Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Today’s The Globe and Mail (Toronto) featured an article on the coming growing pains for Vancouver’s Caffè Artigiano: Coffee chain tackles expansion conundrum – The Globe and Mail. For those unfamiliar, Caffè Artigiano still represents the best espresso shot we’ve ever had — produced by the hands of barista savant, Sammy Piccolo. Pulled in 2003, [...]

Tags: barista_championships, caffe_artigiano, coffee_chains, intelligentsia, sammy_piccolo, Starbucks, third_wave

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Has it really been a couple weeks since our last third wave rant? A few years after we thought this topic was dead and buried, lately newbie third wave coffee articles have been cropping up in local newspapers like teenage vampire profiteers. London, Oakland, and now Vancouver: Indie cafés perfectly poised to quench coffee aficionados’ [...]

Tags: blue_bottle, cafe_cleanliness, coffee_chains, coffee_marketing, consistency, mom-and-pop-coffee, peets_coffee, quality_standards, ritual_roasters, sammy_piccolo, sf_cafes, Starbucks, third_wave, vancouver_cafes

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From yesterday’s Vancouver Sun, the praise is rolling in for Vancouver’s 49th Parallel Roasters, a new coffee destination established by Vince and Mike Piccolo (the former of Caffè Artigiano fame): Vancouver’s new cafe wins best coffee in region. Just don’t ask what Krups is doing as self-appointed tastemakers of good espresso via the annual Krups [...]

Tags: 49th_parallel, caffe_artigiano, milwaukee_cafes, sammy_piccolo, vancouver_cafes, vancouver_coffee

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No, I’m not slated as the latest guest movie reviewer for TV’s Ebert & Roeper. (Though I would love to be backstage to witness Robert Roeper tell his guests, “My show. Got that? It’s my show now!”) But last night, KQED aired a coffee-crisis-themed documentary for PBS’s “Indepedent Lens,” titled Black Gold: Independent Lens . [...]

Tags: barista_championships, big_four_coffee, black_gold, caffe_artigiano, coffee_tv, ethiopian_coffee, fair_trade, sammy_piccolo, Starbucks

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It’s no secret that I generally disdain superautomated espresso machines (myself and Howard Schultz apparently included) and the convenience-step-forward/quality-step-backwards home pod machines. So you may get the (false) impression that, when it comes to coffee, I am an anti-technology Luddite. While I have never placed PID temperature controllers on the group of my home machine [...]

Tags: coffee_pods, coffee_roasters, coffee_tech, espresso_machines, home_espresso, sammy_piccolo, scaa, superautomatic_espresso_machines

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Speaking of Nick Cho recently… Last Fall, Nick won the Southeast Regional Barista Competition (the press always wants to say “Championship”, but it’s “Competition” at the regionals). Congratulations, Nick. (No, seriously!) This means that Nick is headed down to Long Beach, CA to compete for the national title at the SCAA’s 19th Annual Conference & [...]

Tags: Barista, barista_championships, krups, nick_cho, sammy_piccolo, scaa, superautomatic_espresso_machines

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Today the WestEnder of Vancouver, Canada posted an article on one of my favorite baristas in the world, Sammy Piccolo: Canada’s quest for coffee supremacy. Sammy has made some of the best espresso I’ve ever had in North America … if not the world. Back in 2000, along with his brothers Vince and Michael, he [...]

Tags: Barista, barista_championships, caffe_artigiano, intelligentsia, sammy_piccolo

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