Raising coffee intelligensia at Steady Hand Pour House

Intelligentsia is a word of Latin origin that came into our vocabulary after Russians used the term in the late 1800s to describe a particular kind of publicly active intellectual. It's a very fitting name for the coffee roaster located on Chicago's North Side that recently brought their Primary Green Buyer, Geoff Watts for an educational talk at Steady Hand Pour House in Emory Village.

Steady Hand owners, Dale B. Donchey, Jordan Chambers, and James H. Pair hosted the event for their customers and other Intelligentsia Coffee sellers in their continued to effort to raise the sophistication level of coffee lovers in Atlanta. The three owners are dedicated to their craft, serving only the highest quality beans, and training their Baristas to perfectly express that quality when they prepare each cup of coffee or espresso drink.

Intelligentsia has won "Best Of" superlatives all over the country from L.A. to New York. If you attended the event you understand why. The Southeast Regional Sales Rep., Chris Clements set the stage by inviting guests to taste the incredible new espresso, Sugar Glider, offered only by Intelligentsia. And even when the multi-media presentation failed in the beginning, Geoff Watts was able to engage the audience extemporaneously with his vast knowledge of the entire coffee process.

Watts' personal coffee journey began as a Barista almost 16 years ago. When he became a green buyer for Intelligentsia, he traveled almost 280 days out of the year to work with their coffee farmers. He was quick to say in his discussion that once the bean is roasted, no one can make it better than it is. In fact, he said, "You can only ruin it."

That's a tragedy for something that takes years to produce. It takes almost four years from seed to first production. That's why coffee roasters like Intelligentsia are so committed to working closely with the farmers monitoring the entire growing, roasting, and shipping processes.

Unfortunately, there are many points along the production chain where the coffee can decline in caliber. As Watts said, "The quality clock starts ticking the minute the cherry has been picked off the tree." Timing is everything. Picking that perfect ripe cherry versus a slightly green one, or an over ripe purple one takes a dedicated worker with the incentive to pick based on quality not the quantity for which most pickers are paid for.

Most of the mass produced coffee is consumed months and months after production. Since much of the mass produced coffee is still shipped in jute bags that don't protect the coffee, the longer it sits on the shelf the more oxidation take place, and even three weeks after shipment much of the complexity is lost.

Coffee growers are faced with a choice to either mass produce using lots of fertilizer, hybrid seeds bred to tolerate hot sun, and inevitably some sort of pesticide --Or choose smaller biodiverse shaded lots of quality coffee. For a poor farmer with kids that's a tough decision to make.

Companies like Intelligentsia help give the growers the incentives they need, and also share best practices, so they can grow the kind of coffee that rivals wine in taste complexity. Watts explained that coffee has over 800 compounds affecting flavor versus only 200 compounds affecting wine. This makes for a taste sensation that is second to none. When that flavor is sealed in a specialty bag before shipment you are more assured that quality won't be lost en route.

From 6 PM to after 10 PM, Watts held us in awe. When the media presentation was fixed by the unassuming, patron hero, Kevin Sullivan, visuals added color and texture to our developing sense of what coffee should be.

Education is the key to pretty much everything. The more we learn what "great" can be, the more we can strive for it. The specialty coffee industry really began in the late 90s. It's not that old. There is still a lot to learn and refine, on the grower's side, as well as the consumer's.

For the consumer it begins when we meet our first Barista: like Dale, Jordan, or James at Steady Hand Pour House. They tell us about the coffee in a way we've never heard before. Using what Geoff Watts called, the organoleptics of a coffee, which is the flavor profile discerned by using a person's sense organs. For example Intelligentsia's Single Origin Finca Santa Teresa, El Machete, Panama is described as "Botanical and tea-like with a range of florid complexity. It's Melon, kiwi and tarragon combine with a gin and tonic." You can't help but be intrigued. So, you agree to taste the individual chemex'd or syphoned cup, and you are changed forever.

That might sound dramatic, but it's true. Your senses get stimulated in a new way with over 800 compounds affecting what you're tasting. It's like when you were a kid learning to read and those letters everywhere began to come together and make sense. Remember how the world just opened up for you? A simple, specialty coffee enriches your senses much the same way. It expands your idea of the possibilities in taste. That alone makes it worth a few extra dollars. So don't miss the opportunity, go to Steady Hand Pour House located at Emory Village, 1593 North Decatur Rd., Suite B, Atlanta, GA 30307. They are open Mon-Fri 6 am - 6 pm and Sat-Sun 8 am - 9 pm.

