of 100

Exclusions - We have decided to exclude certain coffee chains from our reviews due to bad ratings across their stores. Currently O'Briens, The Streat, Costa Coffee, Cafe Nero and Starbucks are excluded. Although, as I alluded to in an earlier post, Starbucks Coffee, prepared primarily by fully automatic machines, is at least consistent.

Yesterday at 1700 GMT people from around the world came together to watch Barack Hussein Obama II become the 44th President of the United States of America. A few years ago, no one would believe such a diverse mix of people and countries would be so captivated by the inauguration of an American President, but after the hype and build-up of the past few months, it was thought that perhaps his speech would not deliver, those people were wrong.

President Obama knew not only the eyes of America, but the eyes of the world were upon him and his inaugural address, in this smaller interconnected world, reached out to everyone. Suddenly, it seemed that the whole of twitter, Facebook and everything in between were suddenly doing the same thing. As Obama set new challenges for the American people, a lot of us jumped for joy when he mentioned returning "science to its rightful place." I'm sure some of you reading this don't understand the implications, President Obama is a committed Christian, as am I, hopefully this will forever dispel the myths held on both sides of the debate that Christianity and Science cannot and do not go together. Science is not the work of the devil, but at the same time neither do we live in the "dark ages" or so desire to. I like my mobile phone, laptop, internet access, nuclear power, NASA, the Human Genome project and even the LHC. I read scientific journals and have a very rational and analytical mind.

Some seem to think that intelligence and reason go against believing in a "higher power." My intelligence and reason, as with President Obama, are not contrary too, but instead confirm my faith. Faith which does not come from clouded judgement, or impaired mental faculties, but a the very root of it, comes from the empirical evidence that there is a God. Others may complain that what I say is wrong, that faith comes from believing only, but I was a follower of science long before I was a Christian, it was the undeniable proof and complete lack of evidence of the contrary that not only led me to God, but continues with me today.

Those stupid atheist slogans on buses annoy me no end, this is how it would look if I had my way. I have respect for this guy there are very few people who would stand up for their faith, like that, anymore. Notice the word "faith" it's important, this isn't as simple, as I've seen trivialised on blogs that suggest "would a vegetarian refuse to drive a bus advertising bacon?" In my mind, as a Christian, the two cannot be equated and it is not only deeply offense, but also shows, sadly, just how out of touch and little understanding secular society has.

I had the opportunity to tag along to the UKBC Regionals in Hillsborough on Wednesday, camera in tow. The set-up was definitely biased towards the competitors and judges, leaving us photographers clamoring for good angles and light. So, I did my best.

Sadly, I was unable to stay long enough for Julia's turn at the machines!

[caption id="attachment_284" align="aligncenter" width="384" caption="Neli serving up her espressos"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_285" align="aligncenter" width="384" caption="One of the judges enjoys Neli's specialty drink!"][/caption]

The previous post has a shot of Neli preparing her cappuccinos.

[caption id="attachment_286" align="aligncenter" width="384" caption="Heather prepping her station"][/caption]

Here you can also see the fabulous Sanremo machine that was used in the competition!

[caption id="attachment_287" align="aligncenter" width="384" caption="Heather's specialty drink, halfway through the layering process"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_288" align="aligncenter" width="384" caption="Judges scoring Heather's finished specialty drink"][/caption]

These are just a few highlights of the winners at work. Congrats to ALL the competitors, especially the first-timers.

Yesterday was a long day, for no one more so than the baristas that competed in the Northern Ireland heat of the UK Barista Championship.

Only eight competitors took part in the smaller than normal competition, but there was certainly no lack of intensity in this fascinating exhibition of their skills and coffee knowledge. The eight competitors, in order of appearance were:

Judith McVitty - Clements, Royal Avenue
Neli Petkova - Cafe Krem, Banbridge
Heather Jamison - Quail's, Banbridge
Michael McLauglin - Clements, Royal Avenue
Jon Armstrong - Coffee Republic
Rachel Mawhinney - The Streat
Julia McKenna - Clements, QUB Student Union
Luke Powell - Cafe Krem, QUB Peter Froggart Centre

Formerly also from Clements, Royal Avenue

In no time at all the day was over and everyone nervously waited the return of the judges, hoping it would be before the impending close of the building (the organisers were told we had to be out by 5pm). And the top three were:


First - Neli Petkova
Second - Heather Jamison
Third - Julia McKenna

I want to congratulate everyone who took part, as a spectator, you could really feel the tension on the room as each competitor took the stage and they made it the enjoyable day that it was.

