Archive for May, 2009
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
This is something of a summary of the short talk I gave at the Allegra Strategies UK Coffee Leader Summit a week or so ago. Please also bear in mind that this talk was directed at the UK market specifically so won’t necessarily hold true for other national coffee cultures.
For me this talk was a moment of crystalisation about how I feel about coffee right now, and what I want to focus a lot of my energy on. I had initially planned to talk about how quality focused businesses were doing well right now, but in the process of writing the talk that seemed to shift. I should add a final caveat to this by saying that I do love making and drinking espresso.
My talk was titled “How the coffee industry lost the public’s trust, and how good coffee can win it back again.”
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Tags: article, Barista, brewing, Coffee, consumer, drinks, economy, Espresso, history, innovation, italy, london, marketing, pricing, quality, tradition, trust
Posted in Opinion | 43 Comments »
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
I feel it is about time I broached this subject. With an eye to the last posts, as well as to the response to my Chemex videocast, I feel the need to make something very clear.
The internet is full of information, though it is also full of keyboard heroes, and has something of an issue with its signal to noise ratio. Identifying who is a useful purveyor of information is tricky and, while there is growing use of indicators in forums, often it is he who shouts loudest that wins.
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Tags: blog, blogging, brewing, chemex, coffee blogs, Opinion, rant, right, science, technique, wrong
Posted in Opinion | 42 Comments »
Thursday, May 7th, 2009
Not too long ago I posted on Home Barista about trying to find a good way to measure the density of coffee beans.
As always the paricipants there were way smarter than me and offered several interesting options. I dropped into the thread that this was part of my idea of a grand unified theory of espresso, and subsequently a few people mailed and pm’d me asking what on earth I was talking about and what density had to do with it.
Well, I should probably explain what I have been thinking.
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Footnotes:
Tags: Barista, blending, brewing, Coffee, cupping, drinks, Espresso, experiments
Posted in Coffee, Espresso, Food Chemistry, Green Coffee, Opinion, Roasting | 30 Comments »
Friday, May 1st, 2009
I should probably try and post some vague approximations of all the craziness, stress, surprise and good times that was the WBC this year.
So – Gwilym’s performance: I am sure pretty much everyone has worked out that we didn’t go to this competition with the main goal of winning. The idea this year was the same as the idea last year, and the year before that: give an interesting performance that one could are proud of.
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Tags: anette, atlanta, awesome, Barista Competition, Coffee, competition, Espresso, grinders, gwilym, Latte Art, usa, wbc
Posted in Barista Competition, Coffee | 8 Comments »
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