Tag Archive 'coffee_quality'

Travel + Leisure Poll: “Your city’s coffee sucks,” tourists tell locals

Posted by on 17 Sep 2011 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew, Quality Issues

We used to write more regularly about the steady stream of meaningless, unscientific coffee polls that frequently fill the pages of magazines, newspapers, and Web sites. We got tired of writing incessant rants about how the polls were poorly constructed and lacked any stated criteria nor methodology, and most assuredly you all certainly tired of [...]

[view full post]

How Consumer Reports does more harm than good for good coffee

Posted by on 02 Aug 2011 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues

It’s that time of year again for Consumer Reports to come to our collective rescue and save us from wasting our hard-earned money on bad coffee: Colombian coffee champ is unseated in our new Ratings. Except we’ve come to the conclusion that Consumer Reports does more harm than good in the name of good coffee. [...]

[view full post]

Australia’s Good Cafe Guides 2011

Posted by on 13 Jun 2011 | Tagged as: Café Society, Foreign Brew, Machine, Roasting

As many of you may know, we started CoffeeRatings.com in 2003 with the idea of making a printed, local, quantitative guide to San Francisco’s best coffee. Our fair city still lacks its own printed guide, but that hasn’t stopped cities such as Sydney and Melbourne in Australia from forging ahead: Mecca Espresso Ultimo Cafe of [...]

[view full post]

Lights Out in London

Posted by on 11 Apr 2011 | Tagged as: Café Society, Foreign Brew, Quality Issues, Starbucks

This has to be one of the most clueless stunts we have ever seen anyone perform in the name of the professional quality coffee trade. Coinciding with the first London Coffee Festival, some ad wizards came up with the genius idea of having 100 UK baristas churn out a Guinness World Record 12,005 espressos in [...]

[view full post]

$13 coffee worth the brew-haha?

Posted by on 08 Apr 2010 | Tagged as: Barista, Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues, Restaurant Coffee

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. [...]

[view full post]

Expansionist Consumer Reports again raids the ghetto coffee market

Posted by 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]

Colombia: Land of horrible coffee

Posted by on 22 Dec 2009 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Foreign Brew, Quality Issues

Today a writer for the Boston-based GlobalPost published a somewhat contrarian article on Colombian coffee: Colombian coffee | Juan Valdez. Instead of the Juan-Valdez-inspired marketing image of “the richest coffee in the world,” the author suggests that brewed coffee in Colombia has a lot more in common with dirty water. This is also true in [...]

[view full post]

Melbourne, Australia qualifies for a top coffee book, so where’s SF’s?

Posted by on 11 Dec 2009 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew, Quality Issues, Roasting

We’ve posted before about Melbourne’s claim as the coffee capital of Australia. In addition to the Melbourne Coffee Review Web site we noted back in 2007 (in operation since 2004), there is now a printed guide to Melbourne’s top 100 coffee shops with the title Melbourne Coffee Review: Crema of the crop – Epicure – [...]

[view full post]

Common Cues for Recognizing Good and Bad Espresso

Posted by on 27 Jul 2009 | Tagged as: Add Milk, Barista, Beans, Café Society, CoffeeRatings.com, Quality Issues

For a few years now, we had an idea for a post that sat in our unpublished queue: how can you tell a good espresso shop from a bad one? (At least before sampling it.) Given the thousands of good, bad, and mediocre espresso shots we’ve reviewed over the years, we have definitely noticed some [...]

[view full post]

Fables of the Reconstruction: New Yorkers say their coffee has finally arrived

Posted by on 14 Jun 2009 | Tagged as: Foreign Brew, Quality Issues

Over the years, we’ve dropped notes about New York City’s coffee culture: from its origins as a desolate wasteland through its more recent redemption. Like the awkward and homely tomboy who first gussies herself up for the debutant ball, in the past year New York City has been running a major publicity campaign to promote [...]

[view full post]

Older Entries »