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Coffee lovers, meet Peak, a new home water pitcher designed for coffee brewing. This new project from Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood (of Colonna Coffee and Water For Coffee fame) debuted at the 2018 London Coffee Festival, drawing a weekend’s long packed booth of curious onlookers, neck-craners, and gongoozlers. Colonna-Dashwood helped design this device and was on hand to take punters through the paces at the fest; a corresponding Kickstarter campaign is now live.

The Peak pitcher is comprised three-part disc system with a simple goal: to make water for coffee better. The pitcher’s filters work to remove impurities, while also treating water with necessary minerals and solids that help extract a quality cup of coffee.

Peak discs (via Kickstarter)

Until Peak, there hasn’t been a gravity-fed water pitcher filter designed specifically for coffee brewing. As water quality varies wildly from region to region, Peak pitchers will be packaged with a water testing kit for users to determine their specific treatment needs. The pitcher will have a dial at the top to adjust the amount of treatment the Peak provides.

The dial (via Kickstarter)

If you’re anything like us, all this pitcher talk is leaving you with some lingering questions. And so amidst the hum and buzz of the London Coffee Festival, I sat down with Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood to grill him with some piping hot queries. An abridged transcript of said grilling is below.

Hi Maxwell, thank you for speaking with me about Peak. I have questions. For starters, would you say this is the very first water filter designed for coffee brewers?

That’s an interesting question. I would say yes.

But why are you saying “yes” with a cocked eye?

Well, I say it with a cockeye because, while I know the other water jugs have not been specifically designed for coffee, I also know people have become receptive to the idea those other jugs are now being marketed as benefiting coffee. And, I’m not saying they don’t have benefit on tap water for coffee, but I don’t think they do as much [as Peak] and I don’t think they were envisioned and designed specifically for coffee. So I would say ours is the first where its sole purpose is coffee, yeah.

How is this different from the other filters out there?

The existing filter jugs are really, really simple. With a mixture of carbon and resin, they try and get chlorine out and drop the hardness. Regardless of the quality of the water that goes in, they all go through that in the same way. You’re not able to adjust it, to adapt it to the type of water.

So ours, first of all, allows you to adjust how your water is treated, and that happens at each stage of the process. The first chamber that all the water goes through is carbon. It doesn’t matter whether you want harder or softer water, everybody wants to get rid of chlorine and organic compounds and nasty stuff, and that’s what the carbon does. And for every chamber we’ve created like a little maze inside so the water enters one side and has to work it’s way through the maze to get out the other side, which basically is a more foolproof way of treating the water.

Then the other two chambers, that’s what the bypass is all about. It’s a bit complex but basically you’re going to have a capped ion resin that gets the bicarbonate down. The problem you get then is you get a pH drop. This happens not just with jugs, it happens with systems in cafes so we’re adding another resin that helps balance the pH back up.

This is going to drive up the cost a bit compared to other jugs, but it’s also going to give you a more intense treatment and more control over your treatment than other products on the market.

So what do those filters cost?

So this is a very good question, and that’s the one everyone wants to know. If you run a cafe, you know that you set your filter up based on your water hardness and the life of the filter depends on that, right? But obviously people who buy jugs just get told “good for two months,” or one month or whatever. So our goal is that we’ll get 100 liters of filtered water through the setting for the hardest water, and if you’re working with softer water to start with, you’ll get more life. This will all be outlined in the product booklet.

So Peak won’t necessarily come with a set “two months of use” guideline per filter? 

That’s right. The other interesting thing about water jugs is unlike systems in cafe, they’re open to the air and what that means is they can have bacteria build up. So, the EU regulation is you must say two months once it’s been used for freshness. So you’ve got two lives, you’ve got actual physical capacity to soften the water, or treat the water and then you’ve got a freshness life, so we will say the two months, but this is the volume.

And you know, we looked at things like indicators to tell you when it’s done and it all started to turn this product into like a £100, £200 pound product. So we’ve tried to bring it down and make it really simple, quite analog. We might do more complex versions in the future, but we just wanted to make it really accessible to start.

Thanks, Maxwell!

The Peak is available to pre-order now on Kickstarter starting at £20 for the starter kit and £80 for 12 replacement discs (each disc will last about two months or 140 liters of water).

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge. 

Sprudge Media Network’s coverage of the 2018 London Coffee Festival is supported by Cafe Imports, Acaia, Assembly Coffee, Oatly UK, Faema, and Loveramics.

The post Peak: The First Water Filter Pitcher Designed For Coffee appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Another year at the London Coffee Festival, another round of inspired coffee cocktails. This massive festival—30,000+ attendees this year and counting—encourages guests to drink freely and mightily as companies hand out coffee-forward booze beverages throughout the day. And the true nexus for bibendum at the London Coffee Festival is La Marzocco‘s annual True Artisan Cafe, bringing together more than 20 coffee roasters and cafes for a series of three-hour shifts, pulling out all the stops along the way for a series of inventive signature drinks.

“True Artisan Bar was created to give our partners and customers the opportunity to spend time with consumers,” says UK La Marzocco Manager Paul Kelly. “The signature drinks and cocktails show creativity and passion that they don’t get the chance to showcase in their cafes.”

With a live DJ setting the mood, the whole atmosphere is positively club-like. We tried heaps of ace booze here, but these cheeky cocktails stood out among the rest.

Summer Is Coming – Coffee Collective

For three short hours, Copenhagen’s Coffee Collective took over the La Marzocco True Artisan Cafe at the 2018 London Coffee Festival. While there, the team pulled shots on the Modbar espresso machine and made a light, kicky coffee cocktail they call “Summer Is Coming.”

