Best Coffee in Honolulu – The Curb Kaimuki

Coffee will take you on a magical, lifelong journey. Jeremias and Rachel Paul of Charleston, South Carolina’s Broom Wagon Coffee know this first hand. The husband and wife duo came to appreciate coffee later in life than most—after having kids—when they viewed it more as a vehicle for caffeine than a nuanced product with anything resembling terroir. But after that a-ha moment, they dove in headfirst. Jeremias quit his job and began learning to roast, eventually going deep in the 2017 US Roasters Championship.

And now they are shop owners. After three years of building their roasting business, the Pauls felt it was time to take the next step and create a more community-forward space to showcase all their hard work. And the proof is in the pudding. The pudding, in this case, is a lovely cafe, which is way better than pudding anyway.

As told to Sprudge by Rachel Paul.

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

Broom Wagon Coffee is a micro-batch, specialty coffee roasting company in Charleston, SC. We began as a husband-wife team who fell in love with coffee after having kids. Initially, we drank it for the caffeine and added cream and sugar to cover the bitter taste we assumed all coffee had. While traveling, we stumbled upon a cafe that served us a cup of black coffee so sweet and full of flavor that it changed everything we knew about coffee. This began our quest to recreate the perfect cup of coffee.

Our initial investigation led us all along the West Coast where we visited as many cafes as we could. We quickly became aware that finding amazing coffee was rare and had to be sought out. With two little kids in tow, this often proved to be quite challenging yet completely worth it. We met so many friendly shop owners, baristas, and roasters who shared their knowledge, innovation, and excitement. Their inspiration spurred Jeremias to leave his 10-year career as a professor of photography and change his focus to roasting extraordinary coffee. Jeremias trained with several roasters and continues to obsessively educate himself. In 2015, he became a Q-grader, which ensures a continued commitment to offering the highest quality coffee. In January 2017, Jeremias qualified to compete at the US Roasters Championship in April 2017, where he placed as the 8th best roaster in the US. Additionally, our roastery is equipped as a diagnostic lab to allow us to constantly analyze, experiment, and optimize the potential of each coffee we offer.

Merging our love of cycling with our love for coffee, we connected with the spirit of the broom wagon, a common fixture in cycling races that is always ready to pick up struggling riders or encourage them to the finish. We want to support the curiosity that inspires everyone to keep exploring. The experience found in our coffee is just the start.

Can you tell us a bit about the new space?

After building up our coffee business over the past three years, we realized we wanted to be more engaged with the community around us. We have an amazing landlord for our roastery and were able to work with him to build out a space in a previously neglected, burnt-out building in the West Ashley neighborhood of Charleston, SC. We designed our space to be modern yet comfortable in order to create a welcoming environment to further the possibilities of coffee. We also wanted to provide high-quality food to accompany our coffee and offer both savory and sweet toasts and gluten-free waffles, which are all made in house from whole ingredients.

What’s your approach to coffee?

We believe coffee is a window that provides a view into the terroir of its origin and into the lives of the people who have cared for it along its way to you. Our roasting style is to preserve the transparency of that window so that you may peer clearly into the distinct flavor profiles that are found naturally in the world of single-origin specialty coffee. We work carefully with select importers to source the highest-quality, sustainable coffees while providing the farmers with a fair wage. As we grow, we plan to develop more direct relationships with these hard-working farmers. We are also committed to promoting a balanced, healthy lifestyle through our coffee. More and more studies continue to be released touting coffee’s many health benefits. We roast our coffees to bring out the coffee’s natural sweetness, eliminating or reducing the need to add sugar or flavorings. We continue to find coffees that inspire us and we want to share them with you.

Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?

We have the first Synesso MVP Hydra espresso machine in Charleston. We also have a Mahlkönig EK43 grinder for batch and pour-over coffee, two Mahlkönig Peak grinders for espresso, and a FETCO batch brewer.

What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?

We opened in May 2018

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

We pulled from Jeremias’s fine art background and designed the space ourselves. We built the benches, bar, and shelves and painted the 4’x16’ painting hanging above the benches. The painting is inspired by a historic cycling photograph and spent over four months on our kitchen table as we painted it. We also worked with Hillary King at pH Reclaimed, who built the bar top, table tops, and window bar. She used reclaimed wood she had collected over the years from old buildings in Charleston. We love the way her incredible work brings a sense of history and connection to our space.

