Bad Photos, Good Birds

We found this guy first. Not the FOY, but I never tire of seeing them

So...for the past two years we have wasted invested hundreds of hours looking for a Greater White-fronted Goose or a Short-eared Owl. We have driven to the far side of Fort Plain and ventured out into the wilds and sat for hours on a roadside looking for the latter.

I have taken and carefully pored over thousands upon thousands photos of Canada Geese, searching, ever searching for that elusive GWFG. (Or a Cackling Goose, but that is another story.)

To no avail.

Greater White-fronted Goose

Then on Saturday some really nice folks whom I had never met, but who were pursuing  county birds the boss and I had found and posted on eBird, called me up and left a message that they had found the goose down in town.

I returned the call and had an absolutely delightful chat with one of the bird folks....I don't get to talk to other enthusiastic birders pretty much ever. Really fun.

And then we went chasing the goose.

No go. No geese at all. Same deal yesterday morning.

However, yesterday afternoon there were a few geese at the spot where our target was seen. I climbed out and began the tedious process of photographing every single one, just in case. But I already knew that I wasn't seeing it. While I was doing so I heard an odd call right below the high riverbank upon which I was standing. Couldn't see any birds because of a huge snowbank so I dismissed it.

Until I got back in the car and Becky said, "Did you hear that? That was something different. I'm going to play that goose call on my phone." And so she did.

And that was it. Out of the car, up on the snowbank, and there it was...about fifty feet from the car.

Who could ask for more?

Whoooo Me.....? Short-eared Owl

However, there WAS more ..... The boss suggested taking a little ride late in the afternoon. I think he gets restless and wants to get out of the house but it is just too icy to do much outdoors. So we did.

Northern Shrike in the near darkness

Just a handful of miles from home I spotted a little bird in a tree across a field. I still get cold chills thinking about seeing my first ever Short-eared Owl. And because I was taking lots of photos of it I discovered that there was a Northern Shrike sitting about two feet underneath it in the very same tree. I needed one for my county list and there it was.

Terrible shot showing shrike and owl

We went on to find three more owls a couple of miles away, swooping around a big hay field like giant feathery moths.

It was probably one of the best day's birding I have ever had. I am still kinda stunned by it all.

Like giant moths or really big bats

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The Coffee Drinker’s Guide To Tijuana, Mexico

You can tell a lot about someone by how they react when you suggest going to get a cup of coffee in Tijuana. There are the old “painted donkey and piñata” stereotypers, the “isn’t it dangerous?” types, and the “that sounds like so much fun, when can we go?” people who you want to hang out with. Baja California’s gateway has been welcoming strangers for decades, and just as the USA’s relationship with its neighbor has waxed and waned, so has the attitude of San Diegans to the city which is at once part of home and yet very different. However, Tijuana doesn’t need to be viewed through the lens of San Diego or the United States. It stands alone as a cultural, culinary, and coffee destination. And when you view Tijuana from a chair on a plaza with a delicious cortado, it seems anything but intimidating.

Entering from the US means negotiating the world’s busiest land border at San Ysidro, which—unlike Tijuana—is not showing any signs of becoming more welcoming or interesting. But once you cross into Mexico, the town is easy to negotiate by foot, bike, or ride share. English or Spanish and dollars or pesos are equally accepted at most shops and prices for an espresso drink are in the $2 range.

The Baja wine and food scene has been booming for years, with fine dining at Mision 19 and more affordable (but no less delicious) spots like the Telefonica Gastro Park serving the city’s young, growing, and unsurprisingly not-that-different-from-the US middle class. Unlike much of the wine and food, which requires a drive south, the majority of the speciality coffee shops are focused in the downtown area and serve locals as well as the tourist crowd. Recently, Mexican coffees have been more prominent on the speciality market and most Tijuana roasters tend to source from their home country, which means that a short trip around town can acquaint you with some delicious origins which might not yet have made it to your local roaster.

Coffee shops in Tijuana tend to stay open late, often closing at 8:00 or 10:00pm, and are as much of a “third place” coffee culture as you’ll find anywhere in the US. Expect excellent customer service as the speciality coffee scene is still growing in Tijuana and people—customers and staff alike—are excited about it, meaning your barista or fellow customer might love to hear about your other coffee experiences. Oh and Tijuana gets hot, so don’t sniff at grabbing a cold brew to-go. Most coffee houses offer bottled coffee alongside their regular drink menu.