Getting to the Heart of the Mind

Brain cells bring intelligence to different parts of the body through a vast network of nerve fibers that make up our nervous system. It's interesting to note how some parts of our body have more brain cells than others. Take our heart and lungs for instance. They are really smart. They function without us having to think about it.

For the most part, we do have to think about directing our eyes, arms, and legs to move where we want them to go. If we become more active and direct our body in more vigorous ways, we may notice the limited intelligence in say our thighs. They are not as naturally smart as our calves. Our upper back isn't as smart as our lower back, yet it's closer to the head.

What is fascinating is the appendages farthest away from the brain, our hands and feet, though not as smart as our heart are capable of very refined discernment. The intelligence in our fingers and toes enable us to detect the difference between a grain of sand and a granule of dirt.

The ego, on the other hand, which is said to be the mediator between our conscious and unconscious self; the so called, "reality tester" is a neurological function of the brain, but seems to lack such intelligent refinement. Go figure. It's basically a part of the brain, and on it's own is not even as smart as our big toe.

Now it has talents. It can get you to stand up for yourself. However, the strength and developing intelligence of your spine, legs, and feet is what helps you physically stand up for yourself. The ego feeds off of praise and criticism. It helps you claim independence from others yet again, it is your spine, legs, and feet that help you walk out the door.

The ego motivates and justifies most of our behavior for better or worse. A healthy ego develops based on outside feedback, generally positive, from Mom, dad, society, etc. It follows rules well as long as it brings the results it wants. It can make us a superb driver, but can also convince us to swerve through traffic, so we can get to the red light first.

However, when it comes to helping us recognize and change habitual physical or mental patterns, it can't do it. In fact, more than likely, it refuses. That's because the ego believes it knows what is best for us. The ego developed to help separate "you" from everything else.

It became a name and distinguished itself by giving everything else a name: chair, Boss, Lunchtime. It could be argued that it is what helps maintain that duality talked about in an earlier post. It distinguished itself from its own body by giving the body parts names: Eyes, nose, arms, legs. It even distinguished the asshole, probably to take the blame for most of its indiscretions.

It's an important part of us. Without the motivation of the ego, we wouldn't have things like televisions, computers, skyscrapers, or airplanes. The competitive spirit of the ego is amazing. Of course, without it we probably wouldn't have lies, theft, economic crisis, terrorism, or war.

It's no surprise that most neuroses stem from afflictions of the ego --these afflictions can get pretty intense whereby we feel the need to hoard so much stuff we end up like Langley Collyer, the first known hoarder, who died in 1947 probably under the weight of one of his 14 grand pianos; or like Robert Hughes, who was said to have been buried in a piano case, because he consumed so much food he was too big for a coffin.

For most of us the troubles are less severe and simply begin when things don't go the way our ego wants them to go. The ego likes what James P. Carse, calls "Finite Games". The kind of games that have defined players and rules, along with a distinct beginning and end. The kind that has a winner, and that winner better be you. It like titles, like Most Talented, Fairest of Them All, Lord of the Underworld or Top Dog.

What it doesn't like are "Infinite Games" those are the ones Carse defines in his 1987 book entitled, Finite and Infinite Games, A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility, as the kind of games with no end, changing rules, and lots of surprises. The ego doesn't like surprises. It likes patterns it can control. It is subtle and cunning. Even when you are trying to be humble your ego will engage the humbleness and use it to win something.

As we age, no, as we allow our conscious and unconscious space to develop, the ego has less of a hold on us. Unfortunately, as we have witnessed time and time again with our distinguished political figures and financial gurus, age has nothing to do with it, despite the fact it should. It is our developing conscious and unconscious that enables us to reflect on past patterns, tap into our dreams, learn, and alter behavior so we can evolve the self into a very refined soul.

That is if the ego will get out of the way. The ego is not a bad thing. It serves an important purpose in the world. We need it. But it is not who we are. It developed so we can exist and function in a society. Learning to manage it is the key to discovering our true self. That unique blend of conscious and unconscious energy that is like the heart of the mind. And like the heart, it has built-in intelligence to do its job (which is to evolve) and once it starts it won't stop until it's done.