Posted by TheShot on 24 Jul 2011 | Tagged as: Café Society, Foreign Brew, Quality Issues
California’s Santa Barbara County is a lot like the rest of America when it comes to coffee: it should face a tribunal for atrocities committed against the human taste bud. What makes these many crimes particularly heinous are the various local media outlets in these communities that celebrate certain local coffeehouses as some of the [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 04 Jan 2011 | Tagged as: Foreign Brew, Quality Issues
Something strange about the human condition requires us to finish the year by sorting, filtering, and ranking things in order. This perhaps only seems odd to us because we do it continuously. Whether or not you think the world could do without another year-end top 10 list, the coffee consultants behind New York City’s TampTamp [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 27 Dec 2010 | Tagged as: Quality Issues
Over the holiday, a friend asked about the “is crema bad for coffee?” question that we recently posted. We provided an answer in the form of one of our Christmas dinner dishes. This then lead to a debate about the methodology used by today’s coffee tinkerers who are on a discovery mission to improve coffee. [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 11 Dec 2010 | Tagged as: Barista, Beans, Foreign Brew, Machine, Quality Issues
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 [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 24 Nov 2010 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Home Brew, Machine, Quality Issues
Thanks to friend of this blog, Shawn Steiman, for pointing out this somewhat amusing article from today’s New York Times: Loving Coffee Without Being a Drip – NYTimes.com. In something of an ode to the Mr. Coffee automatic filter drip machine, the author — Times food critic, Frank Bruni — laments the many overly precious [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 15 Nov 2010 | Tagged as: Barista, Fair Trade, Foreign Brew, Local Brew, Quality Issues
Today’s The Korea Herald published a thought-provoking (if not debatable) piece about one-time Korea Barista Champion, Jeon Yong: Barista bringing coffee back to basics. Internal divisions within the national barista association prevented him from representing South Korea at the 2007 WBC in Tokyo, and he dismisses the notion that a training course can make one [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 03 Sep 2010 | Tagged as: Machine, Quality Issues
Because public coffee knowledge is in such a state of transition these days, reading mass media articles about coffee can be a little like being in a parent support group. Sometimes you’re new to a subject area, and you might find commiseration among other people going through the same new learning experiences. At other times [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 01 Aug 2010 | Tagged as: Add Milk, Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew, Machine, Quality Issues, Starbucks
Quick!: name a city that’s surrounded by the exquisite natural beauty of mountains and seas, with brightly painted houses that decorate quaint neighborhoods, with great food everywhere you turn, with a nearby wine country consisting of hundreds of vineyards and many nationally renowned restaurants, with hipsters who frequent farmers’ markets in transitional neighborhoods, with a [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 26 Jul 2010 | Tagged as: Add Milk, Barista, Foreign Brew, Machine, Quality Issues
Whereas we’ve written an SF-oriented post on the common cues for recognizing a good or bad espresso, today’s WAtoday (Western Australia) features an article on how to spot a dodgy coffee: Perth’s Best and Worst Coffee. We’ll simply quote it here: Mooba Subiaco manager Hannah Cameron told WAtoday.com.au the top five ways customers can see [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 22 Jul 2010 | Tagged as: Add Milk, Consumer Trends, Quality Issues, Restaurant Coffee
We’ve previously lamented the abuse and overuse of the term “perfect,” particularly when it comes to espresso. For this, and for injecting the term into the media vernacular for anything we consume, we have justifiable grounds to send Martha Stewart back to prison. Until we again see Martha in an orange jumper, today our inboxes [...]
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