You are probably wondering what happens next on the blog? Well my friend Jessica was there yesterday taking photos, (that’s where I stole the ones you can see here) and she will be uploading and possibly commenting on them too. Once I get those, I will give my review of the top two performances, as I unfortunately missed Julia’s (sorry Julia!), both were very different but watching them redefined not only the importance of speciality coffee, but the importance of coffee itself over the performance, something that in recent years seems to have been forgotten about.

As a topic of interest, Neli and Julia are from cafes in the top five of my Cafe Reviews. Sadly for me, Sinammon in Stranmillis was not competiting, although they were spectating. The standard of the baristas in Sinammon (my highest rating, btw) is such that they really will be one to watch in years to come.

As you can see from the post below I tried my hand at live blogging, which worked for a while, only to be thwarted by Three deciding to perform a "network upgrade" and killing my mobile broadband. Thankfully I did get some great audio recording, which I will be tidying up this evening, from both face to face interviews and a recording of the rooms PA, for the bits that I missed. I’ll be uploading them over the coming week, I don’t want to put up too much as I have a lot to write about, after some really interesting and unexpected conversations about the industry with Se Gorman (Cafe Krem), John (Clements), Philip (Johnson Bros Coffee) and Russel Bailie (Bailie’s Coffee). I also hope to be contributing to Common Grind, so I’ll have to get something to Chris for his next podcast.

Thanks to everyone that let me speak to them yesterday, my interview skills aren’t up to much and apparantly I’m "shy" too, so it went better than expected. I know I sound like a Kate Winslett now, but I also need to thank Sanremo, again I’ll be talking about their machines later, but my short opinion of them, awesome. I spent some time playing about with the third machine at the back, mixing with other Baristas and coffee lovers and after Russel gave the grinder some TLC we were pulling some consistently good shots.

One more thing, my rubbish latte art is my fault and mine alone, this much I have learned, now to tidy that audio…

Photography Thanks to Jessica Odell

The live blog is long and rambling, I've moved it behind the link below to tidy up the front page a litte.

