2011 Top Coffee Publishers on Twitter

Need a quick fix on caffeinated news. There are many knowledgeable sources providing news that you can uae. Listed below are 20 coffee people you should be following on twitter. There are many amazing people on Twitter and a few coffee bloggers located there as well… good quick reading!

COFFEE BLOGGERS

• @ShotOfCoffee
• @dearcoffeeiluvu
• @DailyDemitasse

COFFEE TWEETS

• @Coffee_Couple
• @Presso
• @BeanSnob
• @ComplexEspresso
• @MikeKarr
• @Gavin_R
• @BCDodge_me
• @Jen4coffee
• @Iamnotpretendin
• @Caffeinefixxxer
• @ilovesmdlr
• @jaybeaton
• @Radthanael
• @EnCoffee
• @CoffeeHopper
• @Brew_Casa
• @MtropolisCoffee

Source: http://thecoffeeadventures.com

Chicago Coffee Fest 2011

Meet us in Chicago on February 18 – 20, 2011 at the Navy Pier located at 600 East Grand Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611 – 800-595-PIER. Our booth is number 1,000. Mark your calendar, Coffee Fest Chicago is coming up…

About Coffee Fest
Coffee Fest has been celebrating coffee long before coffee was “hot”. In 1992, they gathered coffee professionals together in Seattle for their first consumer coffee festival. After several years of hosting thriving events, Coffee Fest turned its focus toward the specialty coffee, gourmet tea and alternative beverage industry and brought retailers, distributors and manufacturers together for its first retail trade show in 1998.

If it looks like coffee, smells like coffee, goes well with coffee or is coffee you will find it at Coffee Fest. Everything under the sun that would be found in an upscale coffee shop on either side of the counter including the counter would be found on the exhibition floor at Coffee Fest. The best coffee retail education, training and workshops are found at Coffee Fest.

“The little coffee show that could” hosts three annual trade shows across all regions of the country. Coffee Fest remains the industry’s top-performing show, consistently providing retailers with relevant information to hone their business skills and up their bottom line.

Starbucks launched its iPhone mobile payment service at each of its almost 7,000 retail locations today. 

The app lets you load your Starbucks card credit to your iPhone to make payments from special scanners at each store. The app also tracks your spending and offers you rewards like free coffee, but you can always opt out of registering if you don’t want to provide your billing information.

Each register is equipped with a scanner and our barista seemed well-trained in what to do. She took our phone, scanned it, and our gift card balance instantly reflected the new purchase.

The Starbucks Mobile Card app is free in the App Store. Download it here.

Dateline: Chicago, Time Out Chicago

In the mornings, grahamwich will sell only coffee and pastries. The coffee is French press from SmartCup (Elliot says grahamwich is the only place in the city that uses take-out French press cups, which replicate the French press process in disposable plastic); the pastries come from Fritz.

Yesterday afternoon, Graham Elliot invited a few chefs to 615 N State St, the site of his about-to-open sandwich shop, grahamwich. The chefs—Grant Achatz, Ryan Poli, Giuseppe Tentori—arrived and instinctively stashed their bags and coats on the seats of the communal table in the back of the restaurant. Elliot saw this and experienced some minor panic: He realized, suddenly, that there was no place in the restaurant for people to hang their coats.

So after the chefs ate (Poli’s girlfriend, the entertainment reporter Kelli Zinc, tweeted a picture of her tofu veggie wrap, calling it “amazing,” which set off a little back and forth between Elliot and food writer/blogger Mike Gebert), Elliot ran to the store. He picked up some coat hooks and some toy blocks. At 10pm last night he started drilling the hooks into the wall. The blocks he used to make signs to mark the trash cans as “trash” or “recycling.”

Elliot left the restaurant at about midnight—”We got to take the paper [off the windows] as a team,” he says, joyfully—and at 6am this morning he was back. At 7am, 21 months after he first announced the project, grahamwich finally opened its doors.

An hour into the opening, Elliot was sitting in the back of the restaurant, at that communal table, his iPhone and iPad in front of him. “This is my office now,” he said. “I feel amazing.”

graham elliot, Elliot’s flagship restaurant on Huron Street, has progressively become more and more of a fine dining restaurant since it opened in 2008. “The check average has doubled since we opened,” Elliot says. “It’s going down a more serious road.” grahamwich is meant to capture the other side of Elliot’s personality. “Everybody speaks [sandwiches]. Everybody understands.” (Of course, it helps that everybody can pretty much afford a sandwich, even those at grahamwich, which all cost $10.)

