Interesting CNBC article from this summer (h/t to my friend Karen) of the birth and growth of Blue Bottle Coffee. There’s also a lot of good stuff on the development of coffee’s third wave.
Continue readingcoffee story: the evolution of Blue Bottle
Category: miscellany
happy national coffee day!
Hope you all enjoy some great coffee today and treat your baristas kindly.
I went this morning to what was billed as a national coffee day event featuring Counter Culture coffee at a high end mall’s food hall (looked like a food court to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). The coffee shop in the food court hall partners with Counter Culture. It was actually a small table with a serving carafe to sample the Big Trouble blend, but well worth the trip because I met the delightful Lenora of Counter Culture’s DC training center. We had a great chat about all kinds of espresso nerdery. Very glad I went.
Now I’m off to see my friends at Northside Social, as I’d feel remiss not visiting on this day.
the totally unofficial mattymacchiato power rankings
top five preferred coffee roasters, ranked (ask me tomorrow and this list might be completely different)
quick hitters
hey there. a few odds & ends for you today.
- most recent home milk art attempts, feel like I’m making progress if definitely not all the way to where I’d like to be
happy birthday to us!
Today marks exactly one year since I started this wee little mediocrity. I’ve enjoyed it far more than I thought I would, and hope I can manage to keep this going for a while. Thank yous all around, especially to my good friend who gave me the idea and encouragement to start this; to the people who take the time to read my stuff regularly or occasionally or whenever and however they stumble upon it; to the kindhearted folks who give me feedback and encouragement; to my family, for indulging my coffee obsession and compulsion to share about it; and even to the entities (human or otherwise) who trap on the consecutive usage of the letters see-bee-dee and mistake me for a cannabinoid seller who can do all kinds of amazing things with just a little professional help on my search engine optimization. Here’s to many more great coffees, discoveries of wonderful cafes and the fine people who run them, new travels, and continued appreciation that taste is a very subjective thing and at the end of the day your mileage may vary.
quick hitters
Vietnam, the next hot coffee origin?
Having lived in Southeast Asia and visited Vietnam a few times, when you say Vietnamese coffee I think of a sweet, delicious (but incredibly unhealthy) iced drink of instant coffee in sweetened condensed milk. Clearly I missed out on something very different.
So I loved reading this really interesting WSJ article on coffee from Vietnam – h/t to one of my legion of few regular readers (hi Dad!). And this post is an excuse to run the gorgeous picture which accompanied the article.
Lots to unpack here:
Continue readingwell what have we here
I was wandering around my neighborhood supermarket today when I came upon the coffee aisle. Much to my surprise, there was a very nice selection of coffee beans from high quality roasters.
pardon me while I keep beating the drum
Hana Kaneshige (L) and Jenna Gotthelf of Counter Culture. photo by Sprudge
Continuing my one-man campaign for better awareness, appreciation and treatment of baristas…..
Please read this article from Sprudge, about the efforts of two Counter Culture educators to get data on a living wage for baristas.
Continue reading…..and they’re always glad you came
One of the many benefits of frequenting independent cafes and smaller chains over the behemoths is that the warmth and sense of community you can find in those places is far better than the erzatz comfort and faux fellowship engendered by the layout of your local Starbucks.
Continue reading