Specialty Coffee Archives - Page 11 of 35 - The Curb Kaimuki

The official end of summer is tomorrow, but the official end of the Build-Outs of Summer is right here, right now. It’s sad to see it go back into its nine-month hibernation, but that’s just the way these things go. Sunrise. Sunset. But we aren’t leaving without giving you one last extremely beautiful cafe to behold: Treeline Coffee in Bozeman, Montana.

With an eye towards the outdoors (how could you not in a place as lovely as Montana), Treeline wants to fuel you up for your next adventure, all within of a clean-designed wonder of a space. Working with THINKTANK Design Group, Treeline is a mix of minimalism and warmth. And it is the perfect way to end the 2018 Build-Outs of Summer. It’s been a wild ride; we can’t wait to see what y’all have in store next year. But for now, let’s take in the splendor that is Treeline Coffee in Bozeman, Montana.

As told to Sprudge by Natalie Van Dusen.

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

Treeline was born in the mountains of Bozeman, MT. We are a small batch, artisan coffee roaster in pursuit of an unforgettable cup of coffee. We pride ourselves on sourcing excellent coffees seasonally and roasting each bean to highlight the unique flavors that make for a rich and dynamic cup of coffee.

Yes, we are coffee lovers, but we are also adventurers, travelers, and outdoor enthusiasts! Treeline is built on the idea that your coffee should fuel you to do the things you love. With that as our motto, we have gone to great lengths to explore creative and innovative coffee solutions that allow our customers to take their coffee on-the-go. Whether it’s Bozeman or Bali, hotel or hut, we think coffee can be the ultimate travel and outdoor companion.

Driven by curiosity, intuition, and honesty, we seek to create an unforgettable coffee experience from farm-to-cup.

Can you tell us a bit about the new space?

This summer we finished building and opened our second Treeline Coffee Roasters location in Bozeman! The new Treeline Coffee was key element in the design of The Lark Hotel expansion located on Main Street in downtown Bozeman. As a modern reinterpretation of a 1960’s motor lodge, the hotel sets a new standard of what a hotel experience can be by creating public gathering spaces for locals and hotel guests to interact. Treeline Coffee is at the heart of this interplay.

Housed in a warm, sustainable shell of exposed Cross Laminated Timber, Treeline Coffee’s inviting open-air entrance utilizes a large panel door to blur the indoor/outdoor connection. The space features brightly colored custom furniture by local artisans, contemporary lighting, and a steel barista counter whose design was born from a collaboration between the Treeline baristas, local craftsmen, and THINKTANK Design Group.

The barista counter is made from cold rolled steel and houses three pour-over stations, coffee grinders, brewers, Modbar expresso machines, a custom water tap, and a custom-made display rack for fresh pastries.

Guests cruise past display cases to the transaction counter in the middle of the bar where they can experience the creation of the drinks. The space and layout of the baristas equipment is spaced and grouped so they are ergonomically efficient and visually appealing to the clientele.

Treeline Coffee’s downtown location is roughly 700 square feet and serves fresh, locally-roasted coffee in the heart of Bozeman. In its opening weeks in July 2018, the coffee shop has experienced a large amount of traffic due to its uniquely bold, yet refined design, and of course… tasty coffee.

What’s your approach to coffee?

We approach coffee like we approach our adventures: with enthusiasm and an end goal of an awesome quality experience. The attention to detail in each cups starts well before the brewing process and begins with sourcing.

From the beginning we’ve been traveling to meet with farmers and develop long lasting friendships and relationships. This allows us to better understand their growing practice and approaches to sustainability.

We purchase our beans seasonally and design unique roast profiles to match each bean so we can offer a rotating and unique lineup of coffees.

Our baristas, who are coffee professionals and true crafts(wo)men of their trade, then take the freshly roasted beans and pull shots on our Modbars or provide-pour overs on our v60s. Each barista treats every cup with the respect it deserves, keeping in mind the entire coffee story and truly completing the farm to cup experience for our customers to enjoy.