16.40
1. Neli Petkova - Cafe Krem
2. Heather Jamison - Quails
3. Julie McKenna - Clements
16.39
Top 24 from the UK go to finals
16.38
I spy a bag of hasbean coffee
16.36
The judges are back
16.32
Internet problem caused by being in an area where 3G ends and 2.5G starts, meaning the wireless card spends most of its time flicking between bands instead of actually working.
16.20
Just awaiting the result from the judges, lots of nervous baristas standing by
16.17
Apologies for the lack of updates, we lot internet connectivity earlier, thankfully the recording seems to have worked ok, so I'll review the final baristas later
14.20
Two minute warning.
Mixture served into the cups prepared earlier
Time called, well done Jon
14.17
Small amount of peppermint tea, chocolate, condensed coconut, fresh coconut milk and black pepper in a jug and stirred,
Ice added to jug with a squirt of lime juice and the mixture above sieved in.
Now to add espresso, but to be served cold.
14.16
Speciality drink details
Infusing peppermint tea, cutting up lime, melted sweet chocolate.
Lime for the rims of the cups, dipped in melted chocolate
5 min warning
14.15
8 varieties of bean, including robusta because it cuts through the milk well, caramel finish with chocolate hints.
14.12
Recommends an extraction time of 20-25s for this blend
14.09
Espresso uses Brazil Daterra yellow bourbon, with citrus notes and dominican republic, med acidity, wine like towards the end.
Separate blend for cappuccinos and signature drinks, the coffee republic house blend
14.07
The next competitor is Jon Armstrong from Coffee republic, formerly of Clement's. A coffee legend in Northern Ireland and he knows it.
13.51
Honey roasted parsnip macchiato, again, that's very different
Only two minutes to go
13.48
5 minute warning
13.46
Since the burner won't start Michael is steeping the parsnips in milk before steaming them from cold. Yes I have confirmation, real parsnips!
13.42
Looks like the gas stove won't start, not sure what that means for the signature drink
13.39
Starting off with preparation for his signature drink which includes crushed honey roasted parsnips?? Did I hear that right?
Like Judith, Michael is also using Clements house blend
13.28
Just returning from lunch break, up next is Michael McLaughlin from Clement's Royal Avenue.
Got to speak interview Se Gorman and think I ended up sounding like a fanboy, sorry...
12.33
Coffee, honey oranges and milk, served in a cocktail glass for the signature drink and thats her done, under the time limit, well done.
12.29
Heather is working on her signature drink, she isn't saying very much about it however.
5min warning
12.19
Third competitor is preparing to start, Heather Jamison from Banbridge, she is using a blend from Johnsons. Lots of oranges (colour and fruit) in her setup, finished her espresso and is preparing her cappuccinos now.
12.01
1 Minute warning
12.00
Signature drink contains freshly squeezed lemon mousse
11.52
Oh, now I get it, she has fully prepared two cappuccinos and served them before starting the next two. Chocolate and cherry notes in the cup
11.50
Neli will be serving the ladies first and the gentlemen second
11.49
Neli has started, she is using a three bean blend, Guatemalan, Brazilian and Bolivian. Her music faded out as she finished talking, very polished.
I don't know much about Bolivian beans, so you should ask Steve
11.45
Judges are back, Neli's table setup is very elegant, she's almost ready to go
11.35
Post routine interview with Judith, I think I was more nervous than she was.
11.29
Sig drink has spice to complement the spice in the espresso, is adding green & black's chocolate, whipping cream and cinnamon. Sounds very nice to me, I have an idea, a fifth drink for podcasters :-)
11.26
Cappuccinos finished off, can't actually make out the latter art, will check photos later.
Neli and Se have began setup for Cafe Krem at machine 2
11.22




Espresso has been served, the Sumatran adds a rounded spice to the end of the cup
Beginning cappuccino prep
11.20
Remaking one espresso after a minor spillage
11.17
Judith is using Clement's own house blend (which I have to say I really like) and is preparing her espsresso
11.16
Judith from Clements Royal Ave has started
She became a barista as she had been waitressing and wanted a new challenge and always enjoyed the smell, taste and artform of coffee.

11.10
Judges have been announced, updates to names when I get them

Jeremy Regan - Head Judge

Malcolm
David
Pauline
Denise Hall - Sensory Judges

Sarah
Joanne - Technical Judges

As posted on twitter earlier this year, I had intended on entering the UK Barista Championship's Northern Ireland Heat, this Wednesday and Thursday in Hillsborough and as posted last week on twitter, I had changed my mind. The reason? As much I would like to think otherwise, not working in a retail environment is a serious detriment to a barista's skill set. Everything from speed, workflow and consistency can all suffer from lack of practice and as mentioned in this post title, my latte art, especially, is a massive fail.

In the coffee shop environment I previously worked in, we used the machine below, a Basilia Belle Epoque, 2 Group. Although suffering from relatively small boiler size due to the vertical design there was enough pressure to run both groups and steam milk at the same time, for a fairly consistent period of time. Even though it was recommended here that it should not be used on a busy site, we rarely experienced problems.

