Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

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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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 [...]

Tags: 4_dollar_coffee_myth, cafe_customers, coffee_prices, fair_trade, french_laundry, hario_v60_dripper, media, nyc_coffee, vac_pot

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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 [...]

Tags: barefoot_roasters, coffee_beans, coffee_crisis, coffee_growers, coffee_prices, el_salvador_coffee, epicenter_cafe, fair_trade, global_warming, guatemala_coffee, scaa

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Saturday’s Chicago Tribune published a pretty good piece on Intelligentsia CEO, Doug Zell:
Intelligentsia Coffee’s CEO talks beans – chicagotribune.com.
While Doug gets a little loopy (our opinion) in abusing the ever-popular wine analogy for coffee — e.g., espousing such shoehorned ideas as coffee pairings — he’s been a pioneer and leader in areas such as:

responding to [...]

Tags: barista_championships, coffee_beans, coffee_bean_seasonality, coffee_freshness, coffee_nazis, coffee_pairing, direct_trade, doug_zell, fair_trade, intelligentsia, peets_coffee, wine_analogy

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Just when you think the profession of the coffee “middleman” was on its way out in this era of the Internet, in come a number of entrepreneurs trying to reintroduce them. What we’re talking about are consumer retailers that intermediate the sale of roasted coffee — with examples that include Citizen Bean, GoCoffeeGo (see Man [...]

Tags: coffee_middlemen, coffee_retailers, coffee_roasters, direct_trade, fair_trade, indirect_trade, roasted_coffee_brokers, wine_analogy, wrbc

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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

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Last week the Christian Science Monitor published an article highlighting the economic pressures on Latin America’s organic coffee farmers: Organic coffee: Why Latin America’s farmers are abandoning it / The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com.
Just as Fair Trade designed their program to attract coffee growers through the promise of financial incentives, once they made initial [...]

Tags: coffee_beans, fair_trade, organic_coffee, wal-mart

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We don’t reserve our Trip Reports for just the finer examples of retail espresso. As our database shows, we learn from forgettable and even wretched espresso shots. Falling somewhere between the two is Whole Foods Market. Their Potrero Hill location had to be a bit of a construction project, with a parking garage underneath the [...]

Tags: espresso_review, fair_trade, organic_coffee, potrero_hill, slow_food, superautomatic_espresso_machines

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Opening last month on the site of a former Briazz prepared-foods (lunch, primarily) chain shop, this corner café isn’t much of a leap from its predecessor. They serve sandwiches, soups, and salads as before — but with an emphasis on cocoa and espresso.
The store seeps causes from its signage: Fair Trade coffee and cocoa, Clover [...]

Tags: acf_cups, espresso_review, faema, fair_trade, financial_district, mr-espresso

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As Starbucks‘ future looks ever bleaker and bleaker, CEO Howard Schultz continues his maniacal lever-pulling atop Starbucks’ runaway corporate bulldozer. After shedding themselves of music, movies, and books, they’ve tried everything from an online suggestion box and free coffee promotions to membership cards to less expensive (“daily”) roasts and smoothies. Mr. Schultz’s latest lever pull [...]

Tags: direct_trade, fair_trade, mcdonalds, organic_coffee, slow_food_nation, Starbucks, tullys_coffee, uk_cafes, uk_coffee

9 Comments »