October 2018

Sandy Bledsoe is the Dungeon Master—his actual title—at Coral Sword, Houston’s premier board game Twitch stream specialty coffee bar. He’s also the co-inventor of a wallet that may just be the perfect solution for coffee professionals. Called the Wallaby, it’s capable of carrying your cards, some cash, a cupping spoon, and houses a customizable notebook for all of your cupping notes, coffee musings, and—for retail managers—milk orders.

Bledsoe and business partner Alex Pagliere launched a Kickstarter campaign this month and are halfway through funding the campaign with over $11,000 pledged as of press time. Just $15 will get you two Joeys, and $22 will get you two Wallabies right now on Kickstarter. We spoke with Bledsoe digitally to learn more about the project.

How did this project get started? Who is involved?

Our first product, The Wallaby, was born in the Greenlake neighborhood of Seattle four years ago while I was visiting my dear friend (and now business partner) Alex Pagliere. I had been using the back pocket of a Moleskine notebook as my wallet, but the pocket had come apart and my stuff kept falling out. I was fed up. I turned to Alex and said something like, “Why can’t the pocket in this thing actually hold my stuff?” He’s a design person, so he jumped up and started carving up a cereal box with his X-Acto knife, and then we stapled in the guts of my cannibalized Moleskine. That cereal box prototype was a hit when I showed it to people; some friends even tried to buy it from me. That’s really how The Wallaby was born.

How has the product evolved over the years?

The overall design hasn’t changed very much since the original cereal box prototype, though we replaced the original name “CR Brand Signature Pocketbook Wallet” with “Wallaby”. We retired the X-acto knife and started die cutting the covers, which are now made from a fiber-reinforced paper that behaves and wears a lot like leather. The paper that we selected for the interior pages is the right balance between bleed-resistance and thickness so you can actually use both sides of the page but without unnecessary bulk. We use a faint dot grid pattern that’s really the best of lined, grid and blank paper. We’ve focused on elegance, toughness, and utilitarianism. You could call it concise—more with less. We’ve also introduced a smaller size, called The Joey, which is still a wallet and a notebook, but slightly smaller than a deck of playing cards. Perhaps the most exciting change we’ve made recently is an environmental partnership that allows us to plant a tree for every notebook that we sell.

Tell me more about the Kickstarter campaign.

Alex and I have had other jobs and other businesses over the years that have kept us from really focusing on CR Brand. We’d talk frequently about getting things rolling, but it wasn’t until Hunter Pence, my business partner at Coral Sword, invited the business and marketing wizard Gary Vaynerchuk onto our Twitch stream, where Hunter brought the product to Gary’s attention. It was actually after getting some positive feedback from them that I called Alex and said “We HAVE to do this!” The next day I was talking at the cafe with a customer named Van, who happened to be a cinematographer and social marketer, and he jumped at the opportunity to work with us to get a Kickstarter campaign off the ground. The campaign ends at the end of October and folks can expect to have their rewards before the end of the year. We’re hoping to raise $25,000, build up our e-mail newsletter, and help some people get organized in their lives through our product.

You’re the Dungeon Master at Coral Sword—what does that entail?

Coral Sword is (to my knowledge) the first board game cafe in Houston. We serve coffee, tea, beer, wine, and some simple gamer grub. We have a library of free-to-play board games, with titles like Battleship, Connect Four, Catan and Cards Against Humanity, and many many more. I am blessed with wonderful business partners Hunter and Alexis Pence, Ming Chen, and Greenway Coffee. On the worst days at work I unclog toilets and solve problems like “why is _______ broken/leaking/missing.” On the best days I get to make guests and staff feel recognized and special, and I get to watch people make wonderful memories in the cafe with people that they care about. My favorite thing about the service industry has always been the tremendous power that we have to make someone’s day. I want to say it was David Schomer (quoting Randy Pausch) who introduced me to the idea that, “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you expected.” I think of my job (in any environment really) as constantly trying to improve the experience of everyone involved.

An early version of the wallet.

Have you used your notebook for coffee purposes?

First of all, everything I do is for coffee purposes (lol). Maxwell Mooney was the first person to use our product for cupping notes while green buying. But David Buehrer was the first person to realize you can use a Wallaby to hold a cupping spoon while you write cupping notes. Several folks have also used a Wallaby to journal and take notes at origin, but also just while traveling in general. In fact, that has been one of the happiest surprises since undertaking this project—seeing the clever and amazing ways that people use our creation has been inspiring.

What’s next for CR Brand?

The Wallaby and The Joey serve a pretty awesome community of people, who (like ourselves) are focused on self-reflection and self-improvement, as well as documenting the many splendors of life. We had no idea what these folks would do with our products, but now we get to watch people hack and modify them, and I love hearing things like “I use this to take notes in my EMT class” or “I use this to practice Katakana.” We want to continue nurturing and listening to that community and seeing what people do with our products and what they use our products to achieve. I’m turning 35 this first week of October. The business started as an open excuse to stay close with a good friend as we grew older and grew physically apart. The possibility that what we’ve created might help someone else do something so meaningful in their own life is incredible. AND we get to plant trees because of it? Come on.

