Tag Archive 'strada'

Trip Report: Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters

Posted by TheShot on 25 Nov 2012 | Filed under: Café Society, Home Brew, Local Brew, Machine, Roasting

Trish Rothgeb and Nick Cho are coffee notables from the Northwest and D.C. area, respectively, and they’ve combined forces in recent years as the roasting/brewing partnership behind Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters. Nearly seven years ago on this Web site, Trish and Nick became a rather infamous pairing ever since Trish was first credited with coining [...]

Trip Report: Verve Coffee Roasters (downtown Santa Cruz, CA)

Posted by TheShot on 03 Jun 2012 | Filed under: Foreign Brew, Local Brew, Roasting

Opening around Thanksgiving of 2011, this downtown location of Verve clearly ups the design aesthetics and sends a signal across the street of the venerable Lulu Carpenters. If only the coffee service could live up to everything else promised by visual pageantry here. It’s a beautiful, open space with a prime location. A former curiosity [...]

Trip Report: Coffee Bar (Financial District)

Posted by TheShot on 11 Feb 2012 | Filed under: Local Brew, Machine

Opening in October 2011, this new location of the Mission/Potrero Hill’s Coffee Bar expands their reach downtown to something you can actually walk to. The space is small and can get quite packed in a rush, but it’s clean, well-lit, and has a lab-like feel with its white countertops and lower cabinets. They offer no [...]

Trip Report: Stumptown Coffee Roasters (Downtown, Portland, OR)

Posted by TheShot on 29 Jul 2011 | Filed under: Café Society, Foreign Brew, Machine, Roasting

Shockingly, it’s taken us this long to make it to Portland, Oregon — considered by many to be ground zero (no café name pun intended) of American coffee culture. And if you’re going to start sampling the offerings in Portland, it only makes sense that you start with the legendary Stumptown Coffee Roasters. This despite [...]

Too much of a good thing? Today’s conventional coffee wisdom says “more is more”

Posted by TheShot on 11 Aug 2010 | Filed under: Barista, Machine, Quality Issues

Today Tim Wendelboe — World-Barista-Champion-turned-microroaster (and major influencer of the recently reviewed Espresso Lab Microroasters) — posted a rather thorough first-thoughts review of the new La Marzocco Strada on his official blog: Tim Wendelboe » Blog Archive » La Marzocco Strada – first thoughts. Of particular interest are some of his insights about the machine’s [...]

The gadgetization of coffee: coffee’s real fourth wave?

Posted by TheShot on 10 Jun 2010 | Filed under: Consumer Trends, Machine

Two curious, seemingly unrelated posts appeared simultaneously in the news yesterday. One on La Marzocco‘s new Strada machine and all its variable-pressure-control glory: Ristretto | Strada – T Magazine Blog – NYTimes.com. The other, Esquire installment #3 from Todd Carmichael, about the ridiculous MSRP/retail prices for professional espresso machines and what most people in the [...]