Thank you!

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

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Source: Coffee News

We see a lot of Kickstarter coffee projects here at Sprudge, but rarely do we see a new take on coffee brewing; most are just “reinventing the French press” tbh. But there’s a new campaign that just went live that may actually offer a new brew method. It’s called the FrankOne and it is being billed as “the first Colombian coffeemaker.”

Designed by Eduardo Umaña and Amor Perfecto’s Luis Fernando Vélez, the FrankOne revolves around one central idea: crema is bitter. Making a cup without the crema, it stands to reason, will be much sweeter and cleaner. So how do you do that? For FrankOne, the answer is a patented “Vacuum Extraction Technology.”

Borrowing in equal measure from pour-overs, siphon, and espresso machines, FrankOne works by using negative pressure to pull water through a coffee bed. In doing so, the crema remains on top of the coffee grounds instead of ending up in the cup. Check it out in action (making iced coffee not cold brew, I know, so don’t @ me about it):



In addition to claims of a sweeter, cleaner cup, the FrankOne is also fast. Really fast. In just 30 seconds, the FrankOne can make 300g (about 10.5 ounces) of brewed coffee that follows the “golden cup standard set by the Specialty Coffee Association.”

The FrankOne Kickstarter has set a goal of $120,000, not an insignificant number by any stretch. The brew is set to MSRP at $99, though Kickstarter backers can get their hands on one for a pledge as low as $50; that price jumps up to $75 once the early bird pricing have all been scooped up. According to the campaign, all manufacturing has been lined up, so assuming they make their funding goal, FrankOne is hoping to be delivered to backers in April of 2019.

Now, we haven’t had coffee from the FrankOne, so will the practice align with the theory? We can’t say. Only time will tell. But it’s a $50 bet I’m willing to make, especially if it means a new kind of coffee brewer makes it to market.

For more information or to back the project, visit the FrankOne Kickstarter page.

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

All media via Eduardo Umaña.

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Source: Coffee News

Remember when you just had to be good at latte art to win a throwdown? Those salad days are becoming fewer and far(rer?) between, as many events are broadening the horizons of local skill- and fun-based barista competitions. One such event is Creatures of Habit, taking place Saturday, September 22nd at Spark Social SF in San Francisco. Hosting not one, not two, but three different competitions all under one roof, Creatures of Habit features some serious prizes, with proceeds going to a good cause.

Hosted by SPRO Coffee Lab, the resident coffee bar at Spark Social SF—a food truck park and outdoor event space—Creatures of Habit will include a sprodown, signature coffee cocktail contest, and of course, a latte art throwdown. Each event is discrete, meaning three different winners and three different prizes. The winner of latte art throwdown—who much pour exclusively into a four-ounce cup for added difficulty—will take home $200 plus “barista swag,” and the prizes only go up from there. The signature coffee cocktail competition, which requires competitors to use a list of provided secret ingredients (all of them) to craft a tasty beverage, nets the winner $300 plus barista swag. The top prize, though, is for the winner of the sprodown. Whoever crafts the best espresso using a mystery coffee will earn $400. And, you guessed it, barista swag.

And who decides what is best? For that SPRO has enlisted the help of USBC and WBC judge, Blue Bottle’s Mallory Roth as well as Blue Bottle green buyer Charlie Habegger. They may or may not be receiving further assistance 2012 US Barista Champion and Counter Culture coffee buyer, the inimitable Katie Carguilo.

It’s going to take a bit of luck to even get to compete, though; there’s already a competitor waitlist for Creatures of Habit (which you can sign up for by emailing SPRO Coffee Lab with the subject “Creatures of Habit.” Make sure to include the “throwdown type(s) you would like to participate in should a slot(s) open up”). But don’t let that stop you from attending. Getting to hang out with other local coffee professionals should be enough to make you want to make an appearance (it really should), but if it isn’t, go because $1,000 of the proceeds are being donated to the SPCA; the dog-friendly Spark Social SF loves dogs, in case you were wondering.