Thank you!

Photos courtesy Sandy Bledsoe.

The post We Found The Perfect Wallet For Coffee Folks appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Bad news for anyone running a cafe with a no kids policy, as coffee—the very thing they love over all else—appears to be conspiring against them in a very Longshanksian way. A new study from the National Institute of Health suggests that men who drink at least two cups of coffee a day are twice as likely to get their partners pregnant.

According to the Telegraph, the study took a look at 500 couples trying to conceive and found that the male participants who consumed two or more cups of coffee each day the week before the couple had sex had double the chance of conceiving. Dr. Sunni Mumford, the lead author of the survey, states:

We were somewhat surprised by the results though the research on male caffeine intake and its effects on fertility is pretty mixed.

These results highlight the importance of lifestyle factors in both male and female partners during sensitive windows of reproduction to influence fecundability, and the need for appropriate preconception guidance for couples seeking pregnancy.

The results fly in the face of previous research on the topic that suggests caffeine in fact decreases male fertility by “possibly damaging the sperm DNA,” leading to a lower sperm count. Professor Sheena Lewis of Queens University in Belfast offers up one possible explanation involving caffeine’s effects on adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and guanosine triphosphate (GTP):

Caffeine prevents these chemicals from breaking down so more energy is available to cells including sperm so they can swim faster or longer.

Professor Lewis goes on to note that, were this explanation to be the case, it would be good news for men with fertility issues “because lots of infertility is caused by sperm that are poor swimmers.”

Now, I’m no doctor, but it stands to reason that caffeine could have both positive and negative effects. It could at the same time decrease the total sperm count while supercharging ones that remain; it only takes one little swimmer juiced up on 12 shots of espresso, you know?

Nonetheless, many of the reproductive experts the Telegraph spoke to for the article remain unconvinced by the findings. The prevailing thought in the face of this new study is if your partner is trying to conceive, when it comes to caffeine, don’t change what you are doing just yet. What they do know is this: don’t smoke and don’t drink to excess. Coffee? Maybe.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

Top image via Ubisafe.

The post New Study Suggests Coffee Doubles The Chances Of Fatherhood appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

There are so many exciting homegrown coffee festivals happening in Europe right now it’ll make your head spin. Glasgow, Ljubljana, Tehran, there’s an exciting new breed of festivals for locals worldwide (to speak nothing of the larger, Allegra-organized events in London, Madrid, Amsterdam, and Milan). No list of international coffee festivals is complete with out Prague. Now in its seventh year, the Prague Coffee Festival is a weekend full of lectures, workshops, and of course, tons of coffee.

Taking place October 20th and 21st at the Prague Market, this year’s festival includes over 50 Czech and international roasters and cafes working either the brew bar or espresso bar (or in some cases, both), including notables like: La Cabra (Denmark), Origin Coffee (UK), EMA Espresso Bar (Czech Republic), and Double B (Russia).

Along with tasting coffee, the Prague Coffee Festival invited attendees to a host of discussions and workshops. Expect to find a range of lecture topics, from “Good coffee hunting: tips and tricks for enjoying specialty coffee in 2018” to the headier “Mechanisms of resistance of the genus Coffea” as well as a “Physiotherapy for baristas” session. And for those looking to get more hands-on, workshops on cupping, making coffee at home for a variety of brew methods, sensory training, and even a “coffee cosmetics” are all available. Workshops (as well as cuppings) do require a registration through the Prague Coffee Festival website, so make sure you get signed up in advance.

Tickets for the Prague Coffee Festival are 399 Kč (roughly $18 USD) and can be purchased through the website. Saturday has already sold out, so snag your Sunday tickets now before they are all gone. For a full roster of roasters and events, visit the Prague Coffee Festival’s official website.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

Top image via the Prague Coffee Festival

The post The Prague Coffee Festival Is This Weekend appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

A few short days ago we were given an extraordinary opportunity here at Sprudge. Leading members of the Brazilian coffee community, including coffee producers, cafe owners, journalists and activists, have authored an open letter stating their ardent opposition to the presidential candidacy of Jair Bolsonaro, a Brazilian politician commonly referred to as far-right, ultra-conservative, fascist, misogynist, and homophobic.

In consultation with our editorial advisory board, and in advance of the international coffee community’s upcoming travel to Brazil for Brazil International Coffee Week, we’ve decided to publish their letter in full. It includes a link to the community’s petition via Change.org (text in Portuguese).

Please note that it is Sprudge’s policy not to endorse any individual political candidate or party. The views represented in this open letter do not necessarily reflect the opinions of our owners, staff, editorial advisory board, or advertising partners. For additional context, the authors of the letter below recommend recent reporting from the BBC and John Oliver’s weekly news program on HBO, Last Week Tonight.

