Let’s Talk Coffee In Colombia: Your Sprudge editors are currently presenting, holding live panel interviews, tweeting, and wishing they knew Spanish at this year’s Let Talk Coffee conference, presented by Sustainable Harvest. Their panel (on the topic of fancy cafes in North America) was a real hit, presented in “Late Night TV” style, and featuring such industry notables as Sam Lewontin (Everyman Espresso), Stephen Vick (Blue Bottle Coffee), Fabrizio Sencion-Ramirez (Cafe Sublime / 5PM / 2-time Mexico Barista Champion) and Jared Linzmeier (Caffe Ladro) Sprudgey co-founder Jordan Michelman was also featured as part of a panel on “Storytelling At Origin”, where he showed videos and read from an original essay from Sprudge’s recent trip to Rwanda with Fair Trade USA.
Brew Fest Success: Last week’s Hüsker Brew event in Minneapolis, Minnesota was a truly fantastic event in all respects, gathering together over 200 people to eat, drink, and be merry at the Cafe Imports Warehouse. We cupped over 50 coffees from quite the impressive list of roasters — all generously donated, and all thoroughly enjoyed. Hüsker Brew was the fifth in an ongoing series of public cupping parties held by Sprudge this year. For the next one, we’re headed to the Windy City on October 25th!
Espresso Nerd Video Of The Year: Nerds: we love them. St. Ali Coffee Roasters’ Matt Perger has come up with another great coffee video, and this one’s as nerdy as they get. Charts, graphs, and data analysis galore, the video aims to show that “if you’re not using volumetrics or weighing every single shot’s dose and yield, your espresso bar will be grossly inconsistent.” Watch Perger’s V-60 pour-over method video, also accompanied by a damn catchy soundtrack, and read our love letter to roaster nerds.
At Last, Good Coffee In Paris: Is France perhaps on its way to joining Portland, London, Tokyo, and Oslo as a major coffee destination? Oliver Strand sure hope so – he’s tired of his favorite city having such crummy coffee, which is why the delight is palpable in his most recent T Magazine Online “Ristretto” column, in which he gives three Parisian shops his seal of approval. Now the espresso accompanying that Ladurée macaron won’t have to taste like “ashy swill.”
The Verismo, Verifiably Bland: Starbucks has come up with the Verismo, a new automated pod machine that creates both brewed coffee and, according to Starbucks, “caramelly rich true espresso.” Liz Clayton of Serious Eats was bold enough to give it a try, noting in her excellent article that the pod milk tastes “bland at best,” that the system is quite wasteful, but that overall, the machine does do a great job at replicating Starbucks drinks for those who want the Starbucks experience at home. Worth a read!
Glansville & Babinski Opens In LA: G&B is not a pop-up, but it’s not not a pop-up, and anyway, this new café from 2008 USBC champion Kyle Glanville and perennial USBC favorite Charles Babinski opened its doors this week in Silver Lake, LA. In addition to coffee from roasters like 49th Parallel, Ritual, and Heart, G&B serves delicious-sounding brown rice bowls and brioche toast. They’re hiring.
Coffee Potpourri For 500, Alex: 5 historical attempts to ban coffee, from Sweden to Prussia; 20 most beautiful cafes in the world, from Denmark to Israel, according to some gal who probably hasn’t been to any of them; a “reading” and Coffee 101 demo in San Francisco next week from Left Coast Roast author Hanna Neuschwander; and the new Blossom Coffee Brewer in action.