Now at home I use a different setup, a Fracino Little Gem, 1 Group which I will admit is a pretty basic Prosumer machine and frequently has trouble with pressure, even still when you have the right workflow it is possible to brew and then steam without any detriment to the flavour of the cup. One major difference in this setup, that really doesn't help is the steam wand on the Fracino. I don't know if it's just me, but combined with my lack of practice, I don't seem to be able to get the same spin on the milk, regardless of which type of jug I use. And as any experienced Barista will tell you, its the spin of the milk, while stretching and steaming that creates the necessary texture to mix the milk and espresso and create impressive latte art. Latte art, which off-late has been disastrous on my part.
I've seen latte art created when using domestic krups machines, means I really doubt it's impossible, but it really goes to show, just how much your experience on a particular machine contributes to what you can do with it and with this year's UKBC having switched to Sanremo machines. Come Wednesday, I'll be at Hillsborough, unofficially reporting on the regional heat and will hopefully get to speak to a few of our local baristas and ask them how the changes this year have affected them to what lengths they have went to level the playing field. Maybe if you are good at what you do, the machine won't make a difference, in which case, hopefully I'll pick up a few tips.

On some recent trip to Belfast's shiny new Apple Store, I took a walk down Anne Street (what is with the ugly half tile, have pot-holed tarmac street btw?) and found an absolute gem of a shop, The Cookie Box.

Now I know this blog is generally about coffee (or what passes as coffee) but to be honest I've never even tried any of the coffee there, because even walking past I was stopped in my tracks by the sights and smells of about a dozen different varieties of home made cookies. It's only a small shop, opposite Forbidden Planet, and most of the room is taken up by the kitchen, almost putting the counter on the street itself, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in taste. Crunchy but soft, gooey chocolate chips, oodles of butteryness making the cookies literally melt in your mouth. I'm sitting here and I can't even think of words to describe them, all that comes to mind, over and over again is the phrase:

Best. Cookies. Ever.

The owner works there and bakes the cookies himself. I know from my own experience how difficult working in that sort of environment can be so I wish him and his business all the possible success they can have. I for one will be back, again, next time I'm in Belfast and I think everyone else should too.

Go Cookie Man Go!

First off, happy new year, I hope you've all had a restful time lately, it's been great, getting to put my feet up and take a break from computers for a few days.

Some of you may have noticed, my reviews of coffee shops have been a little thin on the ground of late. I haven't been slacking, however, as I have whole list of new reviews, instead I've decided to take a small hiatus until the new collaborative review site is finished. I've been told I can be quite negative and critical sometimes, if not downright nasty and as passionate as I am about coffee, that's not me. So while I work on the new site I'm also restructuring my reviews to be more informative and helpful. The end goal? A one-stop-shop where everything, from the espresso to the environment where it is served can be rated not only by me, but by the general public too. Need to know where you can get a 6oz cappuccino, a free wifi connection and is kid friendly? Well so do I, so when I find it, it'll be on the map :-) You get the idea.

I'm still wrestling with the idea to set the reviews site up as a separate website, so if anyone has any good ideas for a name, they'd be greatly appreciated and your genius will of course be credited. There really isn't any reason to limit something like this to Northern Ireland, so anyone with speciality coffee experience, in other regions, who would like to volunteer should look no further than the comments box below, or contact me on andrew [at] exilecoffee.com

I like Starbucks. There, I said it. I'm sure Steve will be spiking my next coffee order and I'll have to start sleeping with my eyes open, but there is no denying the truth. In my defense, however, it is not for the reasons you may think. I'm not a slave to the corporate machine, I'm not a caffeine junkie, I don't like huge sizes and I certainly don't want a shot of vanilla and whipped cream in my cappuccino. The many faults of Starbucks, which have been flogged to death all over the web, are superfluous to my reasons. I want to focus on a few changes over the last year and whether or not they are nothing more than marketing ploys; the introduction of the 'Pike Place Roast' in the USA and the switching to Fair Trade in the UK.

Fact, here are over 15000 Starbucks in the world! - WikiAnswers
They may have gone off message since opening their doors, but Starbucks is the largest coffee chain in the world. That may be a negative to some people, but try to consider what the world of coffee was without Starbucks. Have a look in any 'greasy spoon' cafe in the UK and you will see the remnants of the old way of doing things, filter pots left on the hotplate all day, Nescafe instant in bulk quantities, espresso, if it can be called that, from dirty machines and oily beans. The sort of thing we see in the very worst of coffee shops, where coffee is not considered a culinary product, but just another commodity to sell. With the spread of Starbucks has come the spread of coffee shop and most importantly, espresso culture. It's very unlikely that you favourite coffee house today would exist without the legitimacy given to gourmet coffee by Starbucks. You can't buy marketing like that, well you can, they did...

