The Coffee Compass

A Look Inside Liturgy Beverage Company in Durham, NC

June 17, 2021 By Michael Leave a Comment

Liturgy Beverage Company More than a year after opening Litugry Beverage Company, Tim and TiLissa Jones can finally welcome dine-in guests to their café. It was a long time coming. It’s been over two years since we published this interview, when Liturgy was a pop up kiosk in a YMCA waiting for their space at the Durham Food Hall to be ready. Construction delays bled into a statewide lockdown, forcing Liturgy to navigate a pandemic in addition to new business struggles.

But they soldiered through and when I visited their café earlier this month, things were humming.

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Now Brewing: Peru Baltazar Guerrero from Brandywine Coffee Roasters

May 31, 2021 By Michael 1 Comment

When I started this coffee blog 9 years ago with two friends, I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to write about.

First and foremost, I wanted to write about cafés. I fell in love with coffee shops before I started drinking black coffee. I had a personal blog where I talked about the coffee shops I went to and those posts would get the most traffic. It seemed like a natural progression to start a website that would guide people to the best coffee shops, and thecoffeecompass.com was born.

What I didn’t want to write were coffee reviews. At the time there was a glut of coffee blogs focusing on coffee reviews, assigning points or stars, quibbling over tasting notes. It felt tedious to me. So I made a decision: no coffee reviews. In the early days, we received almost weekly inquiries from roasters that offered to send us coffee, and though we happily received any free coffee a roaster wanted to send us, we made it clear we weren’t going to review it on this website….

Product Review: The Blue Bottle Coffee Dripper

May 17, 2021 By Michael 1 Comment

Some years ago, Prima Coffee asked me to write a blog post comparing an assortment of flat-bottom pour-over drippers and I was surprised by which one was my favorite of the bunch: the Blue Bottle Coffee Dripper. I had borrowed it from Prima, and was a little sad to give it back, but also couldn’t really justify buying another brewing device.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, where I found myself at the Blue Bottle Coffee on Broadway in Lower Manhattan and in need of a 2-cup coffee dripper, preferably flat-bottomed. I noticed the handsome porcelain device while waiting in a socially distanced queue and impulse bought it.

Since then, I’ve used the Blue Bottle Coffee Dripper 2-3 times a day, and have developed further thoughts on the device. …

Stories Coffee & Wine Captivates in Tbilisi

April 21, 2021 By Michael 1 Comment

In recent years the country of Georgia has seen a rather unexpected tourism boom. Travelers came not only for its unspoiled natural beauty, but its fascinating cuisine and 6,000-year-old wine culture. And while it’s still qvevri-fermented natural wines that make Tbilisi a world-class beverage destination, if you find yourself in the Georgian capital, there’s good coffee to be had as well….

Take a Video Voyage to Guatemala with Primavera Coffee

April 12, 2021 By Michael Leave a Comment

For green coffee buyers, the harvest season is a time of excitement and anticipation as they show up at coffee origins, passport and cupping spoon in hand, to select which lots they want to purchase. In recognition of the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic will keep most coffee roasters from going on origin trips this year, Guatemalan coffee exporters Primavera Coffee have put together a nine-part video series about Guatemalan coffee farming. For those of us in the coffee industry who don’t regularly travel to coffee-producing countries, it’s an intimate look at what is often the most opaque part of the supply chain.

Listen as Kim Staalman narrates different approaches to pruning, harvest practices, and fermentation techniques. But be warned: far from satiating our wanderlust, after watching the series we want to visit Guatemala more than ever!

Good Hands in Coffee: an Interview with Stuart Ritson

April 1, 2021 By Michael Leave a Comment

For many coffee pros, Stuart Ritson needs no introduction. The former chair of the Barista Guild has worn many hats in the coffee industry, including serving as Cafe Imports’ director of European Sales. In 2019 Ritson left that position to take some personal time and reevaluate his long-term goals. After that sabbatical, Ritson launch his own consulting company, a roasting project, and is working to amplify the voice of charities working at coffee origins.

We recently caught up with Ritson over Zoom to learn about his new projects and how taking some time off gave him a new perspective.

How did you get started in coffee?

I was in my last year of college and needed a job. I applied at all sorts of places and nothing stuck. I got an interview at a café and bakery that was re-opening. The new owner had a real focus on specialty coffee. I really fell in love with coffee and wanted to stick it out.

After that, I started with Monocle to run their café in London. It gave me a chance to be hands-on running something, but I didn’t stick that out too long.

I realized my skills are better behind the bar than on the bar, so I joined Workshop Coffee for 3 or so years. I was their wholesale manager and trainer. All sorts of stuff. It was a very formative time for me. By the end, I was cupping like a pro.

In 2019 I left Cafe Imports to take a personal break and work out what I really wanted to be doing. I now have a really broad portfolio of what I do. In essence, I source green coffee, I roast for another brand, and my own brand, Untitled Coffee….

Kahverengi Roastery Opens Istanbul Café

March 24, 2021 By Michael Leave a Comment

Just over five years ago I learned that Turkey would be hosting a Q grading course for the first time, and that it just so happened that it was going to be the week after I already was going to be in Istanbul on a planned visit. It had long been a professional goal of mine to take the course, so I arranged to stay an extra week.