As for why the project took so long to get off the ground, Elliot points to several factors. For one thing, the buildout was a more delicate process since the restaurant is in a landmark building (Tree Studios). And then there are Elliot’s side projects—Lollapalooza, MasterChef—that distracted the chef. Did he put off opening grahamwich until MasterChef had aired so that he could capture the reality television-watching audience’s business?

“Not at all,” he says. “Who wants to open in December? It sucks.”

Perhaps the real reason why the project took so long is because Elliot was a little premature when he told TOC about the project in March 2009. “I always get ahead of myself,” he says. (Merlin Verrier, the chef who oversees both grahamwich and graham elliot, says that Elliot first started talking about grahamwich about six months after graham elliot opened. The fact that it’s finally open, he says, is “surreal.”)

French press to-go 

In the mornings, grahamwich will sell only coffee and pastries. The coffee is French press (Elliot says grahamwich is the only place in the city that uses take-out French press cups, which replicate the French press process in disposable plastic); the pastries come from Fritz. At 11am, the restaurant starts serving its entire menu: Sandwiches (turkey confit with sage mayo; smoked whitefish with raisin chutney), “snacks” (popcorn, chips, pickles), housemade sodas (lemon-lime, orange-ginger) and soft serve (Greek yogurt with glazed chestnuts; cinnamon stick with roasted apple). For now the restaurant is cash only, a restriction Elliot hopes he can maintain. “We want to discourage people from coming in and putting a stick in the wheel by ordering 30 sandwiches,” he says. “So we’re doing the Hot Doug’s thing.”

“I don’t think any corporate place could open a place like this,” he continues. Yet grahamwich may one day grow to compete with the likes of Potbelly. Elliot already has plans to open two more grahamwiches in 2011 (one in Wicker Park, one in the Loop). After that, he wants to open grahamburger. And then he wants to expand to L.A. with a restaurant that is something like what graham elliot started as—sit-down, but a la carte.

This morning, though, he was—for the moment, at least—focused on grahamwich. He greeted customers, many of whom seemed to be fans, as they walked to the back of the restaurant to shake his hand. “Welcome to the neighborhood, chef,” one customer said. “I’ll see you again today at lunch.”

I asked Elliot: Are you ready for the crowds?

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re having the ropes put up in an hour or two.”

Read more: http://www3.timeoutny.com/chicago/blog/out-and-about/2010/12/grahamwich-graham-elliots-sandwich-shop-finally-opens/#ixzz1ByfLkf7T

Tuesday, October 19, 2010
French Press, To Go

Peet’s has done it again. The French Press lid is a new spin on coffee to go.

You do have to wait a couple of minutes to press it down, so you don’t get that instant gratification sip the second it’s handed to you… but totally worth it.

I like it because you can get a stronger cup, and it’s a great way to try all of the pricey blends that line the walls (for the price of a regular cup).

Is This A New Trend?

Perfecting his roasting technique, dubbing himself “The Dalai Java,” developing a following for his organic and fair-trade coffee beans at local farmers markets — that was the easy part for Scott Taylor. The real challenge: persuading his wife, Andrea, that the robust amount of coffee he was drinking wasn’t hurting him. That called for a truly creative solution.

Andrea Taylor, you see, owns an acupuncture business in Canandaigua and practices Chinese herbal medicine. She has nothing against coffee — in Chinese medicine, the green unroasted coffee bean is classified as an herb — but drinking too much affects the energy, or “Qi,” within the body, she says. Qi is believed to help the body cope with stress and prevent illness.

Andrea knew the Dalai Java wasn’t about to give up coffee. Instead, she suggested adding herbs to the beans. With that, a new twist on coffee was born.

Using her store of about 300 different herbs, Andrea helped develop several formulas to balance the effect of the coffee on the body. Chinese medicine holds that the kidneys store a person’s reserve Qi.

“Coffee is such a diuretic that if you drink too much, you use up energy that needs to be restored and replaced,” Andrea says.

