Coffee

Lots of coffee updates since my last time writing.

Middle State Coffee

Rating: 4/5 Location: Denver, CO

This place was great. They do mostly light roasts, which I love. I’m annoyed this was the last new coffee spot I visited in Colorado before I left. I wish I’d had time to try their main location and more of their coffee. The coffee was a bit bitter for a light roast, but I still enjoyed the flavor.

Middle State

Horizon Line Coffee

Rating: 4.5/5
Location: Des Moines, IA

I got a 1:1. It was delicious. It was washed coffee, but it still had flavor. I did this on my drive across country, which was two weeks ago at this point, so I don’t trust the flavors I’m imagining, but it was great. Worth checking out if you are ever in the area.

Horizon Line Coffee Horizon Line Coffee - 1 and 1

Simple Merchant Coffee

Rating: 4/5 Location: Newport, RI

This is my home shop, and it was good to be home. This place has the best vibe and some really strong coffees. The owner is cool and friendly, and the staff is generally great. Excited to get back and have a birthday Salted Caramel Latte.

SMC

Very Good Coffee

Rating: 3.5/5 Location: Pawtucket, RI

My friend Chad told me about this place, it’s a pop-up in The Guy and His Pie pizza restaurant on weekends, and it is pretty darn good. They have a relationship with Hydrangia, whom I tried very hard to reach last year about the coffee box, and I got to drink it this past weekend. The artist, as I’ll call him, is a craftsman and really cares about the coffee he prepares.

Small note: My first cortado during the 1:1 was fantastic. The second was a bit soupy with more warm milk than microfoam, likely because the barista was swamped and had to rush. It’s best to go early and avoid the rush.

Very Good Coffee

Bucket and the Bean

Rating: 2.5/5 Location: North Kingstown, RI

Note: They’ve only been open two weeks. This review may change.

This is the newest coffee place I know in Rhode Island, and I was excited to try it out. I came in hoping to get a cortado or cappuccino to test them out, but when they mentioned they normally use Five Points but were on Lighthouse coffee because they ran out, I went for an Enjoy Coffee Roasters pour-over, Juan Puerta - Araza, highlighted as a co-ferment. (I do miss naturals—everyone’s on co-ferment these days, but I want more light roast naturals.) I got an iced pour-over since they said it was no problem.

They skipped the math for the pour-over, used the usual recipe, then poured it over ice without adding extra. It was cool, but it didn’t have enough ice.

I stayed to watch them steam milk, but it was cold out, so most ordered iced drinks, and I didn’t get to see their technique.

This place feels more like a vibe spot than a coffee shop—more like Custom House than Simple Merchant. That’s fine, but it doesn’t feel like a higher-end shop.

Bucket And the Bean

Updates on review formatting for Coffee

I feel pressured to leave five-star reviews or none at all. I don’t want to negatively affect a business, and I worry that anything below 5 stars could hurt their discoverability on mapping sites.

Honestly, I blame Uber. If you give a driver 4 stars, they always ask what’s wrong. It’s like you must give them 5 stars, or else something is wrong.

This is not how reviews should be done. There’s nothing wrong with not always getting the top rating. It shows you’re genuine, not artificial, and lets us tell places apart. Four out of five stars is fine. Even two out of five can be good when the alternative is one star.

Anyway, I’m working toward normalizing things. I just left a 4-star Google review for Bucket & the Bean, though I really wanted to give them a 3, or perhaps even a 2. Still, I share feedback closer to my true opinion here.

This leads me to a bigger issue, that every rating site has its own format for reviews. There is no standard. I did a little looking around, and there is h-review, though it is being added to h-entry on microformats. I want to start changing the way I do my reviews so they can be better cataloged, and maybe someday we can return to a world where more information is individually hosted rather than controlled by sites like Google, Apple, and Yelp.

Probably more to come on this in the future.

Work Updates

  • I am back to working with Rollin Renovations. We still have a lot of work to do on this website and with record keeping, but we are getting there.
  • I did a bit of work on Authentic Auctions to clean up the mobile navigation. I am also working on updating the quality of the videos we upload to YouTube. I’m finally learning FCP after years of resisting (also, Apple made it more affordable, thank you).
  • I have been interviewing for a couple of mobile jobs. I really want to get back to doing that more regularly. More to come on that later.
  • After a couple of strong weeks working on features for Sacred Space, I’m considering a new direction—more on that soon. Last week, I paused feature work except for a discussion about setting up Coinflow as our payment processor.
  • A new parent project will include several child projects. Details are vague, but I will share more soon.

Moments

Warm Coco Coco in Matt’s Jacket

Pizza Sardellas Pizza pizza reviews comming soon

Work Zack Zack working

Las Jaras Wine My favorite wine in the wild “Glou Glou” by Las Jaras