Using a light-alcohol coffee liqueur the crew created with Trolden Distillery in Kolding, Denmark, the Summer Is Coming is a bright and refreshing cocktail with a bit of orange zest, espresso, and tonic served on the rocks. Look for a spotlight feature on the liqueur collab betwixt Coffee Collective and Trolden in the coming weeks right here on Sprudge.

Coco Colada – SoHo House

While on queue, I overheard SoHo House‘s UK Coffee Quality Control Manager Coco Deeb tell a guest, “If you come back in 20 minutes, we’ll have the best coffee cocktail you’ve ever had in your life! It’s called a Coco Colada.” Naturally, I needed to know more.

The frozen drink was created by SoHo House UK Bar Manager Erden Kayalar and blends coconut, fresh pineapple juice, cocoa nibs, cold brew concentrate from UK’s own Sandows, espresso roasted for SoHo House by Origin Coffee Roasters, and Bacardi rum infused with cocoa nibs.

Diving in a bit deeper, I learned the coconut component was itself a blend of Coco Lopez cream of coconut, coconut water, coconut milk, and Angostura bitters.

It’d be near impossible to replicate this drink at home without a lot of time and a fully operable granita machine, but the kind folks at SoHo House suggest blending cold brew, Coco Lopez, pineapple juice, and Bacardi Carta Oro.

Iced Cafe Fracais – Grind

Shoreditch’s very own Grind classed up the place with bottles of Grey Goose vodka. What tastes better than an espresso martini? If that martini has a bunch of half and half in it! The Iced Cafe Fracais is a shaken cocktail of cream, vodka, espresso, and sugar.

The cocktail is surprisingly balanced, not too sweet: like a boozey coffee ice cream. And that’s what we’re really always looking for, isn’t it? We overheard a passerby exclaim, “This is yummy!” before going back for seconds. Slow down, we’re not on the moon yet!

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge.

Sprudge Media Network’s coverage of the 2018 London Coffee Festival is supported by Cafe Imports, Acaia, Assembly Coffee, Oatly UK, Faema, and Loveramics.

The post 3 Cheeky Coffee Cocktails From The London Coffee Festival appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Imagine being convicted of a crime, sent to jail, serving your sentence, and then being released back into the world to find work. Would you take a job in a former police station, with holding cells intact and graffiti of past detainees still etched on the steel doors? This is the scenario some Rotterdam residents are finding themselves in. Whether you call it an ironic twist of fate, dark comedy, or proof of Northern Europe’s cool-headed, constructive criminal justice system, this social enterprise is called Heilige Boontjes. Locals can appreciate the double meaning: heilige boontjes is the Dutch expression for “goody two shoes” and translates to “holy beans.”

Established three years ago by a cop and a social worker, Heilige Boontjes has been helping economically and socially disadvantaged individuals by training them to work at a coffee bar. The majority are young ex-cons who have been selected for the program by city authorities. Pulling espresso shots, clearing tables, or ringing up orders, they are meant to develop skills deemed necessary to return to school or secure long-term employment, ultimately reintegrating into society.

Following the success of its first cafe, Heilige Boontjes opened a second, more centrally located space in September 2016. Now its flagship cafe and roastery, the stately white and blue-trimmed building was a police station from 1945 right up until 2016. That history adds another remarkable layer to the story, though the property’s main draw was its mere vacancy, says Rodney Van den Hengel, head of reintegration at Heilige Boontjes.

Showing Sprudge around on a visit there in autumn 2017, Van den Hengel starts by outlining the Netherlands’s general prison population: “You’ve got the bad, the mad, and the sad,” he says. “The first group makes a real business model of criminality; you won’t get them in here. Then you’ve got the mad; these people have real mental problems: schizophrenics, psychopaths, those with OCD—we’re not equipped to counsel them. So we don’t take in these two groups, but we’ve got the remaining 70 percent.”

He explains that the “sad” category often includes delinquents who have committed larceny and done so while suffering from substance dependence, poverty, and/or peer pressure. By the time participants arrive at Heilige Boontjes, however, some sadness has been channeled into proactivity. “These kids, they have to say to us, ‘I want to change my life,’” Van den Hengel says. Incarcerated for four years in his early 20s, the 46-year-old speaks from experience. As he puts it: “I used to be the kid that we try to help here now.”

He readily recounts his own turning point. “My mother was dying when I was in jail,” he says. “She got a massive heart attack. And I would have to wait 23 hours a day to go out to make the call to ask: ‘Is she still alive?’ So it fucked up my mind. I went really mental in there. You’re sitting in a room three meters long, two meters wide. These security guards would be walking around your cell door, bashing the keys on your door. Then I made a deal with good or God, however you call it. I said: ‘You leave my mother alone; I will clean up my life.’ ”

Behind bars, his self-education began: he read the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, Buddha’s writings. When he was free, he enrolled in a program to address his cocaine and heroin abuse. Afterward, having found a home in Rotterdam, he was given not welfare, he emphasizes, but a job. Decades later, as a professional social worker, Van den Hengel helped diminish a Rotterdam chapter of the Crips by creating labor opportunities for the gang members.

Suddenly, he witnessed how “a whole group accesses money without using criminality.” “That sparked something in my head—that you don’t use counselors to solve problems,” he says. “You have to use commerce.” He stuck to that belief when Rotterdam police officer Marco den Dunnen sought his expertise to design some scheme that could keep local youth out of crime. Although Van den Hengel says that Den Dunnen “was really into coffee” while he was “drinking shite,” the two came together and wrote a project plan.

