Posted by TheShot on 29 Mar 2011 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Local Brew
Growing up as a teenager, I always hated those “Battle of the Bands” contests. Because — despite my odd musical tastes, from the Dream Syndicate to Mötorhead, at a time when most teens wanted the inoffensive sounds of Huey Lewis & the News — I quickly learned that these contests were never about talent. They [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 18 Oct 2010 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew, Quality Issues
Today’s The Age (Melbourne, Australia) published a less-than-convinced article on the experimental fad of pairing coffees with a meal: Claire’s roast: Coffee matching leaves bitter taste. And Melbourne is a town that famously knows its coffee. For me, the lingering question had been whether the concept of matching food to coffee would work…and based on [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 02 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues
In the headlines today, Consumer Reports continues to explore the merits of ghetto coffee: Lack of excellent coffee blends: Consumer Reports | Reuters. Whereas before they chimed in on the McDonald’s vs. Starbucks debate — something we’ve always likened to a beauty contest between Courtney Love and Joan Rivers — this time their “expert” taste [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 20 Mar 2009 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues, Roasting
For the second of our three-part installment on How future coffee “Waves” will come to disparage the so-called Third, we examine some of coffee’s biggest qualitative fads going today: Single-origin coffees Medium roasts The heavy-handed use of cuppings We’ll examine a little of why we must get past these fads for accessible quality coffee to [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 25 Feb 2009 | Tagged as: Beans, Local Brew, Roasting
While revisiting Dynamo Donuts earlier this month, we quickly noted the bags of Four Barrel Coffee in the back. Like the Four Barrel Coffee mothership, Dynamo had been using Stumptown Hairbender to date — with rumors that they would switch over to Four Barrel once they got their roasting operations going. Four Barrel commenced their [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 01 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Fair Trade, Quality Issues
It is Labor Day weekend in San Francisco. And the only thing keeping us from inaugurating Itching Man, our long-proposed rival event to Burning Man, was Slow Food Nation ’08. For a little background, we mentioned this event in a post last week. Given how it had been billed, we had hopes there would be [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 11 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Local Brew, Quality Issues, Roasting
Philz Coffee presents CoffeeRatings.com with something of a dilemma. Things were a little more straightforward when Philz offered espresso — the basic yardstick for all the ratings on this site. And the 18th St. Philz (since closed) rated among the worst 10% espresso purveyors in the entire city. It practically takes effort to be that [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 11 Jan 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Machine, Quality Issues, Restaurant Coffee, Robusta
Tomorrow’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution nails it with this article headline: Espresso done right is intense — a full-bodied, stop-time moment to savor | ajc.com. Somewhat surprisingly, what follows the headline isn’t half bad either. The author, John Kessler, goes on to note how rare a decent espresso is in this country — and in fancy restaurants [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 05 Dec 2006 | Tagged as: Local Brew
Opening in Nov. 2006, this space is aptly named “Coffee Lounge”. It has dark brown walls, spot lighting, large gallery art, lounge-like music, and it attracts more of an upscale, edgy crowd for the neighborhood. A mix of unique seating options spread throughout the long space. They serve some croissants and bakery items, but it’s [...]
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