Coffee Is Like Vinyl: There’s nothing like a good coffee/music analogy exercise to start (or end) the week, and in our popular “Chemex Is Like Vinyl” post, we compare records players to the Chemex, iPods to Clevers, and demo tapes to sample roasters.
The El Bulli Of Coffee: Theorem, a fascinating new concept cafe from the fine folks behind Portola Coffee Lab, opened this week in sunny Costa Mesa, CA. Your Sprudge editors had the pleasure of attending an exclusive advanced seating, and we found the entire 45-minute experience — filled to the brim with everything from liquid nitrogen ice cream affogatos to coffee old fashioneds — thoroughly impressive and enjoyable. We’re all for innovative, exciting, and well-executed coffee experiences, and hope to see more of them popping up in the future…something like this would kill (and cost twice as much, at least) in lower Manhattan.
Coffee Common Calls It Quits: The world was sad to hear that Coffee Common, an organization for bringing together world-class baristas and roasters with a passion for sharing and experiencing high-quality coffee, is no more. According to Sean Bonner’s official announcement, the level of commitment required by Coffee Common’s unimagined success has simply become too much work for the group to collectively handle. Brian W. Jones of Dear Coffee, I Love You also shares his thoughts.
On The Road With CCC: Counter Culture Coffee’s “Fermentation & Fruit Bombs” tour has begun, and Sprudge.com’s very own Zachary Carlsen has been on the road slurping coffee, sipping wine, and snapping photos. His first stop was Boston, home of CCC’s brand new training center, followed by Philadelphia, where Mr. Carlsen was joined by Sprudge staff writer Alex Bernson. Coffees were cupped, and signature drinks prepared by USBC champ Katie Carguilo were enjoyed. Stay tuned for updates from Washington, D.C., and Durham, NC, the last two stops of the tour.
Barista Nation LA: Barista Nation LA took place last weekend, bringing together well over a hundred baristas and roasters on an impossibly hot and steamy day in Anaheim, CA. The entire day of lectures by some of the coffee industry’s brightest minds was entirely free to the public, and included talks by Peter Guiliano, Anne Nylander of the SCAA, and several others that will be recapped when Sprudge.com gets around to recapping part 2 of the day. Ooh, looks like the next Barista Nation is set to take place in Paris next month!
