Sprudge.com | Coffee News, Events & Gossip

No Rest: All-In-One Roaster / Grinder / Coffee Maker Swings, Misses

Sprudge Editors — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:17:50 +0000

All Looks

Fresh roasted coffee needs more than a few minutes to rest before brewing. It doesn’t take a Director of Advancing Ingenuity and Developing Brilliance to tell you that. Entertaining video, beautiful device, terrible coffee. Best served for roasting Kopi Luwak, on your 80 foot yacht, before sleeping on your bed of money, after doing a double gainer off the diving board in your Scrooge McDuck money vault.

Coffee Schmuck of the Week: Ajax Of All Trades, or, Throw Mama From The Drano

Sprudge Editors — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 07:06:31 +0000

: Jesse Vasquez

Meet Jessie Vasquz, the man who took Dark Roast to a dark place.

Police say on Sunday morning, Vasquez walked into Dallas Fire Station #752 and told one of the firefighters, “I just put poison in my mother’s coffee.”

“He got some Ajax, some bleach cleaner, and poured it in the coffee grinds for her morning coffee”. According to the police report, Mr. Vasquz admitted he put the bleach in her coffee, but he didn’t say why.

Dallas Fox Affiliate – Man Poisoned Mom’s Coffee, Police Say

Oslo: Tim Wendelboe’s Three Year Anniversary This Saturday

Sprudge Editors — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:49:49 +0000

Moon Walk

On Saturday 31 July (that’s how they write it in Europe) from 11am-5pm, Tim Wendelboe’s cafe in Oslo will be serving cheap drinks and kakkes to benefit a project in Kenya:

All drinks are a minimul 1 kr. maximum whatever you want to pay. All the money goes to our drying table project in Kenya where we will fund the building of new drying tables at the Karogoto Factory at the Tekangu coop.

Cool! Start saving your kroner now and help Wendelboe and Co. ring in their leather anniversary!

Read more about it here.

Kenya’s Batian Creation: Is It Really Ruiru?

James Hoffmann & Katie Carguilo Bust Out The Summer Brew Method Slip n’ Slide

Sprudge Editors — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:24:44 +0000

Summertime Coffee Porch Drinkin'

Full immersion + filter + ice = Summer of Hoffmann!

The idea with this is to brew double strength coffee straight onto ice. As the ice melts it chills and dilutes the coffee back to more normal strengths.

Often this is done with pourover or filter brewers. The problem I had with this is that as you double the amount of coffee to your amount of water then it is going to be harder to properly extract it as you have less brewing liquid. You can certainly grind finer but I found the window of tasty a bit too narrow.

So recently I’ve been starting with a french press brew.

Read all about James Hoffmann’s method here.

And check out this iced Chemex method from Sprudge pal and CCC chanteuse Katie Carguilo! Caps lock FABULOUS!

(editors note: Slip n’ Slides are fine, but we were always personally more of a Crocodile Mile kind of kid)

Intelli in Seattle? When Zell Freezes Over!

Sprudge Editors — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 22:47:24 +0000

Seattle? Zell no!

Melissa Allison scored a coup with Kyle Glanville, Intelligentsia’s “Director of Innovation”, who spoke at liberty and denied any future plans for the Chicago industry titans to open up shop in Seattle.

“I think putting a coffee bar in Seattle would be like putting a coffee bar in Rome,” he said.

“Seattle coffee culture is very ingrained; it’s kind of like the paint is drying on Seattle coffee culture, and a lot of the players are already in place, and it kind of is what it is, whereas in a town like Los Angeles, when we came here [opening in 2007], there was nothing.”

We think it’s probably more like opening up a khat spot in Addis Ababa, or a mauby bar in Port-Of-Spain, but we get the point; Seattle is saturated with roasters, and Zell &Co. are staying out of it. Seattle residents can, however, get their Intelligentsia fix at Aster Coffee Lounge in Ballard, currently Seattle’s only Intelligentsia account.

Read more from Melissa Allison at her Coffee City blog

Horror At Manhattan Starbucks: Man Leaps To His Death, Lands In Outdoor Seating Area

Sprudge Editors — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:36:07 +0000

Horror!