Soon after, Den Dunnen became Heilige Boontjes’ director. He is supported by a board of volunteers, as well as investor Dick de Kock, famous for having cofounded the Netherlands’s most influential specialty chain, Coffeecompany, and the person Den Dunnen credits as “our coffee mentor.” In its first year, Heilige Boontjes saw 10 participants complete the program. Last year there were 20, which became the annual target. Van den Hengel is unaware of cases of recidivism among graduates so far.

He describes the rehabilitation as taking place in three stages. “The first phase is just like: ‘Shut the hell up and go work. You don’t have to tell us about your problems because we’ll see them show up in the work,’ ” he says. During this period, participants receive assistance in managing their income and securing housing and health insurance. Once “skills and personal problems are in tune, we go a step further,” he says of the second phase, which might lead to work as a roasting assistant or a busser. For the third and final phase, participants are taught how to be a barista. “And it’s not an easy training,” he adds.  

On several visits to the flagship, right around its one-year anniversary, some half-dozen workers rotating shifts were racially diverse young men and women. Though most were unavailable to be interviewed or photographed for this article, they conveyed plenty in their barside manner. They all seemed professional and conscientious.

Heilige Boontjes relies on a three-group La Marzocco Linea Classic and two Mahlkönig K30 Vario grinders for the house Sumatra and the house Ethiopian-Brazilian blend. These coffees are sold by the bag, as are two single origins and a Brazilian-Colombian-Guatemalan blend called 010, for Rotterdam’s area code. One of the most popular drinks is a Moccamaster-brewed bakkie pleur, which is a colloquialism for “a cup of coffee” (and more fodder for Dutch city rivalry—Rotterdam and The Hague both claim coinage).

Besides roasting for its own customers and some business clients around the city, the company won a contract to supply middle-segment coffee to the city council. The order is so huge that it is handled off premises by a larger roastery. Yet Van den Hengel is quick to clarify: “It’s not our wish to make lots of money. It’s not our wish to drive Maseratis. Our wish is to make the best coffee possible.”

The sense of humor that Heilige Boontjes has about itself is on display too. Labels on the house brand’s soap bottles read: “Wash your hands in innocence.” Crime is not a joke, but the playfulness has a disarming effect. The bookshelves are rainbowed with spines of Agatha Christie novels. Guests have various seating options, from the cushy leather sofa near a wall inscribed with “boontje is ons loontje” (roughly: “beans are our means”), to utilitarian communal tables, ideal for groups ordering breakfast or lunch. The omnipresent staff portraits are by Léon Hendrickx, a photographer recently acclaimed for capturing drag queens in and out of drag and creating a series that conjoins his subjects’ two separate images to become an intimately acquainted couple.

Upstairs is the roasting wing. Guard-like, the Giesen W1M stands outside the corridor of holding cells. These units are currently used for storage: one cell contains the sacks of green beans, which are supplied by Trabocca; another holds buckets of fresh roasts; next door, cupping spoons. Across the floor is the luchtplaats, essentially a smoker’s cage, functional to this day though no longer requiring a push of the red security button to let a break-taker back in.

Spending much time on this level is Robin Scholten. He was among the program’s first graduates and began as one of three roasters at Heilige Boontjes. “They saw that I was the most consistent—in Holland we call it being Pietje Precies [‘Precise Petey’],” the 27-year-old says. “I took it very seriously and they said, ‘Well, if you keep growing in that way, you’re going to be the master roaster.’ ”

Today the title is his. Lately, he has also been coaching a junior colleague in roasting. Asked if he ever foresaw coffee in his career, Scholten is straightforward. “I was a drug dealer. I was a crook,” he says. “But a couple of things happened, which I prefer to keep private, and that’s why I came here: to work on myself. Now everything is good. It’s a balanced life.” As for the familiar job setting, “Aaah, it’s good,” says Scholten. “These younger people wouldn’t have wanted to be in a police station in the past. But now they’re working in one, toward their future.”

In October, Heilige Boontjes received the Hein Roethof Prize, issued biannually by the Dutch Centre for Crime Prevention and Safety to an organization that creatively and effectively deals with a social security issue. In November, it won the 2017 Tinnen Ananas award, recognizing Heilige Boontjes as nothing less than Rotterdam’s most hospitable enterprise.

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

The post Rehabilitation Through Coffee At Heilige Boontjes In Rotterdam appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

There were four, then there were two. Then there was just one. That one is Agnieszka Rojewska, a freelance competitor from Poland, the 2018 Coffee Masters champion at the London Coffee Festival.

On paper, Rojewska was supposed to win. She’s a four time national latte art champion, has won national barista championships more times than I can count, and was a finalist at last year’s New York Coffee Masters. This was hers to win. On paper. (She may have even been the not-so-quiet pick of the Sprudge team.) But things never play out like they are supposed to. Rojewska had a self-described “rough” first round, placing her in the middle of the top eight cutoff at the end of the first day with a second, larger day still left to compete. But Rojewska held on to the sixth place spot, earning her way to the next round. And after that, it all went according to plan.

Agnieszka Rojewska (right) blind folded during the cupping challenge, with judge Freda Yuan (center) and MC Lem Butler (left).

Rojewska first had to square off against Network Cafe’s Daniel Horbat in the semi-final round. She got off to a fast start by correctly reordering four out of six coffee cups—the highest score put down all weekend in the discipline—before putting up eight of 10 drinks in the Order round, one less than Horbat. But Rojewsak ultimately prevailed and made it into the Finals round to face Rob Clarijs of Dasawe Coffee Roasters and Beanspire.