Howard Schultz, taking a leaf from Steve Jobs' book, has returned to the company and earlier this year, announced a series of changes, bringing back manual machines, shorter times keeping brewed coffee and the Pike Place Blend, roasted and delivered to stores within two weeks of brewing. Recognising and attempting to fix mistakes is a quality which in business these days, is avoided like the plague. Pike Place Roast which for anyone unaware and/or leaving outside the US, is a new house blend with a much more palatable roast profile. Whereas the older 'House Blend' was infamous for being darkly roasted and tasting "charred," Pike Place (named after Starbucks original location in Seattle) is a little lighter roasted and from my own experiences this summer, a bit sweeter and more balanced. Along with the new blend comes the obligatory rebrand of cups and store cards bearing the original logo (more or less) and a reemphasis on freshness, which is when I started taking notice.

I bought a 1lb of Pike place back in August and even after a week or two it was still enjoyable. During that time I grabbed a bag of House Blend from my local Starbucks, in Belfast and brewed it up using the same method as the Pike Place. For some reason which I have yet to understand, I didn't actually make any hard notes during this time, not very scientific I know, but I can say with certainty that even 'freshly' out of the bag, the House Blend already tasted like "burnt tarmac."

It left me hoping that Starbucks Europe would make a similar move, but the logistics of roasting and transport within Europe would be more challenging than in the US. That said, if The Coffee Collective can do it, why can't Starbucks?

Speaking of Europe, that brings me back to their other big change, switching to Fairtrade, across their range, in the UK. There has been plenty written about Fairtrade and its branding, how it's not actually as fair as it makes out; the speciality industry has touted the direct trade and relationship coffee as viable alternatives, that give more, financially and technically, back to the producers. You can find articles on fair trade here, here and here, to name a few.

Unlike the Pike Place Roast and improvements in quality and freshness, the Fairtrade switch seems to be more marketing genius, than helping farmers. However that is only my speculation and in turn, my dilemma. The real effect of both these changes remain unseen. The important thing is, that no matter where we stand on the Fairtrade issue, we need to make sure that ethical buying is not to salve our own conscience, but is because we care about our fellow man.

My wife and I recently returned from a short break to Nice on the Cote D'azur (you have to love those cheap Ryanair flights) and I thought I should mention the copious amounts of coffee, drank on the trip. European, primarily Italian coffee holds a fabled place in the hearts of coffee aficionados, with good reason, with Italy being seen as the birthplace of the espresso and so on. Cafe culture in the south of France has a very similar feel to that of north Italy (random tour bus fact, Nice was the birthplace of the Italian unifier Garibaldi and almost became part of Italy). Walk into any cafe, restaurant, patisserie (of which there were many) and you will find a well used, sometimes quite rustic, espresso machine taking a pride of place on the counter. Asking for a coffee, in most of France or Italy, will get you a single shot espresso as standard (un café sil'vous plait,) which can be quite humorous when you see the looks on the faces of ignorant tourists who are expecting a full mug of filter. In a tourist hotspot like Nice this has the affect of the Barista second guessing your order, if they detect you are from out of town, pale skin and a bad accent being dead giveaways.

The espresso itself changes in taste and quality from shop to shop, as it does in the rest of the world, but overall was surprising good. As I mentioned above, shots are almost always singles, a rarity to find in the UK where most espresso is pulled as a double. Single shots can be tricky and are generally less forgiving than double or even triples and as such are shied away from. A single shot in a milk drink will also be very weak unless in a small (5-6 fl oz) cup, which are also rare to find in UK coffee, mostly because the public feel that a small size is because the shop owner is being tight instead of authentic. Because of the single shots I had expected to get some terrible coffee but it was obvious from the word go that the baristas here knew about coffee, knew how to make it and although relaxed in their nature, cared about what they were making, much as making a good pot of tea is part of a way of life for older generation in Britain.

