Coffee Common is happening right now as we live and breathe, providing exemplary service and education to the muckity-mucks and wonkabouts of TED 2012. Updates are pouring in from CC’s blog team, with whom you can stay abreast by visiting the official Coffee Common website here. Up top are some of our favorite images thus far, stolen with impunity from the aforementioned Coffee Common website. (These images must certainly have a Creative Common license; if they don’t, we’re e-mailing Alex Bogusky.)
For those of you who aren’t current on the state of Coffee Common, here’s a brief recap: Coffee Common made its debut at last year’s TED event in Southern California. A board of coffee folks brought together a pool of amazing roasters, talented baristas, savvy non-Sprudge blog-types, and a slick marketing svengali. Overnight, Coffee Common became the most talked about node in specialty coffee, a buzz that resumes its fever pitch with each ongoing CC event. Since that first Coffee Common event last year the gang has acquired an LLC, staged two public events (one in London, one in NYC), and put an extraordinary amount of time into the project, especially Brent Fortune, for whom CC has become an all-consuming lifestyle.
Unlike the first TED (where the CC board had about five weeks to put everything together), this year they had ample time to plan, and were able to offer an open call for roaster submissions. Here’s the impressive line-up of coffees they’re working with right now, with purchase links so you can slurp along at home:
Guatemala Zelaya, from Phil & Sebastian
Ecuador El Batan, Equator Coffees
Rwanda Coko Cooperative, Heart Roasters
Burundi Kayanza Gatare, Seven Seeds
Peru La Frontera, Counter Culture Coffee
Bolivia Anjilanaka, Intelligentsia
Guatemala Finca El Injerto, Stumptown
Rwanda Bufafe, Detour Coffee Roasters
Having a bunch of great coffee companies – as well as gear suppliers like La Marzocco, Hario and Baratza – represented at an event like TED is truly a boon for the industry, for remember: this could have just as easily been some lame megacorp, giving coffee out for free and using the event to advertise its own brand. The baristas that were chosen are some of the best in the business, ambassadors for specialty coffee and the barista craft. They spent their own money to attend Coffee Common, and should be lauded for their hard work under the spotlight.
This year’s TED also afforded CC with the opportunity to create something of a curriculum for TED attendees, dubbed “master classes”:
We developed a 30-minute curriculum that included the process for getting coffee to our cups and demonstrated two brewing methods (Aeropress and V60 pour-over) including a tasting. We finished the class with a Q&A session and hands-on demos with willing participants. It served as a great preview for our Coffee Common service at TED 2012 and created opportunities for continuing dialogue with many of the TEDsters.
Follow along the many exploits of Coffee Common by visiting their website.
