Done

Well kids it's over SCAA Charlotte is over. As they say here in NC, "stick a fork in it it's done!". What a weekend and what an event. There is so much to say about evrything yet, I find that i'm somewhat speechless as well.

I'm always torn at these events as to which place to be at what time, simply because I have an interest in all of it. As an equipment guy, I'm always looking for new and exciting gear, yet, my heart also longs to hang with the green coffee as well. Time is an amazing thing, and I wish there was more of it.

When I got here on Friday I was convinced that I would manage my time well and go see all of the things and do all the things I wanted to do, but really I may have only completed 70% of those tasks.

Brian and Dave did a great job in the booth. I really couldn't ask for a more quality group of folks to work with. Together we are Espresso Parts Northwest, a company that I am truly proud to say is dedicated to quality coffee, without a doubt. Thanks to all of you who stopped by to visit and especially those of you who recognized our efforts, this is the reason we do this. Cheers.

Clover

Everything’s coming up Clover. Somewhere at the far end of isle 1500, you you would have seen the next big thing in coffee preparation. What it is you ask? It is the Clover and it will change everything you know about coffee.




Now with that said.........This years Best New Product is.........The Clover! This is totally kick ass and the best part is that it is a signifigant acknowledgeement of what really counts. No travel mug or chocolate cookie this time folks. The SCAA took notice of a very important device and delivered the props, as it should be. Congrats to Zander and crew for an outstanding debut at the SCAA in Charlotte!

USBC Winners!

Just entering this event makes all of these hard working Barista's winners, but in the end only 3 get trophies, and this year those 3 were in 1st place Matt Riddle of Intelligensia Coffee in Chicago, 2nd Place to Billy Wilson of Albina Press in Portland, and in 3rd place was Amber Sather also of Inteligensia. Amazing performances to be sure and Billy was freakin flawless! Congratulations to all the competitors, you folks rock!

BGA Party... Always a blast.

Well I'll give it to the BGA and Monin (party sponsor) for throwing a great party yet again this year. Everyone you could expect to see at one of these events was present. I showed up before Terry and Brian, who were going to their rooms to take a quick rest and I'm sure blog in Terry's case. Needless to say it was so hoppin' I had to give em a call and told them to "get the ass over here"

The Buckhead Saloon was kick ass. I love this kind of place and wanted to wrap it up and take it on home with me. The decor reminded me of "The Brick" from Northern Exposure, complete with a Moose head and a Buck head or two of course.



10 or 15 minutes after I called the guys I started to look around for them. I turned around looked outside only to find Terry had been caught by Nick Cho and the Portafilter.net Podcast. They had been threatening him with that for quite some time. Man I just want to say Nick is a podcasting machine, he seemed to be out there doing that for hours. But can you blame him? There were lots of folks to talk to and I'm sure the topics were top notch as always. The Portafilter.net Podcast is great for coffee professionals, Nick has got an intelligent wit a keen eye for great subjects and a great radio voice in my opinion. If you haven't listened its a must.

Like I said lots of folks were on hand, I hung out with my girlfriend and the surprisingly fun Batdorf & Bronson crew. The ESI folks were in attendance. We saw Ward Barbee from Fresh Cup Magazine as you might take note below. Thanks for the compliment on the hat Ward!


I also ran into Arnie from Cafe Calabria in San Diego. Besides making some great coffee Arnie is a great guy, is always fun to party with and a long time EspressoPart's friend. Arnie! We missed your crew this year!

Well I'll post a few more random shot and head out to the last day of the show. Man its been fun but I can't wait to go home!

GEE that was great!

Last Night we were treated to an amazing evening at General Espresso Equipment in Greensboro, NC. GEE is the U.S. Distributor of Astoria espresso equipment. Espresso Parts is proud to be an Astoria dealer and part of the greater Astoria family. UmbertoTerrini and Gary Horne are two great personalities in the world of espresso and super gracious hosts. They really out did them selves this time around.

We were bused to Greenboro in a charter bus with many of the best people in coffee. It was a kick! General Espresso's facility is top notch to say the least. A standard, for many companies to aspire to. When we arrived the BBQ was going and a large 11 piece band was busting out R&B tunes much to the delight of those in attendance.

We toured the facility and were super impressed by the how organized everything was. Lot's of espresso equipment and parts, so you know I was happy ;-) We got some great ideas for our new shop from this vist as well.

