Coffee

As the specialty coffee industry’s worker-led push for true inclusion gains momentum, more and more coffee pros are working to create spaces and forums that center and prioritize coffee professionals of color, from the work of Michelle Johnson on The Chocolate Barista blog and the new Black Coffee event, to Kristina Jackson’s black woman-centered Boston Intersectional Coffee Collective, to Ezra Baker’s panel discussion series Coffee, I See You. In the latest move to create spaces of color in coffee, Alexandra L. Zepeda of Gimme! Coffee is launching Caffeinated and Melanated, a platform for people of color in coffee to collaborate, amplify each other, and create opportunities for growth. Her first event, a social mixer for coffee professionals of color, will take place at El Jardin in the Bronx on Wednesday, August 1.

Alexandra L. Zepeda. Photo courtesy of Kendra Roberson.

Born in the South Bronx to Salvadoran parents, Zepeda has worked in coffee since 2011, starting off at Gregory’s Coffee and ending up at Gimme!, where she currently works as a barista. Although she was born in the US, she spent time as a child living around coffee farms in El Salvador. Growing up with coffee at the center of her household, she’s always felt tied to coffee work. While working at the Starbucks Reserve in 2012, she saw the in-depth way she, a barista, could engage with the coffee farms she had been surrounded by in El Salvador as a child; inspired, she decided to dive deep, earning her Coffee Master certification.

As with many other activists of color in US specialty coffee, the inspiration behind C&M came from the lack of spaces for people like Zepeda within the coffee community. “As wonderful as the coffee community is, I didn’t attend any throwdowns or specialty coffee events until 2015 for fear of not fitting in, getting my skills and knowledge downplayed, or getting belittled because of the color of my skin or texture of my hair I inherited from my people, the vocabulary and the loudness I inherited from my hood. I want to be surrounded by people feeling the same thing as I—specifically, women of color.”  Zepeda feels lucky to have found a handful of people she truly relates to in her local coffee community and wants to make sure other WOC in coffee have the same opportunity. “WOC are the backbone of this industry. I want to reach out on a nationwide scale.”

Photo courtesy of Kendra Roberson.

In terms of focus, Zepeda wants to make sure that C&M events present real opportunities for professional growth. She wants to follow the group’s inaugural mixer with a series of skill-building events, including workshops to help POC deal with injustice in the workplace. “We’re in an industry that doesn’t set us up for success. I want to create events that actually benefit us professionally.” In addition to skill-building workshops, she also plans to put together a panel discussion event and donate proceeds to the many POC doing revolutionary work at various levels of the industry. Down the line, she also wants to create an exchange program for baristas and producers at origin.

Zepeda is grateful to those who have paved the way for her to start C&M. “I really want to thank Michelle Johnson, Tymika Lawrence, Ezra Baker, and Liz Dean for being amazing leaders in our industry and for inspiring me to do something different, outside of my comfort zone; to step up where it’s needed,” she said. “The coffee industry regularly fails to address the diversity that stretches across their people from farm to cup by putting only one demographic constantly at the front—or, even worse, only acknowledging other groups when it’s beneficial for them. Posting pictures of your amazing WOC baristas for International Women’s Day but refusing to sponsor their dreams of judging or competing just isn’t cutting it anymore. This is why we’re breaking barriers and making ourselves extra comfortable lately.”

By putting herself out there and attending events even when it didn’t always feel comfortable, Zepeda has gotten to know a lot of coffee pros at many different professional levels, from people with dream jobs to those who are still struggling to find their place in the industry. She wants the initial mixer to help coffee professionals of color to start making those connections in a comfortable setting and gaining access to the resources they need, especially outside of the typical competitive setting that throwdowns necessitate. As organizations like C&M help people of color in coffee to connect with each other and gain opportunities for mentorship and support, we can hopefully look forward to a time when no coffee pro ever has to be afraid to go to a throwdown.

RJ Joseph (@RJ_Sproseph) is a Sprudge staff writer, publisher of Queer Cup, and coffee professional based in the Bay Area. Read more RJ Joseph on Sprudge Media Network.

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Source: Coffee News

There are so many exciting things happening in the Denver coffee scene right now. One of the bigger developments—the opening of a second Amethyst Coffee location—we covered here during this season’s Build-Outs. But only one article about coffee news in the Mile High City would never suffice, so it’s time to check in with another local favorite, MiddleState Coffee.

