According to DNAinfo, a landlord rejected an offer from Starbucks to rent her space in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn.

Matt Perger, champion barista and roaster, has started a website over at baristahustle.com to disseminate "free, advanced, and relevant information for baristas".

Even though I've been drinking coffee for quite awhile and involved myself in the enthusiast aspects of coffee for some time, one thing that I haven't managed to do is really open up my palette. I often find myself responding like TJ in the "sommelier" Sonic commercial when tasting coffee:

When I read the tasting notes or impressions from sharper tongues than mine, I can certainly get the sense of those flavors-- well, sometimes, other times I can't even define, let alone relate to, the flavors some people find-- but I can't yet pick them out myself, beyond either the very general fruity, chocolately, or, at times, specific flavors if the impression is really strong. I had the same experience when I recently took a cheese class-- my tongue was only able to pick out the more general obvious flavors. My tongue, it seems, lacks tact.

I admit here that my coffee drinking runs to the milk-colored variety-- cappuccinos for espressos and plain coffee with milk otherwise. I know that I need to ditch the milk, at least for tasting purposes. I'd love to ditch it all together but I'm not there yet. Baby steps.

To that end, I recently ordered a tasting sampler from Angel's Cup. I'll cover my experience in greater detail shortly but suffice it to say it was a good first experience at experiencing coffee purely to discover the tastes.

Ultimately, I hope this blog will both chronicle my adventures as I delve deeper into that rabbit hole and encourage me to keep on keeping on-- I can't quit you, cappuccino, but maybe I can put you down for a little while.