The Coffee Compass

Your Guide for Craft Coffee

coffee

Come for the Doughnuts, Stay for the Coffee at General Porpoise Doughnuts

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Rodgers and Hammerstein. Martin and Lewis. Riesling and Thai food. Some pairs are timeless. And yet no duo is so ubiquitous as that most quintessential of American breakfasts, coffee and doughnuts. General Porpoise Doughnuts in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood might have perfected that pairing.

In a city with a specialty coffee shop on every block, it helps to have a concept that sets you apart. General Porpoise’s concept is succinct and to the cream-filled-point: a small selection of house-made yeast doughnuts and a simple but perfectly executed coffee menu….

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Cafe Review: Prufrock Coffee in London

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Prufrock Coffee espresso machine

Coffee as Poetry

In The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot famously wrote, “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.” Most Eliot interpreters understand the line to denote the protagonist’s disillusion with the monotonousness of modern society. I certainly don’t claim to be a literary critic, but a life measured out in spoons from London’s Prufrock Coffee wouldn’t be too …

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Cafe Review: Four Barrel Coffee in San Francisco

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Four Barrel Coffee tables

Photo by Eric Wolfinger

Mark Twain supposedly quipped “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” It’s debated whether he actually said it, but one thing is certain: if Mr. Clemens had visited San Francisco today he would have found a great cup of coffee to warm him up. In a city teeming with great cafes, Four Barrel Coffee is one of our favorites.

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Cafe Review: Cartel Coffee Lab in Tempe, AZ

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Cartel Coffee espresso
It’s tough trying to sell coffee when the temperature outside is the same as a well steamed cappuccino, but Cartel Coffee Lab in Tempe, AZ has a threefold recipe for success: source incredible coffees, roast to highlight the natural flavor characteristics, and brew with skill and precision. Throw in a friendly staff, a DIY aesthetic, and an old strip mall down the street from a massive university and it’s little wonder that the Cartel Coffee syndicate has expanded to…

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Learn How to Brew a Chemex with Cartel Coffee

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A CHEMEX BREW GUIDE from Cartel Coffee Lab on Vimeo.

The Chemex

German-born chemist Peter Schlumbohm had a simple goal: invent the best coffee maker ever. After several years of testing and prototypes, the Chemex was patented in 1939. Over the ensuing decades the Chemex became an icon of design and pop culture. The Chemex is James Bond’s brew method of choice in From Russia With Love and is also featured in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who says it “epitomizes the kitchen–as–laboratory concept—a hallmark of the interwar New Kitchen.” (They stole the words right out of our mouth.)  In more recent years it has experienced a revival amongst the craft coffee movement, valued for its ergonomic elegance and the clean, balanced cup it produces.

Cartel Coffee

Out of a plethora of instructional videos on the interwebs, Cartel Coffee Lab in Tempe, Arizona has one of our favorites. This shop is always one of my first destinations whenever I fly back to the Grand Canyon State to visit my family (full review here) and this is the only coffee video I have seen with a No Country For Old Men allusion. So strap on your boots, grab a kettle, and start brewing!

Why You Should Put The Barn On Your Coffee Radar

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Over the last decade several cities have emerged as coffee destinations: London, New York, San Francisco, Melbourne, and Oslo immediately come to mind.  These trendsetting cities are home to acclaimed roasters and attract a steady flow of globetrotting baristas on coffee pilgrimages. But over in the Eurozone a wave of new coffee shops have been popping up around Berlin, and one cafe in particular, The Barn, is a big reason why your next cafe crawl should be in Germany’s capital.

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TNT Louisville: Latte Art and the Legacy of the River City

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I once read about a group of bicycle messengers in New York City who held weekly bike races at a local velodrome. I was struck by the fact that these men and women work long, grueling hours riding a bike all day, only to ride bikes for fun in their spare time. They clearly have a passion for what they do that few people share. But if anyone shares a passion for their job, it’s baristas at craft coffee shops….

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Coffee and Cycling

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I don’t have any academic sociological studies to back this up, but I’ve noticed that people who ride bikes are more likely to enjoy craft coffee, or perhaps the converse is more accurate. Either way, the evidence is staggering: Intelligentsia made a cycling cap (which almost immediately sold out), the Coffee Collective made some limited edition demis for the Bike Film Festival, famed headset builder Chris King made a tamper, and, perhaps most convincingly, the bike rack in front of your favorite cafe is probably full — I know mine is.

But the relationship between cycling and coffee has reached a new level …

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