Starting as a roastery in the back of men’s apparel shop Steadbrook, MiddleState began its life being served primarily in the LoDo’s LittleOwl Coffee. But thanks to really good coffee (and a generally chill vibe), the roaster has grown its reputation nationally and has thus had to move to a larger roasting facility. But success hasn’t changed MiddleState. They’re still the same dudes at heart, who are just as likely to be shredding the city streets (or fingerboarding local cafe countertops) as they are to be sourcing new and exciting coffees. Skateboarding, good coffee, and lots of chill: is there anything more Denvert?

Image by Haley Littleton.

As told to Sprudge by Jay DeRose.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

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

MiddleState started in 2014, here in Denver, Colorado. We are a wholesale roasting company with a retail location in the historical lower downtown neighborhood of Denver called LittleOwl Coffee. We have been around for about five years now. Wait, my math is wrong. Maybe we started in 2013. Anyway, we have been really humbled by our growth and by the support shown to us through the people we work with. We are really just trying to do our best in every aspect of our companies. Buying exciting coffees, making sure our guests in the cafe feel special, making sure we represent ourselves as people in the best possible way too.

Have Fun/Brew Coffee is kind of our “words to live by,” or motto if you will. We firmly believe that there is a weird cosmic energy out there, and that you get out what you put in, which is why we always try to be as happy as we can and work with people who are the same way. That positive energy goes into our coffee, as it would if it were negative. At heart, we just really love what we do and the people who allow us all to do it. And skateboarding. We all really love skateboarding. That was our gateway drug for sure.

Can you tell us a bit about the new space?

Our new space is so cool. It is in the Santa Fe Arts district of Denver, on 2nd and Santa Fe. It has a very industrial feel to it. You walk in and are immediately immersed in a place that has different grades and levels and big ceilings and doorways to other rooms. It has kind of an exploratory feel to it in the sense like, “do I go this way, or do I go that way,” but not in a confusing way.

It has lots of exposed original brick, and old gas lines, and cool wood ceiling rafters. Most of the brick is white to brighten things up. There are also big skylights throughout the entire space so the natural light will allow us to pack the space with plant life. We plan to use light colored woods and steel for tables, and benches and chairs to warm the space up a bit. One of the coolest parts of the space will be the glass wall that will separate the roastery/production area from the cafe. Fucking dream come true for us to have that. Oh, and we have a few water fountains in the production pit so that’s rad too.

We also wanna put cool interactive things in it too, like a claw machine with brewing equipment for prizes. Maybe a sticker vending machine too. Who knows. It will def be a pretty different feel from our downtown location, that’s for sure. That’s the fun of doing new spaces though.

What’s your approach to coffee?

Basically to have as much fun as we can and let things happen organically. We don’t have and never have had an aggressive approach to sales when it comes to wholesale. Through that approach we have managed to gain some insane relationships with like-minded people. Finding that balance of taking what you do very seriously, without taking ourselves too seriously. We love to buy and roast fun and exciting coffees often. Our menu of offerings rotates quite frequently, which is kind of a pain in the ass for us, but super fun and fresh for wholesale customers and consumers alike. On top of all that, make a ton of rad stickers and give them out to the people.

Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?

We will be serving espresso on a Kees van der Westen Spirit Idromatic. The progressive infusion on these machines is absurd. It’s so cool that you can actually see whats going on and have to tangibly use your body in order to change the settings, and not a key pad. It has a very barbaric and industrious feel to it, yet allows for so many different possibilities just like an electronic control board would allow you. We will also have some stuff from Marco, some old brewers from FETCO, and a few Frieling single cup brewers.

What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?

We hope to open the cafe to the people in September, but that will probably be more like mid-October with the way this city likes to treat new business that are trying to open. Denver, get your shit together and make it easier for small business to grow and thrive. Not to mention, the sooner we open, the sooner you can start taking our money for your own revenue.

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

We are working with a handful of amazing folks. Our creative director Scott Allen Hill continues to just kill it for us. He is the person behind the design of the brand really. His ideas are so clean and constructive in order for us to “stay on brand,” as Scott likes to say. I can get pretty crazy with ideas when it comes to art and branding, but Scott is always there to either support those ideas, or put them in the trash. It’s taken a while for me to fully trust Scott and let go of my stubbornness, but as soon as that happened, our relationship and understanding of one another became so much better.

