Murphy will only distribute this special blend at a single shop, but as for what shop and what particular beans, Murphy can’t say. “I can’t talk about that because I’m still in negotiations,” he said, laughing. “I love that we’re here and talking about a film, but I’m like, ‘I can’t really talk about the coffee.’”

Anyone want to guess the “single shop”? Well, James Murphy is literally the most Williamsburgy person on the planet – 1/2 of Sprudge ate dinner next to him recently at the Brooklyn Star – so let’s start the bidding there. Could it be the notoriously post-irono-meta Bedford Avenue cafe El Beit, currently serving 49th Parallel? Or maybe it’s the Variety location on Graham Street – a short walk from the Lorimer L stop, and another short walk to your cookie kickball game in McCarren Park, Variety could be just right for Mr. Murphy’s target market. What about the brand new, stunning Toby’s Estate location just off Bedford Ave? Unlikely. If James Murphy were Jamiroquai, then maybe, but otherwise Aussies don’t tuck in for all that post-irony nonsense.

Intelligentsia Chicago cafes just got an upgrade in deliciousness, Chicago Business writer Kate MacArthur reports:

Pastoral Artisan Cheese Bread & Wine is providing sandwiches, salads and plates of cheese and charcuterie to sell at Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea Inc.’s three Chicago coffee shops.

Pastoral is making and delivering the offering daily, with menu items changing every other day. Sandwich and salad prices start at $7.50, while plates that include meat, cheese, dried fruit or olives, and toasted breads cost $8. Items will vary by season. The service started Jan. 16.

“We consider Pastoral’s offerings as a perfect complement to our menu of direct trade coffees and teas,” Intelligentsia co-founder Doug Zell said in a statement.

Ooh, yum. The article goes on to (somewhat misguidedly) compare Intelligentsia to Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, both having turned a tidy profit on expanded food offerings in recent years, but neither having anything on Canadian chicken-salad-and-crueller merchants Tim Horton’s in terms of overall swill-to-carbs ratio (STCR). We personally trust the taste-testing veritas of the Chicago Intelli crew, even if it means they were briefly forced to forgo more tacos at Big Star.

Here’s a laudable denouncement of kopi luwak from James Beard Award-winning writer Tim Carman, now working for the Washington Post:

My wife, Carrie, paid dearly for this measly two-ounce packet of civet coffee, or kopi luwak, from Sumatra, which was then shipped to the United Kingdom for roasting. It was eventually sent to the United States in this vacuum-sealed package in which the beans were conveniently pre-ground because, you know, caffeine snobs really love coffee that has lost all of its essential oils.

It tasted just like…Folgers. Stale. Lifeless. Petrified dinosaur droppings steeped in bathtub water. I couldn’t finish it.

And just where, exactly, did the aforementioned “Carrie” get ripped off for this pre-ground kopi luwak? Why, over on Think Geek, a website that touts itself as ”stuff for smart masses”, but is actually the Tauntaun sleeping bag of internet commerce – worth a word-of-mouth glance, but quite shoddily made and not nearly as cool as you’ve heard. This kopi luwak listing is at least the second stupidest thing for sale on Think Geek. Why, just look at the brilliant extract written by Think Geek’s resident coffee expert:

Civet Crap Choice Coffee

• The rarest coffee in existence.
• Straight from the ground of wonderful Sumatran coffee plantations.
• Packaged by a highly-ethical company who makes routine trips to inspect the animal welfare and quality standards where the poop is.
• Has a unique and delicate flavor after fermenting in the Civet’s digestive system (yup, it poops out the beans).
• Only 500 kg of this coffee are produced each year.
• Did we mention this stuff is delicious? ‘Cause it is.
• Servings: approx. 5-10 (depending on how strong you like it).
• Net Wt.: 57g

There are several things wrong with all of this, not the least of which being that the coffee is sold pre-ground. Did we mention that this stuff is a complete and total fraud? ‘Cause it is.

Anyone with half a conscience should disassociate themselves, their goods for sale, and their personal commerce from Think Geek until kopi luwak is no longer offered. If this were a K-Cup, you’d all be outraged.

We love it.

