Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Lately we’ve been thinking about quality coffee’s current obsession with all-things-technology. While there’s arguably more science than art to making good coffee, the current climate seems to have pushed any art aside. It reminds us of civilization at the turn of the 20th century, when society held a common belief that technology was going to [...]

Earlier this week, we caught a radio broadcast of NPR’s “Fresh Air” where the program’s host, Terri Gross, was interviewing an entomologist named Douglas Emlen: The Fascinating World Of The Dung Beetle : NPR. About 34-35 minutes into the audio program, Mr. Emlen introduces an anecdote about cockroaches and coffee that even manages to gross [...]

Today’s New York Times blogged about a new barista-as-art exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum: Guggenheim Turns Coffee Into Art – City Room Blog – NYTimes.com. Part of an art installation named Cinéma Liberté/Bar Lounge (we are told the other half is a movie), baristas behind a wooden bar serve espresso drinks from three Francis Francis [...]

Yesterday’s The Age (Melbourne, Australia) published an article on the growing business of home espresso education: Short, strong grounding in espresso – Epicure – Entertainment – theage.com.au. The author noted how cafés, roasters, and other retail locations are creating “coffee classrooms” for instructing consumers on how to “create the perfect coffee at home”. The reason [...]

We’re more than a bit late with the news here, but a hearty and well-deserved congratulations to Kyle Glanville of LA’s Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea for winning the 2008 U.S. Barista Championship (USBC): 2008 US Barista Champion « The Official 2008 SCAA Conference Blog. Proving the West is Best, and giving us some minor trash-talking [...]

In the “unclear on the concept” department, this weekend’s Toronto Star published an article that, in its opening paragraph, mentioned “coffee’s elevated status as the new wine.” However, it then proceeded to discuss coffee-pod-based home espresso machines in the same context: TheStar.com | living | Specialty coffees become the new wine. This is as incongruous [...]

Today’s New York Times published a brief article on Francis Ford Coppola’s personal obsession with espresso machines, of which he’s apparently owned some 300 to date: The Epic in a Demitasse Cup – New York Times. Of particular note is a machine that is “an early favorite, a large, silvery old-fashioned machine for the first [...]

Today’s New York Times Magazine published an article on the declining design aesthetic of the espresso machine: The Pod People – New York Times. As the author puts it, “Cape Canaveralesque control centers that have replaced those great machines.” And she blames the meteoric popularity of Starbucks, which inspired a great wave of ensuing greed [...]

It’s been a long time coming. After three years of laziness, I found a clean way to add non-SF espresso bars to the online database without having them muck up the SF sorts and ratings. It’s not a lot, and there are still a few kinks to work out, but it’s progress. And the timing [...]

The London Times today published a business section interview of Andrea Illy, the head of IllyCaffè: The original Mr Bean – Times Online. More of a financial/business article, it discusses Illy’s role in the world of specialty coffee — touching on Illy’s technical innovations (some of them regrettable, IMO), brand positioning, and even Mr. Illy’s [...]