Coffee

In July, Intelligentsia teamed up with Root Capital to put on the first-ever ECWx, an offshoot of the coffee company’s Extraordinary Coffee Workshop (ECW). Longtime readers of Sprudge may recognize that acronym; the weeklong “signature innovation” of Intelligentsia’s Direct Trade takes place yearly in producing countries all around the world, and we have been covering it since 2011. ECWx, the TEDx to ECW’s TED, as Intelligentsia’s Michael Sheridan calls it in his most recent blog post, took place in Nariño, Colombia and focused on issues relevant to local smallholder farmers with a “deep-dive on all things Colombian.”

Now in its 10^th year, ECW wanted to do something a little different in scope, something smaller. Thus, ECWx was born. According to the Sheridan’s post, “ECWx was created explicitly and exclusively for smallholder coffee farmers.”

With the help of Root Capital, “a non-profit financial services provider”—whom Sheridan refers to as the Apple of non-profits—Intelligentsia is hoping to help those in the “missing middle,” those too big for micro-finance loans but too small or risky for commercial banks. According to the post, coffee coops and other coffee-based institutions at origin fall in the missing middle, a billion-dollar segment that is “systematically underserved.”

Expect to see more local-focused ECWx events from Intelligentsia in the future. Next month, ECW will land in Bolivia, where more than 50 producers from 15 countries will be in attendance. For more information on the inaugural ECWx, Michael Sheridan’s full blog post can be found here. And be sure to check out the ECWx in Pictures, a photo-journal recap of the week’s events.

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 Intelligentsia Coffee.

Disclosure: Intelligentsia Coffee is an advertising partner on Sprudge Media Network.

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Source: Coffee News

Boone, North Carolina, named for pioneer Daniel Boone, is like a smaller version of nearby Asheville, tucked in the Appalachian Mountains. Here, the focus of nearly every business is local and sustainable. Boone’s population is mostly students of Appalachian State University, and also includes some seasonal and year-round residents, all of whom lend the area a distinct funkiness.

Every college town needs a coffee roaster to caffeinate its masses, but Hatchet isn’t exactly what you’d expect. Located in an unassuming warehouse on the way to Rocky Knob Park, Hatchet shares space with Center 45, an indoor climbing gym. This is just one indicator of what type of customers Hatchet serves: lovers of adventure.

Opened by friends Jeremy Bollman and Jeremy Parnell nearly two years ago, Hatchet’s menu is both expansive, with options like nitro cold brew, and approachable. Every drink is $4 and under.

In the spirit of collaboration, they carry pastries from local bakeries, including Stick Boy, Mountain Flower, and Brays. Their coffee is used by local breweries like Booneshine, Appalachian Mountain Brewing, and Lost Province, as well as local restaurants and coffee shops. And Hatchet is a mainstay at local bike races and bouldering competitions.

Bollman and Parnell met while working at Stick Boy in 2013, when they dreamed of bringing a West Coast-style roaster to their beloved town. Parnell moved to Boone in 2009 to attend Appalachian State. “I spent most of my time roaming the remote hills of Appalachia in search of boulders,” he says of his time at school and then-new love of rock climbing. “And that’s when I truly fell in love with Boone and knew that I wanted a career here.”

Thanks to trial and error and software like Cropster, Bollman and Parnell figured out what they needed to run a roastery. The team purchased a roaster from Chattanooga’s Velo Coffee Roasters before eventually going in on a Mill City 20K. They buy most of their green coffee through Cafe Imports, Keffa Coffee, and Dos Niñas. The Hatchet coffee bar includes a La Marzocco Linea EE, and its menu includes craft coffee drinks inspired by the seasons as well as other “craft” industries, like beer and spirits.

Their decision to purchase a small roaster added them to an already crowded market of local roasteries. “I think there were around five by the time we started but we both felt like there was room for one more,” Parnell says. “Our approach to roasting coffee was going to be different enough that we knew there would be a portion of the market to support us.”