Spectator tickets for Creatures of Habit are $10 and can be purchased here. The first 200 persons to arrive receive a coffee swag bag and every attendee is automatically entered into a drawing for the multiple giveaways planned. It all gets started at 11:00am on Saturday, September 22nd. For more information, visit the Creatures of Habit Eventbrite page.

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 Creatures of Habit.

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Source: Coffee News

Christiansburg, Virginia is not a big town by any stretch of the imagination. Boasting around 20,000 participants, it’s safe to say Christiansburg is small. And yet they are still home to Brugh Coffee Company, a specialty coffee roaster founded two years ago. It’s a story we find ourselves telling more and more on Sprudge—often as part of the Build-Outs of Summer—but honestly, it’s one of our favorites: small town is home to specialty coffee roaster, shifting the idea of where good coffee is supposed to be and who appreciates it.

Brugh Coffee fits this storyline. Started out roasting only 500g at a time, Brugh is moving up to a 3kg roaster and a brand new space to boot. Their new Brew Lab will act not only as their roastery but their first brick-and-mortar location to show off their handiwork. So let’s check it out shall we, the brand new Brugh Coffee Company in Christiansburg, Virginia.

As told to Sprudge by Luke Brugh.

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

We started roasting and selling coffee in June of 2016. When we first started we sold at local farmers markets, online as well as had a few different local wholesale accounts.

Our first roaster was a 1.1lb (500g) roaster from Mill City Roasters. This was a great way for us to start and hone our craft. However, over time as we started to grow it kept us fairly busy roasting on nights and weekends outside of our other jobs.

Can you tell us a bit about the new space?

Our new space will be an expansion for us on several fronts. Part of the reason for our move was we acquired a larger 3kg roaster from Mill City Roasters. Our larger roaster wouldn’t fit in our original roasting space, so the new space became a necessity for roasting.

Since we first started roasting in 2016 we knew we would eventually want a place where people could come in to get drinks from us directly. The Brew Lab will cover this goal for us. We are really excited about it and can’t wait to have people come in to check it out!

What’s your approach to coffee?

For us, coffee is more than just a beverage, it’s a connection to others around the world. It connects the soil it was grown to the farmers who nurtured it until harvest to the roaster who thoughtfully shaped it to the barista who skillfully prepared it to you and those you connect to over a cup.

We understand the importance of the quality of these connections, which is why we strive towards sustainability and growth of the coffee community. We strive towards providing the best coffee we possibly can, always looking to progress.

Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?

We are roasting on an 3kg from Mill City Roasters, which we absolutely love! For espresso we are using a Macap M7D and a La Spaziale LUCCA A53 espresso machine. For drip we are using a Mahlkönig GH2 grinder and Curtis G4 ThermoPro. Finally, for pour-overs we are using a Baratza Encore grinder and a Fellow Stagg EKG kettle.

What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?

August 2018

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

We want to thank our community for all of their support throughout this whole process. We’ve had a number of businesses and individuals who have helped us bring this whole thing to life.

Thank you!

You’re welcome! 🙂

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

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Source: Coffee News

Last week, we found a survey of caffeine consumption habits created by Amerisleep, a mattress manufacturer. The results were interesting but got us to wondering about how the numbers would change when only looking at folks who are really into coffee, more specifically the sort of person that reads a coffee publication (and would fill out a survey by that publication). So we made our own little survey, which we bring the results of to you now.

Of the hundreds and hundreds (and hundreds!) of total respondents, a whopping 96.4% said they drink coffee daily, with only 3.2% staying they drink coffee every now and again. These numbers fall much more in line with what I expected from coffee consumers than the 79/21 split of daily/every now and again drinkers from the previous survey. Inexplicably, there were two people in our survey who both said they never drink coffee (wut?) but wish they drank more and drink coffee primarily because they like the taste. I don’t know who they are, but I feel for them.

Our survey didn’t yield quite the same amount in terms of dollars spent yearly on coffee. Initially, our first thought was that this is the result of the survey being skewed toward those in the coffee industry—which it is, to the tune of 53.5%—but when we broke out the results into coffee professionals and non-coffee professionals, the numbers were still considerably lower than the $2,000 and $1,410 peaks from the 25-34 and 35-44 age groups, respectively.