Umberto busted out his Fiat for show and tell and a quick spin in the parking lot! Cool stuff for sure.

It was an excellent evening all the way around. The hospitality of these folks was fantastic.
Thanks to everyone at GEE for a fantastic evening. You folks are truly the best!

Does it get any better?

If it does thats great, but really I would be happy just the same. Saturday was an amazing day all the way around. We met a lot of people and saw a lot of cool stuff. The shot above is just an idea of the type of folks hanging out at the espressoparts.com booth This weekend. Man, I do love this industry and feel really fortunate to be able to hang out with this crowd. It was shear chaos in the booth at times, but the comaradiere was the best.

The shot above from left to right is Greg Scace of Espresso Reasearch, Andy Schecter of Gimme Coffee, Myself (Terry Z), John Blackwell of ESI, and Barry Jarret of Rileys. If we would have had the parts, I'm sure we could have built something really cool ;-)Yep it was a cool day. Thanks to all that stopped by to say hello!

Greg Scace

Today ( Saturday ) was a great day overall. The show floor was busy and so was the Espressoparts booth. Dave, Brian and myself were fortunate to meet many of our customers from around the world. There is something to be said for this community of coffee people. What a great and diverse bunch. We are truley fortunate to work in this trade ;-)

One of the highlights for me this weekend was to meet, face to face with aguy I talk to on a regular basis. Mr. Greg Scace. A wonderful vibrant man, who I can tell loves what he does and simply life in general. A cool dude to be sure Greg hung out in the booth today and was gracious enough to share his time with many of our customers.

The picture above shows Greg in the Nuova Simonelli booth where he did some demonstrations of the Scace device. Nuova Simonelli has got it going on right now with a new machine, the Aurealia . Finally NS has a machine that meets the current state of the industry. I have always enjoyed NS equipment and have great respect for the family responsible for the North American distribution center. This machine is not only technically correct, but it is nice to look at as well. Congratulations to NS for listening to the world market needs.

As for Greg, he will hang in with us this weekend and generally be involved in conversation and other coffee stuff. Thanks to Greg for being a part of the Espresso Parts booth!

How bad do you want it?

Tak on the show floor amonst enthusiasts, has been all about the Clover and the GS3. La Marzooco and ESI joined forces to raise dollars for the USBC and Barista jams across the country by donating a new GS3. This machine is being raffled off this weekend. $50.00 buys you 12 tickets and a real cool shirt. You want it bad don't you? So far I have 12 tickets and the shirt. Fingers are crossed :-)

What the ???

Good Morning

Well I just have to hand to some American Journalists for being slack ass lazy punks. Why? Well I woke up this morning logged into my Google home page to find 2 stories regarding the SCAA show.
Since the article is copyright 2006 by the associated Press I won't reproduce it here. But take a second to read this ridiculous thing. Way to go Associated Press you reached new heights in laziness. There is also a much more tolerable article in the Charlotte Observer here.

Wow exciting stuff eh?! If anybody wants to find me today I'll be hanging around the syrup booths guzzeling "Pomeganate Flavors", which are not new by the way. Oh and if anyone knows anything about this "Faster Espresso" please let me in on it. You know the 25-30 seconds I wait is just too long.

I suspect this "faster espresso" is refering to the very cool and very desirable Clover Coffee Brewer from Seattle's Coffee Equipment Company, who by the way are directly across from us. Here is a much better article written by the Seattle Times.

Trade Show Chaos II

Well its my turn to chime in and well we had quite the set up day. As always some of the best business is conducted before the show while setting up. Today was no exception for us. We talked with quite a few folks during set up. Home-Barista.com's Dan Kehn snuck in (way to go Dan!) and showed up with couple of his site moderators. It was great meeting you guys and I look foward to a little more shop talk this weekend. I know we'll see you Dan.

Set up was pretty good, as always it takes about twice as long as you expect, it always does. We are in pretty good shape I think.

Just got back from the opening reception which was a lot more fun than I had anticipated, I guess it always is. I wish I had taken a few more pictures but my time was well spent with the Batdorf & Bronson crew, and I got to meet Greg Scace finally towards the end of the night which was an honor and pleasure. I know we'll see more of Greg this weekend too.

