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Lightmist Coffee

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Pour-over coffee setup with Origami dripper and glass server on a scale

It’s been a while.

A lot has changed since my last post. Last July, Sherry and I moved to Taipei with the boys and the dog. And somewhere along the way, a coffee hobby turned into something more serious. I started a coffee project.

It’s called Lightmist Coffee (微嵐咖啡). We focus on ultra-light roasts, the kind where you can actually taste the origin, the terroir, the processing. Clarity over intensity. If you’ve ever had a light roast that reminded you more of tea or white wine than “coffee,” that’s the neighborhood we’re in.

The coffee thing started back in 2002 when I was in Austin doing some consulting work on the side, hacking on Linux kernel extensions. The consulting money paid for a Rancilio Silvia and a Rocky grinder, and that was it. I was hooked. For a long time it stayed casual, just making espresso at home. I moved to San Francisco in 2007, and it wasn’t until after COVID that I really fell into the Bay Area specialty coffee scene. That’s when things escalated: dialing in recipes, geeking out on water chemistry, the whole rabbit hole.

The name comes from Mt. Tam, the mountain across the Golden Gate, where fog rolls in around golden hour. That quiet, misty clarity felt right. The Chinese name, 微嵐, uses the 嵐 from my Chinese name (吳以嵐). It means mountain mist.

What we actually do: small curated drops. We source from top independent roasters around the world, and ship in small numbered batches. Every box comes with the water recipe we used when dialing in, because water matters more than most people think. We’re transparent about everything: the sourcing, the process, the numbers.

I also started the Taipei Coffee Group (TCG), a community of specialty coffee people here in Taiwan. It’s still early, a Discord server where people share brewing experiments, compare recipes, and do group buys. It’s the kind of thing I wished existed when I first moved here.

I’ll be honest, I’m still figuring out the right audience for Lightmist here in Taipei. The specialty coffee scene is vibrant, but ultra-light roasts are a niche within a niche. We’ll see where it goes.

If any of this sounds interesting, follow along on Instagram: @lightmist.coffee. That’s where we announce drops and share what we’re working on.

More to come.

Things I Use 2013 Edition

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pic for blog post

As 2013 comes to an end, I’ll write one of these posts to list the things I use.

Development

Mac

  • Dash: my favorite app right now, if you code on your Mac, in any language, just get it! It’s also free with optional donation
  • Xcode: new version is so great
  • MacVIM: I’ve been a VI user for almost 20 years, after a few years of TextMate in my early Rails days, I’m back using VIM. I’m still far more productive in VI than anything else. When I’m not hacking in Xcode I’m in VIM.
  • HipChat: my livelihood pretty much depends on HipChat, having worked remotely across the globe in Taipei this year. Really loving the native OS X client, I don’t have Flash or Air installed on my Mac after my fresh OS install post SSD
  • Coda 2: only use it for collaborative editing (such as at WWDC)
  • Ansible: simple YAML-based deployment, if you don’t need Chef, try this

iOS

  • HipChat: their revamped iOS client is decent
  • Prompt: really great to be able to SSH from anywhere. Would be better if it supported Mosh, one can only hope
  • Diet Coda: Only for emergency copy changes

Photography

Mac

  • Lightroom 5: if you’re semi-serious about your photos, just use this. I’ve recently tried the latest Aperture again, Lr is still far better 1

iOS

  • VSCO Cam: I’ve bought pretty much all the presets, it’s great
  • Camera+: this continues to be the best camera app on my phone
  • FlickStackr: if you use Flickr and have an iOS device, just get this!

Others

Mac

  • Afred 2: can’t live without this, also check my workflows. Multiple clipboard support is godsend
  • 1Password: also cannot live without this
  • Things: after so many years I still use Things a lot. I’m not a strict GTD nerd, but I do like to jot down tasks and free up my mind for more important things (such as nothing)
  • ShiftIt: opensource windows organizer for Mac, works far better than the paid alternatives currently on the Mac App Store
  • Chatology: if you use the Messages app on your Mac, you need this to make sense of your chat logs
  • Marked 2: great Markdown previewer
  • Tweetbot
  • Mailplane: I tried Sparrow and beta-tested and bought Airmail, still addicted to the gmail web interface and Rapportive integration
  • Bartender: if you use an Air with limited menubar real estate, you really should get this!

