Best Coffee in Honolulu – The Curb Kaimuki

Business is booming in Boston’s coffee culture. Three of the most prominent American specialty coffee companies—Counter Culture, Blue Bottle, and Intelligentsia—have set up shop there, with a burgeoning micro-roaster community of its own. In the historically Black neighborhood of Dorchester, Massachusetts, just south of downtown Boston, a coffee scene is growing on its own. Enter Ripple Cafe, a Black-owned coffee pop-up that opened last summer in the dining room of Taste of Eden, a Jamaican restaurant in Codman Square on the corner of Withington and Norfolk. After a successful first year, Ripple Cafe is moving into a permanent cafe space less than a mile from the pop-up, and they’re looking to the community for help funding renovations.

According to their Gofundme campaign, Ripple Cafe is slated to begin renovations immediately and hope to open by October 1st of 2018. Along with continuing to offer Counter Culture coffee, juices, and pastries, the cafe’s stated goals include creating a sustainable living for their baristas through liveable wages, investing back into the community through non-profit work, and providing first-time jobs for local youth. Owners Gaelle Ducheine and James Guerrier spelled it out on the cafe’s Gofundme page:

We have dreamed of owning this sort of cafe for years, but we knew the implications of debt financing in such a start-up situation would create financial pressure on the business. We wanted to start small and experience an organic growth, as this would mitigate risk and give us time to learn the ins and outs of the business. We built a coffee cart in the summer of 2017 and set up in spare dining room space inside a Jamaican restaurant in Dorchester’s Codman Square as a pop-up enterprise. We sold specialty coffee, tea, smoothies, and locally sourced pastries for a year, building great relationships with customers and making great friends along the way. We self-financed the entire operation and continued to do so until the pop-up was able to sustain itself. It took a lot of hard work, but it was sweet to see it flourishing on its own and to gain a glimpse of that organic growth and effect we had been longing for.

We are proud of our initial success as young entrepreneurs, owners of one of a very small handful of Black Owned Independent Coffee Shop’s in the city of Boston.

We’re living in a time where folks in marginalized communities are rallying hard to support each other, and we’ve been fortunate to see this same work taking place in coffee spaces. Groups like Boston Intersectional Coffee Collective (founded by Intelligentsia Post Office Square lead barista, Kristina Jackson) remind us our support for minority coffee folks—especially Black coffee folks—is not only important, but necessary. Fundraisers like the one underway in Dorchester offer another opportunity to extend support to minority-owned businesses dedicated to reinvesting into the communities they come from. It’s a ripple effect of positivity and growth that will reach far and wide to better the world of coffee, for drinkers and business owners alike.

You can support Ripple Cafe’s campaign on Gofundme and follow them on Instagram to stay updated on their progress.

Michelle Johnson is a news contributor at Sprudge Media Network, and the founder and publisher of The Chocolate Barista. Read more Michelle Johnson on Sprudge.

Photos via Ripple Cafe.

The post Boston’s Ripple Cafe Is Expanding (With Your Help) appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

It was only a matter of time before Christos Andrews opened Ghost Note Coffee. The Capital Hill cafe that bills itself as a “modern, progressive coffee shop” is positioned to offer Seattleites a gastronomic coffee experience. Take it’s signature coffee cocktail, called The Sun Ship, for example. The drink, served in a martini glass, is a mixture of espresso, in-house smoked grapefruit rosemary syrup, coconut water, sparkling water, and lime.

“Any professional in any sort of field, art or otherwise, comes to a place where you feel like you’ve hit a wall,” Andrews says. “I felt somewhat limited until now.”

At Ghost Note, he’s the type of owner who pulls a towel from behind the bar 30 seconds after walking in to wipe up a smudged bit of creamer on the counter. His eyes flash around the cafe as he speaks, making peace signs at customers breezing through the entrance.

The prevalence of cocktails on cafe menus is on the rise. Ghost Note’s includes a concoction of African espresso, tonic water, juniper sage concentrate, and cucumber. And still another, dubbed the Firefly Tonic, that features tonic water, Burundi espresso, Lemon Lavender shrub, lemon bitters, and of course, in-house rose lavender syrup.

Andrews made his entrance into the food world while working at Whole Foods in Nashville, where he was living attempting to make a go at drumming in the city’s music scene. Ghost Note’s name refers to a musical note that at once carries rhythmic value and no discernible pitch. For a drummer, a ghost note is what lends personality and feel to an average piece of music.