That week would prove to be one of the most challenging of my coffee career. We tasted table after table of coffee. Blind triangulations. Aroma identification. Roast ID. It was grueling and exhausting. To make matters worse, I burned my tongue on a hot dessert the night before the first day of testing, but somehow managed to pass all 20 tests and earn a Q license.

Perhaps tne of the most valuable parts of the course for me was meeting the other coffee professionals. Having not met any of them before, by the end of the week I felt as though we were old army buddies who had been in the trenches together.

One of those coffee professionals was Ulaş Tüze, the owner and head roaster of Kahverengi Roastery. With locations in Çanakkale and Bozcaada- an island in the Aegean Sea— Kahverengi was one of the few specialty coffee shops outside of a major urban center in Turkey. Although I’ve long wanted to visit Bozcaada, (which produces some of Turkey’s finest wines), I was pleasantly surprised to learn Ulaş was opening a café just a few blocks from my flat in Istanbul’s Nişantaşı neighborhood….

The Zurich University of Applied Sciences Announces New Post-Graduate Certificate in Coffee Excellence

March 1, 2021 By Michael 1 Comment

The Zurich University of Applied Sciences has announced a new post-graduate certificate in partnership with the Specialty Coffee Association. According to the SCA’s press release.

the CAS in Coffee Excellence is a hybrid e-learning course designed to provide coffee professionals with a multidisciplinary overview of applied sciences within the academic world of specialty coffee.

The program consists of four modules and takes a total of 12 months. The curriculum includes an overview of botany, farm management, the science of roasting, and sensory analysis. In addition to the certificate, participants will earn 12 hours in academic credit upon finishing the program. According to SCA CEO Yannis Apostolopoulos, the program is one step closer to the SCA’s long-term goal of establishing a master’s degree in coffee studies at partnering universities.

The initial year of the program will be limited to 50 students. Tuition and fees for the program total 7,400 Swiss Francs.

Designing the April Pour-Over Brewer: An Interview with Patrik Rolf

February 24, 2021 By Michael Leave a Comment

Roaster. Consultant. Podcaster. There’s not much Patrik Rolf hasn’t done when it comes to coffee. Originally from Sweden, Rolf made a name for himself as a coffee roaster in the Berlin coffee scene. After deciding to found his own company, Rolf moved to Copenhagen to launch April Coffee.

In 2019, Rolf won the Swedish Brewers Cup competition and went on take second place at the world championship. Although all competitors write a routine around their coffee, Rolf took it one step further and designed an entire brewing device: the April Pour-Over Brewer. We recently caught up with Rolf over email to learn what’s so special about his device.

Baristas love to complain about the shortcomings of different brewing devices, but you set out to design a better pour-over dripper. What was the inspiration?

To brew the roasted coffee from April in the best possible way. If you think about it, very few, if any, current brewing devices are created with modern (lighter) roasted coffee in mind. After a long time of improving my roasting, I felt there was a missing link and it was clear that it was my brewing that wasn’t able to keep up with my roasting….

Amal Yemen Raises Awareness, Funds for Yemen

February 22, 2021 By Michael Leave a Comment

The country of Yemen plays an indispensable part in the history of coffee. The vast majority of commercial coffee varieties first came to Yemen from Ethiopia before spreading around the world. In fact, for centuries European researchers assumed coffee was endemic to the peninsula, as indicated by the name Coffea arabica.

But Yemen is also poised to play a crucial role in coffee’s next chapter. Recently, researchers in partnership with Yemeni coffee exporters Qima Coffee made a staggering discovery: a previously unmapped gene pool of coffee varieties. Qima is marketing this new cluster of varieties as Yemenia. With climate change and leaf rust decimating coffee production around the world, the discovery of new Arabica varieties offers new genetic material to breeders, not to mention unexplored flavors for coffee lovers.

The discovery comes at a pivotal time. A long, devastating civil war has created in Yemen what many are calling a humanitarian disaster. (The BBC recently shared a harrowing account of children being targeted by sniper fire.)

A group of coffee companies, including Qima Coffee, Square Mile Coffee, and Intelligentsia, have come together to put on an event to raise funds for charities working in Yemen. Amal Yemen, which translates to “Hope for Yemen,” will take place on March 26th. According to the event website:

Amal Yemen is a spontaneous movement designed to illuminate Yemeni coffee history, culture and arts while raising funds for humanitarian relief efforts… It is an attempt to better understand the dire circumstances Yemeni people are facing due to conflict and catalyze new efforts to address them.

The event’s program includes a guided coffee tasting with Geoff Watts of Intelligentsia, a presentation from Christophe Montagnon about the Yemenia coffee variety cluster, and a Yemeni Oud performance by Ahmed Al Shaiba. Participants can purchase a coffee kit, containing eight different Yemeni coffees, each roasted by a different specialty roaster. The coffees will highlight the regional and varietal differences found throughout Yemen. Tickets for the event can be purchased on Eventbrite.