Nativo Coffee Community

Armed border guards can be pretty intimidating, which is why I always like to follow the somewhat unwelcoming and officious border experience with a much friendlier one at Nativo. A cold drink in one of Nativo’s signature cactus-shaped Mason jars provides the perfect antidote to the hustle and bustle of “the line” and their outdoor seating makes a great place to sit, grab some wifi, and plan a day in TJ. The shop is just a block away from the new PedWest border crossing, making it a great first stop for a Tijuana coffee crawl, so long as you don’t get there before their 9:00am opening time. On weekends, you can grab a drink and wander around the farmers’ market that takes place outside.

Nativo’s menu mixes espresso classics with more inventive drinks that combine their own coffee with Dr Pepper and orange juice amongst other ingredients that pair surprisingly well with sunshine and succulents. The shop itself isn’t large, but you’re only a short walk from a beach, garden, or plaza that makes for a great setting to linger over your drink and one of their donuts, or the deliciously international avocado bagel. There’s also rarely not a dog on hand for petting, along with frequent dog meet-ups, making this one of my overall favorite coffee spots to go to when I absolutely don’t want to get work done.

Nativo Coffee Community is located at Larroque 271, Empleados Federales, 22010 Tijuana. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Container Coffee

Situated in an old shipping container in Tijuana’s busy and touristy Avenida Revolución, Container’s architecture might be disposable, but the shop bucks the trend of the area by selling something customers will enjoy and come back for rather than throw away when they realize nobody needs a novelty poncho or sombrero.

Container invites customers to take a moment to enjoy their cup of coffee in a part of town that feels like it stops for nobody. Customers pick from several coffees, all sourced from Mexico, and then select a brewing method in consultation with the knowledgeable and friendly baristas. Then it’s time to take the cup on the shop’s patio and while away half an hour watching the carnival of enthusiastic hawkers engaged in their timeless pursuit of relieving hopelessly clueless tourists of a few dollars as local teenagers strut their stuff and sneer at the whole spectacle. Container has plenty of power outlets, but it isn’t the place to bring your laptop—“Av Rev” provides entertainment enough. If you’re on the go, or a manually brewed coffee isn’t for you, there are delicious single origin espresso and milk drinks from a national level competition barista and bottled cold coffee to keep the post-lunch slump at bay if you’re on your way to, or from, the nearby Telefonica Gastro Park.

Container Coffee is located at Av. Revolución 1348, Zona Centro, 22000 Tijuana. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Electric Coffee Roasters

A little further from the hustle of the middle of the city is Electric Coffee Roasters, where everything from the clientele to the Instagram account lets you know that you’re in for a curated speciality coffee experience that merits a short Lyft ride or a longer walk. Situated just across from the Estadio Caliente Xoloitzcuintles, the Electric’s Nuova Simonelli machines, scales, Chemexes and bare wood countertops set the scene for the sort of coffee shop anyone would be glad to have in their neighborhood and a great spot to grab a pick-me-up before a game or concert. It’s definitely a local hangout and not a tourist trap, especially in the afternoons when the small shop’s tables can be hard to lock down while local freelancers and students take advantage of the quiet space and curated soundtrack to work. If you find yourself down by the beach in Playas, there’s a branch there as well and the friendly locals are more than happy to offer coffee, dinner or beach tips (or, at least they were to a Spanish-speaking Englishman with a ridiculously large camera).

There’s a full espresso menu as well as several manual brew options for hot and cold drinks. The baristas also craft custom drinks, combining honey, cinnamon, chocolate, and other local ingredients with their espresso, which is roasted right in house. If you’re grabbing something to go, don’t overlook the delicious bottled cold brew, which has fueled many a drive south to Baja’s incredible surf breaks.

Electric Coffee Roasters is located at Av. Hipódromo 9- A, Hipodromo, 22020 Tijuana. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Caffe Sospeso

Sospeso isn’t a shop you’re likely to bump into on your way to or from the border; it’s in the part of town where suits are more common than sangria-swilling tourists. The shop is more spacious, and local professionals frequently meet here for a coffee and a chat. Meanwhile, local coffee aficionados stop by to sample the variety of roasts, chat with baristas and take home one of the many coffees on offer.

Sospeso is a bigger setup than anything else on this list, complete with TV screens, point-of-sale displays explaining the roasting and harvesting process, and a Kickstarter page to fund their aims to expand north of the border. It’s an operation that turns out phenomenal coffee and really deserves a greater recognition outside of the immediate area. Their online sales program means that even if you’re a long way from TJ, you can now sample their national and international roasts.

This was the only cafe we visited that roasts an international selection of beans. Indeed, the shop’s owner, Alberto Song, is a certified Q grader and a judge at the Cup of Excellence. Sospeso offers Kyoto-style cold brew and bottles of concentrate to-go that look more like the Tequila that you’ll see tourists clutching as they nervously transit US customs. There’s also a brew bar and to-go cups with sleeves that describe the processing method of the coffee you’re drinking.