Our architects are Unum Collaborative, based here in Denver. They are so open to our vision for the space and really have been amazing at keeping our vision on track, with adding elements of their own that collectively will make the space great. We are also going to do a lot of the buildout ourselves as we think we are pretty handy. Haha. My entire staff though all has so many great ideas and input to offer. I really want to do right by them and implement their minds in one way or another as well. It’s a vey collaborative thing opening and designing a new space.

Thank you!

No, thank you Sprudge.

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.

Photos by Daniel Mendoza unless otherwise noted.

The post Build-Outs Of Summer: MiddleState Coffee In Denver, CO appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Portland, it’s time to get your learn on. Thursday, July 26th, Buckman Coffee Factory has teamed up with Oatly and Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers to present La Lucha: The Coffee Farmer’s Fight for Market Access. The featured guest of the night will be Salvadoran coffee farmer Miguel Menendez who will share his story and give insight into the current struggles producers from El Salvador are facing.

The night gets started with a little cupping challenge. Featuring coffees from Sustainable Harvest’s La Lucha line and Menendez’s family farm, guests will be treated to a cup matching competition, where—you guessed it—they will have to match coffee together using only their taste buds.

After everyone has been officially stumped and caffeinated, the dais will be turned over to Menendez and Sustainable Harvest’s Relationship Coffee Manager Jamie Pockrandt, who after Menendez lays the groundwork of the current issues farmers are facing, will discuss “the importance of direct trade and the power of relationship building to assist in these issues.” The talk will be followed up with a Q&A session as well as a chance to relax with beer, wine, snacks, and a chance to connect with fellow attendees.

La Lucha begins promptly at 5:30pm on July 26th at Buckman Coffee Factory. The event is free to attend, but the hosts ask that you RSVP via Eventbrite, which can be done here. For more information on the event, visit La Lucha’s 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 Sustainable Harvest.

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Source: Coffee News

Among the dozen local enterprises filling Rotterdam’s Fenix Food Factory, the most nominally fitting these days is Stielman. Though the consumer-focused specialty coffee roaster has been around since May 2014, last year marked the beginning of its phoenix-like rise. Things had begun kindling when entrepreneur Marco Pfaff took over ownership, but it was Aukje van Rossum, who’s been with the company from incipiency and is currently its communication and marketing manager, who brought in the fire-starter when she recruited her brother, Jelle van Rossum.

Sprudge readers may recall Jelle van Rossum as the roasting wunderkind at Rotterdam’s Man met Bril, featured in an article from 2015. Nowadays, the—still hardly hoary—24 year old is something of a Dutch coffee industry sage, largely self-taught and unflaggingly, albeit gently, communicative. At Stielman, where he has been since March 2017 and is now manager and head roaster, the plan, he says, is “to just once again get people excited about flavor in coffee and about diversity in flavor.”

Aukje and Jelle van Rossum

It is working. Several commercial venues around Rotterdam are serving Stielman, but, more remarkably, the bulk of clients are individual subscribers (this author included).

“It’s mainly word of mouth. And with all the talks I’m having nowadays with different companies, we’re growing,” says Jelle van Rossum. “We don’t need to grow any faster.”

Like its immediate Fenix neighbors—purveyors of, respectively, Moroccan tapas, farm-made cheese, and jacked stroopwafels—Stielman appears to be a gigantic market stand. Approaching it head-on, visitors encounter a Kalita Wave-kitted filter bar; the espresso bar lies perpendicular, supporting a two-group  La Marzocco Linea PB, twin Mazzer Kony grinders, and a Mahlkönig Guatemala grinder. Yet, behind all that is, essentially, a factory within a factory. Weekly, a Giesen W6A roasts 200 kilos of coffee, much of it then packaged and sent to homes nationwide. A high table and stools provide a spot for sitting and sipping, but the surface seems truly intended for cupping.

The Stielman subscription’s appeal is as practical—customizable delivery frequencies and quantities; eco-friendly shipping via intra-city e-bike network Fietskoeriers; packaging that fits average Dutch mail slots—as it is sensorial. Comprehensive and consistent, the collection comprises six roasts for espresso and six for filter. Named after colors, the coffees are bagged and tagged with hue-corresponding labels. A few adjectives and the occasional noun position each on the flavor spectrum, but they omit all provenance details.