“But after I got my first barista job, it was game over,” Andrews says with a grin.

Instead of a drum kit, his instrument of choice at Ghost Note is a La Marzocco Linea. Andrews and his friends jokingly refer to the shop’s signature method of pulling shots as a Blast Brew.

“We put a flow restrictor on the pump,” Andrews says, “turning the pressure down to five-and-a-half bars, and the temperature up to 203, with a 14-and-a-half brew ratio.”

Other members of the Seattle coffee community, like Alex Johnstone and David Rothstein of Convoy Coffee, appreciate the way Ghost Note brings a culinary passion to coffee.

“We’re big fans of Christos,” Johnstone says. Of the Blast Brew, he adds: “It’s like pulling an espresso-esque shot at the volume of twelve ounces.”

Ghost Note regularly stocks Seattle’s Broadcast Coffee, and sources food items from other local outfits like Salmonberry Goods and Columbia City Bakery, where Andrews expanded the coffee program. The shop’s mugs come from nearby Yu Tang Ceramics, and it adds a bit of imported flare from a guest roaster program, which has featured more far-afield roasters like Colorado’s Sweet Bloom Coffee Roasters.

It should be noted that Andrews’ price point is higher than that of other area shops. He and his partner, a software engineer named Lee Hampton from New York, surveyed the pricing of other cafes in Capital Hill and set theirs in the high end. Then they added 10 percent.

That’s because Ghost Note doesn’t accept tips. Andrews uses the added income of higher-priced menu items to pay baristas competitive wages as well as for holidays and two weeks of paid vacation.

“Ghost Note is different because they’re quietly doing things better than they need to be done,” Convoy’s Rothstein says.

Andrews won America’s Best Espresso contest in 2013 while working for Tony’s Coffee out of Bellingham. Before that, he was directing coffee at Neptune Coffee, then Tougo Coffee for two years. Last year, his Sun Ship garnered a semi-finals nod at the Coffee Masters NYC competition.

“There were times when I had like three jobs,” Andrews says of his dedication to his work. “And I’m technically still a trainer and consultant at the Seattle Barista Academy.” When Ghost Note opened, Andrews ran the cafe by himself.

“I don’t recommend it,” Andrews says with a laugh.

Andrews says he has no idea where Ghost Note will be in the future. But he hopes to open another shop—he knows that much. And he also knows he doesn’t want to hit a ceiling. Today, Ghost Note is good. In five years?

“I’m hoping we’ll be significantly better,” he says.

Paolo Bicchieri is a freelance journalist based in Seattle. This is Paolo Bicchieri’s first feature for Sprudge.

Photos by John Clem.

The post Riffing On Coffee At Ghost Note In Seattle appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

There’s a growing specialty coffee scene in Slovenia and at the center of it all is Ljubljana, much of which has been covered here on the virtual pages of Sprudge. And now, the capital city is looking to push their coffee culture even further with the inaugural Ljubljana Coffee Festival taking place October 5th and 6th.

Taking place at the City Museum, the Ljubljana Coffee Festival may be in its first year but you wouldn’t know it by everything they have planned. The two-day festival is chockfull of sensory cuppings and lectures by industry leaders from around the world, many given in both English and Slovenian. Lecture topics will include Home Brewing, Cascara, Career Development with Swedish Barista and Brewers Cup Champion Alexander Ruas, and a talk with 2016 World Cezve/Ibrik Champion Konstantinos Komninakis.

And if competitions are more your bag, the Ljubljana Coffee Festival has you covered. Along with the 2018 Slovenian Latte Art Throwdown—where the winner earns a training session with current World Barista champion, Coffee Masters London champion, and World Latte Art finalist Agnieszka Rojewska—the festival will also play host to the third annual Barista Battle Challenge. The multidisciplinary contest will put barista through the proverbial ringer, all to be judged by Polish and Slovakian National Barista Champions Natalia Piotrowska and Veronica Galova Vesela, respectively. But whoever makes it out the other side gets to take home a brand new La Marzocco Linea Mini.