The Coffee & Espresso world was well represented as usual. Honestly you meet some of the friendliest, best and most interesting folks in this industry. Its great and as much as these things can tire you out, they are a lot of fun.

I'll just post a few pics from today to conclude this evenings entry, but I am hoping to travel the show tommorow snapping items of interest and I was thinking of making a list of my top 5 most under-rated espressos in the industry. If you guys have any request of what you'd like to see leave us some comments and we'll hunt it down.















There will be more exciting pics tomorrow, during set up we rarely venture outside the booth for very long.

Oh and the GS3

Mr. Kent Bakke of La Marzocco and the GS3...........Not just another GS3, note the paddle on the group. Do I need to say more?

Trade show chaos

What a day.

Breakfast this morning lead to a breif chat with Kenneth Davids, before heading out for a walk about Charlotte. After not finding what I was looking for I jumped cab for a trip to Home Depot first and this was just the begining of a very long day.

When we arrived at the show floor our crate was there in mostly good shape. Considering this thing was built two weeks ago and then shipped across country, I can't complain about a scratch here and ther. If you have ever seen our booth in person, you'll know this just adds to the charm of it ;-)

Working the build of a trade show can be intense. You basically have a day to build an entire city created of trade show booths. Amazing it is, really. So as we unfolded Robocrate and unpacked, everything inside made the trip perfectly, now we just have to assemble it.

Ack! It's Morning already

Ok, so up and heading out to start the day. It is 8:00 Charlotte time. A quick bite and then off to Home Depot, for a quick tool pick up and then to the convention center. I will post some pictures of the Kaos, that is set-up of a trade show. Fun stuff!

A quick note to everyone back home. Thank you for all of the extra effort it took to get us here and for all your efforts while we are gone!

When Morning comes it's Robocube time!

Well as Dave has noticed it is about 1:30 here in Charlotte and the sidewalks have been rolled up and put away for the night. I guess being Westcoast guys and all we are still ready to go. Morning comes soon enough though and we will have a busy day unpacking and setting up the Robocube! It's our version of the convertible crate. We packed all the regular stuff we bring to shows in this amazing crate that turns into our back drop. I got this crazy idea about a week or so ago. I was thinking that it would be silly to just show up in Charlotte with a banner as our back drop. I mean after winning the Best Booth award last year at SCAA Seattle, it is a little hard to just do things simple. So, I threw a bunch of stuff together from last year, mixed in with a Saturday and a couple of evenings to create the Robocube.

Morning is coming soon, so it's out for tonight and an early start tomorrow!

Just got in...

Man oh man after a long day of travel and a sketchy shuttle ride to the hotel its 1 am here in Charlotte and we just got in and somewhat settled. What is unsettling is the fact that our hotel (Omni) lobby bar is now closed. What the?? Its only 1!

Oh well got a stocked mini (honor) bar in the room that might help. I mean its only 10 PM back in Oly.

Terry, Brian and I get to set up tomorrow morning. Terry should be simultaneously uploading his offline blog entries from the day...

Charlotte Bound!

So we are on our way to Charlotte! After running around the office trying to decide which computer gadget would be required to achieve the best results for most everything. I threw every gadget known to man in a bag and we headed up I-5 North on our way to Seatac.

About 10 minutes out we remembered the box next to Brian’s desk, as in the box we forgot next to Brian’s desk. It would be ok except that that box had the Scace device and Fluke meter we will be showing! Yikes, as it was were running late so a quick call to the office got the box onto a UPS truck and on it’s way to Charlotte overnight, (Thanks Devon, you rock!). I will have a stack of boxes waiting at the hotel when I get there, as it seems no matter how hard you try to be ready for these shows you always forget something ;-)

We made it to the airport only to find that what we thought was a Northwest air flight was actually a Northwest Air operated by Delta flight, what ever that means. Once checked in we were on our way through security, and guess who got the SSSS (airport security speak for “get that guy!”) on his boarding pass? Well needless to say after a quick strip search of my person and everything in my bags we were on our way to the gate, yahoo!

So we get to the gate and decide to get a bite, before boarding the plane. So this very nice waitress was not only the waitress, but also the bartender and possibly the cook. It took a bit but we got some food and drink and boarded the plane. Next stop Atlanta for a two hour lay over before getting into Charlotte tonight just past midnight. Oh the things we do for coffee.