iOS

  • iSmoothRun
  • 1Password
  • Downcast: I listen to podcasts when I run, I probably used this more than any other apps in terms of number of hours spent
  • Tweetbot 3: iOS7 update for iPhone version is great, waiting for iPad app update
  • Felix: my ADN client
  • Tumblr: incredible mobile reading experience
  • Mr. Reader: my new RSS reader. I dumped Feedly as they were being shady. Mr. Reader works great with Feed Wrangler
  • Pinner: my iOS Pinboard client
  • Things (iPhone, iPad)
  • Fantastical 2: indispensable app, looking forward to its iPad version
  • Editorial: this post was written entirely in this. Check Viticci’s epic review 2
  • Screens: I used Remoter VNC for years, switched to Screens last week. I prefer paying for all features up front vs buying IAPs a la carte
  • Hangout: to receive and place Google Voice calls, my GTalk can now idle indefinitely with push. It has replaced BeejiveIM on my phone. If you use the shitty Talkatone app, please switch to this!
  • Drafts: if you still use the Notes app on your phone or iPad, try Drafts

Services

  • GitHub: Really great for distributed team, definitely made my life a lot easier having worked from Taipei this year
  • BitBucket: I really like their pricing structure. Charging based on number of users is far better IMO. I was using Dropbox to archive my old git repos and also to host repos when working with just one other developer. After getting tired of fixing repo conflicts when we both pushed while Dropbox was catching up, I looked for viable alternatives and I’m glad BitBucket now works with git in addition to hg
  • Pinboard
  • Spotify: We each have our own subscription. The iOS apps could use some design and development love, but it works great in general, the ability to sync offline playlists is great when cellular service is spotty to nonexistent in central Taipei. At our wedding reception we played hours of music from a synced offline playlist on Sherry’s iPad Mini, turned on Airplane mode to prevent getting notifications, worked amazingly well
  • Feed Wrangler: my RSS service, smart feeds are pretty damn useful, and support a great indie developer
  • Crashplan: just do it, you should have a cloud backup service
  • Copy: great Dropbox alternative, I now have over 100GB of free space (thanks everyone!)
  • Private Internet Access: my new VPN provider, they allow up to 5 simultaneous devices, which is useful when we have 3 Macs and 4 iOS devices together
  • App.net
  • Flickr: still a loyal user after almost a decade

Hardware

Finally

  • Samsung 500GB SSD: best $300 I spent in 2013, my MBP is so fast now, night and day from spinning disk. Samsung released updates on their SSD line, check the great Wirecutter
  • Early 2011 15″ MBP: my trusty 2-year-old MBP is kicking strong after installing an SSD. Been holding out for a 11″ rMBA
  • Thunderbolt Display: just great, I have my FW800 drive, GigE, USB headphone amp, Elevation Dock all plugged into the back of it, only Thunderbolt and power goes to my Mac. Xcode is so much better on a 27″ display
  • iPhone 5s, 64GB, Verizon: can’t wait to move back to get LTE, hopefully VZW service degradation reports have been exaggerated. 64GB not really needed after reclaiming my Messages attachments. My phone has also been my main camera. Hugely improved battery life and the M7 made the upgrade from the 5 worth it
  • iPad rMini, 32GB, Verizon: just incredible, glad I waited. Far more useful than our original Mini
  • Mac mini: my media computer
  • UE Boom: this is amazing, I use it in the shower and next to the tub when I do ice-baths (and I did a lot of that in 2013). We bring it when we travel
  • Synology DS213 (D214 is out now) with 2x 3TB WD Red: decent entry-level NAS, but not enough RAM to run CrashPlan headless, and not fast enough to move my NZB workflow (SAB, SickBeard, CouchPotato) on it. The DS213 is still great with its array of iOS apps, being able to add torrents from my phone or iPad and get emailed when they’re done is great
  • UE900: my Sensaphonics broke again, picked these up for cheap from Ruten as a stop-gap, decent universal cans
  • Audio-Technica A900: the most underrated cans IMO, better sounds than most more popular and expensive cans
  • Plantronics Backbeat Go: walk-around-the-house cans, small and wireless, version 2 looks even better
  • 5D Mark II: still going strong. Still amazed by its outputs every time I use it. My 3 primes have served me well and I’m very happy with my setup: 50/1.2L, 85/1.2L II, 100L. I sort of want the OM-D E-M1 with the 17/1.8, but it’s hard to justify the cost
  • Polar H7 HRM: great tool to judge your effort when exercising, connects to your phone via Bluetooth LE

  1. Seriously Apple, no graduated filter? ↩

  2. You might not want to open this on your iOS devices, it’s so long that it crashes mobile Safari. Opening this review in Editorial’s browser also crashed the app ↩

Taipei reception photos from Ming Thein

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My friend Ming Thein attended and photographed our reception, amazing shots as usual (Flash required, direct link to the photoset on Flickr):

Ming will be doing workshops in KL, Sydney, and London in 2014. If you’re serious about improving your craft, I highly recommend attending them. He also does email school and videos, check them out. Great stuff!

We also put together a slideshow of these images with Animoto: