Mark Warmuth, president of the company, approaches Dodge. They throw around phrases like “first crack,” “degassing,” “color profile.” These are men who know coffee.

M.E. Swing Co. was founded almost a century ago in downtown Washington, D.C. In 1989, fire code and annoyed neighbors forced the company to move its roasting operations outside the city. “Believe it or not, not everybody likes the smell of roasted coffee,” Warmuth said. The company set up their roasting shop in Alexandria, where they’ve remained to this day.

One thing that sets specialty coffee retailers like Swing apart is cupping, a standardized procedure that experts use to quantify aspects of a coffee’s taste and aroma. The Specialty Coffee Association of America provides a “flavor wheel” that tells you how to describe what you’re drinking, which you’ll need, because there are more words to describe coffee than there are for wine. Your coffee can be fruity, spicy or delicate, but it can also taste “horsey,” “sweaty,” or like “wet cardboard.”

Warmuth deadpans, “There’s a dark side to the coffee business, as well.”

Read the rest at Alextimes.com

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Their cupboards went bare then, but not this year.

Members of Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, masterminds behind the Greek Festival in Erie, are so committed to hospitality that when they ran out of food in 1989, the first year, they went home and made more.

After attendance at the first festival exceeded all expectations, “everybody had to go home and clean out their freezers and bake new pastries, ” said Tom Parthenakis, the co-grand chairman of the church’s 2007 festival, or panegyri.

Panegyri (“festival” in Greek; pronounced paw-nee-yee-ree), a summer tradition in Erie, draws people from around the region and from as far away as California. It starts today.

Assumption Greek Orthodox Church started the panegyri as a fundraiser for the building’s upkeep 19 years ago. It’s a small parish, with only 80 families. But somehow that’s all it takes to host a party that draws more than 30,000 people.

This year, they’re prepared.

Read the rest of this story on GoErie.com, or contact me for more.

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