AA Café Podcast

It's our special holiday episode. Mark and Brian talk about several new products at the DoubleShot, as well as the three special limited holiday coffees. And then launch into a long list of 10 things that give them contentment. Listen up. And make your own list. Happy holidays.

This episode of AA Cafe is a departure from our regular episodes. An employee and a customer of the DoubleShot tell stories about encounters with the paranormal. Hope you enjoy this fun little project. Happy Halloween.

In our continuing effort to explore each variable in coffee brewing, we delve into the inner-workings of heat. With the addition of Julie Watson, Mark Brown and Brian Franklin chat about various aspects of heat from body heat to coffee roasting. DoubleShot Chef Shelly Womack talks about when to use the convection setting on your oven, and how to find the hot spots. Also on a guest spot, Andrew Robinson shows how the temperature of coffee changes our perception of its aromas. And our featured guest this episode is Adam Myers from BurnCo BBQ.

Professor Jerry McCoy at the University of Tulsa explains time from the physicists point of view. What is time? What is it REALLY?
We live our lives by time, measuring our birth, death, seasons, days, weeks... seconds for the bloom of a pourover... steep time of a french press, etc.  But what is the fundamental nature of time?  What is the fundamental nature of reality?  This is deep.
We have a new co-host to the AA Cafe Podcast. Mark Brown (argentfork.com) and Brian Franklin (doubleshotcoffee.com) are joined for the first time by Julie Watson (tulsarootsmusic.org), who is our new roving reporter. In this episode, Julie interviews Jerry McCoy to get down into the minutiae of time.
Check out the podcast features at http://www.doubleshotcoffee.com/collections/podcast

Happy Holidays. Mark and Brian get together for a quick podcast to talk about happiness. It was supposed to be a holly jolly podcast, but it ended up talking a lot about the idea of happiness. But we did talk about things that make us happy, and a lot of other people told us about their favorite things as well.

El Erizo is an amazing Costa Rica honey process coffee that we are roasting for the holidays. Hear all about the coffee and some history on the name and the fantastic sequence of events that took place in the mid-1800s, as well as the fantastic sequence of events here at the DoubleShot this month.
Happy Thanksgiving. You can order El Erizo here, while it lasts.

The new MADURO BAR is now available! I went to Elm Springs Arkansas to visit with the owner of Kyya Chocolate, Rick Boosey. He tells us all about how chocolate is made and how he got into the business. Mark and I ramble about other related issues, including vanilla. 

Earlier this month, I went to Nicaragua for the first time. It was a journey into the unknown, as I wasn't sure where I would be going or what I would find out when I got there. As it turned out, I learned a lot about the coffee culture there and experienced farms and mills at a few different levels. Listen as Mark Brown and I discuss the ins and outs of the trip. Some unexpected audio was caught on a farm in the lowland area of Chacraseca, when a local farmer told us, through an interpreter, about his life in farming and what he learned along the way. Pretty moving piece.

Music for this episode is by Lyndon Scarfe, Chenard Walcker, and FortyOne.

For the first time ever, we recorded a live event that took place at the DoubleShot. During this event, I talked about the background for our big holiday package of this year, Brazil Sitio Serra Natural. The DoubleShot pastry chef, Shelly talked about the delicious food pairing she put together, and my co-host Mark Brown read an excerpt from a book he wrote, which comes in the Brazil holiday package.
After the event, Mark and I sat down to discuss all the holiday coffees and merchandise available at the DoubleShot and at DoubleShotCoffee.com.

Brazil Sitio Serra Natural

Costa Rica Pastora Yellow Honey

Pourover Holster

White Buffalo Track Jacket

Jim McEnaney, who is a coffee quality manager at La Minita Coffee, visited us some time ago and I sat down and listened to him talk about La Minita and some of the other coffees they produce and source.
Mark and I talk through the longest preamble ever, fairly dominating the entire show with funny memories of Autumn and Halloween and a few sad thoughts of life and loss.
You can find all the coffees mentioned on the podcast here:  http://www.doubleshotcoffee.com/collections/podcast-features

Music for this episode is by Lyndon Scarfe and Kai Engel.

This was a difficult episode for me to finish because I felt compelled to mention my dad's passing on September 3.  It's an overwhelming loss.

I'm updating the alarm codes, and have decided to make individual codes for each person. For better security and accountability, it's nice to know who's coming and going.  So anyway, I'm going to make your time clock code the same as your alarm code.  It's important that you don't tell other people your code, because in the unlikely case that something should happen, one person could use a different person's code, and implicate someone in some unjust criminal activity, which would cause me to use the debt collector on the wrong person.  No, but you understand- it's important to keep things secure.

So if I haven't already talked to you about changing your code, please either tell me in person or shoot me a text with what you want your new code to be.

Thank you.

Secondly, I've heard a few stories lately of baristas being on edge.
a) We all have to work together in this small place, and we all have to be happy and get along and appreciate each other.  Please be courteous to other staff.
b) The customers who walk in here have been hard-won. If you are rude or short with someone, it's a potential loss of one customer, but more importantly, people love to tell negative things about businesses.  So if someone feels slighted, I promise they will tell a lot of people, which means a lot more people that we may never see.  People come in here for great coffee (hopefully).  Most people have questions - whether they ask them or not.  It's our job to be polite and patient, even in the heat of the moment, and to assist customers as best we can.

Shelly just told me about a customer who bought a Thermos cup and the lid stopped working.  This is extremely common.  We've had to replace probably 40 lids on these cups.  Apparently James and Sam were working on Saturday and told the guy we couldn't do anything about it?  That's ridiculous.

Every product we sell, we stand behind.  If the product doesn't function properly, we need to take care of it.  If you have a question, call me.  But I would advise you to replace a broken part from one of our units in the basement, just to get the customer up and running again with whatever item is malfunctioning.  Then tell me, and I'll deal with the manufacturer.  We have good relationships with manufacturers and they want people to be satisfied with their products.  As do I.  If it's something you're concerned about or something expensive, call me.  If you can't get me, take care of the customer, and take their name and phone number so we can contact them if we need to.  We should probably follow up and make sure the fix worked anyway.  If it's something I need to work on a repair for, have them leave the grinder (or brewer, if that's the problem) and their name and phone number, and I will get to it asap.  It's important that our products stand up to normal use, and people trust us to sell quality products and stand behind them.

Mark and Brian both took trips to Colorado in August, both took DoubleShot Coffee and the new DoubleShot Coffee Concentrate. It's adventure and awakening and brewing and tasting life in the mountains.  In this 90th episode of AA Café, Mark and Brian discuss the minutiae. Mark Brown, currently of argentfork.com, and Brian Franklin of DoubleShotCoffee.com are your hosts on this summertime vacation podcast.