Interestingly enough, we found that, contrary to the findings in the other survey combined with the general thinking about spending from coffee professionals, that spending increased as coffee professionals got older.

Our current leading theory to reconcile the spending disparity between the two surveys is that, while you would expect coffee geeks to spend more on coffee, they are perhaps more likely to make coffee for themselves at home, thus—unintentionally or otherwise—driving down the overall cost of their habit.

Overall, respondents drank on average 2.88 cups of coffee a day. Amongst those professions with 10 or more respondents (though quick shout out to the one Americano-loving funeral director who consumes six cups a day. We see you), Wholesale and Retail reign supreme with 3.4 cups daily, beating out even coffee professionals, who came in second with 3.1.

Our study found that, by and large, everyone is happy with the amount of coffee they consume, 81.6% of all surveyed to be exact. For those not satisfied, the numbers basically flip depending upon whether or not you are in the coffee industry. Only 6.9% of coffee professionals wish they drank more, compared to the 12.7% of non-coffee professionals. Unsurprisingly, 11.7% of coffee professionals—who often have to drink an excess of coffee due to dialing in—wish they drank less; only 5.4% of non-coffee professionals had a similar sentiment.

So what did we learn from this new survey? One, numbers are fun. Two, Amerisleep’s graphics department is far better than my own. And three, predicting coffee drinking and spending habits based on things like profession, age, or gender is a fool’s errand (luckily Sprudge has a fool helming the news desk). It bolsters the already well-known idea that coffee—the second-most traded commodity in the world, trailing only oil—is universally loved and appreciated in ways that don’t neatly lend to some sort of analytic modeling. You may work as a barista but your grandma may still drink twice as much coffee as you do. Or maybe you love and appreciate coffee more than your coworker, but you buy one $20 bag a week and they hit up the Bux twice a day at $5 a pop.

Love is love. Drink as much (and spend as much on) coffee as makes you happy. Don’t worry about what the numbers say. Your coffee habits are unique unto you. Just like everyone else’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 photo via © Andrey Popov/Adobe Stock

The post Your Coffee By The Numbers: The Sprudge Survey Results appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

As the days grow shorter, so too does our time here with the Build-Outs of Summer. It’s bittersweet; the temperature grows closer to ideal coffee drinking weather but we are losing one of our most-fun series of the year. But we still have a few lovely cafes we want to share with you before the sun sets on the BOoS. And we are kicking off the beginning of the end with Tala Coffee Roasters in Highwood, Illinois.

Setting up shop just a short half-hour car ride north from Chicago, Tala Coffee in a revitalized fire station. Cold winters, old buildings, and all manner of unique troubles associated with trying to open in a historical building all conspired against Tala. But you can’t keep a good shop down. After a prolonged build-out, Tala is open for business, and from the looks of the space, it is well worth the wait.

As told to Sprudge by Stefan Tong.

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

Tala Coffee Roasters is a small-batch coffee roasting company based out of Northern Illinois. We roast in Libertyville, IL and serve our coffee in our brick and mortar in Highwood, IL. We started the company summer of 2017 through online sales, wholesale, and farmers markets.

Can you tell us a bit about the new space?

Our new space is in the historic fire station of Highwood, IL. A neighboring city merged fire departments leaving the Highwood fire station for sale by the city. We were able to connect with someone desiring to take the building and turn it into a multi-business structure who loved the idea of having a cafe inside. The process of acquiring the building to completing the buildout took about a year. There were many details for our landlord to handle based on the unique nature of the space and that it is protected as a historical building.

When we were able to begin construction it was dead in the middle of a bitter cold Chicago winter. The paint wouldn’t stick on the walls so we had to wait out the season to really get started. By spring of 2018 we were in full force and began from the ground up with plumbing, electric, bar, etc. The whole floor is pitched in the center of the room for drains that were utilized for the fire trucks so we had to build every single structure with wedges to level everything. Took a crazy long time! Now that it’s finished we want the cafe to serve as a beautiful homage to the fire station and as a centerpoint for the community to congregate.

What’s your approach to coffee?