Of course, there will be coffee. The Ljubljana Coffee Festival has teamed up with La Marzocco for the True Artisan Café, a rotating pop-up to highlight roasters from around the world. Making appearances at the café this year will be: OmniBus (Japan), George Howell (USA), Origin Coffee (England), Bonanza (Germany), Taf (Greece), The Coffee Collective (Denmark), and Bocca (The Netherlands).

Tickets for the Ljubljana Coffee Festival cost €10 for a day pass and €15 for a weekend pass and can be purchased here. For more information on everything going on the festival, visit the Ljubljana Coffee Festival’s official website.

Get ready, Slovenia, on October 5th and 6th you’re going to be the center of the coffee world.

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

Top image via the Ljubljana Coffee Festival

The post Slovenia: The Inaugural Ljubljana Coffee Festival Is Coming Soon appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Can you believe it? The end of summer is this week, and that means so too ends the Build-Outs of Summer. Sunrise, sunset. But we still have a few more tricks up our sleeve for you this week. The first of which hails from upstate New York: Second Wind Coffee in Johnstown.

A multi-roaster—including some international options—Second Wind Coffee is bringing delicious coffee to the upstate area and serving it from a brand new Slayer Steam X. Relaxed and rustic meets international and high tech, that’s what Second Wind is bringing to Johnstown, New York.

As told to Sprudge by Shawn Beebie.

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

We’re, Second Wind Coffee. We’re located in upstate New York, in the heart of the historical city of Johnstown. We will serve handcrafted coffees, espresso, tea, smoothies, and food. Our food menu will be seasonal with ingredients provided by local farmers. Whole bean, ground coffee, and brewing accessories will be available for purchase.

Can you tell us a bit about the new space?

Customers can relax in a vintage, rustic/industrial atmosphere, surrounded by works of art from local and national artists. Artwork, vintage furniture, and decor will also be available for purchase.

What’s your approach to coffee?

Coffee will be sourced from our carefully selected list of local and international specialty roasters that will change with the seasons. We will offer traditional drip coffee, espresso, french press, pour-over as well as cold brew and nitro cold brew coffees.

Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?

The equipment we have planned for our shop is as follows: Slayer Steam X two-group, Slayer Espresso Single Group, two Ceado E37J Touchscreen coffee grinders with small hoppers, one Ceado E37J Touchscreen coffee grinder with large hopper, Curtis G3 Airpot Twin 2.2L – 2.5L Brewer, BUNN GHD G3 bulk coffee grinder, two Blendtec Connoisseur 825 blenders, one Blendtec rapid rinse station.

What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?

We’re hoping to open August/September 2018

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

We’re working with world renowned Artist and Furniture makers, Barney Bellinger and Jonathan Sweet.

Thank you!

To my family and friends for their love and support and all who have helped to make my dream come true!

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: Second Wind Coffee In Johnstown, NY appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

As the News Editor for the Sprudge Media Network, folks are always saying to me, “Zac, we miss seeing all the hot coffee goss on the site. WE WANT HOT COFFEE GOSS!” Know that I have heard your supplications for the tawdry. That’s why today I’m happy to present you with a hot Gos. Getting coffee. Canadian heartthrob Ryan Gosling recently took time out of his busy day being super famous to visit a coffee shop in Toronto.

Now, this story is a little more heartwarming than… other area warming. According to People, the film star was in town to premier his new movie, First Man, at the Toronto International Film Festival. Joelle Murray, owner of Grinder Coffee—not Grindr Coffee, which is unfortunate, because that would have really given this story some zip!—took this as the perfect opportunity to lure in the megastar with the cafe’s #RyanNeedsGrinder campaign. The plan was: for one week, the shop would post photos of a cardboard cutout Gosling enjoying some coffee at the shop, probably dust off a few “Hey Girl” memes, and use the hashtag. Well, the plan worked better than expected; patrons—including the not-Rob Ford mayor of Toronto—began posting photos with the fake Gosling, and the whole thing became this big viral sensation.

Then, on Day Eight, when it seemed like the ultimate goal wouldn’t be achieved, relegated to the depths along with an unsuccessful attempt to get Idris Elba into the shop the year previous, ultimate nice guy, THE Ryan Gosling, showed up unexpectedly to Grinder Coffee. As you can see from the photo below, Murray is pretty excited. Gosling remains handsome as ever.