In the Finals, Rojewska fell behind early to Clarijs after he successfully named the origins of two coffees on the cupping table to her zero. But with the Latte Art round—Rojewska’s best discipline going by her résumé—shortly to follow, she was still very much in it. And indeed, after taking a two to one victory in Latte Art, it call came down to the Signature Beverage round.

Judges Tim Wendelboe (left), David Donde (center) and Freda Yuan look on.

Rojewska’s winning drink was a take on a gin and tonic, using gin (of course), a tonic syrup—consisting of the zests of a lime, orang, and grapefruit, brown sugar, quinine aromatics, and cold water—and 150ml pour-over of her Ugandan coffee from the Mzungu Project and roasted by Gardelli Specialty Coffees, carbonated and then bottled. Judges would then pop open the bottle with their Palace Guard bottle openers, pour enjoy the provided glass, and enjoy.

Then came what may arguably the hardest part: the waiting. Rojewska and Clarijs had to sweat it out for some 30 minutes before the announcement was made. But once the name of the £5,000 prize check was revealed, there could be no mistaking that the winner was Agnieszka Rojewska.

Rojewska photographed in Shoreditch, London.

It will thrilling to see Rojewska, a barista that we have personally seen on a World stage compete multiple times across a variety of events never to cross that ultimate finish line, finally hoist a much hard fought and well-deserve trophy over her head. On paper it was hers to win. But now it’s on carboard. A big check-sized piece, with “Agnieszka Rojewska” and “£5,000” written on it.

Sprudge Media Network’s coverage of the 2018 London Coffee Festival is supported by Cafe Imports, Acaia, Assembly Coffee, Oatly UK, Faema, and Loveramics.

Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network. All photos by Zac Cadwalader for Sprudge. 

Much more coverage of the 2018 Coffee Masters tournament from London Coffee Festival is available at Sprudge Live. 

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Source: Coffee News

What we call our coffee drinks says a lot about us.

Here in America it’s all-Italian-everything. Cappuccino. Italiano. Espresso. The way we talk about coffee is still beholden to the Italian craftspeople who invented espresso technology, and thus espresso drinks, over a hundred years ago. There are of course a few exceptions, like the Mocha, which has its roots in Yemen, or the Gibraltar, which is named for the Libbey brand glassware it’s served in. Slang is creeping into the American coffee experience slowly, but for the most part our cafe menus have stayed the same, even as seemingly everything else about coffee in America has changed dramatically.

The Australians, meanwhile, slang-obsessed and giving little to zero linguistic fucks, have developed* their own lingua franca of coffee drinks. An Americano is, in Australia, a “Long Black,” made with four ounces of water and two-ish ounces of espresso. A simple espresso is, by the same logic, a “Short Black.” A latte is a “Flat White”—that’s really all it is, don’t @ me—and a “Magic” is, I think, a double ristretto topped up with like 120-150 ml of milk, although most of the time it isn’t a true ristretto shot, because that would mean resetting the grinder. So the mythical “Magic” is really just an overdosed shot or a shot pulled short with a little bit of milk. It’s a glorified macchiato with a great big ego and rare earth mineral rights, basically.

There are some drinks that get all the love—people were once obsessed with the cortado/Gibraltar paradigm, in a way that seems quaint now—and there are some drinks that feel like they get the short end of the stick. Consider the Americano: has the Americano ever been cool? Isn’t it just a way of ruining a shot of espresso? True espresso drinkers drink theirs straight. And if you want a six to eight ounce beverage, why not have a delicious, meticulously dialed in cup of “batch brew” (the American term) and/or a “filter coffee” (what they call it in the Commonwealth, except for Canada, where, sorry, it’s called “drip”).

The Americano is the cafe menu’s ugly duckling. Not quite a purist beverage, not quite a specialty of specialty. This juxtaposition cuts me straight to the heart because, friends, the tiny Americano is my favorite drink.

I’m not sure where I first confronted the Americano stigma, but I do recall an experience in a small village in Italy that probably cemented the feeling. At a tiny basement cafe in the religious pilgrimage town called Assisi, in the heart of Umbria, I had one of those emblematic Italian cafe experiences and it has stuck with me for years. First, I attempted to order a cappuccino. It was 3pm in the afternoon and my order was met with a lot of hand gesturing. Instead, the barista/barkeep (it is a dual role in Italy) thought I might like an Americano (was it my Airwalks that tipped them off?) and proceeded to make me what remains to this day the best Americano I’ve had in my life.

I don’t mean “best” in any kind of points score technical way—this was one of those Illy umbrella sorts of places—but I was sixteen and knew exactly nothing about coffee, other than it seemed to fuel the daily efforts of adults, which is what I desperately wanted to be. Sitting there on the Piazza del Comune, with thousands of years of Roman Catholic history all around me (the church next door had an ancient Roman blood sacrifice altar!), well…they could have served me dishwater and I’d have loved it.

But I’ve since reflected that it was, perhaps, the water to coffee ratio of the drink itself that I loved best. I think it was an Americano constructed out of some combination of derision and spatial limitation: two ounces of water and a standard Italian espresso shot. The beverage was perhaps 4 ounces in total. Not a straight espresso—certainly not—but not, as I would come to learn in the years proceeding, a standardized Americano, which is typically at least six ounces, and often more like eight ounces or 12 ounces, and commonly presented with room for cream.

I don’t like these great big ghastly Americanos. Who needs that much water? I don’t even really like the “Long Black” with its two parts water to one part spro dichotomy. But I do love, and really, I mean love, an espresso drink made with just two ounces of water. This is a good drink. Only I’m not sure what we’re supposed to call it.

