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Counter Culture Coffee have had an awesome Flickr for years, but in recent weeks, the quantity and quality of work on their photosharing account has taken things to the next level. We want to highlight some of the better…

Your 2011 NWRBC champion is…Samuel Purvis of Coava! Sam won it all with a score of 688.5, just baaaarely besting 2nd place finisher Ryan Wilbur’s score of 688. Wow. Laila Ghambari rounds out a top 3 of fierce, ferocious…

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Congratulations to Matt Perger, your newly crowned king kangaroo Australian Barista Champion for 2011! Matt works at Axil Coffee in Melbourne, and his winning routine was supported by noted roasters Market Lane Coffee. Though many of the best artisan…

“This is such a great regional” is something I keep hearing over and over again…in general, most of the long-time competitors, judges and industry wonks I spoke with feel that this year’s field of competitors is the strongest in…

Will madman tinkerer home made inventions win it…

Congratulations to Ludovic Loizon, your brand new 2011 France National Barista Champion! “Le big ups” to Ludovic, who’ll be traveling to Bogota this summer to represent the French Republic! France is tres hot for coffee right now, and Sprudge.com…

Competition season is upon us, and the road to Houston leads straight through the Northwest’s most misunderstood center of commerce: the city of Tacoma, Washington. Some might call this city a desert, a wasteland, a nuclear fall-out shelter of…

Todd Carmichael is the funniest man in American comedy, and he’s back again with more crack specialty coffee coverage over at the ol’ Esquire “Feed Bag Fer Dudes Who Like Chicks” blog. This time around, the Toddster poops on…

Our Sprudge NYC coverage concludes (for now) with a loving, apologetically tardy recap of Counter Culture Coffee’s Counter Intelligence lecture series. In December of 2010, Sprudge.com was generously invited to sit in on the first-ever Counter Intelligence Professional Series.…

Nick Cho has resurrected his infamous podcast, the Portafilter.net Podcast, this time from the West Coast. His new sidekick, Marky-Mark Inman, is a welcome addition to the show. Long form discussion is back on the Internet! In Podcast form!…

Decaf. The extra hopper. A true test of every barista’s professionalism? A fact of life for any successful cafe? Erin Meister, noted CCCNYC guru and frequent contributor to Serious Eats, tackles the subject with an open mind and a…

French barista culture is all the rage these days. Frog Fights, NYT features, and now this: Will France make a deep run into the finals at this year’s WBC? Will French coffee culture continue its remarkable turnaround with world-class…

La Marzocco Out Of The Box is getting ready to go LIVE next week in Berkeley, California! Pull your own shots on the Strada MP! Check out product demos from Espresso Parts! Enjoy presentations from Hario, Marco, Mazzer, VST…

Kickoff Coffee Week at SOMA’s Bloodhound! Finally, coffee professionals and enthusiasts can have a drink together, and maybe play a few rounds of Buckhunter. There will be coffee and booze, and coffee booze, and maybe some food, and there…

The Starbucks marketing department has been all aces in 2011, getting attention from the new logo change (who cares?), incessantly bullying Kraft (stop that!), and going all “Victor/Victoria” on their 15th Avenue space in Seattle. Leggo my logo: “Our…