Coffee for Democracy

An Open Letter From Brazil’s Coffee Community

In times of turmoil we, professionals involved in the specialty coffee chain throughout Brazil, find ourselves with no other alternative than taking a stand and stating our commitment to democracy.

The specialty coffee chain, mostly made up of small- and medium-sized producers and companies, symbolizes a future that considers the environmental impact of food production, fair remuneration for producers, as well as respect and promotion of equality and social safety nets for coffee workers. Herein, we exercise the democratic right to oppose the proposals of the candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who in our understanding disseminates hatred and intolerance, going against the basic principles that we understand as pillars of our community. We would be overlooking if we did not stand by people of color and LGBTQ+, many of whom are members of our community as workers and/or customers, at a time when their lives are being threatened. 

We know that we are not alone, both in Brazil and globally. In a recent episode, Sprudge was opposed to doing media coverage for an international event that would be based in a country with homophobic legislation. Part of such event was eventually transferred to Brazil.

To summarize, we believe:

– In the respect for the CLT (Consolidation of Labor Laws) and its acquired and strengthened labor rights.

– In equal conditions and rights for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, and economic conditions.

– In a fair production chain, committed to sustainable development, respect for the environment, and guided by the principles of human dignity and appropriate salaries, thus ensuring better living conditions for all involved in the production of specialty coffee.

Finally, we have the belief that cafes are spaces for dialogue and debate of ideas, thus we need to preserve them. This becomes more difficult if the context in which the cafes are inserted is undemocratic and averse to dialogue. We know, from recent historic events, that authoritarian government projects do not tolerate the free circulation of ideas, one of the bases of democracy: the untouchable right to be opposition with freedom of expression.

With these principles in mind, we believe that the presidential candidate Professor Fernando Haddad is the only one with who we share a shared vision of the future.

Authoritarianism makes everyone’s cup bitter. 

Some Coffee shops/roasteries that signed this letter are below. The full list can be seen at the Change.org petition. 

Takkø Café  – São Paulo

Pura Caffeína – São Paulo

Oop – Belo Horizonte

King of the Fork – Sao Paulo

Objeto Encontrado – Brasília

Casa Quilha – Brasília

Café Secreto – Rio de Janeiro

Por um Punhado de Dólares – São Paulo

Yerba – São Paulo

Fora da Lei – São Paulo

4 Beans – Curitiba

HM Food Café – São Paulo

Futuro Refeitório – São Paulo

Café Magrí – Belo Horizonte

Los Baristas – Brasília

Isabela Raposeiras

Felipe Croce

Sensory Coffee Roasters – São Paulo

Urbici – Fortaleza

Bikebrew – Brasília

AHA! – Brasília

Seu Patrício Café – Brasília

Kaffa – Vitória

Hey Coffee – São Paulo

Portal Coffea – São Paulo

More information and an up-to-date list of signees is available at Change.org. 

All Brazil coverage on Sprudge. 

The post An Open Letter From The Brazilian Coffee Community appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

In the Northern Hemisphere, official fun-in-the-sun season is over. Yet some lucky autumnal gallivanters in the Netherlands are finding themselves at events with a parking spot reserved for Bitter & Real. After a busy summer, the electric mobile specialty coffee company that advocates “more coffee, less fossil fuel” is still on the road. Upcoming stops include Rotterdam’s creative lifestyle-outfitting Swan Market, Amsterdam’s annual jewelry fair, and a culinary disco bash in a Breda church.

It was at a food truck festival in Amsterdam’s Westerpark that Sprudge caught up with owners Laura van der Have and Minos Eigenheer. Amidst all the vying vehicles and victuals at Rollende Keuekens this past May, Bitter & Real stood out. Finished in matte indigo paint, the 1971 Citroën HY Van is haloed by a hand-drawn wood cutout of the brand’s name and logo—a lightning bolt striking a black demitasse.

Eigenheer and Van der Have

Van der Have and Eigenheer have been serving specialty coffee from the fully electric vehicle since fall 2015. They spent months refurbishing, essentially, a rusty cab and chassis after purchasing it secondhand from, in their words, “a Citroën old-timer freak” in Germany. Today, 300-kilo electric batteries get all three tons of it moving “90-ish kilometers per hour,” says Van der Have, who assures, “with the wind on your back, it can go up to 107.”

Li-ion batteries also power the equipment inside. That includes a Tetris-like arrangement of a two-group Kees van der Westen Spirit, a Victoria Arduino Mythos One grinder, a Mahlkönig EK43 grinder, a 3Temp one-group Hipster Brewer, a Marco Ecoboiler WMT5, as well as two fridges (to hold a couple hundred liters of milk, nitro cold brew, beer, and iced tea kegs), an oven to bake fresh sweets (rhubarb frangipane tartlets, anyone?), and a dishwasher.

