Keep It Kaimuki Archives - Page 23 of 23 - The Curb Kaimuki

We’re just a few short days from Black Coffee, a new live podcast event from creative director Michelle Johnson in Portland, Oregon. Tickets are available here, and today we’ve got some exciting additions to the programming to announce!

The event takes place on Tuesday, April 24th from 6-9pm at the Clinton Street Theater, a classic cinema and live theater venue in the heart of Southeast Portland, Oregon. Ticket pre-sale is now available. Hosted by Michelle Johnson, Ian Williams (Deadstock Coffee), and Gio Fillari (Coffee Feed PDX), this event centers the voices and experiences of Black coffee professionals and enthusiasts alike, all with unique perspectives that span intersectional identities and roles on the retail end of the value chain. Special guests include D’Onna Stubblefield (Counter Culture Coffee), JUST ADDED Ezra Baker (Share Coffee Roasters), Zael Ogwaro (Never Coffee), Adam JacksonBey (The Potter’s House), and Cameron Heath (Revelator Coffee Company). The main event at Clinton Street Theater will feature a live DJ performance by |Fritzwa|.

We’re excited to partner up with several sponsors for this event, including La Marzocco USA, Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Oatly, and The Ace Hotel Portland. Ticket proceeds will be donated to our charitable partners, Sankofa Collective and Brown Girl Rise. We are thrilled to have this event supported by NXT LVL, Portland’s partiers for social justice—read more about their involvement with the event here.

Black Coffee tickets are $10 pre-sale, $15 at the door. We’re offering a limited number of VIP tickets that include an invite to the after party, and a special “come down” event the following morning. A little update regarding the afterparty: due to demand this event has been moved to the Society Hotel, featuring DJ VNPRT, natural wine selections by Sprudge Wine, and dessert catering from Kee’s Loaded Kitchen.

We hope you can join us April 24th in Portland! But if you can’t make it, don’t worry—we’re planning on creating wall to wall coverage of the event, including a special podcast presentation to follow. Follow Sprudge for more details.

#blackcoffeePDX

Read Michelle Johnson’s statement of intent for the event here. 

Read more about NXT LVL’s partnership with the event here.

Original poster art by Taylor McManus (@tmcmanusillustration)

The post Black Coffee Is Coming April 24th appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Over the long weekend of April 12th-15th, the international coffee industry and tens of thousands of its biggest fans gathered in Shoreditch, London for the 2018 London Coffee Festival. A four-day event now in its eighth year, the festival brings together established companies and smaller independent brands alike to present their products to more than 30,000 baristas, roasters, CEOs, entrepreneurs, associated media, craftspeople and coffee lovers of all stripes. I was on the ground at the London Coffee Festival to check out the hottest new tech coming on the market later this year.

Rancilio Group has been producing traditional espresso machines and grinders at their factory in Parabiago near Milan, Italy for over 90 years. The London Coffee Festival 2018 marked their official debut into the specialty coffee market with the new Rancilio Specialty.

Rancilio Specialty is a stainless steel espresso machine featuring three independent groupheads with dedicated displays, an insulated service boiler with programmable water change, and steam levers each with two powers levels for different jug sizes. Thanks to a multi-boiler system and “Rancilio LAB patented technology,” baristas can accurately manage water temperature profiles during the shot brewing process, which, according to Rancilio, affords them the ability to control acidity and bitterness. What they call “Thermal Stability technology” allows baristas to program bespoke brewing profiles using a range of 5°C to precisely dial in the flavour characteristics of coffee blends and single origins—if one coffee tastes great at 86°C, whilst another prefers a flat 90°C, the Rancilio Speciality can handle it no problem.

The most interesting feature of Rancilio Specialty, one that I’m sure baristas will be most excited about, is the touch screen interface. The screen allows users to regulate the machine, program groups and steam levers settings, save recipes, add notes, and set up cleaning operations. Rancilio Specialty also stores all the details of last 30 cups of coffee brewed, hence allowing users to easily monitor the machine’s performance and helping support training for new baristas.

The decision to delve into the specialty coffee market came after the launch of Rancilio’s Classe 11 machine a few years ago. “About a year and a half ago, we gathered a team of top baristas from the specialty sector and started working on creating an espresso machine for them,” says Valerio Locati, R&D Engineer at Rancilio Group. “One of the things they asked for was to make the interface easy to use by reducing the number of clicks required to find the main functions.” And so because of this, the most important settings such as group settings and preset recipes can be found on the first page of the display.