If you open up 16,000+ locations, this sort of thing is bound to happen:

A 38-year-old man plunged to his death near a coffee shop in Manhattan yesterday, police said, after leaping from an upper East Side building just after 6 p.m. and crashing onto the outdoor seating of a Starbucks at First Ave. and E. 85th St.

“How horrible!”, said Nancy Miller, 58. ”You’re sitting, having coffee,” she added. “You don’t expect that.”

That’s an understatement, Nancy. Not to promote this sort of thing, but a quick Google search reveals Starbucks locations beneath the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, at the base of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and multiple shops within a block of the Empire State Building. This story is horrible, but it could have been much, much worse.

So many Manhattan locations to choose from!

(image courtesy of Gothamist.com)

Read the original story at NYDailyNews.com

Scientists: Pregnant? Have a latte!

Sprudge Editors — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:38:15 +0000

My baby wants a grande!

Scientists. They love talking about coffee. Every week it seems there’s more and more new stories on the web and in print, with some fresh scientific proclamation regarding caffeine or coffee compounds or why drinking more or less than 3 cups a day is or isn’t good for you. This week’s info comes to us from WebMD.com, the C. Everett Koop of online med journals:

Many pregnant women cut out caffeine the minute they find out they are expecting because of fears that their daily coffee may increase their risk for miscarriage or preterm birth. But a new position statement issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) should put some of their fears to rest. The group states that moderate caffeine intake — less than 200 milligrams a day — won’t increase their risk of miscarriage or preterm birth.

WebMD – Moderate Coffee Drinking OK In Pregnancy

New Study: 10 Cups of Coffee Boosts Brain Activity

Sprudge Editors — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:25:02 +0000

Coffee: Good For You

In another “coffee is good for you” case study, researchers at Tufts University in Boston found coffee can “boost memory and the signaling essential to motor coordination.”

The new data, presented July 20 at the Institute of Food Technologists annual meeting, showed that among elderly rats, the best results emerged after months of downing the human equivalent of 10 cups per day.

“They weren’t hyper at all,” notes Barbara Shukitt-Hale of the Agriculture Department’s Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston. “You’d think that with the equivalent of 10 cups per day they would be. But in fact,” the experimental psychologist observes, “you couldn’t tell the difference between a rat that had been getting the equivalent of 15 cups a day [the highest administered dose] and the rat that had none.”

We’re ready for someone to go public with a study comparing health benefits between freeze dried muck and fresh ground deliciousness.

Science News – Coffee perks up memory and balance in geriatric animals

Some Like It Extra Hot: Marilyn Monroe Coffee Mosaic Breaks Record

Sprudge Editors — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:22:01 +0000

Gentlemen Prefer Blonde Shots

Australia. The people who brought us Emily Oak, Scottie Callaghan, and the Flat White (not really) have made a coffee name for themselves yet again. A team of twelve Aussies just entered the Guiness Book of Records for largest coffee mosaic, ousting the mark set in 2009 for a depiction of the Mona Lisa. For the record, we’d much rather write Marilyn Monroe coffee puns than concoct a bunch of Michaelangelo schtick.

The team of 12 filled 5200 cups with 680 litres of milk and 780 litres of coffee to varying levels, over the course of 4 hours. This all went down in a setting befitting Hollywood royalty: the Sydney Harbour Overseas Passenger Terminal Forecourt Circular Quay. The SHOPTFCQ earned hosting rights in an exclusive bid over the Syndey Opera House, the Warragamba Dam, and that aquarium thing from Jackie Chan’s “First Strike”.

Latte Art

DNA – Coffee mosaic of Marilyn Monroe enters Guiness world record

Chris Farley, Flavor Crystals, Slow News Week

Sprudge Editors — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:31:11 +0000

This man’s reaction is entirely reasonable. And yes, for the record, we also can’t believe it took so long for us to think of running this on Sprudge.

You'll Have Plenty Of Time To Judge The USBC When You're Living In A Van Down By The River