Your Guide for Craft Coffee
It had been four years since our last visit to the UK, so when we attended the London Coffee Festival earlier this spring we were eager to hear from local baristas about their current favorite roasters. One company kept coming up: Curve Coffee Roasters in Margate.
After being blown away by their coffee at the festival, my partners at Etkin and I decided to make the two-hour train journey to Margate, located on the north coast of Kent….
I first met Trent Rollings when we judged the Turkish coffee championships together in 2018. Later, Trent would host some SCA classes I taught at his coffee company, Incommon Coffee Roasters, in beautiful Antalya, Turkey.
As a former barista competitor, coach, and current judge, I was intrigued to hear about a new training program Trent is launching aimed at helping barista competitors improve their performance. I recently caught up with the Canadian expat to hear about his program, learn how he got started with barista competitions, and where he sees the future of coffee competitions going.
How did you get involved in barista competitions?
My involvement in competitions goes all the back to when my wife, Christine, and I became baristas. At the time, we were living in Manila….
Coffee equipment manufacturer Brewista has announced a new limited edition version of their popular gooseneck kettle to benefit Ukraine. According to the press release,
The kettle features an ombre design with Ukraine’s colors and a hand drawn heart. 100% of proceeds from the kettle will be donated to World Central Kitchen and World Vision Ukraine Crisis Response who are on the ground supporting families in Ukraine and neighboring countries.
The Brewista kettle features an ergonomic handle, variable temperature control, and a “flash boil” setting. It’s set to ship Summer of 2022.
Has specialty coffee finally reached a pop-cultural tipping point?
Famed Panamanian coffee farm Elida Estate had an unexpected cameo in season six, episode four of the television series Billions. In the scene, Mike Prince, played by Corey Stoll, offers Kate Sacker, played by Condola Rashad, a cup of “Elida Geisha” prepared with a Chemex. With a listed price of $600, we can only guess it’s meant to be a Best of Panama-winning auction lot.
The cameo is a welcome change from Hollywood’s typical modus operandi of using Kopi Luwak to denote high-end, luxury coffee. In addition to the ethics of force-feeding animals coffee cherries, coffee professionals are almost universally against Kopi Luwak simply because it tastes bad. There’s nothing about passing through the digestive tract of an animal that will improve a coffee. Having tasted kopi lowak once, (an allegedly “ethically-produced” lot) let it suffice to say it wasn’t an experience I plan on repeating.
Elida Estate’s coffees, however, rank amongst the best coffees in the world. Those lucky enough to taste an auction lot from any of the Lamastus Family’s farms know it’s truly a transcendent experience. If we had billions, we would be drinking it every day too.
So many great cafés, so little time. We realized pretty quickly we weren’t going to be able to visit every café on our list during a recent visit to Budapest. The Hungarian capital’s coffee scene has both depth and width. We were never more than a few blocks from a specialty coffee shop, serving an array of both local and internationally known roasters.
Espresso Embassy
Espresso Embassy might be the most famous specialty coffee shop in Hungary, and for good reason. This award-winning team serves coffee from local roaster Casino Mocca and the occasional guest roaster. Even though the café was quite busy, the hospitality we experienced here was first-rate, and the coffees were dialed-in and tasting great. If you only have time for one café in Hungary, we would make it this one. (Read a previous post about Espresso Embassy here.)
Kontakt
No sugar. No Americanos. No problem. Budapest gets the Handsome Coffee treatment at Kontakt. The compact café serves coffee from local roaster KTRL with a minimalist bar setup centered around a Modbar espresso machine. On multiple visits I tried Kontakt’s filter coffee, espresso, and cappuccino, none of which disappointed.
Bon Dia / My Little Melbourne
Bon Dia is a specialty coffee shop masquerading as a soft serve ice cream parlor. Although my kids were disappointed there’s no ice cream in the winter, I was glad to see a variety of coffees from London’s Workshop Coffee and Barcelona’s Nomad, prepared on a single-group Synesso. Bon Dia’s sister shop, My Little Melbourne, is next door and also deserves a visit.
Fekete
Fekete is the Hungarian word for “black” and visitors to this café will not only find excellent coffee but a serious food program as well. For those willing to brave the winter cold, Fekete boasts a stunning courtyard.
