Posted by TheShot on 23 Feb 2008 | Tagged as: Beans, Foreign Brew, Roasting
Occasionally this Web site can be the source of a real life story, and the story of Caffè Mokabar is a good one. For a little background, after a couple weeks of espresso research in Piemonte, Italy last October, we were most duly impressed with Caffè Mokabar among all the coffee roasters we encountered. So [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 19 Dec 2007 | Tagged as: Foreign Brew, Roasting
Our Espresso in Torino and Piemonte series continues with a visit to a Piemonte-based chain of roaster/cafés, called Casa del Caffè Vergnano. Caffè Vergnano has opened 16 roaster/cafés throughout Europe, located in cities as varied as Torino, Milan, Nice, Munich, Düsseldorf, London, one we stopped at in Asti (rated 2 chicchi and 2 tazzine in [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 11 Nov 2007 | Tagged as: Local Brew, Roasting
What a difference four years makes. One scalability challenge with an effort as large as CoffeeRatings.com is the attempt to cover the sheer number of places serving espresso in San Francisco while maintaining a common yardstick of consistency (to produce useful comparative reviews). But another challenge is keeping up with the changes; cafés open and [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 22 Sep 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Local Brew, Restaurant Coffee, Roasting
La Colombe Torrefaction, a Philadelphia-based roaster that’s been something of an East Coast analog to Blue Bottle Coffee Company, has regularly received national recognition for the quality of their roasted coffee. But on the West Coast, La Colombe may as well be based out of Belgium; they’re largely unknown around these parts.
In an attempt to [...]
Posted by TheShot on 10 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: Local Brew
This café was once highly regarded before a recent ownership change, but we never got around to trying their espresso until recently. It’s a sidewalk corner café located across of the SF Cable Car Museum. There is some outdoor seating along Mason and Washington Sts., and indoors there are several tables in a relatively quiet [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 09 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Local Brew, Roasting
Talk about an unusual opening in the West Union Square area in the past year. This café is the daytime sister to The Cellar next door/downstairs (they even share employees) and it turns to a bar/lounge at night. Across from the Academy of Art University, it doesn’t seem like much from the outside. But inside [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 29 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Local Brew, Quality Issues, Roasting
The American Chronicle can be a pretty hokey online rag, but once in a while they feature the occasional gem — like today’s interview with Barefoot Coffee Roasters‘ founder and all around cool guy, Andy Newbom: American Chronicle: Andy Newbom of Silicon Valley - Founder of Barefoot Coffee Roasters. In the interview, Andy reveals how [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 21 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Roasting
In a joint press release oddly issued today — about 15 months after the fact — SF’s own Graffeo coffee was featured in National Geographic’s 2006 book, The 10 Best of Everything: ClickPress | Graffeo Coffee featured in National Geographic’s book “The 10 Best of Everything”. Also noted in the press release, Graffeo’s coffee is [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 26 Mar 2007 | Tagged as: Machine, Quality Issues, Roasting
It’s no secret that I generally disdain superautomated espresso machines (myself and Howard Schultz apparently included) and the convenience-step-forward/quality-step-backwards home pod machines. So you may get the (false) impression that, when it comes to coffee, I am an anti-technology Luddite. While I have never placed PID temperature controllers on the group of my home machine [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 13 Feb 2007 | Tagged as: Barista, Fair Trade, Foreign Brew, Roasting
Today the Chicagoist blog published an interview with Intelligentsia founder and CEO, Doug Zell: Chicagoist: Chicagoist Grills: Intelligentsia Coffee & Roasting Works CEO Doug Zell.
Intelligentsia not only boasts some of the best roasted coffee in the country, and the reigning U.S. barista champion from one of their cafés, but they also helped set a standard [...]