Additionally, the more we learn about coffee the more we realize we don’t know and strive to keep learning. As a team we are always looking for ways to grow and expand our coffee knowledge and craft.

Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?

So much fun equipment in this shop! We are continuing to use Modbars for our espresso but we’ve switched our grinders to the Nuova Simonelli Mythos One Clima Pro and are loving the upgrade!
We have a three station pour-over bar with Hario v60’s. The coffee for our pour-over bar and our batch brew is ground using the new Mazzer ZM.

We spent a bunch of time sourcing awesome cupware. We have a mix of mugs from Loveramics, Acme, and notNeutral.

What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?

We opened July 1, 2018

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

THINKTANK Design Group, Townsend Collective, and other local Bozeman artisans.

Thank you!

Thanks 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: Treeline Coffee In Bozeman, MT appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

I’m always reminded that National Coffee Day exists by a marked uptick in PR blasts finding their way to my inbox. Most follow the form, “Just In Time For National Coffee Day, [Brand] is releasing a cool [uncool thing]!” And as my bloated inbox has informed me, that time is once again upon us—September 29th to be exact—and admittedly, not all of the celebrations are terrible this year. Take for example the geniuses/stoners over at Krispy Kreme who posited, “What if we make our coffee taste like donuts and our donuts taste like coffee?”

You gotta admit, Krispy Kreme knows how to stay in their lane but makes sure to use every part of it. Starting Monday of next week, the donut shop with “brew doughnuts and glaze coffee,” per the press release, an idea that no doubt stemmed from someone doing a little “grew and blaze” at home from the “tomato plants” hiding in a secret closet somewhere. From September 24th through the 30th, Krispy Kreme will be topping their donuts with a “coffee glaze” as well as releasing an Original Glazed coffee, the latter to become a permanent fixture at participating stores.

To celebrate, Krispy Kreme is giving away donut-flavored coffee on National Coffee Day, “any size!”

So if you’ve ever wanted to have whatever it is you call donut- and coffee-based synesthesia, head on over to Krispy Kreme next week. Though I can’t help but wonder, if you want a coffee-flavored thing and a donut-flavored thing, why make the coffee taste like a donut and the donut taste like coffee? Why not just have coffee-flavored coffee and donut-flavored donuts? It’s like my friend Johnny says, “Don’t plan too much. It may not come out right.”

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 Krispy Kreme

The post What If, Like, Coffee Tasted Like Donuts And Donuts Like Coffee? Whoa appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Life comes at you fast. One minute you are sitting in your cafe of almost 10 years and the next minute you are scrambling to find a new location. That’s the story of Augie’s Coffee Roasters in Redlands, California. After losing the lease on their original Little Red Building, Augie’s had less than a month to find a new location, make it shop ready, and get everything moved in. But thanks to the help of friends, family, and customers, they were able to close their first space at regular hours and have everything ready to roll at Augie’s 2.0 by opening time the next day.

Sometimes you get by with the help of your friends. I’d wager the friends in this case were handsomely rewarded with coffee.

As told to Sprudge by Austin Amento.

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

We have been in our iconic red brick building in downtown Redlands for almost 10 years. Starting as just a father/son team in 2009, we became obsessed with specialty coffee and becoming involved in our local community. We spent our last $10k on a roaster in 2011 and turned around our business almost immediately. Since then we’ve grown to four stores (with two in the very near future), we’ve worked with local artists, musicians, schools, businesses, and charities to help better our community.

Can you tell us a bit about the new space?

