Specialty Coffee Archives - Page 7 of 35 - The Curb Kaimuki

World of Coffee is happening in Berlin right now and with it the World Latte Art Championship, Worl Coffee in Good Spirits Championship, World Cup Tasters Championship, and the Cezve/Ibrik Championship. I’m not there and I’m a little bummed. Berlin! New tech! Coffee in Good Spirits! It’s the epicenter of the coffee universe, and here I am sitting in my living room, watching replays of the French Open. There’s a cruelty to it all really.

But for Seattle residents, a little piece of the international affair is taking place right in their backyard. For their newest residency, the La Marzocco Cafe have invited Berlin’s Bonanza Coffee and Tokyo’s ONIBUS Coffee to take over.

We’ve reported on the La Marzocco Cafe in the past, but it remains one of the coolest concepts going. Each month, they invite a new roaster partner (or in this case, roasters) to take over their space and deliver to Seattleites the cafe experience the roasters offer at their home shop. This includes coffee served, how it’s prepared, drink menu, staff training, even the bar configuration, the incoming residents have full control.

This joint residency is new for the LM Cafe, but the two roasters are old friends. According to the La Marzocco blog post announcing the collaboration, the symbiotic relationship between Bonanza and ONIBUS began back in 2016, when the Berlin roaster took a research trip to Tokyo, where they linked up with their Japanese counterparts. After trading guest shifts and training sessions at their respective cafes, the two coffee companies became simpatico and have bounced ideas off each other ever since.

For their residency, Bonanza and ONIBUS are offering an experience greater than the sum of its parts; the roasters will be showcasing their own expression of the same coffee: the Espirito Santo from Brazil. For their version of the washed processed coffee, Bonanza created a roast profile geared toward espresso, making it the go-to choice for espresso-based drinks. ONIBUS, on the other hand, profiled the coffee for filter and will be serving their take on batch brew and pour-over later on in the residency. The both coffees are also available as a Tasting Set consisting of an espresso and a filter coffee.

So what that there’s a giant coffee shindig going on across the pond? Bonanza and ONIBUS will be in Seattle through Monday, July 8th, and that’s way longer than just a weekend. Sign me up for the La Marzocco Cafe residency. WoC’s gonna be stupid anyway. I’m not projecting, you’re projecting!

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

Disclosure: La Marzocco is an advertising partner with the Sprudge Media Network

The post Seattle: Bonanza and ONIBUS Link Up To Take Over The La Marzocco Cafe appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

As the days get longer and the nights get hotter we have some serious questions. Perhaps the most pressing question on our lips is…What summertime coffee drink are you? Are you a hot filter coffee person through-and-through? Or do you deviate from your normal order and indulge in an iced vanilla latte? Heck, maybe you’re a frosty cool frozen cappuccino and you don’t even know it!

Take this quiz to find out what summer coffee drink you are!

The post What Summer Coffee Drink Are You? appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

Who doesn’t love a good pop-up? No one, that’s who. Milan-based espresso machine manufacturer Faema is taking the pop-up to 11, with an extended residency stateside at 198 Allen Street in New York City. Taking place between June 3rd and 29th, Faema’s appropriately titled Pop-Up Coffee Shop will be offering a host of coffee experiences, including a variety of learning experiences and 16 different roasters.

Per Faema’s website, the Pop-Up Coffee Shop “will stand as a hub where baristas and roasters can come together over a shared passion and set their craft in motion, breaking the rules of coffee and taking experimentation to the next level.” Each week four new roasters from across the US will be on bar at the pop-up, where they will “alternate and [use] different methods of extraction, from espresso to flash brew.” The roaster schedule is as follows:

Week 1:
Verve Coffee Roasters
SkyTop Coffee Company
Mr Espresso
Saison Coffee

Week 2:
Brandywine Coffee Roasters
La Colombe Coffee Roasters
Sump Coffee
Katz Coffee

Week 3:
Coffee Project New York
Coffee of Grace
Methodical Coffee
Caffe Ammi

Week 4:
Partners Coffee
GEVA Coffee
Mojo Coffee Roasters
Afficionado Coffee Roasters

More than just providing a wide range of tasty coffee, Faema’s Pop-Up Coffee Shop is offering attendees a variety of learning experiences no matter where they are in their coffee journey. There are events like public cuppings and intro brewing classes for those just dipping their toes in the water, latte art masterclasses for the working barista looking to up their game, and even creative marketing classes, panel discussions on opening a cafe in NYC, and talks on sustainability practices for coffee shop management/owners. Or you can just chill out with a coffee cocktail at Faema’s X30 Happy Hour.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are 15 total events taking place at the Pop-Up Coffee Shop for your caffeinated enjoyment. And it’s happening right now! The pop-up will be open from 10:00am to 4:00pm daily through the 29th. For more information about Faema’s Pop-Up Coffee Shop or to see a full list of events, visit their official website.