The name Hatchet reflects a love of Boone’s surroundings. “We very much wanted a brand that reflected the outdoors that we love,” Parnell says. “With that, we wanted a symbol that would be easily recognizable and relatable to those who also love the outdoors, and we felt that a hatchet truly embodied that.”

Like the tool itself, the roastery’s ideal is to be simple in design and function. It represents hard work, independence, and quality. Hatchet is, after all, where you stop by before an adventure in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

This is Caroline Eubanks first article for Sprudge.

All photos courtesy of Jeremy Parnell, used with permission. 

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Source: Coffee News

The coffee supply chain is something many people in specialty think about and interact with on a regular basis. But it isn’t necessarily something those outside of coffee have really given much thought to. For all they know, coffee starts over there and ends up over here and everyone is paid fairly along the way (that’s why coffee is so expensive nowadays, right?). As many start to think more globally, though, an interest in the coffee supply chain—and its impact on everyone involved—is coming more into focus for those who want to know where their food comes from. That’s why World Affairs is hosting CONNECT with COFFEE later this month in San Francisco. Featuring Equator Coffees & Teas Director of Coffee Ted Stachura, CONNECT with COFFEE will break down the coffee supply chain and ways consumers can have a positive impact on those producing their favorite beverage.

Taking place Friday, August 24^th at the World Affairs Auditorium, CONNECT with COFFEE is just one of over 100 yearly events put on by World Affairs, a non-profit organization that brings together “thought leaders, changemakers, and engaged citizens to share ideas, learn from each other, and effect change through in-person experiences,” per Julia Levin, World Affairs’ Program Officer. Past speakers have included, authors, filmmakers, and former US ambassadors Mike McFaul and Samantha Power.

Now, World Affairs is turning their attention to coffee, a natural fit according to Levin:

That’s why they have invited Stachura to a special morning session to discuss the supply chain as well as Equator’s “chain of well-being,” which “drives their business philosophy and values the stakeholders in both communities with respect for the people, the process, and the product,” per the event page. Along with discussing the complexities of how your morning cup makes it halfway around the world to you and all the those affected along the way, Stachura will also be bringing some Equator coffee for attendees to enjoy and he may just provide a few tips on how to make a better cup at home.

CONNECT with COFFEE gets starts promptly at 9:00am on August 24^th. It is free to attend for all World Affairs members and guests and $5 for non-members. Tickets are available for purchase here. For more information on CONNECT with COFFEE or any of World Affairs’ upcoming programming, visit their official site.

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 World Affairs.

Disclosure: Equator Coffees is an advertising partner on Sprudge Media Network.

The post San Francisco: World Affairs Wants You To Connect With Coffee appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Stop me if you’ve heard us say this before, but good coffee can be found anywhere nowadays. In 2018, places like Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and Portland have thriving coffee scenes sure, but that’s not the full story anymore, not even by a long shot. Now there’s just as much excitement around a new cafe in a city of 50,000 as there is a city with a few more zeros tacked on to the population. And our next stop is one of the former.

Mural City Coffee Company is the newest edition to a revitalizing downtown Dothan, Alabama, population: 60,000. They are setting up shop (and home) in the nearly century-old three-story building, where they are hoping to become a community gathering space for customers of all ilk. Good coffee, a community library, and an old freight elevator, Mural City Coffee wants to be Dothan’s home away from home… but also the owner’s home not away from home.

As told to Sprudge by Destiny Hosmer.

For those who aren’t familiar, will you tell us about your company?

Mural City Coffee Company is a family-owned and operated roastery, tea bar, and espresso bar located in the heart of Historic Downtown Dothan, Alabama. Mural City Coffee Co. was created with our community, local art and culture, and redeveloping downtown in mind. From the very beginning, we wanted to create a space where everyone feels welcome and has the opportunity to appreciate the finer things in life… like art, music, debate, friendship, scholarship, history, or just a fantastic cup of coffee or tea.

We began this journey with a passion for good coffee, a serious interest in tea, and a mutual desire to better our downtown. Almost two years (and a lot of elbow grease) later, our vision is finally coming to life. We cannot wait to open in the fall, and we hope that our space becomes a home away from home for everyone that stops in.