The NYT reports Charlie Trotter will be closing his groundbreaking Chicago restaurant in 2012. Chris Schooley weighs in via a lengthy Facebook post – which is unlinkable unless you’re “Friends” with Chris, so we’ve excerpted it in its entirety:

Charlie Trotter’s namesake restaurant was one of Intelligentsia’s early wholesale accounts back when I was a roaster there, and if I’m not mistaken, its first restaurant account. Trotter making a statement at that time about the quality of all of his ingredients including coffee definitely paved the way for coffee programs in fine dining restaurants throughout the city. In the last year or so there have been a number of articles written and comments made about restaurant coffee, and I was always a little surprised since the relationship between specialty coffee and fine dining had been so well established in Chicago for quite some time.

From a coffee roaster’s perspective, speaking with chefs about roasting was always so illuminating to me, as there was so much crossover and this was an audience who could really understand what was happening not just in the roaster, but all along the lines of production. But it was also always very humbling because what I always thought about and spoke with them about was that at the end of the day I was using one cooking method with one ingredient while these chefs would be serving maybe 200 covers or more/less a night where they might use well over 20 or 30 different ingredients and more than 5 different cooking methods. This is something that I’ve always taken to heart and tried to keep in mind in regards to coffee roasting. But the other side of that is the importance of the knowledge of your ingredient(s), and this is where I always made the strongest connections with these chefs.

Restaurant accounts can be very tricky, but if you demonstrate knowledge and exude passion for the work, you can forge some of the most enduring professional relationships of your career. Though that is one chef that i never did talk to about coffee roasting, kudos to Trotter for going out on top and thanks for setting the table for great coffee in a great city.

New Orleans style or Kyoto style? Lost in that weird week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is this feature from NBC Bay Area blogger Sajid Farooq – Blue Bottle Coffee is now selling cold-brewed coffee to go. (Just don’t call it Cold Brew™.)

Although Freeman blanches at the thought of (roasted) coffee sitting for too long, this bottled coffee is flash pasteurized for extended shelf life. It’s currently being served at Blue Bottle’s roastery in Oakland and Ferry Building location in San Francisco, and could be coming to a store near you, according to Mr. Farooq:

“The strong and black Kyoto flavor and the velvety and sweet New Orleans styled ice coffees will be sold on a trial basis and if the sales go well, production will be ramped up and served at other locals [sic].”

Say what you want about bottled coffee milk, but “Kyoto flavor”? That clever branding dog will target-market hunt.

You’ve come a long way, Stumpy…

Two brand new Stumptown locations to report on today! First up is their second location in New York City, slated to open this summer at 30 West 8th Street in Greenwich Village. Here’s more from the New York Observer, whose source is Bill Abramson, director of sales for the realty group that owns the property:

“This will be the first standalone store in New York; the 10th between here, Portland and Seattle…the largest of all outlets at 1,700 square feet. “This is going to be their big Manhattan roll out,” said Bill Abramson, director of sales and leasing at Buchbinder & Warren Realty Group, which represented the landlord of 30 West 8th Street.

“They loved the space,” Mr. Abramson said. “It’s got 17-foot ceilings, it’s on the corner, they loved the brick interior of it. They just fell in love with the space.” The high population of college students, between N.Y.U., the New School and Cooper Union, was also a draw.”

Meanwhile in other new Stumptown location news, Eater LA is reporting that Stumptown’s first location in Los Angeles is “likely en route,” to be housed in the newly announced Ace Hotel property in Downtown. That Ace location in the United Artists building looks drop-dead gorgeous, and you can tour it here via Curbed LA.

Last but not least, the Portland Business Journal announced that Stumptown has at last found a new home for business operations in Portland:

Stumptown’s Portland operations will move this summer to the former MacForce building, 100 S.E. Salmon St., and the adjacent 30,000-square-foot building on Southeast Main Street, for a total of 37,000 square feet.

“We’re looking at a home for a long time,” Matt Lounsbury, Stumptown’s director of operations, said Thursday. The company will grow into the new space gradually as it increases production and hires more office workers, but isn’t planning any sudden burst in growth, he said.

The new site consolidates production and management functions currently run out of three buildings in Southeast Portland.

Stumptown employs a little more than 100 people in Portland, and about 100 more elsewhere in the country.

Suffice it to say, last year’s deal with TSG is beginning to pay serious dividends for Stumptown. Be aware: the Los Angeles and Greenwich Village locations have yet to be confirmed by Stumptown top brass. Expect updates soon.