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

Top image via Faema

Disclosure: Faema is an advertising partner with the Sprudge Media Network

The post Faema Takes Over New York City With A Pop-Up Coffee Shop appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

São Lourenço is a touristy little town in the heart of Mantiqueira de Minas, one of Brazil’s most notorious specialty coffee producing regions in the state of Minas Gerais. The town’s Parque das Águas (water park) occupies a 400,000-square-meter green area downtown and is the source of nine therapeutical mineral waters, each holding distinct healing properties. Visitors can fill their bottles with the water of choice and also choose to take one of the therapeutic baths, sauna sessions, or ayurvedic treatments that are offered at the park’s spa center.

Helcio Junior and his family founded Unique Cafés Especiais in São Lourenço back in 2008, following the trend they had been observing as green coffee traders—his family farms coffee as well—but also as a means to absorb the town’s great touristic potential. The first Unique coffee shop is located very close to the water park, in the city center. All these years, their wholesale operation grew considerably, but their roastery was located in an industrial site in Carmo de Minas, not open to the public.

The new roastery, inaugurated in November of 2018, celebrates everything that Junior and his family have wanted to do for a long time. In a much larger space exclusively dedicated to coffee, they now house a coffee bar, their administrative and sales headquarters, and a roastery, all in the same space, right off the road between Carmo de Minas—the epicenter of coffee production in the Mantiqueira—and São Lourenço, the therapeutic water haven.

“I knew the region had this touristic appeal, and following the craft beer, wine, and cheese waves, we wanted the new roastery to showcase the roasting process to customers, and at the same time strengthen our brand as a local coffee company,” says Junior. In fact, many of the customers at the new roastery come as part of a special tour Unique promotes on a weekly basis, that takes tourists and coffee geeks alike from the coffee bar in downtown São Lourenço to the farm and now ends at the new roastery. “It is literally a seed to cup experience,” says Junior. He is right, and although we are in a producing country, not many roasteries can showcase such a complete connection between the consumer and the producers, let alone on a weekly basis.

The new space has an industrial feel, but Junior explains that has more to do with complying with local legislation than anything else. Initially the idea was to use up a lot of repurposed wood from the family farm, however since they are required has to follow local food production legislation, they had to use cement and tiles instead. The architect made the roastery space visible through glass wall, and the high ceilings from the location make the temperature inside very pleasant. The entire space has about 200 square meters, which is rather large for a specialty roasting operation in Brazil, and they roast on a 25-kilo Probat.

Right across the street, the Unique team planted more than 300 coffee trees right off the road, just so people who are just driving by can have the opportunity to see what coffee trees look like, even if they don’t get to visit a coffee farm. The idea is, in the future, to build a green house to grow coffee seedlings in the backyard of the roastery space.

With the shop located on such a busy thoroughfare, Junior is hopeful it might attract attention from even more casual Brazilian coffee consumers.

“I think that this could be a first step for all these drivers who travel this touristic route to become more curious about the coffee chain. Here, they can learn a lot about coffee just having a chat with our baristas or our roastery folks,” he explains. “Sometimes, people don’t want to go all the way to the farm, or don’t have the time to do so. And that’s ok. We are here for those people. They can learn about coffee with us, right here.”

The focus of the coffee shop inside the roastery is a bit different from the location in downtown São Lourenço, a shop that is constantly busy and has many food options. Here, there are only a few food items to choose from—the menu is built around coffee—espresso and filter methods—and the so-called coffee “duels,” where the client can choose the same coffee extracted in two different methods. And although they do serve beans from Fazenda Sertão, Junior’s family’s own farm, the roastery operates independently, and coffee is sourced from a variety of farms. Every two months, a limited edition coffee is released for online sales and served at both shops.

Whenever you visit São Lourenço for its therapeutical waters, or go to Carmo de Minas for green coffee sourcing, you can complete the experience with a trip to this striking roastery cafe conveniently located along your journey.

Juliana Ganan is a Brazilian coffee professional and journalist. Read more Juliana Ganan on Sprudge.

Photos by Tribus Studio.