To charge its batteries and run all the appliances, a single cord from within the vehicle can plug into some on-location power source. Additionally, 12m2 of solar panels line the roof, producing 1800 watt-peaks of solar energy—asked for a layperson’s equivalent, Van der Have estimates that “on a nice summer day that is enough to constantly use a hairdryer.”

Of the choice to use solar panels, she explains: “We wanted to be able to power all this coffee gear anywhere without taking a generator, so we can also function off-grid. And that’s what we often do for catering [at events] where a 400-volt phase power supply is not available.”

Indigenous to warm climates though they may seem, the couple met while snowboarding in Eigenheer’s native Switzerland. Before moving to the Netherlands, he had worked for Revita, a small company that designs water turbines. Van der Have started in the hospitality industry at age 15, at boutique hotel and restaurant Villa Augustus in Dordrecht. A 15-minute train ride from Rotterdam, the river-surrounded city is nowadays Bitter & Real’s headquarters. Van der Have’s parents have an estate there, which hosts their chicken coop, a garden yielding ingredients for their baked goods, and an old barn sheltering the parked truck and their Diedrich IR-12. Since January, they have been roasting their own line of coffees, providing for themselves, online customers, and, recently, Villa Augustus.

At a typical festival, five or six Bitter & Real staff work in two shifts, and up to five can simultaneously—and seemingly merrily—fit in the tight space. On a good day, they report selling 800 coffees. It is a compact, classy operation, but eco-friendly portability comes with concessions.

“Often at catering locations, there is no power outlet that can handle a Spirit and all the espresso bar gear without the help of a big battery bank with inverter,” says Van der Have. “During peak hours or while the espresso machine is warming up, we need about six times more energy, which gets drawn from the battery.”

Plus, it is “paper cups most of the time—we very much prefer using porcelain.” Still, she maintains: “We have sooo many people come to drink coffee that you wouldn’t have in a cafe.”

Bitter & Real have undoubtedly upped the standards in mobile coffee—this year all the more apparent with the brand’s freshly roasted beans onboard. However, that was not their explicit intention. Rather, it was “his sustainability vision and my coffee vision [that came] together in this van,” says Van der Have of their enterprise. And, she points out: “It was not that I really wanted to change festivals. We kinda rolled into it.”

Once autumn ends, “we have a semi-winter sleep,” she says, though admits that preparations for the upcoming summer never stop. An exciting project will be putting the finishing touches on their second electric vehicle creation, a 1984 Citroën ideal for hauling extra crew, supplies, and really, anything under the sun.

Karina Hof is a Sprudge staff writer based in Amsterdam. Read more Karina Hof on Sprudge. 

The post More Coffee, Less Fossil Fuel: Bitter & Real Is The Netherlands’ Eco-Coffee Truck appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

There isn’t any shortage of reusable coffee filters on the market today. For the AeroPress alone, there’s the DISK by the recently-acquired Able Brewing, Fellow’s PRISMO filter, the Altura MESH, and about a million different others on Amazon. But eschewing the over-capitalization trend, ameuus is adding its name to the crowded field. Going live on Kickstarter today, October 16th, the ameuus wants to be bring more clarity to the cup than other reusable filters on the market and are doing so with micron-level precision.

The idea behind the ameuus is simple: allow the coffee oils to make it into the cup—something paper filters is unable to do—all while keeping even the smallest coffee grounds from doing the same. And you know, being reusable. To do this, a filter needs really, really ridiculously small holes.

The stainless steel, ameuus filters come in two different varieties: the o1 and the o2. The hole size of the 01 filter has an “effective average” of 100 microns with a rough total of 10,000 per disc. Leading reusable filters already on the market have anywhere between 150 and 300 micron hole sizes, giving the o1 one of the smallest hole sizes out there.

Except for the o2. Using two complimentary stainless steel discs, the o2 has an effective average hole size of 30 microns, well below anything else out there. The almost 50,000 holes is one of the highest around as well.

And indeed, after making coffee using the ameuus and other leading filters, the amount of sediment that makes its way through to the cup is, according to the Kickstarter, notably less for the o1 and o2.

Currently, ameuus is offering backers a chance to get their very own o1 and o2 filters for the low, low prices of CA$10 ($7.70 USD) and CA$13 ($10 USD), respectively. This is assuming the campaign meets its funding goal, which set at a very low CA$1,500 ($1,154 USD), it’s safe to say they are going to blow right through that.

For more information on the o1 and o2, to see them in action, or to back the campaign, visit the ameuus Kickstarter page.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

All media via Ameuus

The post The Resuable Ameuus AeroPress Filter Is Mighty Fine appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

It’s really something to witness Chelsea’s distinguished Metropolitan Pavillion transform into a patchwork quilt of New York City’s finest coffee companies. This is our fourth year as media partners of the New York Coffee Festival, a younger sibling of the game-changing London Coffee Festival, which by all counts is one of the largest attended consumer-facing coffee events in the world. What surprises us most about the festival is its ability to keep surprising us—booths seem to up the ante each year with attention-grabbing and crowd-pleasing design and programming. It’s a thoughtful blend of experimental exhibitions, unexpected vendors, and tried-and-true events-within-events.