(To be clear, in brief sidebar form, I am most decidedly not talking about the Montreal allongé, or an EK43 shot, or a Pergerccino or a Coffee Shot or whatever the hell else you want to call the briefly popular gigantic long shot of espresso, which, if I’m strolling down St-Viateur with a wood-fired bagel, sure, but otherwise, no thank you.)

I have heard my favorite drink called, in no particular order, a “Little Buddy,” an “Italiano,” a “Tiny Americano,” a “Teeny-Cano,” a “Baby-Cano,” a “Lil’ Cano,” a “Medium Black,” a “Minicano,” a “Two x Two,” a “Peggy,” the “Unamerican Americano,” a “Little Meri,” a “Halfacano,” a “Roaster’s Americano,” the “Spanish American War” (at Houndstooth Dallas), the “Mitch” (at Seattle’s Espresso Vivace), and a “Danny DeVito.”

A surprising number of people actually call this drink a “Danny DeVito”—I did some public polling around the question of what this drink is called, and multiple people from different parts of the United States had that response. It is named this because it’s “short and strong.” This drink is for real being called a Danny DeVito out in the wild. That’s amazing.

Also, some people were rude:

Ah yes, the “Why would you drink that” https://t.co/JPQUojkY4Y

— Justin (@hyperpape) March 30, 2018

BECAUSE IT IS GOOD JUSTIN.

I typically order my tiny Americano drink with a combination of hesitation and what I hopes come across as empathy—sort of, you know, “Yes I am self-aware that my coffee drink order is fussy and particular, and I’m sorry for both of us that I’m on some Frasier Crane bullshit, but please, this drink is good, so if you don’t mind…” And from there it’s a game of ounces and cups. If it’s for here I ask for a cappuccino cup, as a kind of spatial limiter. That typically gets the job done, ratio-wise, because those cups can only hold so much liquid. If it’s to go, I’ll say something like, “Can you just use like half as much water as you normally would for an Americano?” I either get a funny look in response or sometimes a knowing, enthusiastic reply if the barista is also aware of this drink and its inherent goodness.

I will also, occasionally, be corrected to just call it by one of the many names. This is my favorite potential outcome. “You mean a Little Buddy?” Yes, I do mean that, but I’m not going to just say that to you apropos of nothing across the counter. Because what if you’ve never heard of a Little Buddy before? What then? If there’s no agreed-upon nomenclature for my favorite drink, I’d rather err on the side of you correcting me halfway through my order ratio song and dance.

I hope that coffee in 2018 is post-stigma for most things. The coffee culture has more important stuff to care about, frankly, and so there should be no more hating on condiments. No more batch brew derision. No more eye-rolling if a place wants to offer a really, really good white chocolate mocha, or a blended frappe. And no more looking down upon the Americano, especially my beloved tiny Americano. Whatever you call it, I love this drink. This is a good drink.

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

*and / or thieved from New Zealand. 

The post This Is A Good Drink appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Just around the river bend from the London Coffee Festival and outside of Christ Church Spitafields, the team at HasBean has opened a four-day pop-up market. Deep underground, in what was formally a public toilet turned nightclub turned restaurant, the space is now filled with coffee goods, brewing devices, espressos, and cheeky ice cream with coffee competition inspired toppings.

HasBean got its start as a cafe in Stafford (in the Midlands region) from 2000-2003, and has helped pioneer coffee culture and sales in the online space ever since, working with an international network of wholesale accounts along the way. This marks the company’s second London pop-up experience, following last year’s pour-over only [H]AND bar inside Uniqlo. 2018 marks the first time the company has built a cafe all their own.

Stephen Leighton and Co. brought 18 coffees for the pop-up with at least four different ways to enjoy them: as pour-over at their hand-drip station, as an ice cream sundae, a self-serve “In My Mug” station with a La Marzocco Linea Mini, and a full-service espresso bar. Among those brewing coffee is none other than World Barista Champion Dale Harris, pulling shots off a Modbar station in the back.

The pour-over zone is branded as [H]AND, greeting visitors as they walk down the steps just to the left. HasBean’s blog describes it as “a place where you can sit back and relax whilst you taste, whether it’s a single cup of something lovely or a tasting flight of all three of the day’s coffees.” You can check out the day’s offerings on their Instagram @madebyhandcoffee.

The In My Mug area highlights the company’s subscription service and video-cast and gives folks a chance to pull shots on a shiny red Linea Mini espresso machine.

Like the In My Mug self-service zone, the ice-cream station is also a hands-on experience. “That’s half the fun,” Leighton tells us. Pete Williams helped translate three competition signature beverages to the medium of sundae. House-made syrups of oolong tea, fermented red plum, and elderflower gel are available for squeezing with orange milk meringues, chocolate soil, and blackcurrant Turkish delights on offer for toppings. An espresso finishing powder is available to give the whole thing a kick.

Along the wall, the pop-up offers a selection of brewing devices, books, and vessels. “We wanted to create a market-like setting,” explains Leighton.

Along with two six-top tables, the space also has a comfortable living room chill-zone with trophies on display from various competitions over the years and perhaps my favorite piece: an enormous red HasBean bean bag chair.

When asked if Leighton ever considers opening another permanent brick-and-mortar cafe, he says it’s something they think about often. If it happens, he assures us, “we’ll do something unusual with it.”

HasBean Pop-Up Market is located at 82A Commercial St and is open from 8am-5pm Thursday-Sunday. 

Zachary Carlsen is a co-founder and editor at Sprudge Media Network. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge. 

