The first season of the Bay Area Coffee Community‘s Latte Art Series came to an eventful end last Thursday night in San Francisco. We’ve been covering the event all season, and for the final evening, we contracted some paid event coverage from our friend and colleague Michael “Panda” Fernandez. Mr. Fernandez attended this event in his capacity as event coordinator for Espresso Parts, who served as the official trophy sponsor for BACC. This is his unadulterated narrative of what exactly went down in The Bay.

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Dateline, Manhattan: Sprudge.com is first to report that Bon Yagi, the “East Village Ambassador for Japanese Cuisine” has now officially opened his first coffeeshop and bar venture, called Hi-Collar and located at 214 East 10th Street. Mr. Yagi’s stable of establishments, which include East Village stalwart Rai Rai Ken, perfect hole-in-the-wall Curry-Ya, and the supremely hollerable street food stand Otafuku, are all about bringing a slice of Japanese food and culture to New York. Hi-Collar is his attempt to introduce the slower, more meticulous and leisurely kissaten style of coffee shop to the hurried, harried world of New York City coffee. This is the world’s first in-depth look at Hi-Collar. 

The name Hi-Collar comes from the term haikara, which Professor Merry “Corky” White in her excellent book Coffee Life In Japan defines as “meaning elite or Western-modern, referring to the starched high collar worn by Western-dressing young men of the late Meiji period.” Haikara historically referred to both an overall Western/Modern sensibility and a specific type of Western-style food, heavily influenced by Parisian café fare, that came to be associated with the new kissaten style of coffee shop that emerged out of the dramatic cultural shifts during late-Meiji, early-Taisho period in Japan. As Japanese cities expanded and became increasingly Westernized, there was a growing need for new informal social spaces, and the neighborhood kissaten grew out of that void. These cafes became both a center of social life for the new modes of living, and a place where newcomers to the cities could go to observe “peoples’ ways, looks, attitudes…and models of sophistication,” according to Professor White.

Hi-Collar is this classic kissaten model come to life in Manhattan. The space is a deep, narrow bar with a row of stools, done-up with an attractively clean and minimal combination of white walls, dark wood, and brass accents. To-go coffee service is provided, but the focus is clearly on taking a more leisurely pause to sit at the bar and enjoy. All of the coffee is handmade to order, and there is a full lunch menu of updated kissaten fare.

Hi-Collar is currently serving coffee roasted by Porto Rico Importing Co., one of the oldest of old-guard New York coffee companies. I would consider this to be archetypically dark-roasted 2nd wave coffee, which is to say, it’s something of an outlier for the kinds of cafes we typically write about on Sprudge, and certainly not what I usually choose to drink. But the siphon I ordered at Hi-Collar was excellently prepared; called the Tokyo Blend (Porto Rico is somewhat blend-mad), my coffee was initially dominated by carbolic roast flavors, before opening up into a pronounced hard caramel and nutty sweetness, which mellowed into a nice toffee with the gentle addition of milk. This was one of the most articulate, well-balanced darkly roasted cups of coffee I’ve ever had, the kind that would make your favorite old-school coffee drinker immoderately happy. And the gorgeous Japanese porcelain it was served in, alongside the delectable savory-sweet munchies it came with, rounded out my coffee experience at Hi-Collar into a real delight.

While at Hi-Collar I had a chance to chat with Yuki Izumi, the woman running their coffee program, about Japanese coffee tastes, which include a preference for darker roasts. She also plied me with their iced-coffee offerings, including a Hario V60 brewed onto ice (I just couldn’t get past the bitter roast on that one) and their “Mizudashi” style cold-brewed coffee, which was ridiculously big and chocolatey tasting–actually one of the best cold-brews I’ve had in this city, though way out of my normal interests flavor-wise. In a more modern vein, they also offer Aeropress both hot and over ice, with a range of offerings that include Ethiopian, Nicaraguan, and Hawaiian Maui coffees from Porto Rico. Ms. Izumi says that they are exploring working with other roasters as well, and I’m personally quite excited by possibility of combining their meticulous preparation with other roast profiles. Seeing classic Japanese dark roast sensibilities sharing menu space with modern light roast profiles would certainly be a fitting take on haikara in 21st century New York City.

What I’m even more excited for is their expansion to morning service. Currently they are open 11-4 for lunch and coffee, and then at 6pm they switch over to a bar menu, offering an expansive array of Japanese beers and sakes alongside a selection of small plates. I talked to to Sakura Yagi, Mr. Yagi’s daughter, and she said that they are planning on incorporating a morning service of coffee and breakfast fare, including the classic kissaten “Morningu Setto” of an egg, small salad, and thick slices of Japanese style “pan” toast.