In the first week of May we learned that we were being kicked out of our original location with no notice. We literally had three weeks to open our space before being out of our store. Fortunately, we were offered a lease on a space we couldn’t have dreamed up. It was clearly the solution—it needed only a facelift, and the licenses were still valid pending an inspection since the previous business had closed within the last year. The business also included the option of a beer and wine license. For the entirety of that month, we worked around the clock—painting, cleaning, arranging equipment, putting in a new bar, counter top, and doing tile work. All the hard work and energy that went into this space paid off; we passed our initial inspections and were given the green light to open. We didn’t skip a beat; customers piled in to show support, and to check out the “new digs,” nicknamed Augies 2.0. The space lends itself to opportunity. It sports an additional bathroom, a big wall of floor-to-ceiling windows providing gorgeous natural light, a naturally shaded patio with tons of greenery, a modest kitchen, and a big open layout. Immediately, this space retained the liveliness and energy the previous one was so known for.

What’s your approach to coffee?

Coffee is the priority. We seek farm direct relationships with our coffee buying and update coffee offerings frequently. Our menu is approachable to a wide audience, with the focus being making everything from scratch as much as possible. We have rotating pour-overs, single origin espressos, and single origin cold brew, but we also have incredible flavored lattes and seasonal drinks made with house-made syrups.

Any machines, coffees, special equipment lined up?

We just got a beautiful MVP Hydra from Synesso that we had painted red and customized with gold and wood accents. We also have a Seraphim and a Curtis batch brewer, and a Mahlkönig EK 43 S. New barista toys for a new chapter.

What’s your hopeful target opening date/month?

We opened May 29. We closed our old location at 9 pm (regular hours) and with the incredible help of our staff and loyal customers, moved our furniture, dry goods, and equipment up the street to the new location and it opened at 6 am (also regular hours).

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

Local artist James McClung painted a beautiful mural in our new space, and we are working with a local craftsman Martin & Co on some custom outdoor seating pieces.

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: Augie’s Coffee In Redlands, CA appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

The New Rules of Coffee—the very first book from Sprudge founders Jordan Michelman and Zachary Carlsen—comes out on Tuesday, September 25th on Ten Speed Press. Pre-order is available now wherever books are sold,  including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, and Powell’s. We can’t wait for you to read it!

To celebrate we’ll be partying with friends across the USA over the next few months, and today we can announce the first round of dates for our book tour. At each stop we’ll be chatting more about the book, signing copies available for sale, and drinking delicious coffee. Come join us at these events—and watch for more events to come in the following weeks!

Wednesday, September 26th in Olympia, Washington at Olympia Coffee Roasting Company

Thursday, September 27th in Tacoma, Washington at King’s Books

Friday, September 28th (daytime) in Everett, Washington at Narrative Coffee

Friday, September 28th (nighttime) in Seattle, Washington at La Marzocco Cafe at KEXP

Saturday, September 29th (daytime) in Portland, Oregon at Stumptown Coffee Roasters

Thursday, October 11th in New York City at Counter Culture Coffee in partnership with Taste Magazine (ticketed event—buy tickets here!)

Saturday, October 13th in New York City at New York Coffee Festival

Wednesday, October 17th in Brooklyn at Stumptown Coffee Cobble Hill

Sunday, October 21st in Washington DC with Smithsonian Associates at Ripley Center (ticketed event—buy tickets here!)

We’ve got much more coming for the months of November and December, including event dates in California, Texas, Illinois and Canada. If you’re interested in booking us for an event in your city, get in touch! Stay tuned for more events announced in the coming weeks, and we hope to see you at any or all of the above parties.

Order your copy today, don’t delay, hip hip hooray.

The post The New Rules Of Coffee On Tour appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Green importer InterAmerican Coffee has recently announced a $20,000 donation to Hanns R. Newmann Stiftung (HRNS), a coffee non-profit organization looking to create sustainable development in origin countries by treating “environmental, social, and economic factors in an integrated manner.” According to a press release, the money will go towards further HRNS’ Coffee Kids program as well as their Feed the Alliance for Resilient Coffee program. This all sounds great, but what does it all mean? How will the money actually be used?