Here’s a collection of some of our favorite moments and details from the 2018 New York Coffee Festival.

T-Shirt Canons & Booth Design

For a moment on Saturday, La Marzocco USA and Variety Coffee Roasters—two prominently featured exhibitors at the event—took part in a heated t-shirt canon battle royale. Perhaps the first of its kind at a coffee tradeshow, the companies, each armed with compressors and canons, shot t-shirts to the crowd (and, reports suggest, each other). Projectiles aside, La Marzocco’s booth at the festival drew oohs and ahs all weekend long, featuring a vintage sports scoreboard theme and a live “shot counter”—each guest was invited to pull a shot of espresso, then entered to win a La Marzocco Linea Mini.

Vendors Large and Small

Roxanne Royce, the inventor of the BevBag (pictured left), exhibits with her mother at the New York Coffee Festival. The insulated bag holds four coffees in a reusable 3D-printed carrier. Royce invented the bag after experiencing the pitfalls of delivering coffees—namely the spills and the heat loss. The bag, Royce tells us, sells big with corporate clients and with folks on Amazon, where it holds a strong four-star rating. And while the fashion hits did not stop all weekend long, Mother Royce’s lewk was one of the very best at New York Coffee Festival.

Chai Marshmallows

There’s no shortage of snackables at the New York Coffee Festival, but our personal favorite was the chai-infused marshmallows on hand at the Dona Chai booth. Paired with their herbal ciders and chai-spiked hot cocoas, these lovely treats were like little cozy hugs in marshmallow form.

Pyschic Energy

Spiritual guide Angelina—practicing Palm, Tarot Card, and Crystal Readings in New York City for over 20 years—offered special readings for attendees all weekend long. “There’s a great energy here,” we were told by one of the many on hand at the booth. It’s great to see folks like Angelina at coffee festivals, and there was plenty of interest from attendees. Maybe we’ll see Angelina and their crew at the Specialty Coffee Expo in Boston?

Living Booths

The plant story was strong at the Sey Coffee booth over the weekend. Marco SP9s serving delightful coffees by co-owner Tobin Polk were practically hiding behind a wall of plant-life. Prominently placed at the entry to the show floor, and beautiful in its simplicity, this was a strong showing from the Bushwick based brand.

CBD Everything

We have entered (or perhaps about to enter) peak the age of cannabidiol-in-everything. Azuca, a New York-based company specializing in sweeteners infused with CBD and THC, are marketing the legal non-psychoactive CBD products to cocktail bars and coffee companies alike. We’re watching this space as we continue to see CBD show up as an upcharge on upscale cafe menus across the country.

Virtual Reality

Project Waterfall, a non-profit started by the festival’s founders, is a project aimed at providing clean drinking water to coffee-growing communities. The initiative is present at each festival, and this year guests were invited to put on VR-goggles and go on a virtual reality thrill-ride.

High Art

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“How You Brewin’?” Artist: Betsi Shelffo using pine, acrylic, coffee, and texture. @coffeeartproject @project_waterfall

A post shared by Sprudge (@sprudge) on Oct 12, 2018 at 12:57pm PDT

This piece of art, on display at the Coffee Festival’s Coffee Art Project competition, sold on the first day for what we believe was around $800.

Coffee Jewelry

While London Coffee Festival is paced by no-one when it comes to fashion-forward vendors (almost an entire floor is dedicated to attire and accessories), the NY Coffee Festival is catching up. That’s thanks to the help of jewerly-maker Anna Steinerová and her line of coffee-themed accessories Kaawa. Based in the Czech Republic, Kaawa has been specializing in coffee jewelry since 2013. These beautiful designs turned heads all weekend long.

Robots

The robots are still coming—and the pour-over robot du jour comes to the festival from the folks at Bubble Lab Robotics. The pour-over bot (Drip) is expected to come out in early 2019 (we were told March) and is going to retail for around $8,000. The booth also showcased an undercounter beverage delivery system (Drop) capable of supplying hot or cold beverages. A unit was positioned next to an espresso machine for cold milk delivery. This device is expected to run $3k and also expected to arrive March, 2019.

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Bubble Lab is here with their Drip pour-over robot and the Drop milk delivery system. We’re digging the milk delivery—think of all that milk waste you wouldn’t waste if a robot gave you exactly what you wanted, right?! Under the counter the milk was being fed out of an ordinary two gallon plastic container, no bladder necessary. Coming out maybe in March 2019. Robot around $8k Milk around $3k. @bubblelabrobotics

A post shared by Sprudge (@sprudge) on Oct 14, 2018 at 12:37pm PDT

Anthropomorphic Cold Brew

Buzzy and Spesh watch out, there’s a new anthropomorphic coffee in town. Variety Coffee Roasters debuted their fun-loving cold brew mascot, followed by a boombox toting man to provide the tunes with which to dance. It was an instant hit. People love mascots.