I've read online, (if you know where please let me know) possibly at coffee geek, that European machines generally run at a different temperature and pressure than our machines, resulting in a difference in the shot. I'd be interested to hear any theories on european coffee and why we don't run our machines this way, as it seems to give a much more pleasant cup.

PS. I've made quite a generalisation above and omitted any details on beans and/or roast profiles, quite frankly because I don't have any. All I can say is that beans weren't as dark or as oily as I would have expected.

I'm sure many of you have will know what I'm talking about when I say it is very hard to keep track of all your online social interactions these days, tweets, blog posts, comments, bookmarks, videos and more!

To help us keep our sanity as we traverse the Social Multiverse™ several useful tools have been created; FriendFeed will aggregate most of the sites you contribute to into one twitteresque page, allowing comments to be made in one place, but unfortunately outside of the environment of the original post. Other tools, such as coComment or co.mments, keep track of conversations by aggregating your comments, from multiple sites, into one place, with browser plugins installed to automate it.

I've been using both these solutions for sometime now, to both feed my sidebar and help keep track of interesting discussions. Recently I've discovered Yahoo! Pipes, which according to Wikipedia, is:

...a web application from Yahoo! that provides a graphical user interface for building applications that aggregate web feeds, web pages, and other services, creating Web-based apps from various sources, and publishing those apps.

I've used it to pull my feeds from blogs, twitter, youtube, flickr and any discussions I'm tracking all into one time ordered feed. Pipes that you create can be made public so that other users can create clones based on their information my source is available here, just paste in your feed URL's and you're good.

I have plans to modify my pipe further, as at the moment it is a fairly basic RSS aggregator and other examples on Yahoo! Pipes put it to shame.

What other methods do people use to keep track and stay current?

Our prayer meeting on Monday night had a visit from night Pastor Groza, of Bethany Baptist Church, Romania, and a group of operatic singers, the Pro Gospel Quartet, I think they are in Northern Ireland for a while touring around various churches and venues, if you get a chance to hear them you should, they are incredible, I have never heard such powerful songs, sung with such passion, they really were giving it everything! No linkage for you unfortunately, I can't seem to find any mention of them online, but they could give professional singers a run for their money. My hat also goes off to their pianist/organist who was equally as incredible and managed to blow up short the church organ, that's what I call power!

Growing up in the seventies and eighties, my childhood memories basically consist of videogames, bright plastic toys and TV cartoons.

While reading an article over at Proton Charging I discovered the Foldskool Heroes, folded paper (and somewhat deformed) versions of my childhood memories. Be sure to check out the astronaut with chest bursting alien action in all its papery goodness.

As some of you know, on the 8th of August this year I got married and the lads have been making digs that I haven't blogged since then because I'm under the thumb, "another good man down," they say.

I wouldn't blame the delay on marriage as that's not fair, nor would I blame my beautiful new wife for keeping me from blogging, but the change of dynamic; moving house, living together, turning that house into a home, all take time and have been top priority for me. I've found my workload to be a lot heavier lately and and after a long busy day in work its hard to find something to write.

However, the break has done me good, now nearly five months on, I'm still happily married and writing the first of several planned posts and who knows what else.

On the 1st December after little more than one week's warning, Chancellor Darling (Not pictured below) lowered the UK VAT rate from 17.5% to 15% and the nation rejoiced.

On the same day the Irish VAT rate rose from 21% to 21.5% they weren't quite as happy. Very few people spared a thought, however, for the programming and IT support companies that had to push out updates and talk almost IT illiterate clients through changing updating their software. Yesterday I was one of those people, stepping in to fill the breach and stem the endless tide of phone calls and I have never been more grateful, in my life that I no longer work tech support.

That's all I have to say about that.