If these are the sort of questions you have when hearing about a sizable donation, InterAmerican want to invite you to the Future of Coffee, “a definitely-not-awkward evening of delicious drinks, two guest-of-honor coffees, and much frank and lively conversation about the future of everyone’s favorite beverage.”

Taking place Thursday, September 27th at Counter Culture’s New York Training Lab, the Future of Coffee is not only a chance to celebrate and taste coffees from two “projects that focus on areas of coffee life [InterAmerican] thinks are essential to coffee’s future”—youth, gender equality, climate change response, and producer profitability—but to also ask questions, discuss, and find out more about how this money will help the people working these farms. The conversations will be led by Jan von Enden (Hanns R. Newmann Stiftung), Joanna Furguile (Coffee Kids), Kathryn Selengia (Climate Smart Coffee), and Emiliano Rice (InterAmerican Coffee).

The coffees to be served at the event include the Guatemala San José Poaquil HRNS from the Chimaltenango region, where partner farms have seen a 56% increase in their yields and a 28% increase in income since beginning work with HRNS, and the Honduras Coffee Kids Uniocafe from the Ocotepeque region, a coffee that comes from 33 producers all aged between 15 and 39.

The Future of Coffee gets started at 5:30pm on Thursday, September 27th at the Counter Culture New York Training Lab. The event is free to attend but InterAmerican is asking those who are planning on making it to RSVP. To reserver your spot or to find out more information on the Future of Coffee, visit their 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 InterAmerican Coffee

The post InterAmerican Wants To Talk About The Future Of Coffee appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

In the futile battle against getting older, there is one defining moment from which there is no return, the final imbroglio: “do I try to stick it out in the city or accept my fate and move to the suburbs?” The schism is an ideological one; the thinking being that the city is full of life and culture, and the suburbs are boring—a place where folks go to bed early. A place dotted with chain restaurants. The same chain restaurants. Over and over. In Dallas, this has historically held true, but as with most cities still growing outward, the ideological divide no longer tracks one-for-one with city/suburb limits.

One such municipality having a bit of moment in that blurred space is Richardson, a Dallas suburb just a quick jaunt north up I-75. It has, for as long as I can remember, been where Dallasites go for really good dim sum, all manner of Mediterranean fare, and northern Indian food. It has never, historically, been a place to go for coffee. But that is changing, thanks to Communion Neighborhood Cooperative. Part co-working space, part coffee shop, part bar, part restaurant, Communion is Richardson’s place for all that is good (and also to work).

Communion is a collaborative effort between Tim Kahle (the founder and managing director of Communion Cooperative, the co-working side of the business) and Tim Cox and Kyle McAdams (the co-owners of the cafe side). Cox and McAdams are lifers in the Dallas coffee scene; four years ago when it looked like the coffee scene was just about to explode—Method had just opened, Houndstooth was about to move to Dallas, and Cultivar was opening its second location—Cox was heir apparent as the most likely (and arguably most anticipated) barista to open their own shop. But despite some of my more grandiose claims about Dallas besting Austin for state coffee supremacy, that boom never happened, and neither did Cox’s shop. Until now.

In the 7,000-square-foot former automotive shop in which Communion now resides, co-working and cafe life are kept discrete. This gives Communion the opportunity to serve not just those taking advantage of the 5,000-square-foot, members-only co-working area, but the public at large. It is through this division, Cox says, that allows Communion works its greater goal: building community. “We want to create an environment of shared ideas and shared experiences. We serve coffee, food, cocktails, we have a co-working community, we are an event venue—and we strive to do all of those things really well—but those things are not our product,” Cox states. “They are the tools we use to create what we feel our real products to be: community, experience, and culture.”