Can you tell us a bit about the new space?

Our first and only location will be housed in the heart of our redeveloping downtown. Mural City Coffee Co. is currently taking root in a 95-year-old, 15,000-sq-ft brick building with a long history of farm equipment and electronics. The cafe and roastery will be located on the first two floors of the three story building; the owners of the shop will reside on the third story.

After nearly two years of renovations and repairs, we have found paint-stained floors, dirty magazines from the 70s, checks written out for just a few dollars, and so much more.

One of our goals in renovating this space was preservation. We tried to reuse, recycle, and restore as many of the original qualities of the building as we could. We opened up a walk-in safe that was sealed shut due to water damage, and we plan to use that as our little community library. We also reused wooden shelving found on the third floor to create our bar-tops on the second floor, and we re-purposed an old door into a meeting table for customers to enjoy. The list goes on, but you’d just have to see it all for yourself!

One of the coolest (and arguably most useful) historical features of the building is a 17-foot freight-elevator located in the back. We have used this original, pulley-operated Otis elevator for everything from our coffee equipment and beans to our furniture for the shop (and sometimes just to take joy rides to the bathroom).

As for decor, we have so much funky, vintage furniture that we have found over the years through one of our other loves: thrift and antique shopping! We have quirky arm-chairs, lava tables, several comfy couches, and two working vintage fireplaces.

All in all, we are in awe of the craftsmanship and history behind our new home, and we hope to inspire other “normal” people to take a chance at restoring a historic building, or even simply doing what they love to better their community.

What’s your approach to coffee?

Our approach is exploration without intimidation. We want our customers and baristas alike to feel comfortable trying new things whenever the opportunity presents itself. We hope to inspire an interactive approach to coffee and tea through our bar-style seating, in-house roasting, home brewing and roasting equipment for sale, regular classes, and informative marketing. We are all about bringing funky, modern twists to tried-and-true classics, from our drinks to our decor.

Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?

We are roasting on our beloved Diedrich IR-12. Our espresso will be ground in a Nuova Simonelli Mythos One Clima Pro and pulled on a Simonelli Aurelia II espresso machine. We also have a Mahlkönig EK-43 for our other grinds, and a pretty sweet Kyoto Drip station that we custom built for the shop.

What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?

October 2018

Are you working with craftspeople, architects, and/or creatives that you’d like to mention?

We would love to thank our community for their continuous support; our local artists and musicians for wanting to help us create an incredible, inspiring space; and our amazing architect and contractors for working tirelessly to help our family make this dream a reality.

Thank you!

The Build-Outs Of Summer is an annual series on Sprudge. Live the thrill of the build all summer long in our Build-Outs feature hub.

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Source: Coffee News

Internationally speaking, the Iranian coffee community has fallen on some hard luck. When the Specialty Coffee Associations of America and Europe joined forces under the singular SCA banner, the global group became an IRC 501(c )(6) organized under the laws of California as a mutual benefit corporation. That means the now unified international association is subject to all applicable United States sanctions—including those currently in place against the Islamic Republic of Iran. This has had the unintended result of isolating the burgeoning Iranian specialty coffee community from the rest of the coffee world. We have heard stories about trainers in Iran as well as barista certification attendees losing access (and registration fees) mid-session. And with new sanctions being passed down just with week by the Trump administration, relations between the two countries grows icier.

But locally, the Iranian coffee scene remains as vibrant as ever. For proof, look no further than the second annual Iran International Coffee Festival, taking place in Tehran August 19^th through 22^nd. After a wildly successful inaugural event last year, the second Iran Coffee Festival is shaping up to be bigger and better in year two.

Taking place at Goftogo Park, this year’s event is certainly keeping with the international moniker. Asli Yaman (Turkey), Davide Cobelli (Italy), Stavros Lamprinidis (Greece), and Ecaterina Szasz and 2016 World Roasting Champion Alexandra Niculae (Romania) will all be in attendance to help judge the many coffee competitions, including cold brew and barista battles.

