Passion Projects
You’re allowed to simply enjoy the taste of good coffee. If you can pluck out familiar aromas and flavors, all the better. If you deem that $4 well spent, growers and roasters and brewers have done their jobs. Everyone is […]
Over time, I may try to woo you with talk of coffee grind particle distribution and total dissolved solids (TDS). I’ll warily tiptoe into debates about brew methods or maybe tunnel down the rabbit hole of coffee varietals. It might […]
(Tasting Notes: A Belgian influence, but the forager, not the waffle . . . nor the chocolate, although it was mentioned as a dream conduit for black sage. A warm trickle of potty humor with notes of sexual innuendo and […]
Tasting notes: A story of coffee. Real tasting notes included. Brighter aromas of the emergence of a new farmer and international investment. The pleasant mouthfeel of a unique and complex journey, with a bitter aftertaste of geopolitics. British colonists brought […]
I sat at the bar that surrounds the massive roasting machine at Portola Coffee in Costa Mesa, CA, during a “cupping” event, sipping two different samples of new coffee from—surprisingly—Myanmar, searching my palette for notes of plum or berry lemonade […]
This was a eulogy I wrote for Robert Dove, my father-in-law. He passed away in May and the family held a memorial service in June. I was unable to attend but wrote this, which my daughter, Layci Nelson, read.
This is the story of Buddy Gray, a blind piano tuner who entered and exited our family’s life while I was in high school. He seemed larger than life at first. Then I saw him use his handicap to prop up an ugly truth.
A night of memories and new discoveries, played to the accompaniment of Styx lead singer Dennis DeYoung in a suburban setting in southern California.