And this happened… #ryanneedsgrinder worked. The man himself showed up. What a good sport, a well brought up Canadian boy. We truly appreciate Ryan taking the time the time to visit us during #tiff. Take that @idriselba your loss. pic.twitter.com/8rMMWOs32J

— GrinderCoffeeGerrard (@GrinderCoffeeTO) September 11, 2018

I gotta say, I kinda love this story. It’s just good clean fun at a coffee shop and who doesn’t love that?

Oh, right. The people who wanted the ole Sprudge spice. Well then, try this tasty lick on for size: Coffee companies who use the term “Geisha” and have no intention of altering course shouldn’t try to “well actually” Jenn Chen’s wonderfully researched—no matter what you feel like should have been included or what you believe you are owed for the sake of “journalistic integrity”—and thoughtfully written OPINION piece on why she BELIEVES a different name should be used. Rather, they should shut the fuck up and stay on the side lines. Whew.

There. How’s that for spice? Now please don’t ask again for a while. My mouth is burning.

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 Grinder Coffee

The post Ryan Gosling Makes Surprise Visit To Toronto Coffee Shop appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Last year, Amsterdam decided to up its tourist tax, put the kibosh on downtown hotel-building, restricted how many days residents could Airbnb their abodes, and nixed the city center from opening new “tourist shops”—bad news for venues selling everything from Nutella-shellacked waffles to souvenir T-shirts (my favorite reads: GOOD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN BAD GIRLS GO TO AMSTERDAM).

Whether or not the limits and levies push you out of the Dutch capital, note that there is now a distinct southwesterly pull away from it anyway—to The Hague. Museums full of Mondrians, international tribunals, and the brisk beaches of the North Sea aside, a must-visit in this city, discerning drinker, is Kaafi. The cafe opened in June 2017, in the Hofkwartier, a picturesque shopping district with no shortage of specialty coffee. Yet so much distinguishes Kaafi from other spots in The Hague and, for that matter, the Netherlands.

A telltale sign is the house espresso, the Red Brick blend roasted by Square Mile Coffee Roasters in London. And following Square Mile’s recommended specs for that very brew, Kaafi uses a three-group Victoria Arduino VA388 Black Eagle Gravitech espresso machine—a rare bird in the Netherlands, with its impressive built-in weighing system. This is no coincidence. Kaafi’s founder, Zeeshan Malik, was lured into the industry at London’s legendary Prufrock Coffee, to which Square Mile is a principal supplier.

From afar, Malik appears serious, if not stoic. But exchange one word with him and he is instantly disarming and buoyantly conversational. A Manhattan-born American who spent his teen years in The Hague and attended law school in London, the almost-30-year-old first became acquainted with Prufrock as an unassuming customer.

“I just kinda walked into the place. It was a rainy day and I just needed a place to study,” recalls Malik. “I had my first cup, which was probably a Red Brick cappuccino.”

Before long, though, he became an obsessive hobbyist, enrolling in Prufrock’s training program and taking course after course, from the barista skills foundations to an authorized training certification. “I was very lucky to have an amazing mentor,” Malik says of Jeremy Challender, who at the time co-ran Prufrock.

Zeeshan Malik

“He would have a whiteboard in front of him,” Malik describes of the drills Challender put him through. “He timed everything I did, from the moment I started grinding to how idle I am while I’m steaming milk. And it’d be like, ‘Well you just wasted 20 seconds steaming milk when you could be doing other things, like setting up a saucer and a teaspoon.’”

After completing schooling and becoming disillusioned with lawyering in London, Malik moved back to The Hague. Eventually, he found “the courage to say, ‘This is what I wanna do, for real,’” as he puts it. “I mean, I had the most kitted-out home barista kit you’ll ever see. I was the guy who had a [Mahlkönig] EK43 at home.”

Today the pet Mahlkönig EK43 is a workhorse at Kaafi, along with two Victoria Arduino Mythos One grinders. Nitro cold brew is seasonally available, and Malik plans to soon offer Turkish coffee—apt for a brand with a whirling dervish logo. Like Prufrock, Kaafi features a usual rotation of light-roasted coffees from dark-weather Europe (La Cabra, The Barn, etc.).

In the Netherlands, early-morning consumption culture is in its nascence, which Malik found out at the start, when Kaafi opened at 7:30 and was “absolutely dead” til 10am. He adjusted accordingly, although “that’s double digits already—like, life should be well into play by 10 o’clock,” he muses, expressing hope to one day “start inching towards 9:30.”

