Keurig’s new line of coffee machines will feature a technological restriction on what coffee you can use in it. If your coffee of choice hasn’t paid a licensing fee to Keurig Green Mountain (the company’s new name; I’m going to keep calling it “Keurig” because the new name is dumb), you’re out of luck. According to an article at Quartz.com:

…Keurig is planning to fight back with its Keurig 2.0 machines, which will have technology that makes it incompatible with unlicensed pods. The company claims that the move is about making a better or more consistent cup of coffee, but its competitors seem to think otherwise.Treehouse Foods, the biggest manufacturer of private-label K-cups, issuing Keurig, arguing that the new machines are anti-competitive.

We have a Keurig in my office. It was a stupid purchase, and I regret it. I only use it when someone wants a cup of coffee and I don’t feel like waiting for the kettle to boil for the French press. My frustration with the machine is that the coffee is pre-ground. But I know it is popular. I just didn’t realize how popular the third-party, unlicensed coffee pods (“K-Cups,” in Keurig’s corporate parlance) are.

How useless is a coffee pot if you can’t use your own coffee? This isn’t about quality, it is about control. I hope the new line of machines fail spectacularly. They are due to be released this fall, so we shall see.

To my mind, this is the second coming of Lexmark v. Static Control Components, a long-running dispute over the authentication system in Lexmark’s toner cartridges designed to keep other manufacturers from selling compatible replacements. It was a mess when I was in law school, and it apparently still is. Hopefully, these new pods will be reverse-engineered in no time. Unfortunately for Keurig, one of the third-party manufacturers, Treehouse Foods, has already filed suit. Time will tell if Keurig will counter-sue.

I cannot tell you how many times i’ve rewritten this article. I’ve been here a handful of times over the past few months and every time I walk in, I learn something new that I must go back and edit in this essay. I talk to the owner, try a new dessert, or explore something on the wall i was blind to the first time around. But wIthout fail, the first thought that comes to my mind when I walk through that door and into The Baker’s Jar is ‘civilization’.

For those who bake (or cook), you’ll understand where I’m coming from. J is an avid cook himself. But baking, in all of it’s grander, conjures many feelings of warmth and love. Sweetness. Perhaps even the savory. Baking is an art, the art of form and decoration. We happily decorate cakes, cookies, pies, and bread. We add color and texture to make it pleasing to the eye. It is, let us say, a practice in science. The science of measuring and precision. Understanding why and what makes certain ingredients rise and fall. How humidity, moisture, and temperature can make or break a cake. Why some ingredients are better than others for certain recipes. How whipping cream too much turns into butter (I once learned this the hard way. I over whipped my home made whipping cream. My good friend, an avid baker himself, explained to me this is the process to which we make butter.)

This is why I say the Baker’s Jar reminds me of the term civilization. This is where art and science come together in harmony. Perhaps one of the good points about us being so terribly human is that good stuff can come from it. This is the science and art of baking, of civilization, in a jar.

Walking into the Baker’s Jar is also a reminder of better time and better things. Of a home that is very far away for some of us. The well lit shop and pastel yellow paint certainly brings about moments of brightness and clarity. One will find a huge dark shelf of nicely organized jar with sweet goodies waiting to be discovered with each bite. Caramels and cakes. Chocolates and sprinkles and icing. There’s even a birthday cake in a jar. Vanilla birthday cake. White icing. Sprinkles. Not your birthday? Not mine, either. Eat it anyway. Certainly just the cake alone is worth a celebration of sorts.

The place is even in an old row house, making it more like home. It almost waits to offer us warmth. I dare say tenderness. The feelings we all seem to forget about, or shove to the side because society tells us to. We must be strong! Strong like bull! We must work until our hands fall off and we die in the saddle! Things to do! Bills to pay! Paperwork! More paperwork! Stress! We must diet and exercise!

In this over political, horribly judgmental world, is this really civilization? Is this really how to live?

I write this because I discover this place time and again when I am at my most tired (I walk dogs). I discover this place when I am most busy (Thursday is my wall) and have logged in more walking time than that of the PPA (not really. They walk a lot and don’t have the benefit of fur therapy). It brings be back to the notion of striving to live, and stay, in a civilized world.

Yellow colors the walls, flowers in jars, and Billie Holliday songs coming from the speakers Yet, let’s focus on what this place really has to offer. That is baked goods in mason jars.
For those who have not yet had the luxury to discover this gem, I suggest one day you take a few moments and pay it a visit, because there are baked goods in mason jars waiting for you to consume.

By the way, I highly recommend the Lemon Pie. I can’t think about it without drooling.

How civilized of me.

What: The Baker’s Jar
Where: 16th and Bainbridge, Philadelphia PA USA
Coffee: La Colombe
Internet: http://bakersjarphilly.com/

Preston Wilson wants us to listen to our coffee beans to get the perfect roast.

Acoustic researcher Preston Wilson normally spends his time studying underwater sounds. But, like many of us, Wilson often relies on coffee to keep him energized. He’s enough of a coffee connoisseur, too, that he roasts his own beans. And he noticed that the sounds those beans make while roasting give away where they are in the cooking process. These clues, he thinks, could be harnessed to perfectly time a light, medium or dark roast’s preparation.

One of my five-year goals is to live in a place where I can safely roast my own coffee beans. I’ll have to keep this suggestion in mind when the time comes to try it.

As we talked about last week, Coffee Rust continues to ravage the Central American coffee crop.

To make matters worse, Brazil is experiencing an ongoing drought. Combined, they are exacerbating the coffee market. As a result, as Joseph Stromberg reports, we will all be paying a lot more for our coffee very soon.

It’s taken a while for this to be reflected in the retail price of coffee, because roasters generally have a few months’ stock of beans on hand. But we’re finally beginning to see slight increases in retail prices of coffee too.

Those two crises are bad enough, but what can we expect in the future? [Read more…]