Tibidabo
Because I have Coeliac disease, I always seek out gluten-free restaurants and bakeries when I travel. I went to Tibidabo for the gluten-free cinnamon rolls but was pleasantly surprised to discover they had a serious coffee program as well. Highly recommended for fellow gluten-free travelers.
Portobello
Portobello serves coffee roasted by the Barn in Berlin in a refined atmosphere. perhaps the real reason to visit this café is its impressive selection of natural Hungarian wine, available by the bottle or glass.
Our video covering our favorite Budapest coffee shops is made possible by our sponsor, the Etkin Dripper.
While there may be no place like home for the holidays, the coffee at home probably isn’t very good. For some, there’s a certain nostalgia that comes from drinking supermarket coffee— laced with ample amounts of cream and sugar. But for us, it just tastes like a burnt hot plate and regret.
Still, one must approach bringing your own coffee home with a certain amount of discretion. So if you want to make sure you’re adequately caffeinated this Christmas, follow these easy tips.
1. Give your family a good coffee grinder
Do your parents want a Baratza coffee grinder for Christmas? Probably not. Should that stop you from giving them one so that you can have fresh ground coffee when you visit? Also no. Trust us, gifting your family a good burr grinder is the gift that keeps on giving.
2. Pre-dose your coffee
Worried what your parents will think if you bust out a gram scale to make coffee this Christmas? Take a cue from busy coffee shops and try pre-dosing your coffee so that you can grind and go.
3. Order Some Cometeer
If you told us 10 years ago when we started this website that in the future we would be able to order frozen coffee on the internet and that it would be *good*, we probably wouldn’t have believed you. But alas, thanks to Cometeer and their super high tech, super secret process, this is the world we live in.
4. Use a Thermos
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: just as you’ve finished making your coffee, there are groceries to unload, presents to wrap, and one of the kids has set the Christmas tree on fire. With a quality thermos, there’s no reason to fear coming back to a cold cup of coffee.
Pro-tip: let your coffee cool for 5-10 minutes before decanting into your thermos to get optimal mileage at an ideal drinking temp.
5. Make frequent trips to the closest coffee shop
Sometimes, the best way to ensure quality time with the family is to make sure everyone gets a coffee break (or three). Remember, those baristas probably didn’t get a Christmas bonus, so be sure to tip big.
Photo by Aaron Oneal courtesy of Etkin.
We have a mental image of the archetypal Parisian café. There’s a handpainted sign, those checkered woven chairs, and an ornate wooden bar with little hooks for your jacket.
Back in Black has none of those things, but that doesn’t mean it’s not our first choice for coffee in Paris’s 11th Arrondissement. The sleek, modern, café from KB Coffee Roasters offers …
We have to admit, 2021 was the best year for books about coffee we’ve seen in a long time. (Admittedly, some of these books were published in 2020, but like Kendrick, we were busy ducking the pandemic and only picked them up this year.) Whether you’re looking to better educate yourself or shopping for that special barista in your life, these are the books that would be on our syllabus if we were teaching a graduate seminar on coffee.
Coffeeland by Augustine Sedgewick
How did a working-class man from Manchester, England create one of Central America’s largest coffee empires? The answer is a riveting story that has much to say about ongoing inequality in the coffee supply chain today. History professor Augustine Sedgewick situates the creation of the world’s largest coffee monoculture in the context of the industrial revolution, the spread of American imperialism, and the rise of Marxist revolutionaries. Coffeeland is unlike any coffee book we’ve read, but we dare say it should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to better understand the coffee industry. …
Love it or hate it, you’ll probably need to make coffee with a French press at some point in your life. And while we admit to preferring filter coffee, the French press is capable of making a delicious cup of coffee when used correctly. To get the most out of your French press, avoid these five common brewing mistakes.
1. Grinding too Coarse
Yes, the French press’s metal filter calls for a coarser grind setting to avoid too many particles passing through the mesh into your cup, but that doesn’t mean you should use the coarsest grind setting possible. …
Nestled in the Smoky Mountains, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more idyllic mountain town than Waynesville, NC. But what’s a quaint, mountain town without a community gathering place? It turns out Waynesville is not only blessed with incredible natural beauty but an exceptional café: Orchard Coffee, serving locally-roasted coffee from its sister company Steamline Coffee. Behind both companies is a man who needs no introduction to long-time readers of thecoffeecompasss.com, Cabell Tice. …
