Another installment in our "faves from 2008" BoingBoing tv retrospective -- this two-parter in which Mark Frauenfelder gets an exclusive tour of Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea. Above, part one, below, part two, and MP4 links for download here:
Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea is based out of Chicago, Illinois and has recently opened up a new store in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. Kyle Glanville, head of research and development at Intelligentsia and winner of the 2008 US Barista Championship shows Mark how they acquire and roast some of the finest coffee in the world.
The word intelligentsia derives from the Latin word intelligentia, meaning a group of people engaged in complex mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture. Kyle Glanville has been laboring to promulgate a new coffee culture with Intelligentsia to combat the "get up and go" mentality, and Mark is along for the ride to learn the careful art of roasting coffee.
Intelligentsia is located at 3922 West Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90029 and is open 7 days a week.
Continuing in our retrospective of favorite BBtv episodes from 2008, today's feature is an encore presentation of our three-part visit to the delicious, trippy, techy TCHO factory in San Francisco. The "chocolate for a new generation" startup was hacked together by a space shuttle technologist, Timothy Childs, and the founder of Wired, Louis Rosetto.
Part one is embedded above, parts two and three below, and here are direct MP4 links to all: one, two, three. Snip from the original post:
In part one of Boing Boing tv's multi-part exploration of Tcho, we begin in the lab, and learn about the origins of chocolate: it's a weird looking fruit with biological roots in faraway tropical lands. How this fruit is cultivated, harvested, and cured determines the flavor of the final product, and we learn about the hedonics -- the sensual nuances -- of this exotic and temperamental element.
Blog posts with more chocolicious background on all that we experienced there:
In this final installment of our TCHO Chocolate trilogy, Xeni and Pesco go on a magical mystery taste test tour -- think Willy Wonka meets The Trip.
Former NASA software developer Timothy Childs founded the tech-minded chocolate company, and was joined by WIRED co-founder Louis Rosetto.
In previous BBtv episodes we learned about the hacked-together, home-tinkered machines and high-tech wizardry that keep their factory humming. Today we dive in to the genetics of chocolate plants, and the hedonics -- the tasting experience -- of the finished product, where science meets sensuality meets sugar.
Oh hell, who are we kidding, you guys? We sat around and GOT HIGH on neuroactive cocoa alkaloids. We freebased theobromine and we LIKED IT. We liked it a LOT.
Warning: this episode is NSFC (not safe for chocoholics).
On behalf of all my Boing Boing and Boing Boing tv colleagues, I'm excited and proud to announce the debut of a new series within our daily video program: BBtv World. This ongoing series will feature first-person glimpses of life around the world, told through the lenses and voices of Boing Boing editors, guest collaborators -- and through the people in these places, their own stories, their own way. When we can, we want to place the camera directly in the hands -- literally -- of the people whose lives, cultures, and lands we're visiting.
We're kicking this off with an episode I shot during a recent visit in a K'iche Maya village in the highlands of Guatemala, where I go a few times a year to work on sustainable development projects with an international project managed with local indigenous leaders.
"El Molinero," the title of this debut piece, refers to the corn mill where young girls go every day to grind soaked, hulled corn ("nixtamal") into soft dough for tortillas or tamales (in K'iche, "k'osh").
The old machine -- hacked together by local craftsman from various components -- is extremely loud, spews smelly fuel exhaust, and like many aspects of daily life and work here, is dangerous.
The K'iche girls you see in this episode helped me shoot some of what you see. In future episodes, they'll tell their stories themselves, and we'll visit other places -- Tibet, Africa, Mexico, China, India, and Japan, to name a few of the destinations planned.
Today on Boing Boing tv, Xeni and Pesco dive deeper into the magical chocolate factory founded by a NASA software developer.
In this installment of BBtv's 3-part series on TCHO Chocolate, we learn more about the hacked-together, home-tinkered machines and high-tech wizardry that keep the factory running. The philosophy is "scrappy, not crappy," as founder Timothy Childs explains.
TCHO's R&D lab contains such diverse components as Space Shuttle tape, a modded RONCO turkey oven, stone grinders used in Indian restaurants, and deconstructed space heater parts from the local hardware store.
Next, we zoom in to the molecular-level science behind this most delicious confection. Science buffs, rejoice! This episode is as fun for your eyes and brain as the "obsessively good" chocolate is for your mouth -- Polymorph fun for the whole family. Warning: this episode is NSFC (not safe for chocoholics).
Boing Boing tv passes the 150th episode mark today, and we're celebrating by cooking up some delicious takenoko (竹ã®å), young bamboo shoots, with Joi Ito -- and original music by Ryuichi Sakamoto.
In this video, Ito welcomes us into his back yard in Japan, where he and his partner Mizuka teach us how to hunt for and prepare this traditional seasonal delicacy from a lush bamboo forest.
The episode is accompanied by an original score composed by Grammy, Academy Award, and Golden Globe-winning composer, Ryuichi Sakamoto. The legendary electronic music pioneer is also an outspoken environmental advocate. His recent reforestation initiative, “More Trees,†supports the planting of trees around the world to help offset carbon emissions. To-date, 2 billion trees have been planted mostly through work with country governments including Turkey, Ethiopia and Mexico. Link to English-language PDF with more info on the project.
After the jump -- Joi Ito's family recipe for yummy takenoko just like mom used to make. Special thanks to the Ito family for sharing their traditions with us.
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