Sakura Yagi says that her father created Hi-Collar to further his mission of introducing New Yorkers to the Japanese lifestyle, and to create somewhere where he could go and have a relaxing cup of coffee. Hi-Collar is certainly an interesting bit of Japanese cultural immersion–from the ”full service” Japanese toilet in the bathroom, to the period aesthetic, to the food and alcohol menus, to the unique coffee program. Most of all, it is indeed a pleasant kissaten nestled in a picturesque East Village street, perfect for a relaxing pause in your day.

More and more, New York coffee truly does have one of everything.

Alex Bernson (@alexbernson) is a staff writer for Sprudge.com.

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Chantal Martineau, the famed defamed author of “Coffee Power Rankings”, has penned a “13 Signs You’re A Coffee Snob” piece for Food Republic (tagline “Eating The Way A Man Should Eat”). We feel Chantal’s article really missed the mark, so we asked a real coffee snob, Laurent Harlow, to weigh in on Martineau’s list.

I prefer rotating my selection of coffee bars day-to-day, so no, I don’t have a “regular coffee bar with a regular barista.” That’s really more of a layman’s thing. I like to spread my coffee dollar around and support a wide variety of specialty coffee small businesses in my region. Plus, no one wants to see the same demitasse day after day on my Instagram. Duh.

It’s “variety”.

One cupping spoon?  I own at least eight, many of which have been laser engraved with affirmations and testaments to my character. 

Ever hear of a Cà phê sữa đá without sweetened condensed milk? Obviously not. My twice annual trip to New Orleans involves a visit to the Cafe Du Monde French Market Coffee Stand for a cafe au lait and beignet. Clearly, you need to get out more.

The iced coffees that come in “cute, stubby brown bottles” are not brewed the “Japanese way.” Fact check!

Hating on latte art is really more of a 2006 thing. Beauty is truth, and community is beauty. 

As a connoisseur of the finer things in life, I’ll imbibe a Mocha Frappuccino® with aplomb, and perhaps help myself to that delightful Protein Box. Starbucks made my snobbery possible, and is the bedrock upon which specialty coffee in North America was built. Respect.

Like any good son/daughter-in-law, I bring my in-laws coffee. We bought them a proper set-up years ago. 

(Heavy sigh) It’s Gesha, unless you’re talking about Panama Esmeralda. 

Anyone whose drinking the same coffee on a daily basis clearly needs to expand their profile.

You forgot “electric kettle to boil water and then place in additional room temperature kettle; preferably Takahiro, with a long, tapered spout modified with a flow-restrictor.” My scale and timer are integrated but I use a vintage Le Jour antimagnetic 1/10 hand-wound mechanical stop watch for aesthetics. 

No but really, pour-overs are coffeemakers. A Chemex is a coffeemaker. And I prefer oxygen bleached paper filters.

I prefer printed coffee quarterlies – the kind that are strictly digital-free, invitation only, and largely ignored by the mainstream media.

Who drinks cortados? Was this list originally drafted in 2011? It’s all about the coffee shot, these days.

Laurent Harlow is a longtime friend, first time contributor to Sprudge.com. You can follow him on Twitter, but we don’t recommend it.

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Designer Craighton Berman reveals a new prototype coffee brewer in a recent blog post. His vision is to create a manual brewer that’s a complete system and lives on your countertop:

Some have suggested that this new product borrows too much from the form of the Hario V60. Your Sprudge Editors thinks it looks like an inside-out Chemex. Have we entered the age of the brew device echo chamber? It’s a beautiful prototype, but ultimately, how does the coffee taste?

MANUAL has been designed to have a slightly slower extraction speed than that of its pour-over contemporaries. This was a purposeful choice, to allow the water and grinds for a single cup preparation to come in to contact for a longer period of time—like that of an immersion method, such as a French press.

The prototypes will be further tested and refined for a Kickstarter launch in late Summer 2013. Join Mr. Berman’s mailing list for the launch announcement.

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Meet Shio, the Shiba Inu with a glorious blog. In Shio’s latest blog post, friends and family go on a trip to Long Island City’s original Sweetleaf location. While New York City has a strict no-animals-indoors policy (unless they’re permitted helper animals), Shio and friends found the outside bench a perfect place to pant:

We tried the iced coffee (regular and Vietnamese), as well as the Strawberry Iced Tea — all were very good.