Also in attendance will be coffee brands from around the world. Expect to see companies like Giesen, Kees van der Westen, Toper, Wega, and many many more to have a presence on the showroom floor.

For more information about the Iran International Coffee Festival, visit their official website. But be forewarned, unless your Farsi is very good, you may have to lean on Google Translate to do most of the heavy lifting, and it is…not great. Get it together, Google Translate. We’d also recommend you follow iCoffee, Iran’s premiere Farsi-language coffee publication, for more dispatches from Iran’s remarkable coffee scene.

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 Iran Coffee Festival Instagram.

The post The Iran International Coffee Festival Returns For Year Two appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

It’s an exciting time for the specialty coffee community in Lisbon. While still rather intimate, the movement toward quality keeps growing as familiar faces, such as Copenhagen Coffee Lab and Fábrica Coffee Roasters, as well as new initiatives expand. Olisipo, a roastery in the Ajuda neighborhood, is next in line for the city.

“Coffee is a connector of people and is therefore about relationships, which are built on trust,” says owner Anthony Watson, who alongside his partner, Sofia Gonçalves, intend to involve members of the local community as much as possible in the establishment of their space.

“We value our role in the community as a local roastery,” Watson continues. “And believe it is very important to build good relationships with our neighbors, but also within the growing specialty coffee movement in this vibrant city.”

He found the inspiration for this approach while cycling through Europe and the Levant to discover local coffee cultures before spending five months researching and writing about coffee in Ethiopia.

“The experience opened my eyes into coffee production at origin,” Watson says. “It’s not just a sensory question of taste and flavor for me, but also about the economic and social benefits that coffee can bring to local communities at both ends of the value chain. Coffee truly has the power to transform lives.”

The involvement of the neighborhood is at the heart of Olisipo’s ethos, which is why there will be an open-door policy during working hours. Watson and Gonçalves are hoping that the smell of freshly roasted coffee will make people in the area curious and encourage them to drop by to try a coffee, even if the experience of doing so in a roastery is new for the neighborhood.

Apart from including an exhibition space for artists, and holding cupping events and regular workshops around brewing, roasting, and tasting coffee, Olisipo plans to include feedback from locals in the creation of a house blend to honor the neighborhood. The coffee selection and flavor profile will be developed in an effort to produce a blend that people living nearby can relate to and love drinking.

“We want to challenge people’s expectations and shine a light on the kaleidoscope of flavors such a dynamic, seasonal product can offer,” Watson says, adding that he believes in the vitality of understanding customers’ taste preferences.

“Our naturally processed Brazilian coffee is closer to the flavor preferences of locals, but it can also open up their sensory journey into more adventurous flavor and taste attributes,” he says.

The roastery will offer a range of single origins such as a washed Tanzanian Peaberry, a direct trade Colombian coffee from La Lomita, and coffees from Peru, among others. Part of Olisipo’s philosophy is to promote fairness and transparency along the coffee value chain. Olisipo’s intention is to work with importers and exporters that guarantee a sustainable price for coffee, and to seek a direct relationship with producers whenever possible.

Olisipo is also active in an initiative called Lisboa Coffee Evolution, a network of coffee enthusiasts and professionals that gather regularly in an effort to direct the growth of the specialty coffee community in an inclusive way. Every specialty coffee shop in Lisbon is represented in the group, which holds events every last Tuesday of the month in a different coffee shop or roastery.

Watson and Gonçalves hope that Lisbon’s specialty coffee scene keeps evolving in interesting and new directions, and are keen to explore creative collaborations with coffee shops, restaurants, and craft breweries as their own presence in the community grows. 

Theresa Schlage is the founder of The Way to Coffee. This is Theresa Schlage’s first article for Sprudge.

The post Lisbon’s Next Chapter In Roasting Is Unfolding At Olisipo appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Coffee is an energy drink, this much we can say for sure, but it’s not really the sort of beverage people think of when they hear the words “energy drink.” Red Bull, Monster, and regrettably, Four Loko all come to mind first. But there’s a new energy drink now on Kickstarter that is looking to take a more plant-based approach rev up your engine. It’s called Nomad Energy and it’s made with cascara.

