– Can you please introduce yourself in a few words.
I’m an artist living and working in Vancouver, WA. (Just North of Portland, OR.)
– Have you ever been in contact with the coffee industry?
I worked for Stumptown in Portland for three years. Two years as a barista at the downtown location – which is the busiest, and about a year as the assistant manager of one of the smaller SE Portland cafe’s.
– How would you qualify yourself as coffee drinker (occasional, heavy, addict…)?
I’d say I’m totally addicted. I started really young, drinking it with my dad when we would go on fishing trips. I now drink about two cups a day on average. I don’t think I’ve skipped a day in 15 years.
– Do you prepare coffee at home ? If yes, what method do you use?
Most days I use a Bee House dripper. Due to the habits I formed making coffee professionally, as nerdy as it is, I still weigh and time everything.
– How do you like your coffee? Black, sugar and milk, iced, vietnamese style,…?
I prefer black, but if it’s shitty coffee I have no problem throwing some cream, milk, or sugar to make it drinkable.
– What was your first coffee experience?
On a fishing boat with my pops. Always black and from an old Stanley thermos that smelled like burnt rubber.
– What was your best coffee experience?
For me coffee is less about being the most perfectly balanced, extracted, sourced, roasted, etc. etc. and more about the context, or who I’m drinking it with. I of course appreciate when all of those things are done properly, but to be honest the most memorable coffee experiences are probably while drinking terrible coffee. Like drinking instant nescafe in the Himalayas, or burnt espresso with tons of sugar in Naples, or coffee with condensed milk on the beach with my brother in Malaysia. I feel the same way about beer. Sometimes the product doesn’t matter. Ff you are in a cool or interesting place with great people, it’s all good!
– What place in the world would you recommend for coffee?
To be honest, I think out of any city I’ve visited, Portland has the best coffee – or rather the highest volume of cafe’s that know what they are doing. You can get better coffee at a grocery store in Portland, than you can in most other cities I’ve been to.