From the hush-hush world of Southern California openings comes word of a new coffee company, slated for the eagerly-awaited Sorpasso restaurant project in Santa Monica. Called “Primo Passo Coffee Co.”, they’re set to be housed in Sorpasso’s primo (ahem) location on Montana and 7th, designed by the noted indoor/outdoor wonks at Ralph Gentile Architects, a firm with projects in Las Vegas and SoCal.

This feature on Eater LA claims that the cafe will be serving “micro-roasted, direct trade” beans (which is something of a non sequitur, but we digress), and that its baristas will be undergoing a training regime prior to the cafe’s opening in January 2012. More elucidatory is Primo Passo’s listing on Craiglist, which we’ll now excerpt from at length:

We seek team members that are obsessive about excellent quality and outstanding service.

You will work with multiple Synesso Espresso Machines in an architecturally beautiful environment.

If you are currently a barista, you must demonstrate that you have distinguished yourself as a cut above your peers. We will train the right individual that does not possess any coffee bar experience. You just have to love coffee and be open and willing to learn.

We are located in Santa Monica.

This is a perfect opportunity for those seeking career advancement with a company that will expand to additional locations.

Additional locations, eh? Add one more notch to the ever-expanding belt of Los Angeles coffee options, all of which has led Eater LA to declare, in running tag form, that “Coffee Is The New Cupcake.”

Anyone know what they’ll be serving?

(Sourced by Sprudge hot tipper Elliott Davis.)

Tony “Tonx” Konecny is a bit like the Forrest Gump of recent specialty coffee history: if you look hard enough, chances are you’d find him somewhere on the scene, sipping coffee quietly in the background, observing the events he helped frame.

Oof, that’s good, wish we’d thought of that. As is often his wont, Tonx treads on the subtly controversial when discussing recent trends and vogues in the specialty coffee world:

“The pendulum has swung too far in the direction where, from the public’s perception, we fetishize the craft, we fetishize the equipment,” Konecny says. “We made it more confusing, and we’re not teaching customers to understand that they can better coffee themselves.” As a result, “The story often ends up being too much about brands, and machines, and expertise, and not very often about what’s in the cup. And why what’s in the cup is good….We figure, we’re going to learn a lot of stuff in the beginning and make a lot of mistakes, and there’s no reason to publish any manifestos or blow any trumpets until we know what we’re doing,” Konecny says.”

Read the full article here, and bear witness to Nguyen’s valiant attempt to photograph Tonx’s nigh-unphotographable Silver Surfer coffee bags, the best available photo of said having been snapped for Sprudge by @smoovebcoffee back in August.

Aimee Groth is a New York-based journalist working for the Business Insider. Before that she was an assistant editor for a legal magazine published by Thomson Reuters in Minneapolis. But in between those gigs, she worked for three grueling weeks at the busiest Starbucks in Brooklyn – and she’s written a fascinating account of her time there for the Business Insider.

My initial idea of working a leisurely part-time job was completely false. This was going to be hard work. And a lot of it.

In this way, she shares a background similar to a number of specialty coffee denizens (including the editor of this website), men and women who got their start at Starbucks prior to moving onwards and upwards in the industry. Groth’s account is harrowing, real, and at times hilarious:

We got two 10-minute breaks and one unpaid 30-minute break for every 8 hours on the floor, where we’d have to decide between running next door to use the restroom (because ours was always had a line of customers in front of it), quickly eating a bag lunch (there was never time to stand in line and buy something from the store), or making a cell phone call. If you’re lucky, you got to sit down on the one chair in the break room, or on the ladder, because there were never any open seats in the store.

Some of my coworkers were more demanding than others. Most were nice and welcoming. And there were office politics. On more than one occasion I walked into the break room to see someone crying, or talking about other coworkers. I mostly avoided this, until what would be my last week on the job.

If there’s something nice to be said about the new employee experience at Starbucks, it is that their streamlined training manual and procedures handbook are both top notch. The brains at SBUXHQ have spent years studying and developing efficient flight patterns and customer service training, effective enough to break down and reform sixteen-year-old shitheads and working journalists alike. “In and out the door in 3 minutes, even at periods of high volume,” is something of a mantra. And it works, with an efficiency that is downright scary. This is how you build an empire.

Read Aimee Groth’s account of her time at Starbucks here, via Business Insider.