Posted by TheShot on 13 Jan 2011 | Tagged as: Café Society, Foreign Brew, Roasting, Robusta
Tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal features an article on the Lisbon espresso, the bica: The Best Cafes in Lisbon – WSJ.com. It touches on Lisboeta coffee culture — e.g., drinking many shots each day at the local pasteleria (a sort of pastry shop/bar); a dependence on slower roasts, good quality coffee from Brazil, but also a [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 23 Mar 2009 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Robusta
Just when we write about the stifling conformity among roasters and coffee professionals of this modern era, today’s New York Times blog reports on the use of robusta beans in espresso blends: Robusta Economy – Times Topics Blog – NYTimes.com. Although there’s nothing in the post we haven’t heard before, it’s the tone of the [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 02 Oct 2008 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Fair Trade, Quality Issues
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: [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 11 Sep 2008 | Tagged as: Quality Issues, Robusta
Whether it’s coffee or Slow Food Nation (or both), today there’s a strong public undercurrent of knee-jerk, reactionary dismissiveness of anybody who dares suggest that the generic brand-X-in-a-can isn’t good enough for them. The mistaken public belief is that most of the things we eat and drink today are somehow normal, inevitable, and “natural” outcomes [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 24 Jun 2008 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Roasting, Robusta
Today Condé Nast posted an general consumer article on what to look for in good coffee: Coffee Drinking Guide – Portfolio.com. However, it reads more as a quick guide to following what’s “trendy” today — rather than as a guide to seeking good quality coffee experiences. (Not to mention that the article’s title, “Eat Sheet: [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 27 May 2008 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Foreign Brew, Robusta
One definition of “overly ambitious” is attempting to write an article about the relationship between coffee and a pluralistic nation of over 1.1 billion people. Compounding this is the nature of India itself — where not only can you find evidence of just about everything, but for everything you find to be true you will [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 24 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Consumer Trends, Fair Trade, Quality Issues, Robusta
Corporate spokespeople frequently speak volumes more in what’s left unsaid than in what they say. Take yesterday’s Reuters news release from The Big 4‘s Kraft Foods. Kraft’s flagship coffee, Maxwell House, has desensitized American coffee taste buds for decades. Kraft has just recently decided to use 100% arabica beans in Maxwell House’s cans of unholy [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 12 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: Barista, Beans, Café Society, Fair Trade, Starbucks
Today Voice of America News broadcast an executive summary of sorts on specialty coffee consumption in America: VOA News – Good to the Last Drop: Coffee Culture Is Alive and Well in the US. Like many things VOA, it’s spoken in slow and clearly annunciated English. Think the clinical drone of NPR presented at the [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 06 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: Home Brew, Quality Issues, Robusta
Last week, C. Clairborne Ray of the New York Times answered this question as part of the paper’s Q&A feature: bookofjoe: What makes coffee bitter?. (I’m citing it on another blogger’s post instead of the original NY Times source — in case you are religiously opposed to NYT logins.) As the article states, coffee is [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 05 Jun 2007 | Tagged as: Café Society, Consumer Trends, Local Brew, Restaurant Coffee
According to an article in today’s USA Today, hotels are still slowly catching up on the rest of society when it comes to serving better quality coffee: Upscale coffee selections brewing at more hotels – USATODAY.com. As the article opens, “Good coffee is the next big thing at hotels.” Business travelers, accustomed to better coffee [...]
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