Anticipating a day when Kaafi could potentially approach big-city busy, Malik wanted “to create a bar that was optimized for workflow and quality consistency,” he says. “I always ask myself, ‘Do I have a bar that one person could handle on their own?’ And the answer to that inevitably is yes.”

The image of a solo staffer is comfortably projected onto the two Marco SP9s that are used to prepare filter coffee. The choice has been a local talking point, for which Malik has a considered response.

“My least favorite part of being a barista is pouring hot water. I think it’s just not something that you need to be spending time on,” he emphasizes. “Proponents of manual pour-over might say that it provides a better experience, but to that, I say, it’s 2018, and most of our customers are familiar with the way a pour-over coffee is made. There’s no need to be showing that off when you can be tending to them.”

Gear and groove aside, another trait that sets Kaafi apart is kinship. Malik’s parents, since retired from continent-spanning work as Pakistani diplomats, have embraced second careers—alongside their son. Malik’s father is Kaafi’s head chef, fulfilling a longtime fantasy to have his own restaurant and now creating delectable takes on cafe fare, such as brie brûlée toasties; Malik’s mother is his pastry chef, producing a score of sweets with Pakistani twists, like the signature pistachio cardamom cheesecake. Malik’s little brother was his first employee and his wife, a human rights lawyer by day, moonlights as his marketer.

The cafe comfortably sits 40. A dapper family-den feeling characterizes the main floor. It contrasts with the elevated back area that Malik calls “our inspiration-slash-productivity space,” hosting a “cupping table that masks as a communal-seating table.” Bright and minimalist, the alcove welcomes patrons to work, staying as long as they wish; the table height is ideal for standing typists and outlets encourage laptops (and during off-hours, kettles).

Clearly influenced by his inculcation at Prufrock and helped by his family’s panoramic support, Malik offers a kind of hospitality and attention on the guest that remains scarce in the Netherlands. So for visitors to The Hague, including those of us from Amsterdam, Kaafi is definitely something to write home about.

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

Some photos courtesy of Kaafi.

The post Kaafi In The Hague: American Born, British Trained, With A Pakistani Twist appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Coffee science: there’s a lot of it. I can’t really go into much more detail than that because honestly, it’s all way above my pay grade. But you know whose pay grade it isn’t above? The folks at the Association for Science and Information on Coffee. Coffee science is their wheelhouse. And starting this Sunday, September 16th, they want to share that information with you at ASIC Portland, a five-day conference covering multiple aspects of the science of coffee.

In collaboration with the Specialty Coffee Association, the 27th iteration of the biennial conference takes place at the Portland Convention Center and will cover topics across the coffee production chain, including: plant pathology and protection, farm management, biochemistry and biotechnology of green coffee, roasted coffee technology and processing, coffee chemistry and sensory sciences, and consumption and health. Keynote speakers for the event include CEOs, researchers, coffee professionals, and PhDs from around the globe specializing in a wide array of disciplines.

And for the first year, ASIC has created an “Industry Day,” where coffee professionals—those more closely related to the serving of coffee than the production of it—can take advantage of a full day of science-minded “talks, panel discussions, and Q&As” to help “build a bridge [between] science and industry.” Session topics will include coffee and health, genetics and breeding, sustainability and economics, and quality.

ASIC Portland begins Sunday, September 16th and Industry Day is Wednesday, September 19th. Tickets for ASIC Portland range in price from $375 to $850, with the Industry Day tickets comprising the lower end of that range. For more information on the speakers, the topics, or to register to attend, visit ASIC Portland’s official website.

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

Top image via ASIC Portland

The post Take A Deep Dive Into The Science Of Coffee At ASIC Portland appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

We see a lot of shops opening in small towns around the world during the Build-Outs of Summer, but this newest entry may just be the smallest. With a population just over 5,000, Kutztown, Pennsylvania is a nano-town that is home of nano-roaster Four Monkeys Coffee. Having started as a passion projects for owners Christopher Eugster and Colleen Underwood, Four Monkeys soon developed into a roasting company.

And now they can add a cafe to their resume. Focusing primarily on pour-over, Four Monkeys is using their new space to have complete control over the product served to the customer, from green coffee to brew. So if you ever find yourself in Kutztown, look for the former vape and cigar shop with the “latte” colored walls. There, you’ll find Four Monkeys Coffee.