Coffee is for everyone. We desire our company to be approachable, intentional, connective, and offer quality coffee. Sometimes these core values can conflict with each other because our service and knowledge of coffee runs the risk of alienating our customers, so we make sure to offer accessible beverages and craft drinks that anyone can be excited about (not just the TDS geeks).

Our staff is hired and trained off of if they are people persons, not coffee persons. It’s not worth it for us to serve a specialty item and be mean people about it. We want our coffees to model sweet and beautiful things and we consider that during the cupping process.

Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?

We are using a three-group Synesso Cyncra and Mazzer grinders to handle the spro, Baratza Vario-W grinders for our Kalitas and Chemexes, and a Mahlkönig GH2 grinder with a FETCO CBS 2052e for our batch brew (found the FETCO in this old gas station in Wisconsin for 30% of the price. It was epic!).

What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?

We opened August 11!

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

A big thank you to our good friend and carpenter Brandon who did all of our tables. He owns a company called Craft Hammer and killed it with all of the tables that we have in here.
crafthammer.com

Thank you!

Thank you! We are excited to join the wonderful community of Highwood, IL and elevate the culture of specialty coffee.

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

The post Build-Outs Of Summer: Tala Coffee Roasters In Highwood, IL appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

The Spirt of Tea Tour rides again. Back for a third lap, Spirit Tea and Marco’s combined US tea tour isn’t going coastal this go round; they are going straight down the middle for a three-stop engagement starting at the end of September. And they are shaking things up.

Previous Spirit of Tea Tours have centered around a talk during the day followed by a matcha latte throwdown at night. While there will still be talks—topics include Chemistry of the Tea Leaf, Barista Best Practices, and How to Dial-In Tea—there will be no throwing down on this tour. Instead, attendees will get to take part in a pair of new competitions: a tea triangulation and a dial-in competition. The tea triangulation will work similarly to that of a coffee triangulation: sets of three cups will be filled, two the same brew of a tea and a third with a different but similar tea. Competitors then have to pick out the non-matching cup. The person who gets the most right in the shortest amount of time wins.

The dial-in competition works a little differently. A team event, the dial-in competition is by invite only and will feature some of the best shops in each host city vying to make the best cup of tea. Teams will receive sample teas and brewing vessels from Spirit in advance of the competition along with some simple brewing guidelines. The day of the event, each team will have 10 minutes to create their best interpretation to be evaluated by a special guest judge.

Dates for the Spirit of Tea tour are:
9/21: Austin, TX — Merit Coffee
10/16: Kansas City, MO — Messenger Coffee
11/8: Chicago, IL — Spirit Tea

As with previous versions, this round of Spirit of Tea tours is free to attend. It is intended for coffee professionals but is open to anyone interested in learning more about the wide world of tea. No RSVP is necessary but Spirit and Marco would appreciate it if you did anyway using each event’s respective Eventbrite page (linked in the cities above). For more information on the Spirit of Tea Tour, visit Spirit Tea’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 Spirit Tea

Disclosure: Marco is an advertising partner with the Sprudge Media Network.

The post Spirit Tea & Marco’s Spirit Of Tea Tour Returns For Round Three appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

What’s in the name? Located in the lively 11th arrondissement of Paris, just east of the city center, and not too far from the Bastille, Passager Cafe can be found on the corner of a small side street, Passage de la Bonne Graine, and the larger Avenue Ledru-Rollin.

French for passenger, Passager itself feels more like a passageway, with a back set of doors leading out of the cafe onto Passage Josset. Open since 2016, the cafe is already a neighborhood fixture, in large part due to its warm, relaxed atmosphere. One barista described the cafe as “informal and comfortable, where you can do what you wish.” 

Passager was founded by the proprietor of Starvin’ Joe on the nearby Rue de Charonne, in partnership with well-known fashion blogger and stylist, Fanny B. Like many of the cafes in Paris, it’s cozy in size, but has massive windows facing Avenue Ledru-Rollin and Passage de la Bonne Graine that allow for an abundance of natural light to filter in. A long bench jutting out from Passager’s facade provides a fantastic perch for people-watching and basking in sunlight when the weather turns warm.

Currently, Passager’s menu features espresso and drip coffee made with beans from local roaster Lomi. Previously, their beans were sourced from Copenhagen’s April Coffee Roasters and Berlin’s Five Elephant.