Aukje van Rossum explains: “We always had the origins listed on the packaging, but recently Jelle convinced us to start leaving that information off because it biases people. A lot of customers would think, for example, ‘Oh this is an Ethiopian, so we should buy it.’”

“And we really want people to get engaged with specialty coffee through flavor,” Jelle van Rossum emphasizes.

Origin information is given on the Stielman website and, Aukje van Rossum assures, “our baristas know everything about the coffee.” At the time of writing, six part-timers rotate bar shifts and due to soon join the team is an assistant roaster—the first and only candidate Jelle van Rossum interviewed because “she just had the right mindset.”

A new Stielman product is the Shokunin tasting box. Conceptualized by Jelle van Rossum, the series debuted with an heirloom coffee from Ethiopia’s Kochere district; to highlight the multiple flavors the single coffee could yield depending on how it was processed at the Reko Koba mill, three packages are included showcasing natural, washed, and honey-processed beans. The second Shokunin release demonstrates the effects of different fermentation times and drying surfaces on a Caturra-Castillo combo from Argote farm in Colombia’s Nariño region. Each box comes with an 18-page booklet containing background stories, photos, and roast profiles.

“That’s something that people are usually very secretive about,” Jelle van Rossum acknowledges of the roast profiles. Yet, he believes that for this project, publicizing them creates a feedback loop benefitting consumers, producers, and partners, such as Stielman’s two green bean importers, The Coffee Quest and This Side Up. The Van Rossums themselves stay in direct contact with the coffee farmers via Skype, Facebook, and occasional visits to or from them. “Making it a two-way street,” as the roaster puts it, stabilizes both supply and demand—and helps flesh out his fantasies about future experiments. Today, he also has his own premium coffee label and service (called Shokunin, too).

Although nowadays she does more front-of-the-house work, Aukje van Rossum, older by two years, was the first of the pair to discover specialty coffee. Her foray was nearly a decade ago, when alongside attending design school in Rotterdam, she worked at a nearby branch of Coffeecompany. A particular Yirgacheffe impressed her so much that she wanted her brother to try cupping and beckoned him from Leeuwarden, where he was contemplating food and wine as part of hotel management studies.

“He was blown away,” Aukje van Rossum remembers of his early experience. “He was like, ‘Oh, this is so much fun,’ and then he got into the coffee.”

In fact, back then, when gathered on weekends at their family home in Vorden, the siblings not only got their parents drinking specialty coffee, but also so profoundly diffused their enthusiasm that mom and pop eventually quit decades-long office jobs and opened a specialty cafe. Lo and behold: Van Rossum’s Koffie, established in 2014 in the small city of Zutphen, and run by Frans and Dagmar van Rossum, with support from their big-city children. That, surely, is another story, though one sharing thematic similarities to the regeneration happening at Stielman.

Later this year, the brand expects to launch a second coffee bar and a roastery in Zoeterwoude, the South Holland municipality famously hosting a Heineken brewery. Additionally on the to-do list are a third tasting box, a line of coffee capsules, and a tea collection. So continues Stielman’s spectacular rise, at Fenix Food Factory and beyond.

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

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Source: Coffee News

There will be no brew eyes crying in the rain today as Texas legend and true American hero, the one and only Willie Hugh Nelson has announced his own line of CBD-infused coffee. That’s right, the 85-year-old country music icon known for his greener predilections has created Willie’s Remedy, a line of cannabidiol-infused products, and the first one set to be released is coffee.

According to GuideLive, the whole bean coffee will deliver a 5mg dose of CBD in every eight-ounce cup. Willie’s Remedy won’t get you high, though. CBD lacks the psychoactive-inducing properties associated with marijuana; that comes from tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and can be found in Willie’s Reserve, Nelson’s strain of marijuana launched in 2015.

Modern country music is complete vapid garbage. It’s banal top-40 trash about a rural life the performers never lived, sung with an affected twang they didn’t come by honestly. But Willie. I fuck with Willie. Everyone does. He is literally the only artist you and your probably-racist uncle can agree on. The pride of Abbot, Texas. You’re welcome.

