Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

This month’s Wired magazine published a piece on this year’s Cup of Excellence (CoE) competition in Colombia: Sip, Spit, Grade: Coffee Experts Crown Colombia’s Best Beans | Magazine. Opening with the Q-grading Alberto Trujillo and Intelligentsia‘s Geoff Watts, the article describes the Cup of Excellence process and a little of its short history. It also [...]

Tags: coffee_growers, colombia, colombia_coffee, cup_of_excellence, intelligentsia, wired_magazine

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Ecco Caffè founder and fellow South Side Chicago homie, Andrew Barnett, posted a little background about the Cup of Excellence program on SFGate yesterday: Inside Scoop SF » The Cup of Excellence: The Oscars of the Coffee World. Thankfully he compared CoE to the Oscars and not the Grammys — the latter of which have [...]

Tags: coffee_origin, cup_of_excellence, single_origin_espresso, third_wave

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Many in the coffee industry speak volumes about wanting to market themselves to the public as the “new wine.” But if we examine the practices the industry has taken on to accomplish any of this, it has failed miserably on nearly all fronts. What becomes all too clear is that the coffee industry either doesn’t [...]

Tags: barista_championships, barista_magazine, brewers_cup, coffee_cupping, coffee_marketing, consumer_marketing, cup_of_excellence, event_marketing, latte_art, wine_analogy

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Call it coffee’s version of Hubble’s Law: the rate at which a local coffee scene evolves is inversely proportional to its maturity. What?!? Let us explain. Seattle and San Francisco are examples of well-established coffee cultures, and the rate of evolution and improvement we see in the coffee there tends to nudge along at a [...]

Tags: americano, Barista, barista_championships, cape_town_cafes, coffee_choices, compak, crema, cup_of_excellence, deconstructionism, espresso_choices, four_barrel, latte_art, la_marzocco, origin_coffee_roasting, quality_standards, ritual_roasters, single_origin_espresso, specialty_drinks, synesso, truth

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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 [...]

Tags: clover_brewer, coffee_pods, coffee_tech, cup_of_excellence, le_fooding, siphon_bars, slayer_espresso_machine, Starbucks, superautomatic_espresso_machines, wine_analogy

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This past weekend, Barefoot Coffee Roasters celebrated their seventh anniversary. While the San Francisco Coffee Wars have clearly overlooked the South Bay, we’ve frequently traced some of our favorite coffee experiences back to this small microroaster and their tiny chain of cafés. Besides their flagship café in Santa Clara, they have recently expanded to a [...]

Tags: acf_cups, barefoot_roasters, brightness_bomb, coffee_roasters, cup_of_excellence, espresso_review, hario_v60_dripper, pour_over_coffee, probat, san_jose_cafes, san_jose_coffee, victoria_arduino

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In the transitioning Cape Town neighborhood of Woodstock, which out-Missions the Mission, this espresso bar and roaster perhaps looks like no other you’ve seen before. Located inside the newly-art-conscious Old Biscuit Mill, this small space is a pristine, stark black-&-white-themed coffee lab that exudes meticulous organization. The Old Biscuit Mill is known in town for [...]

Tags: aeropress, blue_bottle, brightness_bomb, cape_town_cafes, coffee_blending, coffee_roasting, cortado, cup_of_excellence, deidrich_roaster, espresso_brightness, espresso_review, gibraltar, hario, hario_v60_dripper, kenya_coffee, la_marzocco, mission, pour_over_coffee, south_africa_coffee, wendelboe

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Among coffee aficionados in town, quality artisan coffee originates with Origin. Opening in 2006 in a more modest space, this place changed the face of coffee in Cape Town if not South Africa. Since its expansion, it is now three transparent levels of coffee, café, roasting, regional Synesso distributor, and barista training labs. If that [...]

Tags: barista_championships, barista_training, cape_town_cafes, coffee_roasters, cup_of_excellence, espresso_review, espresso_training, fair_trade, hario, hario_v60_dripper, la_marzocco, moka_pot, organic_coffee, south_africa_coffee, synesso, vac_pot

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Today Salon magazine posted their take on this whole “Hey baby, what’s your wave?” coffee business: Baristas gone wild: meet fourth-wave coffee – Coffee and tea – Salon.com. We most appreciated that they wrote the article from a coffee consumer’s perspective. What often gets lost in this feeding frenzy of hyperbole is that none of [...]

Tags: Barista, cup_of_excellence, fourth_wave, slayer_espresso_machine, third_wave

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Recently I was approached by a writer exploring ideas for an article to be published by Wired in the UK. (This wouldn’t be the first time.) The subject line of his e-mail? “The Future of Coffee.” His goal was to put together a piece about the “vanguard of the coffee industry,” featuring “new and disruptive [...]

Tags: caffe_artigiano, coffee_brewing, coffee_innovation, coffee_tech, cup_of_excellence, david_schomer, fair_trade, kyle_glanville, la_marzocco, pid, single_origin_espresso, siphon_bars, slayer_espresso_machine, third_wave, usbc, wired_magazine

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