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Panama’s Elida Estate has Surprise Cameo on Billions

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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.

Six Great Budapest Coffee Shops

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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.

Five Coffee Tips for Surviving the Holidays

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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.

Four New Books That Should Be In Every Barista’s Library

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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. …

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Four French Press Mistakes You Might Be Making

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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. …

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New Merch: Coffee Compass Logo T-Shirt

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The perfect cup of coffee may not exist, but we’re pretty sure the perfect t-shirt does: the American Apparel gray track shirt. We’ve long dreamed of slapping our logo on one is these cozy beauties, and that dream has finally become reality. We mostly made these for our team, but we have a limited number of Medium and Large t-shirts up in our webstore while supplies last. This shirt is not guaranteed to repel coffee stains, but it is guaranteed to make your morning coffee taste better. Ours does anyway.

Osito Coffee Launches Fundraiser for Colombian Farmers

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Colombia-based coffee exporters Osito Coffee has launched a fundraiser for Colombian farmers on Gofundme.com. Between the COVID-19 pandemic and a national strike, Osito explains many of their producers are facing a dire situation.

 

In our network of coffee farmers, we’ve seen folks struggle mightily with cash flow.  With a delayed harvest and limited access to town centers because of the widespread roadblocks, farmers still have to lay out money to maintain their farms and families with little money coming in at this time.

The company has pledged to match the first $4,000 of donations. The money will be used to provide farmers with essential tools like GrainPro bags for storing coffee. A smaller number of farmers will be gifted new drying equipment.

 

Peixoto Coffee Redefines Direct Trade in Chandler, Arizona

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The specialty coffee community often celebrates direct trade: when coffee roasters buy their coffee directly from farmers without utilizing a trader. In theory, the practice ensures more of the profits go to the people who grew the coffee.

But Peixoto Coffee in Chandler, Arizona takes direct trade one step further: the vertically integrated coffee roaster sources most of their coffees from their family estate in Minas Gerais, Brazil. …

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Kahverengi Roastery Opens Istanbul Café

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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….

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

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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.