First off, to confirm what many have already noticed and emailed me about with some panic, except for one 1000ml rugged style, there are no FMJ style steins left in the store. The last one went to the very welcoming hands of Steinweilder Morton in Wellington, New Zealand two weeks ago. Until I can get more at a reasonable price, that’s going to have to be that unless you’re willing to pay about $100 extra. If price is no object for you, feel free to drop me a line, but know that I am trying to find a way to get reasonably priced dewars again.
Next, BBotE Ambassadorial service to Indianapolis is restored! Jeremy has returned from his hiatus and looks forward to playing host to bottles for his local folks. Like all the Ambassadors, you can find his contact information here.
Third, the Ipsento Panama Natural selection will be going away in the near future as they’ve gone through all the beans from the last crop and the next isn’t due to show up for several months yet. I laid in a decent supply, but that is dwindling as well. I’ll make the formal announcement of when it’s gone, but if it makes it through the end of the month I’ll be surprised.
Fourth, to explain the weirdly short production windows in the last couple weeks, there has been some exciting travel lately. Much like I put my name in the hat a couple years ago to take a tour of the Nevada Test Site and got picked, Test Subject Calkins did the same for a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. While it is an awesome honor to get to do it, there’s a certain level of “Shit, I wasn’t expecting to actually get to do it” last minute planning that happens when you get the nod. My Lovely Assistant and I were invited to be witnesses for the event. As this seemed a suitably once in a lifetime opportunity, we went.
In the photo to the right, you can see that I am wearing my favorite bolo tie, a little doot of brass on my label that is my University of California service pin, and my Antarctic Service Medal. This is the first time I have ever actually worn it because I’ve never had occasion to do so until this trip. It is the only military medal a civilian can receive and I figured I might as well. There was one little boy who saw me in the bathroom, who had clearly been told in no uncertain terms “IF YOU SEE SOMEONE IN UNIFORM OR WITH MEDALS, YOU THANK THEM FOR THEIR SERVICE”, who thanked me for my service. I told him I had earned it by getting very cold for America and science. He ran away, which is the correct reaction.
There was also and excellent dinner at Mari Vanna to celebrate all this. Test Subject Calkins sang Katyusha in his excellent Russian which, per our waiter, is officially when a party is drunk. Apparently you celebrate this by giving the person who just sang Katyusha a complimentary shot. And rather than just see it on the menu like I did in Kiev, I totally ordered the Lard In The Acute Paprika this time.
Lastly, and most exciting, there is potentially a new BBotE selection coming your way soon if it passes one more test batch: Philippines Barako. This is a continued part of my interest in the historical coffees of colonialism. Years ago, sitting in a cafe in Hilo, I saw the marketing line “America’s Only Domestic Coffees” describing the fine produce of the Big Island. I knew this was wrong because I was familiar with the highland crops in Puerto Rico that had been there for centuries, but then we do seem to have a problem with forgetting that PR is part of America. From a coffee point of view, the problem is that most of the historical coffee plantations in the wider American sphere of influence got torn up and replanted, because United Fruit was clearly a transtemporal corporate conspiracy dedicated to replacing things I love (coffee, pineapples) with things I hate (bananas). One moment, I need to go seed a new thread on abovetopsecret.com…
The Philippines have a longer coffee history than any other current or former American possession thanks to being the Pearl of the Pacific. Wave after wave of traders and invaders showed up in the archipelago via the Straits of Malacca, heading for Manila, and all of them agreed that coffee was extremely important. Depending on the century, country of origin, and last port of call where they got cargo, is what determined what strain of arabica coffee got taken to what island and then crossed with the native robusta that was already there. Because of this, the Philippines have an astounding amount of diversity in their coffee. Unfortunately, this also means every disease gets transported to the islands too and a blight in the 19th century almost wiped all of them out. The barako strain, rather than being arabica or robusta, is one of the coffee liberica species which was resistant to the disease, allowing the coffee industry there to continue.
The tricky part if getting it. For reasons I’m not quite clear on, the roasters of the American mainland are far more interested in importing Indonesian coffees rather than the Filipino ones. The doesn’t concern the Philippines much as they have plenty of their own roasteries and are every bit as prideful about “my island’s coffee is the best coffee”, much like the different regions of Puerto Rico. Lucky for me, as an extremely white man, I have access to the powerful logistics of the Filipino Cousin Network (FCN). If you have not already experienced the power of the FCN, it goes something like this:
- You express an interest in a $THING which is available in the Philippines, usually because your Filipino friend has kindly shared it with you.
- Your Filipino friend says “If you want more of $THING, I can get it for you from the islands.”
- You ask if they are going to the Philippines soon.
- They say no, but their sibling is already there.
- Their sibling’s spouse’s cousin has easy access to $THING.
- Sibling isn’t coming home soon, but sibling’ spouse’s cousin’s dad is a pilot and can just bring it over on his next leg to the States.
- Cousin’s Pilot Dad loves your friend’s grandma’s adobo, so if you can buy the fixings for grandma to make adobo, $THING is yours in the next 48-96 hours.
A side-effect of the FCN is that there is absolutely no way to keep grandma, any grandma, from knowing absolutely anything she wants to know within the FCN. The grandmas are almost a hive mind, so that joke from Cookie Clicker is frighteningly accurate.
The name of the varietal, barako, is a bit of linguistic appropriation from Spanish. Verraco, Spanish for “wild boar”, became barako with the rough meaning of “stud”, in the animal breeding and machismo senses of the word. It is regarded as bolder than the arabicas and more palatable than robusta, an opinion I’ll agree with. The smell is sharp and the taste is flinty and rich, very much reflecting the fresh, ashy volcanic soils of the island. Not quite slopes of Mt. Pinatubo tephra in flavor, nor Philippine Sea Plate basalt, but a nice mix of the two (forgive me, as the frustrated volcanologist have pulverized and smelled/tasted a lot of different volcanic rocks, particularly from this region). Taking it to my favorite taste testers at St. George Spirits, it apparently mixes with everything they make, and they wiped out the test bottle in very short order.
So, it’ll probably start showing up as the Mystery Vials in Sampler Pack II in the near future before becoming a drop down selection for all the other ordering options.