Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

In the news today, researchers in Australia have decided to take a deconstructionist’s approach towards creating the ideal coffee: Australia Looks To Produce The Ultimate Cup Of Coffee | Gov Monitor. The Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC) performed experiments to determine how picking coffee cherries at different stages in their maturity might affect [...]

We wrap up our brief series on Seattle’s espresso and coffee culture with a few observations. First, it had been way, way too long since our last visit. Twelve years in fact. Which is all the more ridiculous given the kind of coffee tourists we’ve become. It was 15 years ago that I attended graduate [...]

After David Schomer lost the original Espresso Vivace Roasteria location on Denny Way to an eminent domain seizure in 2006, when the city of Seattle decided to place a new rail line station at its location, Espresso Vivace needed a new home where they could showcase their coffee and techniques. This Espresso Vivace location opened [...]

No coffee tour of Seattle is complete without a visit to our last of the three V’s in town: David Schomer‘s famed Espresso Vivace. The subtitle for this location is “a sidewalk espresso bar,” which it most certainly is. We normally have more than a few gripes about sidewalk coffee kiosks, but this one is [...]

This week we came across a curious video published by Voice of America: VOA News – Seattle: Capital of Coffee Houses. If you wonder why something called “Voice of America” produces video, you’ll question that even more after viewing this parody of a 1980′s corporate training video. But the video is essentially a review of [...]

To the uninitiated, CoffeeRatings.com might look more like a horse racing tip sheet than a coffee Web site. But there are very good reasons why we’ve gone through the effort to quantify things. Just look at the chaos that can ensue when you don’t follow a system nor a simple baseline set of evaluation criteria: [...]

Seattle’s Coffee Fest trade show ended yesterday. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published an article announcing the winners of its “Millrock Free Pour Latte Art competition” (isn’t that a mouthful?): Artistic cup of joe brings home $5,000 prize. Top honors and $5,000 of prize money went to Layla Emily Osberg of Vancouver, BC’s Blenz Coffee — where [...]

As Stumptown Coffee Roasters plans to invade Seattle, today’s Seattle Weekly published an amusing letter of distress from a reader concerned about the coming potential clash of Northwest espresso cultures: Uptight Seattleite: Why This Unfair Prejudice Against Skateboarders? (Seattle Weekly). The writer also categorizes the local shot pullers in two distinct families: The Starbucks family, [...]

Today’s The Seattle Times published an article on Espresso Vivace‘s David Schomer and his influence on smaller-scale, higher-quality retail espresso preparation: The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Vivace founder, David Schomer is a coffee prophet. UPDATE: February 20, 2007 Mr. Schomer recently had a nice write-up as a small business “guru” (oh, do I hate [...]

Today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on the eventual paving over of David Schomer’s Capitol Hill Espresso Vivace: Whirr of Espresso Vivace soon silenced by new rail. With a new Westlake-to-University District line Seattle rail service planned beneath Broadway on Capitol Hill, Vivace’s Denny Way location — open since 1988 — will be bulldozed and replaced by [...]