While Scott sells coffee without herbs, the Taylors now offer a line of roasted beans that are “herb encrusted,” produced in their backyard roasting yurt. It’s one of the offerings at their retail “beanery,” The Dalai Java, at 246 S. Main St. in Canandaigua, where they sell coffee beans, tea leaves, baked goods and gifts, many of them locally produced, along with some hot coffee and tea.

The herb-encrusted beans are designed to provide health benefits such as strengthening the body, enhancing immunity, improving digestion and boosting stamina without affecting the flavor of the coffee.

“I would say I’m a coffee purist, meaning I don’t like flavored coffee, and I can say that I don’t notice the herbs at all in the taste,” says Rich Lynch, a Dalai Java customer. “I love the coffee because Scott roasts coffee better than most people do.”

Lynch, who has taught and practiced yoga for more than 30 years and owns Finger Lakes Yoga in Canandaigua, says coffee, like anything else, must be consumed in moderation. He believes the herbs can add balance. His personal favorite is the Dalai Java formulation called Relax. “I tell my students after the Saturday class, ‘If you haven’t tried it yet, go buy it!’”

It was about seven years ago that Scott Taylor decided to join the estimated 75 million people around the world who depend on coffee for all or most of their living. He chose the name to reflect the attention and mindfulness associated with the words Dalai Lama (literally, “oceans of wisdom”).

“I’m very mindful about the type of coffee I pick and the attention I give to roasting,” he says. “I’m a craft roaster. I work in small batches-checking, watching, smelling all the time.”

Mark Pendergrast, author of the book Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, says that while unusual, the practice of combining coffee with herbs is not unprecedented.

“The Ethiopians have always added spices to their coffee,” he noted by e-mail. But like most coffee drinkers, even an expert in “uncommon grounds” has strong preferences. “I don’t want to sound like a purist. Nonetheless, I would prefer my coffee as just that — coffee,” Pendergrast says. “On the other hand, I haven’t sampled any of the Dalai Java products.”

All it takes is one sample, says Linda Bombard, a local personal fitness trainer who regularly buys beans (without the herbs) for herself and to give to friends.

“You can tell he’s totally into what he does, and I relate to that,” she says. “I love really good coffee. It’s the one thing I don’t mind spending money on.”

In opening their beanery, the Taylors are counting on such people. “We want it to be a funky little place where you can find globally minded products and coffee that’s mindfully roasted,” Scott Taylor says.

Norris is a Canandaigua-area freelance writer.

Starbucks, who traditionally charged for wireless internet, began their free wireless internet campaign in July of this year. Now when you access Starbucks’ wireless service, you will be welcomed to watch moves, read books or enjoy access to some paid sites from their partners, some of which include:

• The Wall Street Journal
• USA Today
• The New York Times
• Apple’s iTunes
• Patch
• Zagat

The move comes as Starbucks faces steep competition from McDonald’s Corp. and other fast-food chains pushing increasingly fancy coffee drinks. But it also offers Starbucks a chance to make money by selling songs, e-books and other material to customers who linger over its free Wi-Fi.

Customers will see the network as soon as they connect to Starbucks’ Internet on their smart phones, computer or tablets, such as the iPad. A welcome page allows customers to scroll through various sections including entertainment, wellness, business and careers, and “my neighborhood,” where they can find community news, restaurant reviews and more.

The e-books on the network are being offered through the Bookish Reading Club, a partnership with publishers, including Harper Collins, Hachette, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster.

Starbucks Corp. started offering free wireless Internet access in July, 2010. The new network, a partnership with Yahoo, is the next step in its strategy.

Most of the free content – from movies to books and news – can be read or viewed only in Starbucks. The content was designed so it could be consumed in small doses, anywhere from five minutes to 20. That way, people either want to buy the content outright to take with them, or return to Starbucks again. The sites were designed to remember where people leave off in a book or a movie, so picking it back up is seamless.

When customers buy the content, say a newspaper subscription or an e-book, Starbucks makes money by taking a cut of the sale. The company declined to specify its share.

The companies designed the site and its content to be consumed in smaller bits after observing customers, said Burke Culligan, vice president of product management at Yahoo.

“Users across the Internet are moving more into this ‘snackable behavior’ to begin with,” he said.

The company, based in Seattle, worked to get content its customers wouldn’t find anywhere else so people have a reason to go to Starbucks beyond the coffee, said Adam Brotman, vice president of Starbucks Digital Ventures.