Willie’s Remedy, the “hemp derived cannabis products to supplement a legendary life well-lived” per their website, will debut in Colorado some time in September. From what little can be gleaned from the website, the whole bean coffee will be “small batch” roasted, “infused with full spectrum CBD oil derived from American sourced and organically grown hemp,” and sold in eight-ounce tins.

Willie’s Remedy adds to an increasingly crowded field marijuana-based coffee products. There are cold brews in both THC and CBD varieties, coffee pods, dehydrated coffee, and even an American coffee shop where cannabis products can be consumed on premises. But Willie’s Remedy marks the first whole bean offering (to our knowledge), proving yet again that Willie Nelson is truly a pioneer.

God bless Willie Nelson and God bless Texas.

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 Willie’s Remedy.

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Source: Coffee News

Can someone please tell the JAB Holding Company that the coffee industry isn’t just a big game of Katamari Damacy, because they seem dead set on rolling through every coffee company until they’ve created some sort of Frankenstein’s monster coffee star. The Luxembourg-based investment firm has already swallowed up big time coffee brands like Peet’s, Stumptown, Intelligentsia, Caribou, Keurig, and Pret A Manger, and now they have turned a lustful gaze at one of the largest independent coffee companies left: Illy.

But there’s another player, a cousin of Prince JAB to keep the Katametaphor going, with interest in the 85-year-old coffee company, none other than Nestlé.

According to Bloomberg, the Swiss company is looking to add to their coffee portfolio that includes homegrown brands Nescafé and Nespresso as well as acquired entities like Blue Bottle and the rights to market Starbucks products. But neither Nestlé or JAB are going to have an easy time adding to their collection as Illy Chairman Andrea Illy has stated that, “Every hypothesis of corporate agreements has been deemed inappropriate.” For now.

Were a sale to occur (and let’s be honest, it’s probably going to happen, right?), financial experts believe the bidding would start at a cool $1.6 billion, roughly three times Illy’s yearly revenue based on 2016 earnings.

Illy’s market share in the coffee space has stagnated at around .2 percent since 2008, whereas Italian competitor Lavazza has increased from 2 to 2.5 percent in that same time frame thanks to acquisitions like that of French brand Carte Noir. Experts believe that this stagnation—along with the acquisitions happening all around them—will make it harder and harder for Illy carve out their own space in the coffee industry:

For now, Illy remains independent. One would think that $539 million in annual revenue across 140 countries would insulate a company from talks about not being able to compete in a global market and acquisitions. But that’s just not the case in the current coffee marketplace, where power is quickly consolidating around only a handful of brands (with a few new players trying to gain ground). It seems if you want to be a multi-national independent coffee company nowadays, you need to turn those M’s to B’s.

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 AWS Productions.

Disclosure: Blue Bottle, Intelligentsia, and Stumptown are advertising partners of the Sprudge Media Network.

The post JAB and Nestlé Are Looking To Acquire Illy appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Many coffee companies started small. Before they were a multi-national entity, Blue Bottle for instance got their start at a local farmer’s market. It is an origin story not uncommon in the specialty coffee world, but our next entry into the Build-Outs of Summer has a twist. Lynchburg, Virginia’s Golf Park Coffee started out like many others, selling coffee at local community events, but unlike others, Golf Park only served cold brew.

That’s all changed now, though, with the opening of their brand new brick-and-mortar cafe and full service coffee bar. You will of course still be able to get cold brew, but now Golf Park is offering espresso drinks and filter options courtesy of Blanchard’s Coffee Roasting Company, themselves a Build-Outs alum. So let’s head down to Kentucky to check in (and maybe slam a cold brew or two for old time’s sake) on the new Gold Park Coffee in Lynchburg.

As told to Sprudge by Carl Arvidson.

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

We started Golf Park back in 2014 as a pop-up cold brew company. Over the past four years we have been a part of many local events—music festivals, holiday markets, weddings, and other private functions. In 2016, we had the opportunity to compete for a grant that the City of Lynchburg was offering—and we were awarded some money to expand our business. We used that money to purchase our cold brew trike. The trike is now a staple at our local community market each Saturday morning and we love using it around town.

