Muertos Coffee

To anyone who saw this post before it was ready, I apologize. I was trying to take notes on my phone and accidently hit "publish," then I couldn't figure out how to undo it. So, here it is officially. We planned a trip to Oceanside, CA with my brother and his family. We normally do parks like Seaworld and other trips, but they just wanted to chill. I get that, but we were expecting to be bored. The solution...go see as many coffee shops as possible! I created a list of 8 or 9 and we only got to 6. So here is a summery of my experience along with my ranking:

In the process of re-branding, we are working on starting a podcast (more to come later). I have been researching and wanted to touch base with someone who is running a podcast that sounds good. So, I reached out to the guys at Orange Cactus Coffee ( www.orangecactuscoffee.com ) here in Az. Jake got back to me and said that he was going to be in town the next day on a coffee crawl. One of the shops he was stopping at was Boss Coffee. I've been wanting to review this place for a while, so I caught up him there.

With my re-branding efforts, I'm working to develop my palate. I need to be able to better taste the products that I'm providing. As a coffee roaster, I need to be able to tell what effects any changes I make has on the bean. The only way to do that is to taste. The hard part is that it's very difficult to distinguish what we taste. Most of us think in cave man perspectives, "mmm, good," or, "me no like." So, with that in mind, I decided to do a cupping with one of the best roasters in town.

I was meeting a friend of mine, as I do every so offten. We were only able to make the meeting happen during a time he had his kid, so we picked a place that was close to his house. He reccomended Urban Beans because they sold coffee and beer. Sweet! 2 reviews in one...kind of.

My oldest daughter started her first dance class which is in old town Peoria. The old town area is a neat little place with a park, a massive library and some really old shops. They have recently been working to make this place more of a "charming - old part of town" rather than a "hold you up at knife point and take your wallet - old part of town." One of the newest editions to this area is Driftwood Coffee, an excellent addition that really brings the whole area up.

For my birthday a while back, we went to a new BBQ place (it was disappointing, so no free plug for the place). After dinner, I noticed a little bakery that was advertising coffee so we stopped in to try it out.

I have been trying to figure out who I am as a business. I know what I like to do and who I want to be, but I don't know how to put that together in a package and sell it. Customers want to know who the business is because most people invest in other people, not in businesses. I have had people come up and ask me about my company and I just don't have that elevator pitch yet. I need to know who I am before I can tell someone else. With that, I have had on my heart the idea of starting a YouTube show. I have always loved video and did some work there in a past life. I don't know what it would be, but will most likely be some sort of extension of this blog. With all that, I decided to contact my cousin and have a cup of coffee to discuss the possibility of the show.

We got back from California this weekend, and I failed pretty hard on my coffee plans. I was going to hit all 3 of my favorite coffee shops and barely only made it to one. We got in much later then I expected and just got caught up in trying to do everything we planned that my coffee trips got pushed to the back and then fell off. I did stop at Better Buzz, though. I really like this shop. This was my first time getting a pour over here. They had awesome equipment, but I wasn't a big fan of their technique. I call it the fill and empty. The barista was doing 2 things at once, so she would fill the v60 then go do something else while it emptied, then repeat a couple of times. I'm not a fan of this. Also, for $4.30 for 12oz cup, I feel like I should get a little dedicated time. I'm super bummed I couldn't hit the other 2 shops. We hit a couple of other places. One was a little cafe for breakfast that literally offered over 10 different types of coffee in air pots....

We pretty much head to Encinitas every Memorial Day weekend. This is one of my favorite trips. One, because I love the beach. I could sit on the beach all day long. Two, the food in San Diego (and surrounding towns) is awesome. And three, my little beach town has 3 amazing coffee shops.

My wife and I were invited to a little party out in Downtown Gilbert. It was a crazy long drive, but well worth it. It is like a little piece of Radiator Springs right in the middle of Arizona, minus the talking cars. I love this little street. If it wasn't an hour drive, I would spend a lot of time there. We were sitting out on the patio of one restaurant and I was longing to be at the BBQ restaurant across the street. Then I realized there was a little coffee shop across the street. It was getting late so my wife googled when it closed...I had 4 minutes before it closed. I hesitated for a  moment, but the walk signal turned on the cross walk switch to go and I made a break for it.

For those of you who don't know, I'm a huge fan of Fox Concepts. I think they just do everything right. When I heard that there was a Fox Concept restaurant that had a coffee shop incorporated, I had to go. I got a nice gift card from my manager for Christmas and I was only going to use on The Henry. My 7 year anniversary was at the end of February and my wife and I agreed we would just go have a nice dinner. I capitalized on this opportunity to try their coffee shop too.

It was getting late in the year and so my family and I decided to make a last minute trip up to Flagstaff to play in some snow before it all melted. It had been raining for days, but the weather app on our phone said it would snow that day. Sadly, it did not. Instead, we got rain...lots of rain. Since we had to wait out the storm, I used that opportunity to check out a coffee shop I have been wanting to try for a while, Firecreek Coffee.

 Looking ahead to 2017, I want to include as many new coffee experiences as possible. One the best ways is to try new shops and meet new people. Everyone does it a little differently. I take all those little nuggets of experience and continue to develop my own way of doing things. That being said, I thought it would be good to look back at my top 3 shops of 2016.

I took the day off work to spend the day with my wife on her birthday. We started the day off with breakfast at Kneaders, which is awesome by the way. (Side note: they serve LaVazza coffee, so the drip's not bad either.) Then we were off to the Children's Museum in downtown. We played for a good long time and once my daughter was utterly exhausted we called it a day. I noticed Street Coffee would be on our way home and was able to talk my daughter (who was the crabby one) into stopping.

I have been wanting to try Cabin Coffee for quite a while now. Our trip up to the pumpkin patch was a perfect opportunity.

I stumbled across this place looking for a new place my artist friend and I could meet up. I wasn't sure if he would have an issue with meeting at a Christian book store, but if he did, he never said anything. So we have met here a couple of times now and I think I like it.

I have mentioned before that I vacation at a particular little beach town in near San Diego, CA. Encinitas is my absolute favorite place to be. It has grown quite a bit, but has maintained its small town feel. Over the last two years, the little town has had an explosion of great coffee. They went from none to four, real quick. I have tried all of them. My most recent was Buzz.

It has been quite a long time since I have posted. My day job has basically made it impossible for me to do or think about anything else...and not in a good way. I have some huge updates to post too.  One thing that I have not stopped doing (despite the abyss of my cubicle) is drinking coffee. One of the shops I visited was Elevate Coffee ( elevatecoffee.com ).

I have been wanting to stop into this coffee shop since The Newton was in concept. I loved the shared space idea. Multiple businesses working together to be mutually successful is how it should be. I loved the concept, but wasn't sure how it would work in reality. It was free comic book day, so we were out and about in the area. We had had our coffee that morning, but figured, what the heck, and stopped for another.

I was cruising through my back log of Coffee News emails and spotted this article that caught my eye: The Barista Capsule. I had to know what it was. I have been working on coffee cart plans for a while but could never really figure it out. It was always to big or too heavy, or we couldn’t figure out how to power everything. I realize I was most likely making it far too complicated, but these guys looked like they figured it out.