Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Of the coffeehouses in Boston I visited this month, this was my favorite. Sure, I didn’t make it over to Barismo or Voltage, but that was somewhat deliberate. Of all the times I’ve come to Boston, I’ve always stayed in the ‘burbs like Cambridge and Somerville but never Boston proper. This time I never left [...]

This spacious café, oddly decorated with bike frames, lies on the north end of the Sausalito strip. Its name is pronounced “CHEE-bo”, Italian for “food.” (Though we did find an amusing online reference where someone suggested it is pronounced “SHEE-Bow” — which sounds more like M&M-Mars for “decommissioned cat food“.) There are a few outdoor [...]

Just a few years ago, for a variety of reasons, we were avid and regular home coffee roasters. Today we still occasionally roast our own coffee at home, but we find far fewer reasons to do so — and we find ourselves doing it much less often. The reasons for this change are partly personal. [...]

This coffee farm specializes in the under-appreciated (next to Kona) Hawaiian coffees on the East side of the Big Island (Puna, Ku’a, Hamakua) as well as Kona and coffee from the other islands (Maui Moka, Oahu Waialua, Kauai). They take in beans from many local farms for roasting or selling as greens, and they’re at [...]

I’ve written before about how my personal rediscovery of the Maui Moka bean at the 2006 WRBC was, at least for me, something akin to finding a live dodo…or at least a ceolecanth. But a coffee that was presumed extinct for four years is one thing. One that has been presumed extinct for over 50 [...]

Here’s an update for the fellow home roaster geeks who have lamented the demise of Hawaii’s Ka’anapali Farm … from today’s The Maui News: Buzz over coffee has come back to Kaanapali. As reported here in March, I first spotted the return of the Maui Moka bean — easily my favorite bean stock for homemade [...]

The Petaluma Hot List As I mentioned in a previous post, the 2006 Western Regional Barista Competition was held in Petaluma over this past weekend. Twenty-two baristas from across California and Hawai’i participated in the annual competition — many for their first time. In addition to bringing out some of the best espresso preparation the [...]