Featuring over 100 interviews from long time coffee connoisseurs and entrepreneurs such as Andrew Lindemann (Global Green Bean Director, Starbucks), Doug Welsh (Master Roaster at Peet’s Coffee and Tea), espresso guru David Schomer (President of Vivace, Seattle), Matt Lounsbury CEO of Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Geoff Watts (Green Bean Buyer-Intelligentsia) and Counter Culture’s Peter Giuliano, along with other World Barista Champions and coffee lovers, Caffeinated reveals surprising insights on everything that happens from the bean to the cup.

Learn more and exercise the option to pony up cash here!

Mr. Steinkamp’s on-screen persona is just awful, but it’s cool he’s profiling small businesses like Four Barrel, the episodes are produced really well, and the footage of Jeremy and his little boy surfing is achingly cute.

From the Peregrine blog:

Remember when Lindsey, Travis and Randy went to Atlanta to compete in the Southeast Regional Barista Competition? Well, it is now time for the US Barista Championship, happening next weekend in Portland, OR. We are excited to have Lindsey Kiser and Travis Beckett representing Peregrine Espresso at the USBC and they’ve been working very hard to polish their routines.

Many of us in specialty coffee have been interviewed or otherwise covered by the mainstream media. Local or national, print or online, there’s been growing engagement by the media with specialty coffee. In this session, we’ll turn the tables on the press and ask them some questions: What interests you and your audience about specialty coffee? How does specialty coffee fit in to your other coverage? What negative elements have you and your readership noticed about the specialty coffee industry?

Our panelists are:
Julie Wolfson, Freelance Writer, Cool Hunting, Tubefilter, KCBSLA, KCET Food
Oliver Strand, Food Writer, New York Times, GQ, Bon Appétit (and other publications)
Melissa Allison, Business Reporter, Seattle Times
Moderator: Nicholas Cho, Co-Owner, Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters

In addition to our panel, we’ll hear from both industry folks and others in the press, notably from Bon Appetit Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, and GQ Magazine.

Registration is still open to attend the 2012 SCAA Symposium, held April 18th and 19th at the Hilton Executive Tower in Portland.

Turns out, the heist was largely a hoax, except the staff working that afternoon at Four Barrel were not in on the joke. According to Four Barrel owner Jeremy Tooker, the boar was offered to Sean McGee, owner of nearby Mission District haunt Amnesia, as a donation for some pre-school auction or something a couple of months back. McGee and Co. thought it would be a fun idea to take the boar by staging a heist. Little did they know, the baristas at Four Barrel are a bunch of rough customers, certainly not the kind to let that shit go down without a fight.

McGee chipped his tooth but no one else was (seriously) injured, except for Mr. Teisl, who suffered some pretty serious cuts:

The boar went on to fetch $500 at the charity auction.

Nick Barnett lived in a 12 x 14 foot room in Los Feliz for three years. On the last day of his residence, Danny Fasold came over and they played 3 tunes that they had previously been working on for some reason unbeknownst to them that, in time, would be the start of an amazing adventure. It just so happened that the wandering eye of Joe Strand pursued the scene that day and caught it on film. This is the first of three songs that we are releasing…. Enjoy.

Previously featured:

Musicians In Coffee #1: Guiding & Counseling With Ian Hunter Anderson

Musicians In Coffee #2: Ain’t Nothin But A Peter G. Thang 

Musicians In Coffee #3: James Hoffmann

“I think it’s excellent that people who are very passionate about coffee go to origin and look for coffees…it’s going to make the whole industry better.”

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Percy Ramirez

There seems to be no limit to the kindness and genuine enjoyment of the barista craft exuded by Percy Ramirez, of Intelligentsia’s Pasadena cafe. This was Percy’s first performance in the USBC regional cycle; Mr. Ramirez has competed twice before (and enjoys dual eligibility) in Guatemala, where he lived until he was four. Percy competed using an Intelligentsia sourced-and-roasted offering from Finca Matalapa, El Salvador – it is not currently commercially available. We’ll add that meeting and having a chance to share some conversation with Mr. Ramirez was a personal highlight for both your Sprudge editors last weekend. In an industry full of all manner of characters, Percy Ramirez is truly one of the nice guys.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Charles Babinski

One of our sport’s (or whatever you want to call it) most electric performers, Charles Babinski of Intelligentsia Silverlake turned in two absolutely captivating performances over the SWRBC weekend. He’s dancing as he pulls shots; he’s mugging for the cameras;  he’s the perfectly devilish flirty barkeep. The audience is educated by Mr. Babinski seemingly by osmosis, as if knowledge could be transferred by charisma alone. Charles’ routine broke down walls between judges and the competitor, by acknowledging the often very different expectations a barista encounters from his or her customers in a cafe setting. He encouraged sharing, dialogue, and playfulness among the judges, while advocating passionately for the very special coffee he was privileged to serve – Intelligentsia’s Bolivia Takesi microlot, which is as of yet not commercially available. Mr. Babinski is a very special competitor, a barista’s barista, and his is one of our very favorite routines of this year’s competition cycle.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Lizzy Sampson