Cox and McAdams are on the front lines of this mission with the cafe side, where the majority of folks have their first exposure to what Communion is all about. Amid glossy, warm wood tones, roll-up windows, and mid-century modern-esque patinated brass, the cozy vibe inside Communion belies what is one of the most progressive (and in my opinion, best) coffee programs in the entire city. A multi-roaster, the Richardson cafe always has three roasters on offer—one local, one from Texas, and one from beyond—each for a three-month stint. In those three months, each roaster will spend a month on espresso, pour-over, and batch brew. This, according to McAdams, allows customers to try every roaster, “whether they are adventurous and enjoy all forms of coffee preparation or if they prefer to stick to one style of brew.”

And Communion actively seeks out new and exciting roasters to carry. In just their second rotation, they have already featured Sey, Maquína, and Houston’s Xela Coffee Roasters, each making their first Metroplex appearance on Communion’s concrete countertop, along with local favorites Oak Cliff Coffee, Cultivar, and Amarillo’s Evocation.

As a full-service bar (and one of the only ones in town with a few by-the-glass splashes of natural wine), Communion allows Cox and McAdams the ability to flex a bit of creative muscle and design fun PM-type drinks that a coffee shop-only establishment couldn’t. Think adult slushies like the frosé—which is exactly what it sounds like, frozen rosé—and the coffee slushie, which goes great with a float of your favorite spirit. But if a more traditional cocktail is to your liking, Communion’s whiskey-forward menu boasts 120+ whiskeys used to create unique imbibements to great effect, like the coffee-focused Skin Seed & Soil, featuring Buffalo Trace bourbon, sambuca, brandy, and house-made cascara and coffee bitters, all shaken together and served over a cold-brew ice cube.

As Cox stresses, all these offerings are mere tools to build Communion’s real products: community and experiences. With their all-day approach to service, Communion is able to provide a litany of events for patrons, many of which don’t often find their way this far north of downtown. Be they scotch pairings, coffee cocktails, pop-up dinners with guest chefs, or latte art throwdowns, community engagement is at the heart of what Cox, McAdams, and Kahle are trying to do with Richardson’s newest all-day hangout. And it’s working. After several months, Communion Cafe is busy from AM to PM, bustling with locals, many of whom have perfected the seamless transition from coffee to cocktail all from the comfort of the same booth.

With each passing day, that dichotomy between urban and suburban life is proving to be more and more false. As “the big city” becomes prohibitively expensive, folks are looking elsewhere to start their own endeavors, often combining efforts to create a single, multi-use space. And nowhere are the rewards of this reaped more than in the outlying areas. With places like Communion finding homes outside the city center, the suburbs—contrary to decades of thinking otherwise—do not suck.

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 Setting The Table At Communion Cafe In Richardson, Texas appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Remember five or so years ago when it seemed like every specialty coffee company had an ad of some dude pouring coffee on himself (or maybe his bro) out of a Chemex in a provocative way? Yeah, it was weird. But on a semi-related note, you can now bathe in coffee. A resort in Japan offers customers a swimming pool-sized spa filled with coffee for their relaxing pleasure.

According to The Travel, the Hakone Kowakien Yunessun Spa and Resort in Hakone, Japan is home to multiple food- and drink-based spas, including wine, tea, “ramen”, and of course, coffee. And it’s not just brown-colored water, it’s actually coffee—low heat Nel Drip style brewed coffee per the website—though I have had many a coffee that I would classify as “brown-colored water” and I can’t say one way or the other how this brew stacks up to those. I don’t plan on finding out either. The Hakone Kowakien Yunessun Spa and Resort wisely suggests you not drink the coffee. Or the tea or wine or ramen broth.

The coffee bath is more than just a ploy to draw in the coffee obsessed. Not much more, mind you, but still more. Bathing in coffee is said to have “recharging, relaxing, skin beautifying effects.”

Even if it’s not, a photo in a coffee bath is pretty pretty pretty Instagrammable.

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 Hakone Kowakien Yunessun Spa and Resort

The post You Can Bathe In Coffee At This Japanese Spa appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

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