Remembrance of Espresso Past

The tricked-out 1972 La Marzocco GS2 espresso machine that Intelligentsia has had restored for the Venice, Calif., cafe is a dazzler. With its polished walnut, glass panels and laser-engraved knobs, it’s part vintage amp, part Apple Cube and not like any other machine out there.

That’s because it also has a pedigree: it’s the first La Marzocco, from the original Starbucks cafe.

“I guess you could say it’s the starting point of North American espresso,” said Kyle Glanville, the cafe manager. “Or one of them,” he added, carefully qualifying himself.

The vintage machine will be dedicated to pulling single-origin shots. But for all its flash it’s one of the cafe’s more conventional components.

Coffee Shop Innovation
Instead of a counter, four Synessos will be mounted on hydraulically adjustable columns that swivel 360 degrees (think barber’s chair). Instead of giving an order to a cashier, waiting patrons will be approached by a barista.

The idea, according to Mr. Glanville, is to get the barista and client talking: rather than passively watching the coffee assembly line to do its thing, you can chat about seasonal microlot coffees, or what to try on the Clover, or if Manny Ramirez will put up the same numbers he had last year with the Dodgers.

And if there’s some Hollywood spectacle to the setup, locals have always enjoyed a little showmanship. Just look at Lamill.

“Los Angeles is really open to new ideas,” Mr. Glanville said. “I’m inspired by coffee bars in Japan, and I wanted to bring some of that here.”

And that just might be the most succinct assessment of where specialty coffee (or, forgive me, the Third Wave) is moving: after decades of imitating the coffee cultures of Italy and France, the United States is now looking to Japan.

Japan, coffee geeks know, has arguably the most sophisticated scene anywhere. It’s also the world’s third largest importer of coffee, well ahead of Italy and France.

The cafe’s address is 1331 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, Calif.

Passengers travelling with insulated beverage containers can expect to see additional screening of these items using procedures currently in place, including X-ray screening, physical inspection and the use of explosives trace detection technology, states an advisory issued by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

Its best to leave a little extra time when you are traveling, especially during the holiday season, due to increased security measures.

by Andrés Castro, in Colombia

For many years, I thought that beautiful Espresso machines, sophisticated programmable drip ones or other fancy artifacts to extract coffee were better if bigger. Last week, traveling around the Colombian coffee region I stopped by a traditional bakery and asked about their old and big coffee machine. In the past, this exceptional looking coffee maker caught my attention, but I did find downsides about its operation and outcomes that I would like to share.

I would like to by reviewing some typical ways to prepare coffee. The following brewing methods are used today around the world:

• Steeping (brewing method of coffee grounds mixed with hot water sometimes for an arbitrary length of time, includes the French press, siphon method, coffee bags
• Boiling preparation (Includes the Middle East traditional style); filter, which is commonly used in our Western countries
• Pressure machines

These machines in both pictures served coffee in old Café shops, and could be considered as a blend between a steeping and espresso device. In addition, most of these coffee shops were located around coffee production areas. The ambience of these places is usually accompanied with Tango music from Argentina.

The aroma of the fresh roasted coffee from the new harvest, lovely songs from the south of the Continent, as well as attractive machines have been luring clients for decades. However, the handcrafted machines are currently sold with premium prices and do not offer a versatile or quick way to prepare a beverage. I found that the gold machine with 32,6 inches height and 16,53 inches of diameter can hold about 15 liters of hot water (4 Gallons). It has two filter baskets where the pressure would never reach 8 to 10 bars to extract a good shot. In addition, the vendor suggests not to tamp too hard otherwise it would get clogged.

The filter baskets should be filled up with 1 to 1,2 ounces of middle-coarse ground coffee. It works as a simple mesh filter, so the coffee could be considered as Americano or “lungo” (long). The manometer indicates the pressure inside the water container only, in addition, two hot water faucets and one steam wand to froth liquids are provided. The set is nicely distributed in this mechanism but some of its functionality such as the drip feature has not been clearly indicated or set.

I would say that it may be considered to prepare Americano or “lungo” beverages rather than espresso. Nonetheless, this is such a nice looking device that you may want to place it in a public space to show off how beautiful equipment can be built to prepare coffee.

—Picture courtesy of cafexpresspereira.com