Rancilio Group also took care to address sustainability as part of their machine design; it’s an increasingly large focus in the specialty coffee industry here in London and around the world. The Rancilio Speciality’s main boiler is insulated to reduce energy consumption; the micro-boilers for individual units can be switched off manually or programmed to switch off automatically. Equally important was the R&D team’s goal to create a user-friendly and ergonomic machine. To that end, the design of the brewing units, the positioning of the steam levers, and the ample working area guarantee the barista supreme comfort, precision, and operating speed to optimize the work flow.

Rancilio Specialty is full of other cool functionalities, such as an LED illuminated work surface, a USB port for recharging smartphones and scales, cool touch steam wands, a control panel with back-lit icons, and a removable drip tray with height adjustment for all cup sizes (80, 100, or 120mm). Under the machine is a 90mm deep compartment that can be used to store the filter holders, scales, and other working tools. The cup tray can be set up to five different temperature levels to guarantee stable and even heat in any season and environment inside and outside the cafe.

What may seem like small things can really make a difference in improving the day-to-day workflow and performance of a coffee shop, making for an impressive, barista-focused first entry from Rancilio into the specialty coffee market.

Rancilio Specialty was first presented at Host 2017 in Milan, but the machine’s official launch took place at the 2018 The London Coffee Festival. Rancilio Group will take the new machine to other coffee shows this year, but you saw it here first on Sprudge.

Giulia Mule is a Sprudge.com contributor based in London. Read more Giulia Mule on Sprudge. 

The post New Gear Watch: The Rancilio Specialty Launches At London Coffee Festival appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Hey there Sprudge reader! Thanks for clicking this link, and thank you, as always, for reading our website. A good 95% of what we report about on Sprudge takes place far outside our own organizational sphere, but from time to time we’ll keep you posted about what we’re up to as a media network, and today is one of those days. If internal talk of #SprudgeLife is not your jam, we understand fully—you might instead prefer this emotional treatise on the state of the Americano, or an interview with Jerry Seinfeld, or a coffee guide to Kyoto—but if you’re still with us, thank you, let’s get down to it.

Sprudge Media Network is excited to announce our 2018-2019 editorial advisory board. It is a broad, wide-reaching, and highly informed group of individuals that come from all steps of the coffee chain, from producers to entrepreneurs to working baristas, roasters and educators, encompassing a diverse spectrum of experiences and viewpoints across the industry. It leans young; there aren’t a lot of suits. It’s a group that has graciously agreed to help better inform our small independent media company over the next year, and we are really over the moon about it (if you’re wondering).

So let’s meet them! This is your 2018-2019 Sprudge Media Network editorial advisory board.

David Buehrer (Greenway Coffee, Houston)

Jenn Chen (Acaia Coffee + independent consultancy, San Francisco)

Marta Dalton (Coffee Bird, Guatemala+London)

Liz S. Dean (The Wing, New York City)

Gilbert Gatali (Independent, Rwanda)

Michelle Johnson (Chocolate Barista + Barista Hustle, Melbourne)

Tony Konecny (Yes Plz, Los Angeles)

Tymika Lawrence (Genuine Origin, New York City)

Joe Marrocco (Cafe Imports, Minneapolis)

Diana Mnatsakanyan-Sapp (Undercurrent Coffee, Charlotte, NC)

Hugo Neuproler (Independent, Vancouver BC)

Becky Reeves (Oatly, Austin TX)

Trish Rothgeb (CQI + Wrecking Ball Coffee, San Francisco)

Akaash Saini (Equator Coffees, San Francisco Bay Area)

Bronwen Serna (The New Black, Singapore)

In the coming weeks you’ll get a chance to learn more about our board as we update and feature each of them on our “About” page—look for more soon, watch this space. We’re working every day to make Sprudge the best coffee website it can be, and today’s announcement is a public part of that process. We hope it makes our website better and we thank you for your time and readership.

-Zachary Carlsen and Jordan Michelman

The post Introducing The Sprudge Editorial Advisory Board appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

In the coffee farms along western Colombia, indigenous transgender people are finding places to work and a safe haven to express themselves. A new article in National Geographic details the work of photographer Lena Mucha as she follows these workers in the fields, the dormitories, and the city.

As the article notes, many trans people don’t find acceptance in their communities and are “often punished or forced to leave their villages, even if they have families and children.”

This has led many to find refuge working on coffee farms, where after the work is finished, they are able to “dress as they’d like during their free time without punishment or harassment.”

Mucha’s work captures candid moments of these women’s lives on and off the farm. The photos are beautiful and moving and have a way of expressing the complicated emotions that must be involved in finding a place to truly be yourself, but having to leave everything you know behind to get there.

The full collection of Lena Mucha’s photos can be found here.

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 Indigenous Trans People Find Refuge On Colombia Coffee Farms appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News