Fashion-Forward Exhibitors

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Everyone can go home now. Thanks for playing but @cameronxheath of @revelatorcoffee has won the New York Coffee Festival fashion contest.

A post shared by Sprudge (@sprudge) on Oct 14, 2018 at 10:11am PDT

Winning all of the awards for best-dressed, Revelator Coffee roaster Cameron Heath stunned in a purple suit ensemble, expertly matching the coffee on offer at the Trade booth. Revelator teamed up with Trade, a new e-commerce company that launched in April this year.

Here are a few runner-ups:

James McCarthy and Cora Lambert of Equator Coffees & Teas deliver espresso at the La Marzocco USA Basketball Booth in fashion-forward, function-friendly uniforms inspired by vintage mechanic wear.

An old-timey carnival barker challenges guests to a game of ring toss at the Toby’s Estate Coffee booth (the rings were tossed at portafilters).

For more from the fest, please check out @newyorkcoffeefestival on Instagram, and follow @Sprudge for live looks from the weekend. Up next: we’ll see you at the Los Angeles Coffee Festival November 9th—11th.

Disclosure: Sprudge Media Network is a media sponsor of the New York Coffee Festival.

The post 12 Incredible Moments From The 2018 New York Coffee Festival appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Farm-level efficiency has a sticking point in the coffee industry for some time now. Already battling against razor thin margins (that are only getting thinner), folks have come up with inventive ways to utilize all aspects of the coffee growing process in hopes of making it a profitable venture. In the past years, cascara has gone from byproduct to ubiquitous cafe beverage, one farm began collecting and selling honey from bees who solely pollenated coffee blossoms, and working with Terroir Chocolate, some producers have planted cocoa trees at lower elevations to be used for single origin bean-to-bar chocolate that includes coffee from the same farm.

And according to The Guardian, UK scientists thinking beyond coffee have created a fuel cell that not only removes contaminants from wastewater, but creates electricity in the process.

Funded by the UK government and led by the University of Surrey systems microbiologist Dr. Claudio Avignone Rossa, researchers from the UK worked with Colombian counterparts to create a biome-based fuel cell to create energy from the waste in water used during “the washing of coffee seeds, or beans, and during the water-intensive process of making instant coffee.” While coffee has been used as a biofuel before, the article notes that this is the first time it has created electricity.

The hungry little microbe pooping out power was originally found in the “sludge from wastewater treatment plants;” it just so happens to also be readily available on Colombian farms. “Supply is not a problem,” Dr. Avignone Rossa tells The Guardian.

Dr. Avignone Rossa goes on to note that the amount of power the fuel cells can produce isn’t staggering, the effects it can have are not insignificant either:

You’re not going to light up London with these things, but you’re going to put a light where there was none.

The farmer will be getting a little bit of energy coming from the waste they are throwing away. So the environment will be cleaner. The finances of the farm will be improved.

The size of a soda can, the original lab versions fuel cell cost £300-£500 to produce—due mostly the materials used—but that cost can be cut to less than £2 by using “ceramics and disposable plastic boxes” instead.

The new fuel cell is a double whammy: it’s eco-friendly and financially positive for producers, two big issues in the coffee world. And while their current electrical output is small, this is a pretty big first step toward easy and cheap access to power. It’s not like electric cars started out getting over 300 miles on a single charge; it took time, research, and interested parties. This fuel cell may prove to be more than just a building block. It may be a cornerstone.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

The post A New Fuel Cell Converts Coffee Wastewater Into Electricity appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

This Thursday, October 18^th, Seattle’s General Porpoise Pioneer Square location will host a night of discussion on what it means to be an underrepresented person in coffee. Titled Womxn In Coffee, the event will shed light on the “hardships and successes” folx—women, people of color, queer and non-binary individuals—have experienced while working in the coffee industry.

Created by Tatiana Benitez, a barista at General Porpoise and member of #CoffeeToo, Womxn In Coffee aims to “give a pedestal to all of the under represented folx in the industry” in order to “establish a stronger sense of community… and make it known to these marginalized groups that they do have support and they do have allies,” per the Facebook event page.

“I’ve been in the coffee industry for a bit over five years, and the community surrounding has always been super important to me. When I started working in smaller local cafes I realized that there was a lot more discrimination going on. As a woman of color in the industry I was often the target of some of these discriminations. Sexual harassment and discrimination are something that we all know happens in the industry, so why aren’t we talking about it? Why aren’t we giving these people a safe place to talk about their experiences?” Benitez tells Sprudge. “There have been a couple of other woman-in-coffee events in Seattle, and that’s good, but I just couldn’t help but notice that most of the time they focused on successful cis white woman. That’s why my event is more geared towards POC, queer, and non-binary folx.”