The cafe’s food menu includes house-baked options like cake, granola, and scones with butter and jam. They also offer breakfast and lunch every day of the week, and a remarkably Instagrammable brunch menu that routinely garners out-the-door lines—especially on weekends and around holidays.

It includes avocado toast, golden-edged pancakes cooked to order on a flattop griddle in the back—which can be had either “sweet” with fruit and maple syrup or “sweet and salty” with crispy bacon—sunny-side up eggs, assorted bagel sandwiches, and chia pudding. Lunch is comprised of a changing soup of the day and tartines of various sorts.

Perhaps what is uniquely Parisian about a cafe such as Passager is that their drinks and baked goods use sugar with a light touch. For instance, Passager’s famous carrot cake with cream cheese frosting is flavorful and sturdy, despite being neither too sweet nor overly rich.

The mocha is judiciously sweetened, and avoids being cloying, as are the chai and matcha lattes, two of Passager’s most popular non-coffee options according to the staff.

The Passager mocha

With its exposed brick walls, rust-colored columns, concrete counters, and gracefully-worn but still colorful tiled floors juxtaposed with all the markers of a specialty cafe, Passager is reflective of Paris as a whole. Both old and new. Traditional and modern.

If you happen to find yourself in the 11th, perchance as a passager traveling between someplace here and someplace there, stop by Passager and soak in the local charm while you sip a cup of coffee. Listen to the pleasant din of spoken French, and look out the windows at the city passing by—just don’t forget to say bonjour when you enter, and merci, au revoir as you depart.

Michelle Hwang is a writer who splits her time between California, Paris, and Seoul. Read more Michelle Hwang for Sprudge.

The post Coming And Going In Paris At Passager Cafe appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Coca-Cola is getting into the coffee game. No, I’m not talking about Coke Plus Coffee, which saw a wider international release at the end of July. The Atlanta-based soft drink company announced of Friday their plans to purchase the UK’s Costa Coffee for $5.1 billion. Cash.

According to the New York Times, this is Coke’s largest-ever acquisition, edging out 2007’s purchase of Vitaminwater. This now puts them in pretty direct competition with behemoths like Starbucks and JAB Holdings for global coffee domination. Costa was already making a push into China to compete with Starbucks and upstart Luckin Coffee, and the acquisition allows the brand to make an even greater push in global markets. “Coca-Cola’s distribution muscle will no doubt help close the gap and boost sales significantly in the long run,” GlobalData research analyst Jonathan Davison tells the New York Times.

Now the proud owner of nearly 4,000 retail locations worldwide, Coca-Cola plans to use their strong distribution channels to push Costa into more grocery stores and restaurants. “The Costa brand has potential for expansion into ready-to-drink coffee across many markets globally,” Coke’s chief executive James Quincey stated in a blog post.

The $5.1 billion sales figure is 16 times Costa’s pro forma earnings for the 2018 fiscal year, which Alison Brittain, chief executive at Whitbread—the British company that owned Costa—called an “absolute stonking” deal. We’re pretty sure that means they liked it.

So you can expect to see Costa popping up a whole lot more now. Especially in America, presumably. The home of Costa’s new parent company is a relative unknown to the UK brand, so a US push seems imminent as this point. Hopefully we’ll at least get some Coke Plus Costa out of it.

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

Digital illustration by the author.

The post Coca-Cola Acquires Costa Coffee For $5.1 Billion appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

It’s been 14 years since the Geisha coffee variety dropped into the specialty coffee scene on the 2004 Best of Panama auction stage. Since then, the variety has broken records on auction prices multiple times, helped secure wins at barista competitions, and astonished palates for people around the world.

But here’s the issue: it gets confused and punned with geisha, the Japanese entertainer, which leads to many problematic interpretations. What some might consider a delightful homophone has become a kind of carte blanche for inappropriate appropriation—taking images and motifs associated with the Japanese tradition of art, song, and dance, and using it to sell high-priced coffee.

The misuse of “geisha” in this style is nothing new, nor is it a relic of yesteryear. In researching this article I came across multiple roasters using Japanese geisha images to market their coffee. Similarly, there are articles written in the last three years with geisha people imagery illustrated next to Geisha coffee. 

