Hawaii Archives - Page 10 of 33 - The Curb Kaimuki

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

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.

The post Build-Outs Of Summer: Broom Wagon Coffee In Charleston, SC appeared first on Sprudge.

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.

The post Hold The Crema: FrankOne Is “The First Colombian Coffeemaker” appeared first on Sprudge.

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.

The post Three Barista Competitions In One At Creatures Of Habit In San Francisco appeared first on Sprudge.

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.

The post Build-Outs Of Summer: Brugh Coffee Company In Christiansburg, VA appeared first on Sprudge.

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.

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Source: Coffee News