And not just any cascara. According to Forbes, Nomad Energy chose to use coffee fruit from the famed Finca Las Lajas micromill in Central Valley, Costa Rica (featured here on Sprudge), perhaps best known as the first Costa Rican producer to use the natural processing method. Though they have other cascara-based products, Max Keilson and Jon Esptein—owners of Nomad Trading Co, the makers of Nomad Energy—are hoping to challenge Red Bull in the energy drink market by offering consumers a natural, plant-based alternative that lacks “the sugar-crashes and jitters that accompany the energy-boost of most mainstream energy drinks.” Along with cascara, Nomad Energy only contains water, lemon juice, maple syrup, Himalayan pink sea salt, and a little carbon dioxide for effervescence, all while still packing a walloping 120mg caffeine.

As of press time, the Brooklyn-based Nomad Energy—why they didn’t call it Red Bullbon still remains a mystery—has already over doubled their $5,000 Kickstarter goal with 17 days remaining. Pledges start as low as $10, which will receive a couple cans of Nomad Energy, ranging all the way up $1,070 for a full pallet of energy drinks, 900 in total. The latter is really meant for distributors, or you know, one really REALLY good LAN party.

Admittedly, I gave up my energy drink addiction many years ago once I got out of the service industry and working doubles were no longer a thing I had to power through. But even then, I would reach for the sugar-free 80 oz. Monster or whatever ridiculous, heart-exploding size they came in. Now with Nomad Energy, I may have to bust out the ole Playstation 4 for an energy-drink fueled video game all-nighter. I mean, have you seen that gameplay debut for Ghost of Tsushima? Sign my palate up for a pallet.

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 Nomad Energy

The post Now On Kickstarter: Nomad, A Plant-Based Cascara Energy Drink appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Whither the multiroaster?

That paragon of speciality coffee retail models, once so in vogue, has been struck a major blow today as Go Get Em Tiger—the fast-expanding coffee bar brand from Kyle Glanville and Charles Babinski—have announced the upcoming launch of their own coffee roasting brand. After five years spent championing the multiroaster model, GGET’s own brand of coffee will become the exclusive offering served at GGET cafes across Southern California—a transition that happens “next week,” according to Kyle Glanville. The duo also own G&B Coffee, a coffee bar in the downtown Los Angeles’ Grand Central Market.

The brand’s roaster expansion dovetails with a successful round of private micro-investment and the acquisition of a new brand headquarters, a sprawling 16,000-square-foot building containing a production HQ and offices in Vernon, a neighboring industrial city just south of the LA Arts District.

After five years in business helping grow and innovate the Los Angeles coffee scene, some jitters today should be expected. “Aside from it being nerve-wracking, I think this all feels like the validation of a process that we’ve really tried to honor,” Glanville tells Sprudge. “We feel nervous because we’ve truly put so much time into learning how to be good at this, and teaching ourselves for the first time what our own voice sounds like.”

But growth and expansion has always been the dream for Glanville and Babinski, a dream that has long included—by virtue of necessity—transitioning to the roaster-retailer model. “We’ve always known that we would end up roasting if our company did well, ” Glanville says. “It’s been a real pleasure and joy to be able to buy really awesome coffees from other really awesome roasters, but ultimately there’s this sense of passiveness that we’ve learned is not really who we are. We make all of our own shit—our own chai, our own pastries, our own almond milk—and this feels like a moment of validation for how our perspectives have matured.”

Glanville and Babinski announced the move last night in a personal Medium post, authored by Glanville:

First fruits of the roasting project can be sampled as part of the new GGET Coffee Club, a subscription service featuring “education, events, a text message service for troubleshooting your brews, behind-the-scenes access, and a lot more.” Full service launches later this fall, but for now there’s early subscriber access for friends and family (and Sprudge readers)—$100 for 5 coffees delivered anywhere in the United States, with new shipments every other week. International subscribers can inquire about shipping and availability via the GGET text line—1-323-YAA-GGET—or by emailing hello@gget.com.

