Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Jeremy Tooker, co-founder of Ritual Roasters, had a bit of a falling out with Ritual’s co-owner, Eileen, and he’s pursued his own vision of a quality coffee business in Four Barrel Coffee: no Wi-Fi, no squatting start-ups that can’t pony up rent, just no-frills retail coffee plus a roasting and distribution operation. We admire the [...]

Today the SF Chronicle posted an impressively long article on the state of quality coffee roasting in the Bay Area: ROAST WITH THE MOST / A new generation of Bay Area coffee roasters pushes the perfect cup to the next level. It’s a remarkable piece, given its breadth. It lightly touches on everything from the [...]

Tacoma’s The News Tribune published an unusually lengthy bio piece today on Stumptown Coffee Roasters owner and founder, Duane Sorenson: Coffee’s benevolent Mr. Bean | TheNewsTribune.com | Tacoma, WA. One of the big, early supporters of SF’s Ritual Coffee Roasters, Duane is quite a famous character in the industry. Among many other things, the article [...]

As Stumptown Coffee Roasters plans to invade Seattle, today’s Seattle Weekly published an amusing letter of distress from a reader concerned about the coming potential clash of Northwest espresso cultures: Uptight Seattleite: Why This Unfair Prejudice Against Skateboarders? (Seattle Weekly). The writer also categorizes the local shot pullers in two distinct families: The Starbucks family, [...]

According to today’s Seattle Times, Stumptown Coffee Roasters — who were instrumental to putting SF’s Ritual Coffee Roasters on the map — are opening up a location in Seattle: Business & Technology | Portland’s Stumptown Coffee Roasters coming to Seattle | Seattle Times Newspaper. With Stumptown adding to Seattle’s coffee riches, and Intelligentsia recently opening [...]

This week Willamette Week (Portland, OR) reported on a new coffee maker — one that has been getting a ton of buzz in coffee aficionado circles — now in use at Portland’s Stumptown: Willamette Week Online | Post: ‘Holy Platinum Percolators! Stumptown’s $11,000 coffee makers’. Made by Clover of Seattle, the uniqueness of its design [...]

Decaffeinated coffee was once treated a lot like robusta: as some kind of crude, faux coffee that caters to consumers with the misfortune of a biological defect. But just as high-quality, expertly prepared robusta beans started appearing on the market from places such as India (for blending into quality roasts for espresso, etc.), decaf coffee [...]

Today’s Lawrence Journal-World (Kansas) features an article on the El Salvador Cup of Excellence competition: Coffee connoisseur | LJWorld.com. The competition enables growers to set aside their best beans and submit them for judging — ultimately in the hope of attaining a top auction prices offered by roasters. By selling premium beans directly to roasters, [...]

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 [...]

It took a moment for me to dig up an online version, but here it is. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the March 2006 issue of Food & Wine Magazine has a special report on coffee: An Obsessive’s Guide to Coffee | Food & Wine. The editors apparently “spent 410 man-hours tasting 157 coffees [...]