Caffe Sopreso is located at Joaquín Clausel 10312, Zona Urbana Rio Tijuana. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

James Stout is a freelance journalist based in San Diego. This is James Stout’s first feature for Sprudge.

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Limited Edition Created Co. + Taylor McManus Sprudge Mugs

Sugaring

Sapcicle

Alan and Amber are tapping some trees this year. He sent me this video of the clean, clear sap dripping into the bucket.





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There's Always a Story

Whenever we can we shop for the folks. Saves them going out and getting stuff to the car and from the car and fighting icy parking lots and all that stuff.

Today was one of those days.

A Friday.

I think it was also some kind of special payday because the store was crammed with people, most of whom missed out on Manners 101.

By the time we got to the checkout I was grumpy.

 I admit that grumpy is my default setting and it doesn't take much to return me to that spot, but let's just call it extra grumpy.

There were only five clerks running checkouts; self-checkout was clogged with a dozen carts, so we picked a line and waited.

And waited.

And waited. 

The boss hurt his hip and it was about killing him. He is not a lean-on-the-cart kind of guy normally but today he kinda had to. 

I enjoy the casual, and perhaps ill-mannered, habit of sneaking a peek into other people's shopping carts while shopping, especially after twenty minutes in line. 

Speaking of stories....carts tell them you know.

The lady in front of us had a number of huge bags of pet food, tons of cleaning supplies, and several small blankets.

And dog toys.

I speculated to myself....I'll bet those are for a shelter. How nice....

Finally her turn came to check out. She was obviously a pro at getting multiple large items scanned and quickly and as she flopped bags and flipped bottles, I overheard her speak to the checker.

Seems her father had passed away several years ago. Today would have been his birthday. Since she couldn't buy him a gift any more, she and her three cute youngsters hit the mall and bought a big pile of things for the shelter dogs and cats.

I congratulated her on such a selfless and wonderful act and she said...."oh, don't make me cry."

I gotta tell you, she wasn't the only one with tears in her eyes.

See there's always a story, even in a humble shopping cart in a crowded Friday noon mall.

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La Marzocco Releases New Espresso At Home Video Series

When we think about big name coffee professionals, we often imagine them in the shop setting, tinkering away intently on $20,000 machinery most of us only wish to try out at least once in our lives. Rarely do we ever imagine how these real, actual humans make their own real, actual coffee on a daily basis in their own homes. In a new video series released today, La Marzocco is peeling back that curtain. Titled “Espresso At Home,” the quarterly-ish series by La Marzocco Home talks to coffee professionals about their coffee at home and the ritual surrounding it. And it all kicks off with Blue Bottle founder James Freeman.

Working with Los Angeles-based videographer Anthony Diaz—a Regional Emmy winner for The Migrant Kitchen—La Marzocco Home catches up with Freeman in his hyper-clean, minimalist kitchen, home to a Linea Mini, Mazzer Mini, Baratza Sette, Ikawa roaster, Fellow Stagg kettle, and Acaia Pearl scale. It’s basically exactly like the sort of house you’d imagine the very composed James Freeman to live in—consider this a coffee-focused amplification of the NYT profile his house received in 2018.

Over the course of the three-and-a-half minute video, Freeman discusses the importance not just of being able to make good coffee at home, but how the home coffee making ritual came into his life:

My parents were frugal, and they drank horrible coffee, but they were very conscious of their process and their rituals around the horrible coffee. I have an appliance timer on the back of my espresso machine—it turns on about an hour before everybody wakes up. They had that on theirs, too, so there are these odd threads in common about how important it is to have something, like, ready to go… That ritual of having a warmed-up espresso machine waiting for me, making a quick cappuccino before I do basically anything else, including put on pants—that’s been a feature of my life for many years.

The Espresso At Home series is tentatively planning to release new videos on a quarterly basis and will include coffee professionals from the world over. The company already has a few other big names in the works (including at least one very well known coffee producer) but aren’t yet able to officially announce them.

But for the time being, please enjoy James Freeman making a cappuccino and imagine him making it for you, having a chat in his very calming way of speaking. It sounds like a lovely way to spend an afternoon.

Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

All media via La Marzocco

Disclosure: La Marzocco and Blue Bottle Coffee are advertising partners with the Sprudge Media Network. 

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Coffee Design: Huckleberry Roasters In Denver, Colorado

Everyone knows that feeling.

There you are, just a child alone in the world, learning who you really are. You go through the first eight years of your life wearing the same clothes (they’re perfectly nice clothes) and going by your full name, but then.