The post Underground Coffee: At The HasBean Pop-Up Market In London appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

#CoffeeToo, a “volunteer-run grassroots community project dedicated to gathering and sharing information and resources with coffee professionals on the topics of discrimination and sexual harassment within the coffee industry” spearheaded by Molly Flynn is launching a new initiative in the form an epic pledge campaign. The campaign, according to Flynn, “urges the whole coffee community (not just the US coffee community) to pledge to conduct themselves in a non-toxic way and to be active allies in toxic situations.”

In a written statement, the organization explains “#coffeetoo has created a pledge for any person, organization, or business to say they will not engage in toxic or dangerous behaviors, and will instead adopt an action plan for being an active ally for those who are in toxic situations.”

Once members of the coffee community sign the pledge, there will be a number of ways to show solidarity: the organization will be handing out enamel pins and users will be able to express their allyship digitally with custom Facebook photo frames.

To help support the initiative, #CoffeeToo are hosting an upcoming event—their first—to drive community engagement and support. To learn more about #coffeetoo and this event, head over to the #coffeetoo Facebook page.

The post Take The #CoffeeToo Pledge Against Harassment appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Indonesia: home to lush beaches, beautiful jungles, incredible art and culture, and one of the world’s great specialty coffee scenes.

We dug deep into the Bali coffee culture during a recent Sprudge Instagram takeover. Longtime Sprudge contributor Giulia Mule spent a week in Indonesia on the islands of Bali and Java. While there, Mule took over our @Sprudge Instagram account, chronicling her cafe stops along the way.

EXPAT Roasters — Seminyak, Bali

Hello from Giulia @mondomulia, taking over Sprudge Instagram feed this week! I’ll be sharing my favourite coffee spots in Bali, where the café scene is growing so fast, it’s hard to keep up. One place coffee lovers shouldn’t miss on the island is @expatroasters, a brew bar and roastery led by Australian barista Shae Macnamara in Seminyak. Order a cup of locally sourced Kintamani Ulian Murni Farm single origin: one of the best coffees in Bali. #SprudgeTakeover

A post shared by Sprudge (@sprudge) on Mar 26, 2018 at 7:59am PDT

Anomali Coffee — Ubud & Kuta, Bali

Hello, @mondomulia here sharing my favourite coffee spots from around Bali. @anomalicoffee is a coffee roaster company serving premium coffee beans from all over Indonesia and promoting speciality coffee since 2007. They have two locations on the island in Ubud and Kuta. #sprudgetakeover

A post shared by Sprudge (@sprudge) on Mar 26, 2018 at 8:55pm PDT

Hungry Bird Coffee — Canggu, Bali

Over in Canggu, a popular beach town on Bali’s west coast, @hungrybirdcoffee has been roasting and serving specialty coffee since 2013. Their house espresso ‘Berawa’, is a blend of Brazil, Sumatra and Colombia beans. • Follow me @mondomulia for more coffee and food spots in Indonesia. #SprudgeTakeover

A post shared by Sprudge (@sprudge) on Mar 27, 2018 at 4:51am PDT

Juria Coffee — Ubud, Bali

Have you heard of Juria coffee? It’s a rare variety of Typica Arabica which used to grow in Indonesia, India and Sri Lanka. Most of it was destroyed by disease 130 years ago, but the plants still grow in Manggarai, Flores, Indonesia. @juria_coffee have started roasting the beans two years ago (fully washed or honey process) and serve specialty coffee pourovers at their shop in Ubud, Bali. by @mondomulia #SprudgeTakeover

A post shared by Sprudge (@sprudge) on Mar 27, 2018 at 4:49pm PDT

Gangga Coffee Gallery — Bali

Hello, @mondomulia here with more Balinese specialty coffee shops to share with you! @ganggacoffeegallery is a hub for the local specialty coffee community, you’ll find some of the best Balinese brewers and baristas there. The house espresso ‘Sweet Solitude’ is a blend of house blend of Kintamani Bali and Ciwodey West Java, roasted by @smith.jkt in Jakarta. The brew bar also offers a variety of Indonesian single origins sourced by fair trade. #sprudgetakeover

A post shared by Sprudge (@sprudge) on Mar 28, 2018 at 5:51am PDT

Senima Coffee Studio — Ubud, Bali

Next up on @mondomulia takeover from Bali is @senimancoffee in Ubud — Seniman Coffee Studio opened in 2010 and remains today one of the leading Third Wave coffee shops in Bali. Sit down on a bar rocker chair and order the flight of 3 coffee tasting or cross the street to THCR store and small-batch roastery to buy beans. Try a single origin from Bali, Java, Sumatra, Flores, Sulawesi and Papua or Seniman espresso blends (light or medium roast). Seniman was my first stop as soon as I landed in Bali and a place I returned to many times during my stay. by @mondomulia #sprudgetakeover

A post shared by Sprudge (@sprudge) on Mar 28, 2018 at 6:01pm PDT

Revolver Espresso — Seminyak, Bali

Hi from Bali! The coolest coffee joint on the island is @revolverespresso on the trendy west coast: down an alleyway, off Seminyak Square, a wooden door leads you into a dark and large bar area followed by a very Instagrammable flowery pink room. You’ll feel like walking into a secret speakeasy. The Revolver espresso – a blend of Guatemala, Colombia and Papua New Guinea – is supplied to the best cafés and restaurants around Bali. Order a Cold Brew, essential to survive a hot day at the beach in Seminyak. by @mondomulia #sprudgetakeover

