15 episodes
Pure Happiness Coffee Brent Michael Cox
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Pure Happiness Coffee is a poetic exploration of the specialty coffee world. In 2023, I finished a PhD in Poetry (seriously!) and for the last two years I've been writing about my passion for coffee on instagram. This podcast is an audio version of that writing, plus long-form pieces about many aspects of the coffee world, all told in my distinctive poetic philosophical style. The goal of the podcast is to provide a unique lens on the coffee world, one that will inform you about many of the most exciting recent developments in coffee, while offering a poetic, meditative daily experience.
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Episode 15: Onyx Coffee Lab
Onyx Coffee Lab is an undeniable powerhouse of US specialty coffee. In this episode, leaping off from co-founder Andrea Allen's remarkable World Barista Championship performance in 2021, a performance that won her the US competition and earned her second on the world state, I meditate on coffee and the social world, in homage to Allen's beautiful poetic gesture of washing the judge's hands in rosewater to conclude her presentation.
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Episode 14: Loveless Coffees
Loveless Coffees is doing some of the best coffee in New York City, and their cafe is a wonderful spot to hang out, drink some amazing coffee, and read poetry. When I first visited Loveless Coffees in Bushwick, it was actually called Spectrum. This change becomes the occasion for a pure happiness meditation on names, language, memory, and virtual reality.
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Episode 13: Boxcar Social & Subtext Coffee
On this episode I revisit a trip to Boxcar Social in Toronto. I was visiting Toronto to see Michael Holboom's important film, Free From Everything. As I was reading around for this episode, I was thrilled to discover Subtext Coffee's videos with producers they work with in Costa Rica, Colombia, and Guatemala. It's this kind of evolution I love to see in the industry, where we are better using the tools available today to bring us all closer together.
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Episode 12: A Matter of Concrete & I Wayan Parum
On this episode, A Matter of Concrete's wonderful roast of I Wayan Parum's Indonesian Natural becomes an occasion to continue to expand on some of my thinking around coffee, taste, and writing. I present "non-representational coffee writing" as an early invention at pure happiness, one that encourages a meandering, discursive, poetic investigations of coffee as an alternative to the quippy kind of discourse encouraged by scores.
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Episode 11: Color Coffee Kolla Bolcha Ethiopia
Color Coffee Roasters had been one of my favorite roasters for some time, with coffee that was always bright, clear, and expressive, when I got the exciting opportunity to visit their cafe and roastery in Eagle, Colorado in 2022. On this episode, I talk a little about that visit and the wonderful Kolla Bolcha Ethiopian coffee I drank there.
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Episode 10: Café Tío Conejo & Methodical Coffee
While many myths deal with the origin of the world and the founding of a people, at the same time, myths, unlike the past, are open to evolution. Today on the podcast I discuss an event, a tasting of Methodical's roasts of Café Tío Conejo's coffee held at drip coffee makers, that transformed the cosmology of Pure Happiness Coffee.