Kalita USA’s “Yes We Kantan” 2012 North American Winter Tour dates have been announced. Starting next week, Kalita’s posh luxury tour bus will be criss-crossing the USA and Canada, hitting up hot spots from New York City to Seattle, and wrapping up the journey on December 14th at Olympia Coffee Roasters.

This is Kalita USA’s first North American tour since debuting on the continent in 2010. Distributed exclusively through Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters, Kalita USA has developed a kind of cult following among coffee enthusiasts, culminating in this arching, graceful Strand job back in early November. Top Kalita products include a line of drippers with formidable waves and graceful flat bottoms, pouring kettles with generous briskets, and single-use Kantan drippers with wallet-sized form factor and backpackability.

advert but first coffee cookbook now available

 

More info comes via Copy & Pasteboard from the original announcement:

We’ll be traveling across the US and Canada, meeting specialty coffee professionals and enthusiasts and demonstrating the Kalita Wave Series. Come and learn some advanced coffee brewing theory from Nick Cho (Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters, San Francisco, CA) and about Japanese coffee culture and history from Mayu Ono (Kalita Japan).

Space is limited and in some cases require pre-registration. Set lists, stage pyrotechnics, and content may vary from city to city.

December 3, New York Counter Culture Coffeeย (pre-registration required)
December 4, New York Irving Farm Coffee, 6:00PM
December 6, Chicago Bow Truss Coffee Company, 5:00PM
December 8, San Francisco Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters,ย 2:00PM
December 10, Los Angeles Cognescenti Coffeeย (Culver City), 7:00PM
December 12, Vancouver Elysian Coffeeย (590 W Broadway), 4:00PM
December 14,ย Olympia, WA Olympia Coffee Roasters, 10:00AM
December 14,ย Seattle La Marzocco USA, 3:00PM

 

We spoke with a roadie from a past Kalita tour who offered us this story in exchange for guaranteed anonymity: [quote style=”boxed”]So there I am, in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, at about 3 o’clock in the morning, looking for one thousand brown M&Ms to fill a brandy glass, or Mayu Onoย wouldn’t go on stage that night. So just then, James Hoffmann pops his head ’round the door, and mentions there’s a little sweets shop on the edge of town. So – we go. And – it’s closed. So there’s me, and Stephen Morrissey, and Tim Wendelboe, breaking into that little sweets shop, eh? Well, instead of a guard dog, they’ve got this bloody great big Bengal tiger. I managed to take out the tiger with a can of mace, but the shopowner and his son… that’s a different story altogether. I had to beat them with their own shoes. Nasty business, really. But, sure enough, I got the M&Ms, and Mayu Onoย went on stage and did a great show.[/quote]

Visit Kalita USA for more information.

New Rules of Coffee banner advertising an illustrated guide to the essential rules for enjoying coffee