It was a little bit hot for the pups, but a nice man from inside brought the puppies some water.

The final verdict: the coffee was good and they’ll soon be returning (likely as a pack).

Woof.

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There is a long standing Australian cultural tradition designed to prepare the next generation of cafe goers. If you work in coffee in Australia, it’s a part of your daily life, but no matter where you’re located on the planet, odds are there’s an Aussie mum calling out this drink’s silly name. You’ve read about it on Sprudge, in New York Magazine, and the Brooklyn Paper  - it’s the hottest thing in milk since the nipple. Let me introduce you to the babycino.

Like most things, the babycino’s origin is a source of debate between Australians and New Zealanders. As is the way in this part of the world, anything good is claimed by Australia first and then counterclaimed by New Zealand as actually originating there. Similar conflicts have occurred over the origin of the Pavlova, Russell Crowe, and the music of Crowded House. The flat white is claimed by both countries; the music of Russell Crowe is claimed by neither.

If you’ll forgive me a bit of apocrypha, no one keeps precise histories of these things, and it’s the hope of Your Sprudge Editors that this feature will serve as a kind of de facto history of the babycino in its current form. The drink’s origin story begins in the mid-90s, when baristas across Australia and New Zealand had their Eddie Vedder tresses in a twist over the growing trend of mums and dads bringing kids into the hip cafes. The babycino was born out of necessity, as a simple drink that allowed baristas to adopt a SDSU (sit down, shut up) service model for children. It was originally served from the cold dregs of a milk jug, and were initially offered free of charge. This “free babycino” trend was short-lived, however, as it attracted a fiscally-frigid type of parent who would sit on a glass of water whilst their army of offspring, high on calcium, turned the tastefully appointed urban cafe space into Lord of the Flies.

Babycinos are the private bane of many baristas, but the savvy ones never show it. The commercial reality is that they offer another revenue stream and while providing a kid-friendly menu option. I spoke to a number of baristas in Melbourne during the preparation of this feature, and most talked of having love/hate relationship with the drink. Prices tend to fluctuate from 50c up to $2, with the average being around the $1.50 mark. When you consider the amount of toddlers during a weekend traffic flow, adding a babycino to the menu could be the difference between a holiday to Barbados or Baltimore.

A great babycino is first about the milk, then the dusting of chocolate powder (what we call “sprinkles”, which aren’t like American sprinkles). The milk needs to be expertly frothed, rarely stretched. You are aiming for a vivacious, oxygenated pillow of foam upon which to rest the decorative cocoa raindrops.

Underneath all this lies a secret well of expertly warmed milk. This should be enough for approximately two shot-backs. A shot-back is when a toddler takes the drinking receptacle in their tiny, innocent little fingers and knocks the contents of the cup back like a whisky-pounding cop. This process allows them to be part of what they see their parents/bodyguards doing. Deny a child this, our reasoning goes, and you are contributing to early onset of social disassociation disorder. The wee ones must be made to feel a part of everything, including mum and dad’s quite necessary trips to the cafe.

You’re looking for a split of 80% foam and 20% milk (10% per shot-back). Babycinos should be served at slightly above body temperature, ideally 40.5c/105f. This is for two reasons: the natural sweetness of the milk can be best articulated and you’re protected from getting sued for the child’s loss of tongue function. When it comes to the topping, the only way to go is cocoa. Depending on the standards, it could be anything from your pre-packaged supermarket variety through to fully organic, 80%-pure flakes, hand shaved by an octogenarian Dutchman. Side-serve extras are sometimes included, such as marshmallows, small biscotti or chocolate bites. Syrup faces drawn on in lieu of sprinkles are a kind of little-one’s latte art.

The overall goal of the babycino is to produce a two-part response sequence from the child in question: first, squeals of delight when the drink is presented; second, a precious moment of peace and quiet while the drink is consumed. These moments are certainly worth your $2, and if the “peace and quiet” part of the equation were contractually guaranteed, cafes could charge $20.

Lach Ryan’s investigation of the babycino trend continues later this week, when we’ll join him and a World Certified Babycino judge on a Melbourne cafe crawl. Stay tuned.

Mr. Ryan is a humour writer based in Melbourne. When not working on the fringes of the coffee industry, he writes at www.blackframes.com.au and hosts The New podcast.

The post The Babycino [Part One]: Where It Came From, And How To Make It appeared first on Sprudge.com.