To that end, the event has lined up a panel of speakers from the Seattle coffee community to start the conversation about their shared experiences. The panel includes: Fabiola Sanchez (General Porpoise), Molly Flynn (#CoffeeToo, Broadcast Coffee), Rowan Alaka’ilenani Kapanui (Mr. West Cafe), Emily Chavez (Black Rabbit Service Co), and Radhika Kapur (Third Culture Coffee). At the conclusion of the panel, the floor will be opened for a Q&A session with the speakers.

“I think that if we start the conversation and start letting these people use their voice, then things can change,” Benitez states.

Food, beer, and wine—as well as some plant-based ice cream treats from Frankie and Jo’s—will be available for all attendees. Womxn In Coffee is free to attend, but they do ask you RSVP, which can be done here.

For more information about Womxn In Coffee or to read their code of conduct, visit their Facebook event page.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

All images via Womxn In Coffee

The post Womxn In Coffee: A Panel Discussion At Seattle’s General Porpoise appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Stop me if this sounds familiar.

“This coffee was grown in fertile soil, amid a lush landscape known for producing bright, fruity notes with a hint of chocolate. We believe in sustainability and transparency throughout the supply chain. Our team travels the world to responsibly source the best coffees, taste them, and carefully roast them for you. We partner with producers who practice traditional farming methods, but aren’t afraid to try new techniques.”

If you’ve read enough coffee roasters’ About pages and coffee descriptions, then all of this should sound familiar. This was not quoted from any one company; rather, it was a patchwork of keywords pulled from many companies’ websites.

Every coffee has a story, and anyone in marketing will tell you that stories sell. It’s even easier to sell when consumers recognize certain attributes without preemptive education, such as where the coffee was grown (place-based marketing) or any certification marks (e.g. Fair Trade). If I had told you the coffee was  Jamaican Blue Mountain or Kona, you’d likely have recognized the names and skipped the flavor notes. This is intellectual property (IP) at play.

This type of brand recognition is sometimes driven by a marketing campaign from the country’s government and other times, it’s a result of consumers associating certain characteristics with quality.

There is a wide range of how IP affects producers. It runs the gamut of creating a geographic indication (GI) for a specific region, developing a new variety and protecting it with plant breeders’ rights, and using certification trademarks like Rainforest Alliance. Much like the previous angle examinations of IP in this series, enforcement and laws vary by country.

Enveritas is a non-profit organization with a mission to create a sustainability verification platform for all coffee farmers through data and field assessments. COO and co-founder Carl Cervone echoes what we’ve all heard, that what makes a coffee interesting is the story behind it. Unfortunately, it’s a story often told by the buyer, and it can create a tricky loop. “On one hand, you want to bring the story to the public,” he says. But the story drives recognition and other importers become interested. “But on the other, it’s more difficult to buy it again the next year once you’ve created the buzz.”

Geographic indications (GIs) are one way for producers to collectively pursue IP protection. GIs give producers control over their story, which can be important in an industry that markets their faces and cultural assets without recognizing their original owners. Usually created for indigenous or historical products with distinctive flavor profiles—like Parmesan cheese—successful GI programs require robust organizational and institutional structures. Each country varies in its GI approach with some being government-funded and others producer-run.

Marshall Fuss, a California attorney specializing in the coffee industry, says that GI programs would be a great protection option for regional coffee producers. “The problem is that in so many regions, the farmers are poorer than winegrowers and winemakers, they are even poorer than cheesemakers,” says Fuss. “So it’s been very difficult for them. Personally, I’d be delighted to see them pursue geographical indication protection.”

One research study on IPR’s value in the coffee industry by Daphne Zografos Johnson of the World Intellectual Property Organization observed that consumer purchasing habits can influence a decision to pursue GIs programs and ethical certifications. Johnson wrote, “These emerging tendencies offer producers opportunities to pursue strategies independent of commodity pricing at the exchanges, and to capture value by asking for higher prices for better quality coffee, and more sustainable cultivation and trade practices.”

To examine this further, we can take a look at Indonesia, where the first GI was domestically registered in December 2008. The pilot project of Kintamani Bali Arabica coffee began in 2002 and led the way for the 13 coffee GIs now registered in the country. One 2009 study (PDF), published by Surip Mawardi from the Indonesian Coffee and Cocoa Research Institute, examined the region’s success by looking at the farmgate price.  These prices paid to producers on the farm, excluding any export or transport fees, increased from US$0.80 per kilogram in 2002 to US$3.30 per kilogram in 2008. In addition, infrastructure and the local economy improved.

In a research article published in the Journal of Rural Studies a few months ago on this topic, Dr. Jeffrey Neilson and team argue that producers in Indonesia are not seeing the value of GIs reflected back to them. They wrote, “As a largely technocratic intervention, imported from Europe and implemented as an elite driven project, the GIs are yet to deliver economic benefits to coffee producers in Indonesia.”

