Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Nobody enjoys paying 83% more for something than they paid for it last year. That is, unless you’re living in Zimbabwe under a 89.7 sextillion percent inflation rate. Earlier this year, the media were hot and heavy with news stories about surging coffee prices. However, some such stories are still trickling in — such as [...]

A couple weeks ago, a regular reader made a very relevant comment on our last post: “You have become very negative. When was the last positive post?” They were completely on target, and we have noticed this trend in ourselves for months now. (See: Coffee Commenter Archetype #10.) The reasons are worth a post here. [...]

A friend of this Web site, Andrew Hetzel, called it the best article about Kona coffee ever written. That’s a pretty tall order. But this piece, which came out a couple days ago, makes a compelling argument: Hana Hou: The Magazine of Hawaiian Airlines – Adventures in Coffeeland. It’s at least good enough to make [...]

What is it about coffee today that makes it such a lightning rod for consumer indignation and class warfare? Nobody expresses outrage over a $400 bottle of wine, a $110,000 MSRP Mercedes-Benz, or even a $300,000 diamond-encrusted smart phone. But should someone dare sell a cup of coffee for $12, the world is coming to [...]

We honestly don’t like repeating ourselves, but we will anyway. No, this has nothing to do with the Cafe Grumpy $12 cup of coffee scuttlebutt going around — where New Yorkers once again find something in their backyard and therefore presume they must have invented it. (Curiously, this came up one month after CNN reported [...]

One of the long running jokes among the (these days: masochistic) fans who follow Italian soccer is that — at least according to the Italian sports media — teams tend to go from “crisis” to “crisis” several times in a given season. If a top-caliber team doesn’t win for two straight matches, sono in crisi [...]

The mainstream media barely understand that qualitative differences exist between really good coffee, good coffee, and average coffee — let alone that some of the differences might be worth shelling out a few extra bucks on. CNN is one of the more recent outlets to ponder the differences: $13 coffee worth the brew-haha? – CNN.com. [...]

Reading the papers, for many mainstream consumers, you’d think that the current economic slowdown marked the return of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. However, you could argue that we’ve witnessed the necessary bursting of the real estate bubble, the correction of stupid money that pumped up the sub-prime loan debacle, rising food prices that [...]

According to yesterday’s Daily Telegraph (London), the tiny Sicilian town of Partinico has defined a social ritual to counter Italy’s struggles with the rising price of coffee: Italians share coffee to beat price rise – Telegraph. Because of the higher prices, and the Italian need for several cups of espresso a day, some Italians have [...]

Walking in to a Peet’s Coffee & Tea last week, I noticed they are once again offering their supply of Panama Esmeralda Geisha as a roast-dated “Reserve” coffee. We wrote about this coffee varietal last month (and also in 2006). It has consistently sold at record auction prices, and it has won numerous awards for [...]