We didn’t think opening a shop was the right move for us during the first few years. We wanted to focus on our pop-up coffee service and get to know our community in a way that enabled us to be mobile. Our plans changed, as they often do, when we were presented with the space that we are moving into and we feel really good about the direction we’re headed with our brick and mortar.

Can you tell us a bit about the new space?

The new space is located inside the Bedford Exchange, a 33,000-square-foot business incubator, just off of Lynchburg’s popular Rivermont Ave. The opportunity to be a part of the revitalization of Bedford Avenue is something we are really looking forward to. Serving the Lynchburg community in a new space that encourages collaboration and the flow of ideas seems like the perfect spot for us to be.

We were drawn to this location because of the natural light—it’s basically all windows. The bright, open space pairs well with our minimalistic design scheme. Creating a space that fosters community is super important to us. The room is anchored by a 10ft-long community table—perfect for conducting business, working solo, or meeting new people. The perimeter of the shop features a wrap-around window bar that overlooks the street.

What’s your approach to coffee?

Our approach to coffee is pretty simple—we brew what we like. We try our best to stay out of the way of the coffee itself. Our cold brew is best enjoyed straight up over ice so you can really get a feel for the complex, rich flavors of the beans we use. It’s our goal to do the same with our full-service coffee bar.

Over the past four years, we have been working with Blanchard’s Coffee Roasting Company, based in Richmond, VA. We’ve developed a great relationship with their team and regularly consult with them for our offerings—these guys know their coffee and we respect what they are doing in the coffee industry in Virginia and beyond. Blanchard’s honors each coffee’s story with a commitment to sustainability in the global coffee community through responsible sourcing, stewardship, and thoughtful roasting.

Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?

We are going to be working with a La Marzocco Linea EE and a Mahlkönig K30 for our espresso program. We will offer a house blend drip coffee as well as an ever changing single origin option.

What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?

Our current target opening date is July 6

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

We’ve been really lucky to basically have our entire shop built by our friends. It’s been one of the most special things to experience. Seeing people become as excited as we are about our new location has been extremely humbling and so cool to watch. Our community is full of talented craftspeople and we’ve been so lucky to tap into their expertise on this venture.

Daryl Calfee, one of the owners of the Bedford Exchange, has played an instrumental role in helping us get to this point and we are so grateful for his guidance and support.

Thank you!

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.

The post Build-Outs Of Summer: Golf Park Coffee In Lynchburg, VA appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Breaking news coming out of the Food and Drug Administration today as they announced that alternative milks aren’t actually milk at all. Wild, I know. But it turns out that these alternative milks—y’know, nut, soy, oat, etc, the ones defined specifically by their not containing lactose (lacktose)—aren’t technically milks because they don’t have lactose.

According to Politico, the FDA is going to start cracking down on the marketing of alternative milks as “milk,” because it is apparently confusing and may lead to someone accidentally not buying cow milk when they really want cow mi… oh look! Cashews! I wonder how they got cashews in that cow’s milk. Better buy a carton and find out without reading anything else on the packaging.

Or as FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb puts it, “An almond doesn’t lactate, I will confess.” Which is maybe a funny joke that would have elicited a snicker in the hippy dippy Meet The Parents sequel, Meet The Fockers, but it’s hardly a guiding principle by which the government should be making regulations. The FDA will be issuing “a guidance document outlining changes to its so-called standards of identity policies for marketing milk.”

Not to Whataboutism this to the high heavens, but really? This is what the government is spending time on? How is it that Conservatives—the party of limited government and unfettered capitalism—have decided that they, the government, should step in here? Shouldn’t we get to call anything we want a “milk” and let the market determine if it is or not? Isn’t that how that works? I understand it’s a stupid way of doing things, but isn’t that what the whole conservative economic platform is all about?

And further, who in the hell decided that “milk” was defined by a presence of lactose? Sure, the first milk humans presumably encountered (breast milk) contained lactose, but that hardly seems like the defining characteristic. When someone describes something as “milky,” are they commenting on how much lactose is present? Or are they describing some other quality—a creamy texture perhaps—one that is in cow’s milk, oat milk, nut milk, coconut milk, soy milk, milk oolong, and so on? It’s clear the government is in the pockets of Big Udders.