Not only is this misuse disturbing, but it is wholly unnecessary. By the time Geisha coffee made itself known to the greater coffee community, geishas were already known to the world as something else. The region from which this coffee hails, however, and the traditions to which it is tied, are hundreds of years old, and instead go by the similar-sounding but importantly different name of “Gesha”—hold the i.

I’m writing this editorial to offer a bold choice to coffee drinkers, roasters, importers, and industry professionals of all stripes around the world. What if we just stopped calling it Geisha? I posit that the industry should choose to use Gesha instead, in perpetuity moving forward, and to abolish “Geisha”—and all of its unfortunate linguistic abuses—to the grounds bin of coffee history.  

There’s several potential advantages to this choice.

1. Consumers new to Gesha coffee will no longer assume that it’s named after the Japanese geisha performing arts tradition.
2. We can hopefully, and definitively, avoid seeing any future instances of Orientalist imagery being used to market and reference this coffee.
3. We can wax poetic about this truly delicious and inspiring coffee variety while properly evoking its Ethiopian heritage, and without confusing consumers as to its origin.

Before we get too far down the rabbit hole, let’s back up to what we know about Geisha coffee.

The Gesha coffee variety was “discovered” via British colonial expeditions in the 1930s in southwest Ethiopia, brought to research stations in Kenya and Tanzania, and then subsequently to Panama for its coffee leaf rust-resistant traits. In their groundbreaking previous work on the subject, coffee professional and journalist Meister explored the variety’s historical documentation in a piece titled “Is it Geisha or Gesha.” A certain “Geisha Mountain” was referenced in 1936 by those British colonials, but, plot twist: there is no Geisha Mountain in Ethiopia. Instead, there is a Gesha region of Ethiopia—an entirely separate term with no connection to Japan. How exactly the “i” came to find its place in coffees from Gesha is a matter of some conjecture. It may have been a simple misspelling. It’s also possible that because the local language Kafa is oral, it was romanized into “Geisha.” There’s also a third theory that the researchers used “Geisha” because it was a more familiar word and exoticized it. Since we weren’t there and documentation is not clear on why it was written as Geisha and not Gesha, we’ll let these theories lie here.

In 2004, the Peterson family of Hacienda La Esmeralda submitted Geisha coffee and won the Best of Panama auction. The winning bid was $21 per pound, which seems like nothing compared to this year’s record-setting $803 per pound. Geisha seeds were introduced to Panama from a research station in Costa Rica. The coffee was spelled as Geisha—and still is by many producers—because that’s what they were documented as in the original expedition.

The Panamanian “Geisha” coffee has origins to Ethiopia. In a 2014 genetic research study of Geisha coffee in Panama and Ethiopia, Dr. Sarada Krishnan, Director of Horticulture and Center for Global Initiatives at the Denver Botanic Gardens, found the two coffees to be genetically very similar. She wrote, “It is highly possible that the Panamanian Geisha could have originated from the same Ethiopian Geisha coffee forest as the samples for the present study came from.”

As the variety spread around the world, other producing regions wanted to replicate the success of the Panamanian “Geisha” coffee. The variety grown in Central America tends to be spelled “Geisha” while other regions use “Gesha.” There is no established rule. Within the industry, “Geisha” coffee is more widely known and holds brand power, as written about by James Hoffmann and many others.

To summarize, all of the coffee we’re talking about—whether you use the “i” or not—is actually Gesha. Let’s move on to why this is all problematic—and please note that for the remainder of the article we’ll default to using “Gesha” when talking about the coffee.

Gesha coffees are rare, expensive, and often given notes like “delicate” and “floral.” If you were new to specialty coffee and just learned about this variety, it wouldn’t be too far a jump to unfortunately associate these same characteristics with the Japanese arts tradition. In Western countries, stereotypes about Japanese women lean into exoticism. They’re portrayed as submissive, delicate, and astonishingly beautiful. For geisha performers, the word came into global use in the early 18th century and it often mistakenly connotes an idea of a demure, high-priced prostitute. Books like Memoirs of a Geisha and Madame Butterfly have certainly enforced stereotypes and contributed to Orientalist perceptions.