After working out I grabbed a cup of coffee from the Peet's stall in the hotel lobby, it wasn't great coffee but I was initially pleasantly surprised to see that the staff were undergoing retraining, right up to the point where I heard the trainer talking to the barista. This wasn't some young college kid, but an older Hispanic lady, who is very pleasant and upbeat, (although in Florida it's uncertain just how real the pleasantries really are). The trainer was a young well dressed White woman, whom I assume is from the local head office; I have ran, participated in and evaesdropped on enough Batista training sessions to know the way she was talking to this lady was in no way appropriate regardless of her competancy in making coffee. Talking down to and criticising someone to colleagues via the phone, infront of both the trainee herself and customers is wrong, there is nothing else to say about it. Hopefully she'll make it through the retraining and may I suggest the head office staff could do with some retraining on manners! Andrew

I'm in Florida on honeymoon and the last think I expected to find was a front page article in the Wall Street Journal about latte art! I'm not sure if it's available online, but it actually seems like a very balanced article, going into the potential expense and "over thinking" that can go into producing latte art. It even mentions our very own James Hoffman, and his crazy latte art challenge, among other famous names, David Schomer and Mark Prince etc. I'm still shocked that they found a place for a story like this on a front page otherwise dedicated to the ongoing conflict in Georgia. More news from the colonies is on it's way; Ive been to Starbucks to try their new Pike Place roast. Andrew

After helpingRussell I've decided to upload a couple of photo sets showing what I think are the best options to Jailbreak and/or Unlock an iPhone using Pwnage

This first photoset shows the options needed to create a custom restore bundle that will unlock and activate an original generation iPhone.

iPhone 2G Unlock

Disclaimer: DO NOT FOLLOW THESE STEPS FOR IPHONE 3G, THERE IS NO UNLOCK FOR IT YET

I hope you've got your glasses nice and full, there's a whole stack of toasts coming! We'd like to thank you all for coming today, it wouldn't have been half the day it was without our friends and family around us, so thank you.

We'd also like to thank our bridal party for their help today, for the bridesmaids, Tanya and Lousie, our ushers Brian and Richard, my groomsman Ashley, Kyle for his reading, to Jessica for singing and of course Mark, my best man. Just remember bro, go easy on me in your speech. The advantage of getting married first is that I can repay the favour when its your turn! I'd like you to raise your glasses and toast the wedding party.

A big thank you goes to both my mum and dad and my new mother and father in law, who have so warmly welcomed me into their family. The love and support from both our parents and the Godly homes that we have grown up in, have made a huge impact on both our lives and is part of the reason that we both know the Lord today. Lets raise our glasses to our parents

Of course then we have the most important person of the day, Lila, who, Im sure you'll all agree looks absolutely stunning.

As I'm sure you all know Lila and I are both saved, and Church has been and is an important part of our lives, infact Lila and I first met in church, all those years ago, but of course being a typical teenage boy, I had very interest in girls and am sorry to say didn't really notice her. But as you know Lila likes to get her way and eventually, after a few years, I noticed her, which goes to show, persistence pays off. We started going out on the 6th of September 2003, after  bravely asked her out via text message. I was a bit more brave when it came to proposing however, I did that in person! However any rumours that some people might spread. about how the shock put Lewis in hospital are completely untrue. I want to thank Lila for agreeing to marry me, I'm still not sure what I did right to make her say yes, but she did and now today I feel like I'm the happiest man in the world. So please everybody raise your glasses in a toast to Lila

Finally I'd like to thank our Lord and Saviour for all the help and strength he has given us over the years and would hope, now that we are married that we can now walk together, united in Him.

Thank you

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="203" caption="Burning Blackberries"][/caption]I've been nearly two weeks since the arrival of my iPhone 3G, signified by the burning of effigies of blackberries throughout the country. And since that time I've been patiently waiting for a native Wordpress application that would rival the TypePad app; yesterday was to be that day, or was it. Although not quite as disappointed with it as @cimota, there still are bugs to be worked out, like why I had to reinstall my blog to get it to work. I'm also concerned with my comment on the support site is still unapproved, are they trying to hide their bugs?

Regardless I'll stick with it for a while yet, I'm hoping for a quantum leap in features for version 1.1, in the way that Facebook 1.1 improved on it's initial false start.

Andrew