The post Going From Seed To Cup At Unique Cafés Especiais In São Lourenço, Brazil appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

At the intersection of science and clickbait, there lies coffee. What presumably start as arguments and inquiries made in good faith get twisted by we media folk into sensational headlines about “Science Proves Drinking Coffee Will Kill You” or “A New Study Shows That Drinking Coffee Will Make You Live Forever, But Only If You Drink Exactly 3.28 Cup A Day.” It’s just the way the world is. You, dear reader, probably aren’t going to give us those sweet, sweet clicks about some stupid science mumbo jumbo unless we grab you with a bonkers headline.

Now Science, bless them, are embracing the absurd and writing the attention-grabbing headlines for us with their newest discovery, “Fuck it drink 25 cups of coffee. It won’t kill you.”

Maybe they didn’t say it exactly like that, but that’s the jist of it. According to CNN, new research funded in part by the British Heart Foundation finds that drinking five cups of coffee a day is no worse for your arteries than drinking less than one (and before you all get hot on the biscuit and take to social media, I DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY MEAN BY A CUP, OK?!). These findings run contrary to previous research that found coffee “can cause a stiffening of the arteries, putting pressure on the heart and increasing the likelihood of stroke or heart attack.”

So how did get land on 25 cups being a perfectly reasonable amount of coffee to not initiate cardiac arrest? In this most recent study performed by scientists at Queen Mary University of London and presented yesterday at the British Cardiovascular Society conference, researchers examined 8,412 individuals, breaking them up into three different groups: those who drank less than one cup of a coffee a day, those who drank one to three, and those to drank more than three (but no more than 25. The 26+ were excluded as outliers, which is a weird and arbitrary line to draw but ok). Participants were all given MRI heart scans and infrared pulse wave tests, factoring in things like “age, gender, ethnicity, smoking status, weight, blood pressure, diet and how much alcohol a person drinks.”

They found, according to researcher Kenneth Fung, that “drinking more than three cups of coffee a day did not significantly increase the stiffness of blood vessels compared to people who drink one cup or less a day.”

So there you go. Science says drinking 25 cups of coffee—again, not 26, that’s a bridge too far to even be studied—won’t make your heart explode.

But let’s be real for a moment. If you drink 25 cups of coffee a day, you will most certainly die prematurely. To even get to 25 cups of coffee, you have to make many bad choices, conservatively 10 of them. You’re undoubtedly making all sorts of other questionable decisions throughout your day-to-day activities. Eventually, one of them is going to get you.

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

The post Science Gives Up, Says 25 Cups Of Coffee A Day Is Fine appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News

As a newly minted old person, I now find myself enjoying several of the tried and true old person pastimes: going to bed early, not drinking too much, taking it as a compliment every time I get ID’ed. And now, one coffee company is allowing the younger generation to experience the thrill of old person flattery. Costa Coffee, the world’s second-largest cafe chain, has enacted a policy that allows employees to ID teenagers, and deny them sales if they don’t meet a minimum age requirement.

According to Grub Street, the company’s new policy allows “stores to refuse drinks to anyone under the age of 16.” A Costa spokesperson tells the Manchester Evening News that they do “not encourage the sale of caffeine to children,” which apparently makes the next logical step to allow baristas to “interrogate customers they suspect are too young.”

Grub Street notes that while the policy has been in place since the end of summer and stores are given discretion on when to implement it, the new rule has drawn more attention lately after a 12-year-old was denied a coffee.

Some of you might think this sounds like a great idea—the hepped-up early teens of this world have enough to be excited about, what with their apps and their Post Malone fandom. But in my opinion, this is a dumb rule. Should you maybe keep a pre-teen from ordering their 10th orange mocha Frappuccino? In an ideal world where everyone looks out for one another, probably. But that ain’t this world. You’re not that kid’s parent. Let ‘em enjoy their caffeinated sugar rush. Why is a 12-year-old alone in a coffee shop anyway? Shouldn’t they have a guardian? What are they even looking at on that phone they stare at all day long? And if they don’t and they are out there in the real world taking care of themselves, then they damn well deserve a coffee or how many ever they decide to order and are able to pay for. I don’t need some visor-wearing barista playing caramel police.

So smooth move, Costa, you just created an open invitation for everyone under the age of 16 to come camp in your stores, not buy a damn thing, and waste your wifi downloading the latest posthumous release by Lil Peep or somesuch similar artist. This all could have been avoided by simply giving a child caffeine. It’s your loss.

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 Superbad.

The post Should Coffee Sales Have A Minimum Age Requirement? appeared first on Sprudge.

Source: Coffee News