A post shared by Sprudge (@sprudge) on Mar 29, 2018 at 5:16pm PDT

Ubud Coffee Culture — Ubud, Bali

@UbudCoffeeCulture may be the newcomer to Ubud’s specialty scene, but the coffee shop and micro roastery is definitely worth checking out. They focus on pourovers made from Indonesian single origin beans (my favourite was from Flores). They also have a Rok machine if you fancy an espresso. The Balinese owners love to engage and chat with customers and local baristas until late, so that the shop never closes on time! by @mondomulia #sprudgetakeover

A post shared by Sprudge (@sprudge) on Mar 30, 2018 at 1:21am PDT

Milk and Madu — Ubud, Bali

Hello! Giulia, aka. Mondomulia, here sharing my favourite cafés in Bali. I love @milkandmadu’s stunning glasshouse space, commanding views of Ubud’s Royal Palace, awesome brunch and coffee. They use beans by @goodfoodbrotherhood (100% Arabica from Colombia, Guatemala and Ethiopia). The creamy milk comes from expat Australian cows living in Java. They also have a pop-up in trendy beach town Canggu. Find more Bali tips on my feed @mondomulia #SprudgeTakeover

A post shared by Sprudge (@sprudge) on Mar 30, 2018 at 10:12pm PDT

Epic Coffee — Yogyakarta, Java

Hello from @mondomulia! The last stop of my Sprudge takeover is a coffee shop I discovered in Yogyakarta in central Java. @epic_coffee was founded in 2013 by Indonesian roaster and Q grader Aji who travelled all around Indonesia to meet growers and taste hundreds of coffees. The epic café / roastery / furniture store serves the best local coffee – such as Sumatra Aceh Gayo. Definitely worth checking them out. I hope you enjoyed my takeover, you will find more coffee and food tips on my feed @mondomulia #sprudgetakeover

A post shared by Sprudge (@sprudge) on Mar 31, 2018 at 6:16am PDT

Each month we feature a new Instagram takeover on the @Sprudge account—give us a follow, won’t you, and who knows where we’ll be popping up next.

Much more visual beauty from cool cafes around the world, exclusive content only on the official Sprudge Instagram channel. 

Read more of Giulia Mule’s work on Sprudge, follow @mondomulia on Instagram, and visit her official website.

The post A Cafe Tour Of Bali With Giulia Mule appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

What if I told you that you could drink beer for breakfast, in your pajamas, and call it a culinary delight? You may be surprised to know that such an event exists, but you may be less surprised to learn that it is happening in Colorado, a stalwart of really good beer and really good coffee. It’s called the Brewers Breakfast and it is taking place this Sunday, April 15th at Ginger and Baker in Fort Collins.

Hosted by Black Bottle Brewery, Bindle Coffee, and Troubadour Maltings—a craft malted grains company started by none other than Chris Schooley, formerly of Coffee Shrub—the Brewers Breakfast is a four-course brunch featuring cool pairings and collabs from the three hosts. The menu includes items like Brewers Breakfast Cereal with almond milk, Troubadour malt sourdoughs, malt ice cream affogatos, and the “Cereal sundae with Troubadour vanilla malt ice cream, cereal streusel, bananas and maple caramel.”

Tickets for Brewers Breakfast are $55 ($25 for the three-course Brewers Brunch Kids menu), and seating for the event is very limited. Tickets for the inaugural event can be purchased here. For more information, visit the Brewers Breakfast Facebook event page. If there’s a better way to spend a Sunday than eating a four-course brunch, drinking coffee, and having a few breakfast beers, I have yet to find it.

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 Ginger and Baker

The post A Very Special Brewers Breakfast In Fort Collins, Colorado appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Western Massachusetts is, generally speaking, the bucolic chunk of land lying west of Worcester County—an area containing the Berkshires, the Connecticut River Valley, and the city of Springfield. Here we have The Basketball Hall of Fame. We have mountains that would be hills in any other state. We have old mill buildings converted into bookstores, artist studios, and breweries. Interstate 91 cuts through our modest region, carrying travelers south to New Haven and New York, north to Burlington and Montreal. Leaf-peepers stop over en route to Vermont’s fall foliage, parents pack into hotels at graduation time, and Trump voters and Bernie die-hards avoid eye contact in the Stop N Shop parking lot. The towns are small, the farmland hugs the houses, and the river wraps up this pretty land with its rich history of classic New England Colonialism, crop cultivation, and, of course, college students. This area has long been home to craft beer, gorgeous produce, and handmade everything—but in recent years good coffee has sprung up like the ever-present cornstalks that in winter here, peek out like stubble from fluctuating layers of snow. Here are some of Western Mass coffee’s very best.

Share Coffee Roasters

The Share Coffee roastery rolls up its door weekdays at 8:00am, as commuters thread along Route 9—a stretch of chain stores bisecting the farming town of Hadley, Massachusetts. Inside, owner Ken Majka can be found Mondays and Thursdays roasting coffee on his 60-year-old Probat. The coffee is roasted, bagged, and shipped out the same day to wholesale accounts and weekly subscribers, and delivered to his two cafes in neighboring Amherst and Northampton. Share prioritizes seasonality in its coffee, and changes the components of its two blends—Daily Driver and Pickup Espresso—often, maintaining a consistent flavor profile. Their single-origins are divided into Comfort and Adventure categories—a way to guide customers towards a coffee that will align with their tastes.  

Behind a single table and thin counter, the whole operation is laid out for locals who trickle in to buy beans, ask coffee questions, and possibly taste something just roasted and not yet in the rotation. It is common to be the only one there, and Majka is happy to pull shots on his Kees van der Westen Mirage while launching information across the counter about his retrofitted Probat, his newest coffee, or his partnerships with local breweries. He is enormously passionate, and very educated, and it’s easy to be spat back into the parking lot head spinning.