As told to Sprudge by Christopher Eugster and Colleen Underwood.

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

Four Monkeys journey started about seven years ago in Baltimore. I lived in a neighborhood where I just couldn’t find a cup of coffee that excited me. I started roasting on the rooftop, and it quickly became an obsession. Soon after, I moved to Kutztown to be with my future wife. We built our own five-pound roaster in the garage labeled our coffee as Four Monkeys and started roasting for friends, family, and occasional sales. Our combined love of coffee and now years of experience led us to formally start the business in 2017. We are fortunate to live in a community that supports small business and have grown our business through retailing at farmer’s markets and festivals and wholesaling to farm stands, general stores, cafes, and specialty shops.

Can you tell us a bit about the new space?

We started out in a warehouse space that sits behind our current shop. After painstakingly renovating that space and getting our roasting business off the ground, our neighbor, a cigar and vape shop, vacated their space. We had no intention of starting a coffee shop so soon but loved the building and didn’t want to miss an opportunity. The building is a Quonset hut addition that serviced a farm implements business that had operated in the main building since 1918. After several transitions, it became the cigar shop. When we took over, the shop was ripe with cigar and cigarette smoke smell and even had a sign discouraging women from hanging out. Our biggest challenge was purging the cigar and cigarette smoke.

We renovated the custom humidor that was left behind into the roasting room, and repurposed cedar shelves from the humidor into our coffee bar, with the help of a live edge coffee table purchased from our other neighbor’s midcentury modern antique collection. We maintained a bit of the “Casablanca” feel, which was an easy design transition from cigars to coffee. I think the paint previously used was actually called “Latte.”

What’s your approach to coffee?

Our approach to crafting great coffee starts with our roasting process. We use a fluid bed roaster, which requires a great deal of manual interaction during the roast. This enables us to craft coffees with distinct profiles. Brewing Four Monkeys coffee for our customers allows us to put our vision in their cup. We also source only certified organic beans, our packaging—including labels and all of our to-go items—are 100% industrial compostable.

We love sharing the joys of coffee with our customers and have met so many amazing people from those who have spent time on working coffee farms to those who are just trying their first cup of specialty coffee!

Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?

We mainly do pour-over, using Kalita Wave and Hario V60 brewers. We have a ’92 Nuova Simonelli MAC Digit that performs flawlessly and hope to one day upgrade that to a Slayer Steam. We also have a BUNN ICB we programmed to get the most out of our beans for the few occasions we batch brew.

What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?

As we transition from roaster to shop, we are currently just open to the public for limited hours but hope to open full time in the near future.

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

We’re pretty big on DIY, so we did most of the work ourselves, however we couldn’t do it alone and would like to thank: Eric Dejesus and Beth Duby of easysubcult for helping us with the interior, Jodi Whalen and Phil Merrick from August First in Burlington, VT for their assistance with our layout and workflow, Röbi Eugster for muscle and answering 1,000 construction questions, and Robyn Jasko and Paul David of The Hive Cafe for giving us the push to get our business started.

Thank you!

Thank you for considering us!

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: Four Monkeys Coffee In Kutztown, PA appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

For the general coffee consuming public, certifications like those from Fairtrade and the Rainforest Alliance are indicators that the product they are buying are sustainably grown with farmers making a fair wage. Those more deeply involved in the coffee industry, though, often have a different view of these sort of certifications; many hold that while they aren’t per se bad, these certifications don’t necessitate a coffee’s sustainability and they certainly don’t mean that everyone involved in coffee production is paid a livable wage. And a new paper from the Center for Global Development appears to back this sentiment, finding that the impact of such certifications to be “mixed and usually finds modest effects at best.”

As reported by NPR, the paper by Kimberly Ann Elliot, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Development, reviewed nearly 100 previous sustainability studies and found that it is “almost impossible to tell if those certifications have any measurable effect on coffee growers.” Elliot states that, essentially, metrics for deciphering the efficacy of the programs were only put in place after the fact, hamstringing their utility from the get go. From NPR:

For example, there weren’t many defined baselines for how farmers were doing before they got certified, and people weren’t comparing certified farmers to similar but uncertified farmers, Elliott says. Certification organizations haven’t been able to directly monitor many of the growers that they certify either, Elliott says.