So if producers aren’t earning more, then who does GI really benefit?

I posed a question about the Gayo, Indonesia GI program’s success and producer benefits to Hadiyan Ibrahim, General Secretary of Yayasan Masyarakat Perlindungan Kopi Gayo (Gayo Coffee Protection Society Foundation). Ibrahim said that while the quality has improved, the price has only remained more stable with no changes. The most direct benefit to producers has been “the traceability protection to make sure the originality of coffee.”

Indonesia is certainly not a case study for the world, and its GI programs’ successes vary even by region. But one item that GIs protect is the immeasurable sense of ownership and nationalist pride in their work. As Neilson writes, the producing countries’ interests “need to politically engage with the moral legitimacy of roasters and cafe owners to use place names and cultural property without acknowledging producer claims of ownership.” In other words, if roasters truly believe in contributing to a sustainable coffee chain, there’s certainly more work that can be done in telling the right story with the right words.

And while some countries like Indonesia and Vietnam go with a top-down geographic indication approach, other countries prefer something more decentralized. Trademarking a name of a farm or region may prove to be more useful.

Because GIs require characteristics within the region to be similar and that much of the coffee is produced on smallholder farms, Ethiopia opted for trademarking the region names themselves. This strategy received opposition from the National Coffee Association and Starbucks in 2006, contending that the country’s trademark application should be rejected based on how common the region names had become. Starbucks later caved to public pressure.

One study by Heran Sereke-Brhan, published in Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, looked at Ethiopia’s strategy and concluded that it was a success. Sereke-Brhan noted that trademarks like Sidamo, Harar/Harrar, and Yirgacheffe were registered in 30 countries, and over 80 countries had committed to being licensed distributors. The researchers extrapolated the success, predicting it would set a precedence for African cultural goods. They wrote, “Even beyond coffee, the general premise holds that African countries have the capacity to generate intellectual property assets that can then be harnessed to meet development needs.” When the producers and creative makers have control over their “story,” it’s when IP “favorably shifts the position… to capture an increased portion of retail price for their goods.”

Another IP consideration that directly affects farmers is the development of new plant varieties. “Creating a new coffee variety using traditional methods takes 30 years,” says Hanna Neuschwander, Communications Director of World Coffee Research (WCR). Combined with issues like climate change, diseases like rust, and subsequent labor problems, the work can’t stop. She says, “You have to be doing that work continuously, you can’t wait until the crisis hits to start doing it.” Breeders’ rights give the creator control over how the variety is distributed, but they also require you to make it available for other breeders to use for research.

One of the goals of World Coffee Research is to collaboratively work with countries on variety development. In a search for new coffee varieties filed in the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) database, Neuschwander found only 36 for plant breeders’ rights.

One of the barriers to variety development is that there is no professionalized seed sector for coffee, says Neuschwander. A seed sector, or formalized industry, will give you assurance that the seed you purchased is the correct one and support the cycle of research that is needed to produce the seed. The sector would also work to market their seeds to the farmers that will purchase them. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you have a great variety if farmers don’t have access to it.

There is also currently no protection for seed quality, which can negatively affect farmers. Imagine being told you have a rust-resistant variety and later finding out that that was false. WCR often receives requests for help in identifying varieties. “At least half the time it’s not what they think it is because they just got it from a neighbor or they bought the land and someone told them that’s what it was,” she says. One resource that may become helpful is the World Coffee Research-produced  Variety Catalog, filled with breeder information, agronomics data, and photos.

When asked about what he thought would be the biggest impact of sustaining the industry at the farm level, Enveritas’ Cervone noted that it came down to understanding what’s unique about a place or processing method. “To go beyond large estates, it’ll require a lot of cooperation among farmers,” he says. “It also comes down to producers listening closely to the market to recognize what is unique and what is valuable.”

Neuschwander was more stark, emphasizing a need to invest in farmers and research. She says, “Sometimes people either forget or not have full clarity on the fact that coffee is agriculture and farmers have to have the tools, resources, and knowledge that they need to support the work that they do.”

When we’re far removed from the source, we don’t think about things like plant breeders’ rights or geographic indications. Naming the region is something everyone does. But if you’re using a story to sell your coffee without acknowledging any rights of farmers, are you really supporting the coffee value chain or are you just participating in a colonialist structure?

Intellectual property is varied and complicated. Cafe designs, logos, and concepts are easily duplicated across international borders, often leaving the original creator helpless to pursue. Social media access has only fueled faster copycat manufacturers. For producers, their stories and customs are often retold into bite-sized, glorified material. And for those who have the power and resources, our job in the industry is to recognize who owns the story rights and reallocate some of that power to them. We can surely refocus some of our energy from developing another brewer to truly sustaining the industry for the next generation.

Jenn Chen (@TheJennChen) is a San Francisco–based coffee marketer, writer, and photographer. Read more Jenn Chen on Sprudge.

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Source: Coffee News