Intelli and Chicago and Ikea

This post has all of the Intelli pix. Both from the Barista training and the Roastery tour. Both were at the Fulton facility, which was pretty large and impressive. Erica and I both enjoyed the tour, and the training with Matt and Sarah. Matt R. won the #1 for the US and #3 for the world in the Barista competition, so we figured he'd be ok. The training was very hands on and informative, and I enjoyed talking to some of the other employees during the roastery tour (I felt like I knew most of the general info, and we were free to wander a bit). The cupping room was pretty cool (pix below).....

My mom and my bad lion (Leone Ray), at my mom's farm (Franksville, Wisconsin, near Racine)

Packaging area....this changes throughout the day...

Erica working on her art with Matt....

Getting the technique down....

Matt, impressing Erin and others with his artwork...

Erica pulling some more shots under the watchful eye of Matt....

More yummy espresso on the way.....

I think they were talking about tamping and maybe the grind here...we did some adjusting to get things just right...the grinder is a Mazzer Major. I have the Super Jolly, which is one step down, but pretty similar overall (not quite the beast a Major is).

Me, sampling one of my shots....
Again, me, with shot pouring...they all came out pretty darn good. We were using the Intelli Black Cat.
No complaints from Matt, so I guess I was doing ok.

I think these were the two girls' pulls, not too shabby looking....
Erica, Matt, and Sandra. She's from Louisville too! (cool coincidence)
Matt and Sarah (our fearless leaders)


More Matt and Sarah......they did a really good job.
Here's my post from Green Coffee Buying Club (just a quick summary I posted - hey more pix below !!!) : I made it to Intelligentsia today. Pretty impressive facility. I was there with my ex-wife, Erica, who will be a future business partner of mine at my new coffee shop (she's sick of her lab tech job). We started with an hour long tour of the roasting facility. It reminded both of us of the brewery days. Pretty similar, except coffee instead of beer.Three roasters (Gothot 23,40 and 90 kilo monster!), all within feet of each other. There were a few guys roasting, and a bunch (5 or more) in the packaging area. It all seemed pretty efficient. We checked out the cupping room. Nice old sample roaster, and two or three folks up there. Pretty slick overall, including some shiny new paint and trim in several parts of the building. I ended up chatting with EJ in the cupping lab, and Caleb down in the roasting area (most of the tour info was pretty general, so I sort of wandered from the group).The Barista training was a lot of fun. Another couple from Louisville happened to be there, so we made friends with them. They'll be starting a roasting operation shortly. Very cool. We'll be hanging out and roasting with them soon. They're getting a Diedrich 12 kilo roaster next month. Sarah Kluth and Matt Riddle were doing the training. Matt, of course, is the reigning barista champ of the US (USBC in charlotte in April), and he came in third in the world barista contest in switzerland, so it was kind of fun to work with him for three hours. I mean, how can you beat learning directly from the #1 barista in the country, with him critiqueing (sp?) your tamping and shot quality? Well, just because you win doesn't mean you're the best, but he knows his stuff. Everyone there (ten I think) got plenty of time to pull shots (we chose the semi-automatic marzocco and worked with matt). Then we practiced milk stuff, and latte art. Pretty fun. I got burnt out by the end (we drove up from louisville late the previous night), and it was an hour tour plus three more hours.Erica learned a ton. She had made espresso drinks at a previous job, but she said "hey, they didn't teach us any of this stuff." And she learned a lot about the roasting process and the business in general. So pretty exciting day overall...I took a lot of pix, but can't download them until sunday night to my blog (forgot my cable). My son had a great day playing in the park and in sprinklers with gramma and grampa, and tomorrow we're up to wisconsin to see his other grams. Hopefully I can hook up with peter and jeffO tomorrow up in milwaukee too for some coffee (though I had waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much today).
Packaging area....
This was by the roasters...and that is Caleb you see here...

Erica talking with Sandra during the roastery tour....

Caleb, spraying some compressed air I think....



The corner of the main roasting area...

Roastery tour....it was a little too general for me, but pretty fun!
EJ and ??? in the Cupping room...
Cupping room area...
Cool old sample roaster....
Just a hallway upstairs. Plentiful coffee, and pretty slick paint job.
Julie's little ones! No shortage of hair!
My little bad lion, Leone, with Grampa Bill.

Erica in the truck
She got high fives from Leone at one point: "mommy, you're a truck driver." Really funny.
Having fun on the road. The cab was pretty good size for the three of us, and Leone enjoyed all the construction scenery (though daddy got kinda sick of the traffic in Chicago).

Hmmmmm...back from a long weekend (weds-sun) in Chicagoland, including a Barista training and tour of the Fulton Street Intelligentsia roasing facility. However, my camera isn't being detected by my computers, so I'm off to get a card reader so I can post a few of the MANY pictures I took...So, coming soon!! EDIT...got the card reader, and pix are up (well, a bunch of them...) See above....

-Nimbus