“There’s very little actual monitoring or measuring of the outcomes that you want to see going on,” she says. “For example, studies suggest [after certification programs] there’s more safety equipment for workers. Do they actually use it? Are they healthier? Not clear.”

Many of the problems faced with tracking and reporting a certification’s effect are due to the global nature of the programs. With coffee farms existing in rural areas across multiple continents, it is difficult to get boots on the ground for direct observation of the changes that are reportedly being made at the farm level. And they “must also contend with vastly different cultural, climatic or regulatory contexts that can cloud study results.”

There are other issues facing certification:

Some certifications, like Fairtrade’s, charge a premium for certified coffee – presumably making certified coffee more expensive than similar, uncertified coffee of equal quality. If there’s no good evidence that the certifications make a difference, [sustainability advisory firm 3Keel researcher Catherine] McCosker muses, are they worth the extra charge?

One less contentious positive, according to Elliot, is that by buying coffees with certifications, consumers are telling the coffee industry they value sustainability, which can “spur the industry to work harder to meet sustainable standards.”

Ultimately, Elliot concludes that sustainability certifications may have a modest positive effect, but only for those who can afford them; the poorest farmers, whom would presumably see the greatest benefit from these programs, don’t always have access to them. Now, none of this is to say that these programs are inherently bad or that they aren’t trying to affect positive change at origin. It simply that the little sticker on those coffee bags doesn’t necessarily amount to as much as the consuming public believes/hopes it does.

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 Do Certifications Positively Affect Coffee Farmers? New Study Says “Meh” appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Sprudge has formally rejoined both US Coffee Champs and World Coffee Events as an official media partner, effective today. This move comes as a response to a spate of changes and much-needed oversight around issues of site selection and “Deferred Candidacy” announced by the SCA earlier this summer.

Expect an immediate return to Sprudge’s industry-leading coverage of the Specialty Coffee Association competition circuit for the 2019 season, including coverage of the 2019 US Coffee Champs Preliminaries, US Coffee Champs Qualifiers, and 2019 US Barista Championship. As always, this coverage will be hubbed at Sprudge Live, our node for worldwide coffee sports, which has new content today featuring interviews with some recent champions.

For readers outside the United States, we’re accepting proposals for coverage of a variety of national coffee championships in 2019 outside the United States. If you’re interested in having Sprudge cover your national event, do get in touch.

Our 2019 coverage agreement leads up to the 2019 World Barista Championship and World Brewers Cup events in Boston, April 11-14th and the 2019 World Latte Art Championship, World Cup Tasters Championship, World Coffee In Good Spirits Championship, and the Cezve/Ibrik Championship tournaments in Berlin June 8th-10th.

“We at the SCA are happy to renew our relationship with Sprudge with whom we have been working for nearly a decade. Sprudge.com is a compelling resource for the specialty coffee community and we know our competitors, judges, volunteers, and staff will be excited to see [Sprudge founders] Jordan, Zachary, and their team of writers covering our competitions and other activities once again. Both our organizations are committed to serving and informing the specialty coffee community and we are confident that thisrenewed relationship supports that goal and our mission to serve coffee professionals everywhere.” —Ric Rhinehart, SCA Executive Director

On a personal note, we’re thrilled to be back covering the events we love so dearly. Our media network has covered the US and World Barista Championships in exhaustive detail each year since 2010, and so on behalf of everyone involved in this coverage—our competition teams, our editors, and owners—today is a really happy day for us. In the coming days and weeks you’ll see coverage ramp up on the 2019 US Coffee Champs Preliminaries season to date, with a return to full coverage—including @SprudgeLive live Tweets—for the Denver Qualifying event, December 1-2nd.

To everyone around the world who reached out to us over the last 18 months with messages of support, please know that these words have meant the world to us. To the many hundreds of readers (and competitors, and SCA staffers, and volunteers) who have reached out publicly and privately to express how much you’ve missed our coverage over the last two seasons, thank you a thousand times. We’re picking up right where we left off and very happy to be back.

For now, jam over to Sprudge Live and check out interviews with 2018 World Barista Champion Agnieszka Rojewska and 2018 US Brewers Cup Champion Becca Woodward, with more to come in the coming days. Thank you for reading Sprudge for supporting the Sprudge Media Network.

Top photo by Charlie Burt for Sprudge Media Network. 

The post Sprudge Rejoins The SCA As Official Media Partners appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News