One of two competitors from Verve to reach the finals, Lizzy Sampson’s routine stood out for a couple of reasons: she was the only SWRBC finalist to compete with a blend, using Verve coffees sourced from Ethiopia, Sumatra and Guatemala; and her routine was the only one to speciically focus on traceability at origin. Watching her twice, we were blown away by some of the bigger questions she asked of the judges. It takes guts to openly admit – indeed, to spend time on such admissions from the ever-ticking 15 minute clock – that certain components in your competition coffee are less traceable than others. But the truth is, that’s often the truth, and we applaud Lizzy for acknowledging the complicated realities of many coffees from Ethiopia and Sumatra. For 15 minutes, Lizzy was able to compellingly argue that, while traceability in coffee sourcing is enormously important, so too is taste. Playing to a packed home crowd for both of her SWRBC performances, Lizzy Sampson and Verve were able to pull off an important, engaging pair of routines: the kind that makes you think.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Alfonso Portela

Hailing out of the burgeoning Central Valley specialty coffee scene in Sacramento, California, Alfonso Portela made heads turn on Selection Saturday at the SWRBC, earning a spot in the top six for himself and Chocolate Fish Coffee Roasters. A first time competitor, Mr. Portela’s routine was a premiere example of friendly, warm customer service in the superchared barista competition environment. One of the joys for us covering the USBC cycle is to learn more about shops in emerging cities, of which the Sacramento-Modesto area is certainly one. Just as the routine from Camilla Ramos at the SERBC made us want to visit Panther Coffee in Miami, so too did Mr. Portela pique our interest w/r/t Chocolate Fish. Once an Ecco account, CF is now a small roastery in Downtown Sacramento with a pronounced New Zealand vibe. Mr. Portela competed using a coffee from Honduras that is not currently available via Chocolate Fish, but you can learn more about their other offerings here. 

As a last note on Fonzy’s performance, we present a hypothetical: pretend you’re taking a friend out for coffee, and that this friend is a civilian, entirely unconnected from the specialty coffee industry and with very little experience visiting nice cafes. If we could draft pick a barista to spend time with that friend from behind the bar, we’d have to consider Alfonso Portela. We hope this is the first of many competition successes for him and the crew at Chocolate Fish.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Kevin “Tex” Bohlin

Sometimes barista routines have a very disparate set of influences. In the case of Ritual Coffee’s “Tex” Bohlin, his 15 minutes on stage were a delightful melange, equal parts Guatemalan adventure and Hollywood picture, poured through a San Francisco filter. All coffees tell a story, but for Mr. Bohlin, the coffee WAS the story; watch the above interview to learn more about Tex’s work in Guatemala at Finca La Merced. (For the full experience, pull this song from the “Drive” soundtrack up in another tab.) You were a pleasure to watch, Tex.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Jared Truby

It sort of felt like destiny, for Jared Truby to win this year’s SWRBC. A seasoned competitor who has lived and worked for years as part of Verve Coffee Roasters, Mr. Truby’s routines were standing-room only affairs on the competition floor in Santa Cruz. He used a remarkable coffee, Verve’s Costa Rica Finale de Cosecha – we had a chance to write it up already here – and finished his routine with one of the more notably complex signature drinks we’ve seen all year, a multi-step experience involving cascara and molasses tea, vanilla cream espresso foam, and a re-imagined spherical coffee “cherry” made from apple and cherry juices. Mr. Truby never loses focus on stage, never breaks a sweat; he is a natural competitor, and he makes that which is most decidedly not easy look it. The first-round bye and the confidence he’ll be bringing with him to Portland makes him a must-watch Championship contender at this year’s USBC.

For more photos, please visit our Facebook album.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Here’s Park Brannen, chatting with us and snuggling up with WBC champ / Handsome honcho Mike Phillips.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Our favorite new person we met this weekend was Daria (pronounced dare-ee-uh) Whalen, of Pavement Coffeehouse in Boston. We were really impressed by the Boston showing at NERBC, and look forward to checking out the cafes in that city soon.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Sam Penix is the owner-operator of Everyman Espresso, in the East Village. He just missed the cut for this year’s NERBC finals. Sam’s store manager / right hand man, Sam Lewontin, placed 4th in this year’s NERBC, and will compete at the USBC in Portland.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Some love for the Brewers Cup, which had a circus-like atmosphere of onlookers and attention at this year’s NERBC. If you haven’t had the pleasure already, meet Tamara Vigil of Irving Farm coffee, a double-competitor in both barista and brewers events, who competed in the finals for Brewers Cup.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

We caught former Mid-Atlantic Regional winner Katie Carguilo as she was walking in on the very first day of NERBC, the calm before the storm.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

And finally, the ever-humble, still shell-shocked Katie Carguilo gave us a moment of her time after winning the 2012 Northeast Regional Barista Competition. She thanked the entire Counter Culture team for their ongoing support throughout her months of training.

Congratulations to all of the competitors this year!

Could a lot of these problems be solved by legalizing drug trade? Probably.

Is this video compelling? Yes.

Do these people know a lot more about this subject than we do? God, yes.

Should you watch? Absolutely!

Is it time for lunch? Almost.

The World Fair Trade Organization asks government leaders a big question, the answer to which will determine the kind of world we live in and the kind of values we live by. We don’t have to live with poverty, climate change and economic crisis. The values we live by determine the outcome not just for us but for future generations. The WFTO has a letter signed by leading figures and economists requesting for a shift in values from Greed and Ignorance to Transparency, Accountability and Fairness. The question, the letter and the tools for a sustainable economy will be presented to the G8 in July.