Briefly, Orientalism is a concept introduced by a Edward Said in a book by the same name about how the West is centered and the East is perceived as “other” and exotic. In the West, it creates fantasy interpretations and representations of what the East is like. It’s a fascination with Eastern culture and shows up on the daily as turmeric suddenly being “discovered” as a superfood or Katy Perry dressed as a geisha.

“The concept of the geisha as perceived in Western society is fraught with exoticism and hyper-sexualization of Japanese women,” says David Inoue, Executive Director of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). Established in 1929, the JACL is the oldest Asian American civil rights organization in the US and according to their website, works to “secure and maintain the civil rights of Japanese Americans and all others who are victimized by injustice and bigotry.”

Inoue continues, “It is quite a stretch to use images of geisha to market a coffee that has its origins in Ethiopia, but is also symptomatic of our misogynistic society that continues to celebrate the objectification of women, particularly women of color.”

The coffee industry already fetishizes Gesha coffee. We package it up nicely into tins and small doses. It’s talked about in tones of reverence and introduced to customers at five times the standard cup price. Asian women are similarly fetishized (believe me—I am reporting from personal experience). If we’re not on parallel paths of the same word being used in similar ways, then the industry is certainly capitalizing–unconsciously or not–on Japanese exoticism.

Confusion abounds around the term. “I thought it was named ‘Geisha’ because someone thought it was so exotic and sexy,” a fellow specialty coffee pro told me, on condition of anonymity. This is from someone who used Gesha coffee in their United States Brewer’s Cup competition routine.

It’s not just baristas who get confused. Noboru Ueno, owner of equipment distributor FBC International in Japan, finds the use of the word “geisha” when referring to Gesha coffee to be similarly misleading in his country. Ueno says that because geisha artists are often symbolic of Japan’s culture, like Mt. Fuji and sushi, it’s easy to popularize it in consuming countries, especially in Japan. He found that Japanese consumers associate “geisha” coffee with Japan, and that coffee professionals typically do not try to correct the misunderstanding.

Ueno agrees that the correct term Gesha should be used going forward, as the coffee itself is Ethiopian, not Japanese. “Every consumption country, including Japan, must respect the original culture,” Ueno tells Sprudge. “Words and language are the fundamental basis for each nation’s culture.”

Respect, accuracy, and the dismantling of Orientalism and colonial primacy—these sound like pretty great reasons to drop that damn unnecessary “i”. You can argue around this a thousand different ways, and it all comes back to the same thing: it’s Gesha, not “geisha”.

Gesha is a coffee producing region in Ethiopia, from whence the popular Gesha coffee variety is thought to originate, same as the Chardonnay grape is named for the Burgundy village of Chardonnay, or Warsteiner beer is named for the southern German region of Warstein, or the brand Point Reyes Cheese is named for Point Reyes, California. We name agricultural products after the places they hail from all the time. In Gesha’s case, globalism conspired to move the fruit from Ethiopia to Panama and beyond, which has ended up being a good thing for coffee drinkers—these coffees are delicious!—and also a good thing for Gesha growers in Central and South America, whose coffees can fetch top dollar. However, these same global forces also conspired to introduce the “i”, making it sound more like the familiar word “geisha”—which is why today I have to look at exoticized, fetishized depictions of Asian women being used to sell coffee.

There is maybe only one scenario I can think of in which it might be genuinely appropriate to term something a “Geisha” coffee, and that is if the coffee was grown, roasted, or served by an actual Japanese geisha artist. In such a scenario I am all for using the term “Geisha” in relation to coffee—and I’ve created a handy Venn diagram below to illustrate this choice.

Words evolve. Their associations change. That’s part of the glory of the English language. And for all its glory, it is not without fault—sometimes words get written down wrong or exoticized, especially when the person doing the writing has all the power. But together we have the power back in our hands now. Using the correct term Gesha instead of the inaccurate term “geisha” helps remove ambiguous relations; it respects the cultural and agricultural history of the crop; it better informs coffee drinkers about that history; and it minimizes the likelihood of some asshole using a picture of a Japanese geisha person to discuss the coffee ever again.

So let’s call it Gesha, not “geisha”—it’s a small change with big meaning behind it.

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

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Source: Coffee News