Your Guide for Craft Coffee
Most visitors to Cyprus come for the Mediterranean island’s sunny weather and immaculate beaches. Nicosia, the country’s landlocked capital, rarely even gets so much as a stopover. With the international airport in Larnaca, most tourists have no incentive to make the trek to Cyprus’s largest city. But those who travel inland will find a bustling coffee scene well worth skipping a beach day. These were four of our favorite place to have coffee in Nicosia. …
Antalya, Turkey is famous worldwide for its beautiful Mediterranean beaches and picturesque mountains, which line the coast in dramatic fashion. The water stays warm late into Autumn, making it a popular vacation destination for European tourists seeking nicer weather. But while most visitors see almost nothing of the city on the way to their all-inclusive resort, coffee lovers have a good reason to make a detour before jumping in the sea: The Sudd Coffee in Antalya’s Konyaltı neighborhood….
We live in the era of fake news, and in the world of coffee there’s certainly a lot of misinformation about Turkish coffee. But we’re here to set the record straight about the syrupy, sludgy cup of coffee.
Turkish Coffee is a Brew Method
Turkish coffee is a way of preparing coffee, not a coffee origin. The Republic of Turkey produces tea along its Black Sea coast, but the climate isn’t suitable for coffee. During the Ottoman Empire, Turks controlled Yemen and its coffee trade, holding a virtual monopoly on the coffee trade. But the Dutch managed to smuggle a few seeds out and coffee soon spread around the world. For the last hundred years or so most of Turkey’s coffee imports have come from Brazil….
Good coffee doesn’t happen by accident. When it comes to quality, precision is critical. Nowhere is this more evident than espresso. Even a half gram difference in dose or yield can have a marked effect on flavor. For espresso, we’re big fans of the American Weigh Sc-2Kg. It’s small, cheap, fast, and accurate, but it has one Achille’s heel: even a small amount of moisture will destroy it. I’ve seen many a barista ruin a scale with a careless steam wand purge or a sloppy pouring technique. But the latest product from coffee tech start-up Acaia promises to be a “barista-proof” scale. In addition to being waterproof, the Lunar offers…
It’s a quiet morning in Istanbul’s Cihangir neighborhood, and Serkan Ipekli is tired. The 2013 Turkish Barista Champion is fighting an ear infection, but he’s also experiencing the grueling pace of running what amounts to be a 24/7 business: Geyik Coffee Roastery & Cocktail Bar. Geyik, which means “deer” in Turkish, only opened five months ago, but it’s already been a wild ride….
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the Dirt Bag Barista, Zach Hester, but we’re glad to know he’s alive and well- last seen somewhere in New Mexico. To catch up on his travels read Part I, Part II, and Part III.
We had just come from the Earth Ships of Taos and the wild sagebrush stretched for acres, maybe miles. The smell was what you’d imagine— turpentine and beautiful desert mythos. From left to right the vast desert stretched into some wild blanket of the brush until finally, some miles off, it ceased in growth at the foot of the Sangre Di Cristo Mountains. Somewhere in the distance you could see the coloring of yellow October Aspens and, illuminated by the sun, it became suddenly quite clear why Taos is the oldest continually inhabited community within our United States. The history dates back to 1000 A.D. I feel certain places secrete a stillness in the air that carries over into its’ environment, I’m not sure what one would call it—I imagine a lot of names for such held breaths in the natural world exists and Taos certainly carried this notion in abundance. The place is powerful.
As Ian and I drove up the road and …
If you had a cup of coffee this morning, you can thank the Turks. Coffee came to the West through Turkey as the Ottoman Empire expanded into the European continent. According to one legend, the first coffee house in Austria was opened with the coffee abandoned by the Ottoman army when they were repelled at the Battle of Vienna.
Fast forward several centuries later and …