Well looks like I have about five hours of spare time in front of me, maybe I will listen to the Portafilter.net Podcast ;-)

See you in Charlotte!

Leavin' on a Jet Plane.

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye.

Whoops... Well we are just about outta here. Should be to the hotel by oh I'd say around 12:30 am tomorrow morning. Which is only 9:30 Pacific, man how late are the bars open in Charlotte?

Well you may see us the in the Omni Hotel's lounge or nearest bar around 1 AM. Yikes!

Then up early for show set up. It's gonna be a long weekend...

Home-Barista.com's EspressoFest

Home-Barista.com has been hard at work putting together EspressoFest.

I've stolen some text from Dan's web site to help explain:

As noted in Just when I thought it couldn't get better, Counter Culture Coffee and Home-Barista.com are joining together to offer a consumer-oriented event during the SCAA conference. Here's the broad outline of what we've discussed: The event will take place at their office / training facility, located approximately one mile from the conference center. Scheduled for 12-3pm on Sunday. They have a 3-group stock La Marzocco Linea and an Astoria Gloria that should be installed soon. In addition, I will arrange as much equipment as fits in my car for "hands on" sessions (with luck, including a one-group Synesso Cyncra).

EspressoFest is primarly a good excuse to meet with other enthusiasts, however it will have some structured presentations. I would like a mix of topics that address home baristas at all levels, from pro-am to budding enthusiast. Below are some of the ideas I propose, many of which were inspired by discussions on this board:

EspressoParts will be there too we got a block of time to meet and greet all of our most excellent customers on the consumer side of the business. We are looking forward to it guys!

Barista Competition USBC

So this is the big weekend. SCAA 2006 Charlotte North Carolina!

Not only will this be the biggest coffee show in the USA, but it will also be the largest gathering of coffee professionals involved in competition level coffee preparation. These folks are the best of the best and their dedication to the craft of quality espresso is amazing.

Checkout the quality items that many of these Barista's use in competition. Many of these fine items can be found online at Espressoparts.com. Shop where the pro's shop, I always say ;-)

Espresso Parts NW salutes all of those who have made it to the USBC. Good Luck to all.

I will be a volunteer in the Barista Guild of America booth on Monday from 2-3:30. During this same time frame coffee from Olympia Coffee Roasting will be available to sample, please stop by and say Hello!

More SCAA 2006 Conference & Exhibition Reporting

Mark Prince always does a terrific job every year of documenting the SCAA from preview to show finish. Please check out the CoffeeGeek.com web site and see what Mark is saying.

One New Item... Well Maybe Two.

Home-Barista.com Tampers...
Well we finally did it, we got the first round of our version Home-Barista.com Espresso Tamp finished. Although it is a limited run, we will be bringing a handful of them to SCAA this week and especially to and for Home-Barista.com's EspressoFest. Go Dan Go!



Espressocraft Professional Barista Tools
Espressocraft - Designers of the world's finest Barista tools and accessories have made their home at EspressoParts.com

Espresso Parts NW , is proud to announce , that we have been selected as the exclusive manufacturer and distributor of Espressocraft Products. Espressocraft offers a complete range of professional Barista tools, created by professional Baristas.

We are really excited about this opportunity with Espressocraft and feel that it really cements our commitment to provide the best barista tools available to our customers.

EspressoParts.com Blog?

We thought it a good idea to start an weblog & journal to chronicle some of our mis-adventures. We attend and exhibit at our share of specialty coffee & espresso trade shows and we introduce our share of new products & product lines into the high end espresso community. We thought blogging here on Blogger would make a perfect forum.

Tomorrow Terry Z, Dave, and Brian leave for Charlotte, North Carolina to attend the SCAA's (Specialty Coffee Association of America) Annual Conerence & Exhibition. Its the BIG ONE!

Last year we were fortunate enough to steal the Best Booth Award, as we beat all the big budget corporate coffee booths. We loved that, and was one of the highlights of our show last year. To our advantage the show was held in Seattle which is 60 miles North of us and pretty much in our backyard. This year we have a small 10X10 spot but as always we have stragegically placed ourselves in a real hub of activity. You'll find us in booth #1580, right across from the Clover Booth & Batdorf & Bronson, and real close to our friends at ESI and Espresso Supply.

Should be a blast! We are hoping to make daily entries so check back and leave us a few comments. We'd love to hear from you!