But then! Then you meet that really cool kid who helps you pick out some rad new clothes. You start going by a nickname—a shortened version of your full name. You’re all like, “Hell yeah, I’m eight years old, and I’m gonna start wearing these clothes and go by my short name now!” You are figuring your shit out, basically. For the first time in you truly feel alive. 

Sprudge readers are already well familiar with Huckleberry Roasters, an eight-year-old coffee roasting company based in Denver, Colorado. But for the very first time let us introduce you to Huck.

Founder and owner Koan Goedman tells us that the folks at Huck “loved our previous bag, designed by Denver homies Studio Mast, but I wanted a change. I felt like I was seeing very similar bag designs (and, even spreading into non-coffee package design) all over the place —lots of blockiness, lots of hard/sharp lines, lots of white. I felt I wanted a big change, and that our guests and partners would trust us to deliver on something wild and crazy and unique.”

It’s a big change, alright, and with it comes a new design identity and approach to packaging that makes them a perfect fit for our ongoing original feature series on Sprudge. Brand name changes are nothing new, but this one—the intentionality behind it, and that dramatic shortening to a single syllable—well, I just had to learn more. And so I sat down digitally to speak with Goedman about the change, the new look, and what’s next for Huck.

When did the coffee package design debut?

It seems like every time we do the “let’s design a new bag” dance, we start learning the steps too late in the process. This go around was a little better than last when we had to deploy some “pardon the interruption” bags to hold us over, but super well planned out it was not….

Basically, the bags arrived, via an overnight plane trip, on a Monday morning in late November, and we were filling them with coffee beans later that day. Exciting, eh?

Who designed the package?

Fun story! One of the first regulars we had at our 4301 Pecos cafe in 2013, was a delightful person by the name of Ross Evertson. In the magical way that coffee shops work, Ross went from being a stranger to a regular to a friend (to all of us, truly). He’s really an exceptional person with passion for dogs, photography, words, intentional design, typography, and smart-assedness—that last one said with love and admiration, of course.

I asked Ross to design something that reflected our company culture, something that reflected a company willing to push the boundaries a bit and something that would truly stand out from what I was seeing on shelves at other shops, Whole Foods, etc.

Ross was down to tackle that challenge with us, and given that he knew me and Huck as well as he did, it was a natural partnership.

What coffee info do you share on the package? What is the motivation behind that?

All the usual stuff!

It should be noted that the coffee label was designed by Lisa Wright of Obsesso Processo. Ross has a grown-up job (wink), and his time was a little tied up towards the end of this project, so Lisa stepped in and up to the plate to walk the new bag project across the finish line in a way that honored Ross’s work, but also breathed some life into the label! Lisa is also intimately aware of all things Huck, so it was pretty easy for her to come in and do some creative work. She’s the best!

On the information front specifically, we trimmed up some of the information from our previous label that we knew, based on some soft polling/inquiring with customers, wasn’t a point of interaction or useful for them. And, at the end of the day, as much as we might want to talk about elevation and varietal, we decided there are better ways to share that information (i.e baristas at a cafe, webstore on the internet)… and simply leave the label to pass along the essentials. So, we share coffee name and region, tasting notes, producer details, processing particulars, and roasted on date.

Most interestingly, I think, Lisa came up with the brilliant way to tie the flowing nature of the bag concept into the label. There is a color coding system that ties back to the three previous versions of retail bags we’ve had, so there’s some very useful continuity and familiarity there. However, not stopping there, Lisa then moved beyond just the color coding by designing these super fun, sorta-abstract region shaped blobs to catch the eye. So, just within the label there are 3-4 opportunities to engage!

Why are the aesthetics in coffee packaging so important?

I think the answer to this will change for different people, but for Huck… it’s a chance to tell our story and, if we’re lucky, we’ve caught the eye of someone unfamiliar with Huck and given them a reason to dig further, ask questions and order some coffee.

Where is the bag manufactured?

Per usual, we worked with Pacific Bags on this bag.

Is the package recyclable/compostable?

The answer to this question is basically the most confusing, long-winded answer of all time. Honestly, I’m still a little confused. It’s probably wisest to say, “go visit Pacific Bag’s website to read about what Biotre is and isn’t!” In reality, I think the legal answer to the question is “no” and we make no claims to recyclability/compostability, but the real-life answer to this might be a “sort of and sometimes, depending where you live and what local laws are.”

How’s that for unsatisfactory?

All I can say is that I’m excited to see Pacific Bag’s 100% compostable Biotre bag, which, rumor has it, is close to being available!

Where is it currently available?

Our shops and the world wide web!

Thank you!

Company: Huckleberry Coffee Roasters
Location: Denver
Country: United States
Designer: Ross Evertson
Design Debut: November 2018

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge.

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