Read the full Medium post here. 

All Glanville & Babinski coverage on Sprudge. 

Jordan Michelman is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Jordan Michelman on Sprudge.

The post Go Get Em Tiger Launch New Roasting Program appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

The charms of a small town are often the siren song for urbanites looking for a little change of pace. Especially if those urbanites are looking to raise a family. But instead of pulling the out-of-towners straight into the rocks, it may just pull them into a coffee desert, a place where no specialty coffee shops have yet to put up stakes. And this is the story arc Ryan and Stephanie Baughn found themselves in when they and their four sons moving from Seattle, Washington to Stoughton, Wisconsin.

Coming from a world-class coffee city, the Stoughtons did what any reasonable person would have done: start a coffee shop of their own. At the urging of friends and family, they fulfilled a lifelong dream and opened Wildwood Coffee. With an eye for design and good coffee, the Stoughtons DIY’ed their way into a lovely space, complete with a fully customized La Marzocco Linea/Strada Frankenspresso machine. It’s definitely a family affair at Wildwood. Thankfully, they have four baristas in training.

As told to Sprudge by Ryan & Stephanie Baughn.

For those who aren’t familiar, will you tell us about your company?

Stoughton, WI is a small town 30 minutes south east of Madison, WI with a charming historic walkable Main Street. My wife and I moved here from Seattle a little over 13 years ago, drawn to the charms of small town living and found it to be a pretty ideal place to raise our four boys. Stoughton is a lovely riverside community and has everything we need with the exception of a good coffee shop. This past fall we decided that it was time for us to open a place, and this new cafe is the realization of 19 years dreaming. When the boys were younger, baking and cooking with Stephanie, people would tell us “you should open a family cafe” and it is incredible that here we are doing it. The boys range in ages from nine to 15 and they are helping out as we get Wildwood open, learning to be dishwashers, bakers, baristas, entrepreneurs—a true family business. Our intent with this project is to create a space for our community that is comfortable and inviting, a place where people can gather and connect, with a backdrop of high end coffee and food.

My wife is helming the design build out and the space is the perfect intersection of refinement and rebellion. Every object, every piece of art, every vintage plate is telling a story… in short, we view Wildwood as our love letter to Wisconsin.

Can you tell us a bit about the new space?

This used to be a small hair salon (about 860 sq. ft.) and the space was divided into small separate rooms with dark green and brown paint and a dropped acoustic tile ceiling. The first thing that made us think the space had potential was all the natural light pouring in the three large Southeast facing windows. Winters in Wisconsin can be long, cold, and dark, and for anyone who has seasonal affected disorder, natural light can be a life saver. We immediately knocked out all the walls to let in as much light as possible. We designed a small but efficient kitchen space, adding vintage windows from a 1930s cottage up north to again, let sunlight into the kitchen space. Stephanie wanted the main wall to be a strong focal point and chose William Morris wallpaper that felt representative of our love of nature and the outdoors. The condiment area and retail wall is ship lathe board painted a deep navy blue, redolent of Wisconsin storm skies; a large antique gilt mirror from up north reflects more light and makes the space seem larger; an antique side board buffet repurposed from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore holds cream, sugar, lids, napkins. All the shelves are reclaimed boards from an old barn in Columbus that we sanded and stained. To keep it from feeling too period piece, Steph kept the rest of the space white and full of plants. After ripping up the pergola flooring, we decided to keep the concrete floor underneath as is, appreciating the juxtaposition of the rough floor against the polish of everything else (and a subtle nod to our family of skateboarders!). We replaced the acoustic tile with beautiful hammered tin that is still made in the US in Florence, Alabama. As much as possible, Stephanie used eBay, thrift stores, antique stores, and the ReStore to fill the space with things that have history, that tell a story, and that also fulfills our desire to help the environment by reuse and repurpose rather than buy new.

What’s your approach to coffee?