Maybe you were sitting on your couch watching “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” for the last two days or maybe you were busy at Barista Camp all week—whatever the case may be, here’s the latest coffee news you missed in the last seven days—all in one spot. It’s like a Jason Dominy bear hug, only there’s way less scruffiness.

This week, we introduced a brand new team of Sprudge.com city “desk” writers in NYC, LA, London, and Melbourne. These paid members of the Sprudge.com team will be bringing you the very best in coffee coverage from a roster of cities around the world.

We also announced that Sprudge.com will be the exclusive home for “Coffee Uncut”, a brand new specialty coffee podcast hosted by Alexandra Littlejohn (@ravenspeaking).

We released the third video in our Symposium Colloquium series: Exploring Plant Pathology With Steve Savage. He attempts to demystify agriculture and shine a light on coffee rust and other plant diseases.

MadCap Coffee Launched a new “Varietal Series”

World Brewer’s Cup Champion Erin McCarthy hunted down the top 5 cafes in Wellington on his tour around New Zealand.

Koppi’s legendary Anne Lunell graced the cover of our Sprudge Sunday Magazine.

We took a look at the beautiful pop-up cafes that popped up during the Melbourne International Coffee Expo.

Check out these gorgeous photos of Assembly Curated Coffee & Tea from our recent jaunt in Melbourne. 

Espresso flight at Either/Or.

Either/Or Cafe opened in Portland’s once-sleepy Sellwood.

Tamper Tantrum released its speaker list for the SCAE World of Coffee event in Nice, France later this month.

In one of the more surprising “sort-of-related-to-coffee” news stories of the week, J.C. Penney pulled a kettle from the shelves because of complaints that it “bears striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler.” What do you think? Sound off!

Have you been enjoying these weekly recaps? Do you wish you could be genius behind the pen? Do you think you have what it takes to wrangle up all the wildest coffee news each and every week?

Well that’s too bad, because that’s my job.

But if you do have awesome archiving and video skills, Sprudge wants you! We’re looking for a brand-new intern. Check it out and shoot us a line if you’re interested.

The post Last Week With Ben Blake: Week of June 15th, 2013 appeared first on Sprudge.com.

We’re seeing this new line of Hardmill Rugged Aprons in nattily appointed specialty coffee houses across the United States, and for good reason! Nice aprons have been tres chic in high-end coffee for sometime, but these Hardmill numbers are made to last in Seattle, Washington by a team that prides itself on meticulous manufacturing and quality materials. They are gorgeous and practical (as far as aprons go), plus there’s a lot of options to choose from.

So enamored are we with the Hardmill Rugged Apron, that we undertook an exclusive apron photo shoot of our own volition, soliciting the help of some equivalently rugged menfolk to model our favorites from the Hardmill line. The models on Hardmill’s website were a little…frail looking. It’s best to pair a butch apron with a butch fella, and we think you’ll agree.

Our first model Jack shows off the “Tobacco Canvas” apron ($220).

Handsome hulking Hank dons the rugged apron in Waxed Canvas ($235). It has a utility ring for a hand towel (they all do!), so you’ll always be ready to clean up a mess.

Black Selvage Denim looks great on Buck ($220).

Lastly (but not leastly) we have Ricky, working the canvas/denim number in Grey Indigo ($220).

Hardmill Aprons are available online and at E. Smith Mercantile in Seattle, Washington.

The post These Hardmill Rugged Aprons Are So Butch appeared first on Sprudge.com.

It was the sort of show floor where Ric Rhinehart (SCAA Director), Anastasia Chovan (Barista Nation founder / UNIC-USA marketing director), Scottie Callaghan (two-time Australian barista champion), and an unnamed mime could gather together for a casual game of hoops. Feast your eyes. Nothing but net!

Read more Sprudge Melbourne coverage here. 

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We turned to the Symposium community, and former speaker John Vendeland told us: “You have to talk to Steve Savage.” Dr. Savage is a plant pathologist by training- that’s a person who studies plant diseases-, but after his formal education at Stanford University and U.C. Davis, he’s explored other disciplines in agriculture and worked with a variety of crops in many places. He now turns his attention towards demystifying agriculture, and promoting understanding of science. We reached out to Dr. Savage, and he agreed to bring his considerable expertise and give us an overview of coffee rust’s place in the world of plant disease.

We had an opportunity to speak with Dr. Savage exclusively for our web serious Symposium Colloquium. Watch our interview along with Steve Savage’s full talk, now available online. Dr. Savage also writes a pretty excellent blog called Applied Mythology - we encourage you to peruse there for more thoughts on agriculture, farming and food.

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