jbviau wrote:^^^ Well, that's not the home version. Is the point that the home version might have the same potential "issues" then?

Yeah, clearly a very early iteration of design. Video is less than positive, but somewhere (twitter?) I thought I saw a rather positive comment from the SM folks about testing it. Wherever I saw the comment, it had attached the same picture Eric posted.

another_jim wrote:I haven't sent in my bio yet. I'm trying to improve on "Posts frequently on HB. Regarded as a distinguished pest by many prominent coffee personalities. Yada, yada, yada."

Home Espresso from the Basics to Third Wave
presented by Jim Schulman 2pm to 4pm

Jim Schulman is a one of the group of coffee and espresso enthusiasts who have been exchanging ideas on internet newsgroups, bulletin boards and blogs since about 2000. He has published several articles on espresso preparation, given classes on home espresso at the SCAA annual meetings, judged at the US Barista Championships, reviews green coffees for the website coffeecuppers.com and is a moderator on home-barista.com. The thesis of Jim's seminar will be to illustrate that entry level espresso gear makes acceptable shots with the low end and staler coffees one finds in super markets, or robusta heavy Italian blends, etc. But as the coffee gets better, i.e, higher grown, more acidic, more powerful flavors, the espresso gear has to get better to do it justice. Jim will take you through the entire process of home espresso from grind to milk foaming. After completing this you will get better espresso from your home equipment. 2:00pm to 4:00pm Credit value 3 toward Coffeeology Certificate

http://coffeecon2012.eventbrite.com/

It's up now and I have registered for this class.

Hope I live up to that billing. I look forward to meeting you and all the others who can make it.

Man, I wish I could visit Chicago for this. This has got to be amazng!

another_jim wrote:Hope I live up to that billing. I look forward to meeting you and all the others who can make it.

Looking forward to meeting you in person too - we will have a lot of company as well with what I heard is now 800 registered attendees - this should hit capacity for the event center - I read that 1000 persons is the max.

Bags are packed, alarm is set, tank full of gas in the car, boarding pass printed - lets do this thing!

I just returned home from attending Coffee-con 2012. I could kick myself for not signing up for Mr. Schulman's class in the afternoon. I went right away at 9 am and really enjoyed myself. It was a really nice setting for the event. More than enough room. Counter Culture was there among some other roasters I had not heard about. The folks at the Oren's booth were really nice and I got some samples of beans to take home. All of the exhibitors were very gracious and generous with their time.

I was hoping for at least one booth making espresso but I didn't see that going on. Lots of other brewing methods demonstrated though. I didn't attend any of the classes and now wished I had. I am hoping this becomes an annual event. I could make a weekend of it and go to some of the coffee places downtown like Metropolis and Intelli. I look forward to attending more events like this that come along. I would have liked to have seen someone come with a portable espresso machine. We had a guy come to our place of work that does that for a living. I think it could have been done for this event. I would have loved to see someone demonstrate a lever like the one I have. I could have watched that all day. Just dreaming my little dreams.

Best to all

Rick P.

Had a fantastic time a the CoffeeCON 2012 today, kudos to the organizers and participants! For an inaugural event, from a participant's perspective things went extremely well. I attended three presentations (George Howell, Geoff Watts, and our own another_jim) and the material overall was excellent. The George Howell coffee lab with its multiple rounds of tastings tied to the explanations of the various stages of coffee production and coffee flaws was a big hit with the audience. All three speakers were generous with their time and answered questions long after their presentations were over (another_jim was still pulling demonstration shots for a small mob of interested spectators when I left). There were a number of coffee related booths in the lobby that also seemed to be doing a brisk business.

It was great to see such high profile members of the super high end specialty coffee business take the time to meet with the end users. I know I appreciated the opportunity to meet them in person!

The coffee knowledge of the attendees I spoke to was all over the map, from dedicated enthusiasts like fellow HBer Robot at one end to senior citizens currently brewing in a Mr. Coffee with a blade grinder on the other, but the enthusiasm level for great coffee was high. Hope this can be an annual event, I would certainly recommend it to anyone interested...

Pipeguy wrote:The George Howell coffee lab with it' multiple rounds of tastings tied to the explanations of the various stages of coffee production and coffee flaws was a big hit with the audience.

This was a amazing effort. George has been honing this talk for many years (I heard an earlier version a few years back). The coffees for each tasting round were brewed by Randy Pope, head of research at Bunn; which show the sort of clout he has now.

Five years ago, George Howell was considered a somewhat cranky outsider for advocating very light roasted coffees, special handling of beans, including freezing, and saying dry processed beans should not be in Specialty coffee. Now Illy and Intelligentsia have stopped buying dry processed, more and more people are freezing beans, and even Starbucks is roasting light. Maybe turning out to be right is an even better revenge than living well.

Nevertheless; I still like the DP Yrg more.

Glad to here it went well. Great concept, finally. Hope someone got a few photos.
And George doing his classic cupping presentation at CoffeeCon is just another example of his always being on the cutting edge.