Your Guide for Craft Coffee
When was the last time you went to a coffee shop and felt like the star? While craft coffee has focused on improving the product, the customer experience has largely been overlooked. Nashville’s Steadfast Coffee is trying to change that. When we first visited Steadfast Coffee they were a small pop-up shop with big ambitions. A year later and they’ve opened a roastery, a café with a full kitchen, and a cocktail bar is on the way. The common thread throughout? Hospitality….
What happens when you plant 100 coffee cherries you picked in Costa Rica? Turns out some pretty crazy stuff. Kávékalmár, the same creative team behind these genre-defining short films, just released a project 150 days in the making.
SPROUT – BABNEVELDE from Kavekalmar on Vimeo.
Edited down from over 200,000 frames of footage, SPROUT features a time elapse of the first months of a coffee tree’s life. We watch as coffee beans eerily emerge from the soil in an almost zombie-like fashion. Then, in a surprise burst of color, the first leaves appear.
For all the seed-to-cup education that has taken place over the last decade, few coffee drinkers have any meaningful connection to the agricultural processes that produce their morning cup. SPROUT offers a rare glimpse at those first, precious steps. Hats off to Gabor Laczko and company, who continue to outdo themselves!
You see them every day. They know everything about you- at least everything about how you drink your coffee. Whether you’re friends, roommates, lovers, or casual acquaintances, your barista is important to you, and you want to show them how much you care. That’s why we’ve assembled a gift guide that is guaranteed to put a smile on your barista’s face. (Unless you’re crushing. That’s just weird.)
As much as we all wish we could slowly sip that first cup of coffee in a ceramic mug while leisurely reading the morning paper, sometimes you got to take your coffee to go. These matte black travel mugs from Louisville’s Quills Coffee (my own place of employment) offer double-walled, vacuum-sealed insulation and a airtight lid that isn’t going to leak. The original design by Quills’s owner and founder Nathan Quillo is pretty nifty too. You might be surprised to discover that 8 ounces is the perfect amount of coffee for a barista- we really don’t drink that much!
We can’t say it enough, your grinder is your most important piece of coffee equipment. Without a good one you can’t make good coffee. No exceptions. As we’ve written elsewhere, we love hand grinders, which allow you to save money on electronics and spend it on a good burr set. We’ve used a lot of hand grinders, but Idaho’s Orphan Espresso makes the best. The recently released Lido 3 features a collapsable handle, but we still prefer the Lido 2, which features 48mm Italian steel burrs and more metal parts. Read our full review for the low down.
Photo by Heart Roasters
A lumberjack needs an axe, a chef needs a knife, and a barista needs a good tamper. Australian coffee super star Matt Perger designed this tamp to maximize extraction by increasing the surface area of a conventional tamper by 2 cm2. That small improvement has a huge impact on flavor. The Pergtamp is available in the USA through Heart Roasters.
Trust us, coffee is the last thing your barista wants for Christmas, unless that coffee is from Copenhagen’s acclaimed roaster the Coffee Collective. Founded in 2007 by four coffee industry veterans, the Coffee Collective has remained on the bleeding edge of the coffee industry. With a rigorous direct trade program and a distinctively light roasting style, the Coffee Collective offers a coffee tasting experience like few others. And with a strong dollar and free international shipping it’s never been easier to enjoy the benefits of the Coffee Collective’s subscription program stateside.
A Coffee Compass original. These beautiful t shirts designed by Ryan Harrison feature our logo and everyone’s favorite grinder, the Mahlkönig EK43. Only downside? The American Apparel 50/50 fabric is so comfy you’ll never want to take it off. Interested in one or two or a dozen? Email us.
Looking for something extravagant for the retired barista in your life? It’s hard to beat the La Marzocco Linea Mini. The Linea Mini features preinfusion, temperature control, and a steam wand powerful enough to pour some killer latte art. No one misses 4 AM alarms or mocha syrup stains on clothes, but every former barista misses making themselves a cappuccino.
Your barista’s biggest secret: they never make coffee at home. When you’re already in a coffee shop 40 hours a week it’s a lot easier to swing by the shop for a quick espresso on your day off. But sometimes you have to visit your parents/in-laws/ go camping, and that’s exactly why your barista needs an Aeropress. Its compact, collapsable size makes its perfect for travel and most techniques don’t require any other equipment besides a timer and scale, making it ideal to throw in a backpack and take on the road.
Do you know why your barista is better than you at making a coffee? They use a scale. And if they could afford it, they would use this one. Autotare and autostart timer are just a couple features on the Acaia Lunar. And did we mention it’s completely water proof? Lucky for you, our sponsors Prima Coffee have one of the best deals on the Acaia Lunar on the internet.
Yes, your barista makes only slight more than minimum wage, but they still love designer clothes. There’s a pretty good chance they’re stashing their tips aways to get a pair of these Yuketan Sneaker Moc Highs, designed in collaboration with Houston’s Greenway Coffee. Steel shank reinforced arch support and a cork outsole are designed with the service industry in mind.
Do you know your barista really wants for Christmas? To be able to get their first cup of coffee every morning without doing anything. Which is exactly why you should get them a Wilfa Precision Coffee Maker. World Barista Champion/ coffee farmer Tim Wendelboe served as the lead consultant on this device, which is beautiful in both form and function. Read why our friend Brian Beyke loves his Wilfa.
Over the last couple of years we’ve seen a proliferation of coffee subscriptions, each offering a carefully curated, seasonal selection of coffees chosen to suite your taste. While we can confidently say there’s never been a better time to buy coffee with an automated payment, the choices can be overwhelming. When we first heard about Angels’ Cup we were a little incredulous. Do home baristas really need one more coffee subscription? But as we learned more we were intrigued….
Whether it’s the Hario V60, Kalita Wave, Bonmac, or Gino, there’s no shortage of pour-over devices on the market. Each has their devotees and detractors, but few people are dissatisfied with the options. Which is exactly what makes Long Beach Dripper so surprising. In contrast to the mass-produced, imported drippers that dominate the market, the Long Beach Dripper’s Ximeno is handmade in, you guessed it, Long Beach, California.
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