Anyway, Gottlieb states that the FDA will “soon start gathering public comment before taking next steps in redefining the rules for milk products.” So pretty soon you’ll have to order a tall iced latte with an “almond-based alternative to milk but definitely not milk,” or whatever cumbersome new naming convention the FDA will come up with.

Please no one tells these rubes about turkey bacon.

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 Are Name Changes Coming For Non-Dairy Milks? appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

When is a Build-Out not a build-out? When it’s a knock out. Which is to say, when the space next to an already existing cafe becomes available, allowing for a much-needed expansion via knocking out a wall or two. That’s the story for the partially new Spencer’s Coffee in Bowling Green, Kentucky. When the law firm next door unexpectedly closed, Spencer’s had the rare chance boost their seating capacity (because 80+ just wasn’t enough) while still serving the neighborhood they love. It’s win-win, especially if you are one of those 50 people that now has room to sidle to up to a table and enjoy some baked goods made in house along with one of the offerings from Sunergos Coffee, Spencer’s main roaster. So grab a cup of coffee and fan out, there’s room for everyone at the new and improved Spencer’s Coffee in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

As told to Sprudge by Justin Shepherd.

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

Originally a cozy coffee shop, we’ve grown into what we call a “coffee-centric restaurant” over the past 17 years. We serve both breakfast and lunch, a full menu of coffee and espresso, craft beer, fresh pastries… basically everything you need for a fulfilling existence. We’re located in the historic downtown square of Bowling Green, Kentucky’s third-largest city and home to Western Kentucky University, whose campus is just a few blocks away. Our clientele is a vibrant mix of professionals (bankers/lawyers/etc), young families, and plenty of college students, particularly in the evenings. We’re also the host of My Old Kentucky Throwdown—a once-a-year latte art competition that’s undoubtedly one of the largest in the south, boasting a 64-person bracket and competitors from literally all over the country, including a number of CoffeeFest champs.

Can you tell us a bit about the new space?

Spencer’s Coffee is located in a 200-year-old brick beauty called the Landmark Building, which housed a JCPenney department store about a century ago. With 2,500 square feet and 80+ seats (along with another 40 outdoors), we were already pretty large, but the neighboring law firm (part of the same building) closed suddenly when our friend and attorney Brad Coffman passed away; as the last real option for expansion in our current space, we decided to jump on the opportunity. We added just under 50 seats, most of them geared toward readers and laptop users—these people were already our customers, but now they have a dedicated space that’s a little quieter than our main room, plus it frees up the more traditional four-tops in our main space for larger parties. We also gained a conference room, which will seat 8-10 and be good for meetings, both for customers and for our own staff sit-downs.

What’s your approach to coffee?

We used to use the tagline “Great coffee, made simple.” We offer a variety of coffees from Sunergos Coffee of Louisville; a majority of our filter sales are batch brew, though we do offer by-the-cup options made on a Curtis Gold Cup. We’ve also got the standard array of espresso-and-milk drinks, along with seasonal creations. We strive to give our customers as much or as little information as they want—we can talk brew methods, processing, flavor notes, and extraction ratios if that’s your thing, but we don’t force it on anyone. Oh, and we’ve got both nitro cold brew (brewed in-house) and Matchless Coffee Soda on tap.

Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?

We were fortunate to work with Jacob Ellul-Blake of Pantechnicon Designs a couple years back; he customized our wood-and-white three-group La Marzocco Linea PB, which was the first of its kind (we’ve seen a few more around since). We’re big fans of the Nuova Simonelli Mythos One, and our FETCO has been crushing rushes for years now without a single hiccup.

What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?

We opened the new space a few weeks ago, and while it’s already popular, the real test will come when WKU is back in session in mid-August; in spring and fall, we often run out of seating, so it’ll be interesting to see how many people we can comfortably pack in!

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

One of our longtime baristas, Benjamin Fox-Ezell, crafted a pretty sick retail display cabinet; woodworkers Stephen Gordon and Ben Hughes built out our community tables and countertops in the new space; Rustic Nail and Co. crafted the custom steel legs for the communal tables; and Brock Coffey Construction did the renovation work (and yes, we might have chosen them based on the last name alone).

Thank you!

Longtime Sprudge reader, first-time submitter! Thanks for keeping the coffee world informed.