Circuit Coffee

Circuit Coffee sits at the edge of Westfield’s main square, and has the shiny, particular feeling of a cafe that just opened its doors. Customers sit on couches and at repurposed wire-spool tables—seeming right at home. Behind a Kees van der Westen Spirit, owner Ted Dobek pours maple lattes, his most popular drink. When customers order caramel lattes, accustomed to Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks—the only other coffee options in town—Dobek steers them gently towards his version, made with local maple syrup, local milk, and Share Coffee’s Pickup Espresso. Parts of the interior are also local—the bar and countertop’s thick maple was salvaged from a bowling alley next door.

Dobek is 25, recently married, and lives in the apartment upstairs. He spent a few years after graduating from Westfield State working in different coffee shops—including Share—dreaming up a way to bring good coffee to his area. With his background in graphic design he created the logo and drew plans for the interior himself, and with build-out help from family and friends, and a successful Kickstarter campaign, opened Circuit Coffee this past September. “I wanted to make sure a coffee shop wasn’t just what I talked about doing. I was working a job I hated and I didn’t want to say, ‘I wish I had opened a coffee shop.’”

Tunnel City Coffee

After encountering the colossus that is MASS MoCA—our country’s largest contemporary art museum—it is easy to stumble past Tunnel City Coffee and instead find solace at Bright Ideas Brewing, also contained within the many outbuildings of this former mill’s campus, some of which hold even more art. But venturing inside Tunnel City provides a gentle anecdote to James Turrell’s lightworks, which are both beautiful and exhausting. Here they have soft lighting, light and dark roast options, and the quiet space to decompress.

Tunnel City roasts its own coffee in yet another converted mill nearby, this town once full of water-born industry, which they pay homage to in their name—a reference to the nearby Hoosac Tunnel. The construction of this four-mile tunnel—at its completion in 1875 the longest in North America—killed about 200 workers and created a vital economic link between Albany and points to the west. Their espresso blend, Number 50, is named after the first train to travel through the tunnel. They also have a single-origin espresso available, today a Brazil Peaberry Fazenda Guariroba, pulled on their shiny La Marzocco Strada. Outside the window is Natalie Jeremijenko’s Tree Logic, in which six live trees grow suspended upside down, and if you venture a look up at the ceiling, pipes can be seen leftover from this building’s industrial use—long before the coffee break was invented.

No. Six Depot

Inside No. Six Depot Roastery and Cafe, architectural lamps hover above thick wooden tables, where co-owner Lisa Landry attends the bar, topped with a Victoria Arduino Athena Leva. In the back, her husband Flavio Lichtenthal may be standing watch at the roaster. He worked as a chef and journalist before landing in coffee. They will soon release a line of “Campesina” coffee from women-owned cooperatives—building on their longtime use of Ethiopia Amaro Gayo by Ethiopia’s first female exporter, Asnakech Thomas.

Landry and Lichtenthal spent years talking about starting a roastery before finding a space, “that we could make a bigger dent in, spread out, do what we wanted,” says Landry. With her background in art, branding, and journalism, this meant dedicating the largest room to space for a gallery. With its white walls, farm-blue floors, and extravagantly paned windows, this space retains the elegance of its original use as a train station—built in the 1830s when marble was being exported from a nearby quarry.

“We, at first, wanted to be strictly coffee roasters; but Flavio is Argentine and I lived in Italy for years and the idea of coffee separated from community and culture was impossible for us to envision,” says Landry. They incorporate the community as thoroughly as possible, holding events all winter in appreciation of the locals—the backbone of this region whose population quadruples come summer.

Iconica Social Club

The front door at Iconica opens directly onto the bar where owners Em Withenbury and Fitzpatrick Mulvaney are usually stationed—serving Ritual Coffee on their La Marzocco GB5 and Swings Coffee on their rotating pour-over bar. With no batch brew available, this place is set at a sluggish pace, and as customers wait for their drinks they often explore the elaborately decorated space. Withenbury and Mulvaney spent two years renovating it themselves, filling it with family heirlooms and flea market finds. They have thought everything out to the very last detail—from the screen-printed hand towels in the bathrooms to the Depression-era glassware, and a sign painted on the brick wall that politely implies the use of space, pointing customers to a lo-fi area in the back, and a Wi-Fi area upstairs. The Wi-Fi area is set up like a library—complete with map wallpaper, dark-stained siding, sturdy desk lamps, and bookshelves lined with thick tomes and back issues of National Geographic. The “low-fi” area has industrial tables, chairs that swing on metal brackets, a small stage, and a wood burning fireplace that Mulvaney feeds every so often—squeezing past customers sipping coffee on well-worn couches.

Customers come for the coffee, cold-pressed juice and almond milk, and pastries baked in-house, but at its heart, Iconica is trying for something bigger. “In creating it as social club, community was at the forefront to what we are thinking about,” says Withenbury, “and we wanted to create a space where everyone felt like they could come in and engage on a lot of different levels.” This may mean stopping by for a movie night, attending a free weekly cupping, sitting in the public parklet outside, playing with the antique machines that sit like paperweights on every table, or picking up one of the books strewn about as if the reader is just up getting a refill.

Oona Robertson is a freelance journalist. This is Oona Robertson’s first feature for Sprudge Media Network.

All photos by Haley Carchio except Tunnel City images courtesy Tunnel City.

The post A Coffee Drinker’s Guide To Western Massachusetts appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News