We think coffee is special, but we are setting out to normalize the specialty cafe experience. With the help of top notch Wisconsin roasters (Ruby, Kickapoo, JBC) we are offering a combination of consistency and adventure. We have a fantastic blend called Creamery and this will be our main espresso blend to start. We’ll rotate coffees for single origin espresso and batch brew options throughout the summer, offering batch brew and flash brewed/iced coffee. We won’t offer pour-overs, but we are developing coffee shot recipes since we have the ability to drop flow rate and pressure to whatever we want on the La Marzocco conical valve head of our espresso machine. We may roll these out late Summer or early Fall.

Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?

I built a custom machine based off a La Marzocco Linea frame from the year I graduated high school (Shorecrest ‘94), but I incorporated Strada AV tech and internals and custom exterior materials. The hickory surround is Japanese Shou Sugi Ban, or charred wood, with a custom ceramic “moon phases” piece from San Francisco artist Jenifer Lake. It matches our matte black Victoria Arduino Mythos grinder, Mazzer, Ditting, and our Curtis brewer, which looks about as sleek as a bulky brewer can look! I guess you could say all our coffee equipment fills our aesthetic vision of being a little bit unexpected and unpredictable and we like it like that!

What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?

We spent February-May building and hit our preview open date of 5/18/18. We’ll open for regular hours by mid-June 2018.

Are you working with craftspeople, architects, and/or creatives that you’d like to mention?

Jamie Stanek built our beautiful countertops featuring custom cutouts to my specs. Jenifer Lake is a San Francisco artist (and our dear friend) and she made the custom black matte “moon phases” piece that graces the back of our espresso machine.

Thank you!

Thank you! We are excited to introduce Stoughton, WI to the world of coffee!

The Build-Outs Of Summer is an annual series on Sprudge. Live the thrill of the build all summer long in our Build-Outs feature hub.

The post Build-Outs Of Summer: Wildwood Coffee In Stoughton, WI appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Last week, Durham-based Counter Culture Coffee released their 2017 transparency report—a now annual tradition for the company dating back to 2010. The information-heavy report discloses prices paid for coffee, as well as digging deeper into what transparency and sustainability mean for the coffee brand, and the initiatives and metrics they use to assess these concepts. And for the first time, this year’s report coincides with the release of a limited edition coffee.

For those unfamiliar with transparency reports in coffee, they are essentially means for which a coffee roaster will show how much they paid for each of their coffees in a given year, usually represented by FOB (free on board), the “price of the coffee when it gets on the boat to leave the country or area of origin,” as Counter Culture defines it. We have reported on all manner of these reports in the past, including more straight-ahead documents like those from 49^th Parallel and Tim Wendelboe all the way to Onyx Coffee Lab’s point-of-sale reporting, listing of the FOB price of each coffee on description/purchase page. Whatever the method, the goal of each transparency report is the same: to allow roasters to show what they pay for coffee in order to establish some sort of accountability, while simultaneously encouraging both consumer understanding and industry openness for how coffee is traded on a global scale.

The 2017 Counter Culture transparency report is the company’s most thorough and ambitious yet. Included in this report is a breakdown of their carbon footprint for the year as well as steps they have taken to offset it, quality initiatives like coffee variety testing and financial grant programs, along with contributions to the industry at large, and an interactive map showing FOB prices for each individual coffee roasted and sold by Counter Culture during the reporting year.

To coincide with the release of the 2017 transparency report, Counter Culture has also released FRANK!, a limited edition blend of 90% Ozolotepec, Oaxaca, Mexico and 10% Kushikamana, Embu, Kenya. FRANK! was created and released alongside the report to “[bring] attention to the average amount a coffee farmer makes versus an actual living wage,” per the press release.

There is so much information to digest in Counter Culture’s 2017 transparency report that a simple recap article doesn’t even begin to do it justice. To truly understand the level of detail provided—as well as the commitment to the complicated issued of sustainability—you really have to to take it all in for yourself, which you can do here. But be forewarned, this isn’t a one-page quick read. Best come prepared with a nice cup of coffee at your side.

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 Counter Culture

Disclosure: Counter Culture Coffee is an advertising partner on Sprudge Media Network.

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Source: Coffee News