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: Spencer’s Coffee In Bowling Green, KY appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

We’ve said it before but Melbourne has become something of a hotbed of food, coffee, and wine over the years. There are so many specialty coffee shops and boutique cafes that you can find at least one in every neighborhood, and a generation of hospitality professionals who are spending lots of time working for other people before opening their own spaces. These new businesses often become even more niche and focused than the venues that spawned their owners: think niche shops focusing in and limiting their offerings, or very small venues in previously un-catered-to areas. So it’s even more surprising when a venue takes on an ambitious space, choosing to prioritize areas that the owner hasn’t necessarily specialized in.

Take, for example, Wild Life Bakery. Opened in September 2017 by Huw Murdoch, Wild Life found its home in a warehouse in the inner-north Melbourne suburb of Brunswick, with a focus on high-quality bread. Murdoch is a familiar face in Melbourne, having managed Market Lane Coffee’s Therry Street store for six years, with long stints in cafes and restaurants while studying jazz performance at Monash University. Over the years, he began baking sourdough at home and slowly realized that it far outshined the bread he could buy around his local neighborhood of Brunswick.

Sometimes when a business arises from a business owner’s hobby or passion, they tend to try and take on that role professionally, which doesn’t always work out. While Murdoch did toy with the idea of translating his love of bread into working in the bakery day-to-day, the venue he found ultimately dictated the way the business was structured. “It came down to the size of the site that I found,“ he says. “If I’d found a hole-in-the-wall to sell bread and some coffee out of, I would have thought more about trying to be the baker and to learn on the job a bit. But once I thought hard about the kind of venue it would need to be to work, I realized that I was much more qualified to run the front of house. For new businesses particularly, it’s nice for the locals to actually meet and talk with the owner, which is something that I can do out front but probably couldn’t have done out the back.”

Walking into Wild Life, one is struck by just how large the space is. It’s a huge light-filled warehouse that’s been lovingly transformed by Sarah Trotter of Hearth Studio into a beautifully compartmentalized space encompassing a well-sized kitchen, a dedicated bakery (with large circular peepholes in so that customers can view the magic), and a T-shaped island that houses the bread display and barista station. Light filters in from skylights, while tables and chairs luxuriously spread out in front of the bakery windows and kitchen pass.

Murdoch outlined his motivations for the business: “My aim was always to make a simple space that focused on sourdough bread, with the hope that eventually I’d find smaller local grain suppliers, and possibly make some positive contribution to supporting farmers growing higher-quality, less commodity-focused products.”

The menu here is (understandably) bread-focused, with a kimchi toastie on the menu from day one, whiles grains sneak their way in in non-bread form via porridges and the like. Murdoch has taken inspiration from folks like SQIRL in Los Angeles, and Tartine in San Francisco (pre-Manufactory). “Bar Tartine, and their philosophy of trying to make everything in-house, is something we think about a lot,” he adds. 

These inspirations come to light in things like Wild Life’s delicious take on Tartine’s salted rye cookie recipe, or their delectable range of Viennoiseries and sweet treats, but it’s an inspiration that blends beautifully with Murdoch’s choice of a unique menu; you won’t find poached eggs on avocado toast coming out of this kitchen, but you will find one of the best gazpachos you’ll ever have (accompanied by a cheese toastie, of course).

While the bread and food are definitely a huge draw, the beverage offering is expectedly no slouch—with Market Lane Coffee being brewed either through the La Marzocco Linea or as pour-over filter coffee, and a small wine and beer offering rounding out the all-day menu with a focus on approachable minimal-intervention delights from folks like Jamsheed Winery and La Sirene Brewery (thanks to a pre-exisiting liquor license from the building’s previous tenants).

While Murdoch intends to continue to bring good bread to the Brunswick locals, his non-glutenous goals for the future are equally noble. “I just really want to run a business where everyone is treated and paid well and correctly,“ he says. “It’s kind of ridiculous that I can take any pride in paying all of my staff the award wage, but it’s still pretty rare in Australian hospitality businesses, which is sad. I’m still very much learning how to run a business, so it’s early days, but creating and maintaining a positive work environment and culture is probably my main priority.”

Eileen P. Kenny is a coffee professional, winemaker, and Sprudge Media Network contributor based in Melbourne. Read more Eileen P. Kenny on Sprudge.

The post Melbourne: Sourdough And Coffee Find A New Home At Wild Life Bakery appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News