Welcome To SUNDAY Coffee+: Coffee News That Made The Headlines
Each week, Craft Beverage Jobs compiles the top headlines for Craft Coffee News & Information. On Sunday morning we post those headlines in SUNDAY Coffee+ for your reading pleasure. Whether its industry growth, new business, job openings, profiles or human interest, you just never know what will tickle our fancy from week to week. We want to make SUNDAY Coffee+ a part of your Sunday morning coffee experience. Want Sunday Coffee+ delivered via email each weekend? Sign Up Here.
Top 15 NEW Coffee Roasters In The US
These are the 15 best new coffee roasters in America, by Dan Gentile – Thrillist
Always in pursuit of the best of the best, one of our favorite magazines, Thrillist, puts together a list of new US coffee roasters who are pushing the boundaries of the greatness of craft beverage. The roasters in this Top 15 list all launched in 2013 & 2014, and represent roasters from all across America. See if one of your favorites have made the list.
Portland: Coffee Rules Everything Around Me
Coffee Issue 2014: Coffee Rules Everything Around Me, Willamette Week
We’ve got more cafes per capita than any city in the country except grimly Starbucked Seattle. Heart, Coava and Stumptown all routinely rank in lists of the best roasters in the country. The Alliance for Coffee Excellence, which determines the year’s best roasts, moved its offices here last winter, declaring Portland coffee’s “mecca.”
And yet, while researching our annual Coffee Guide we’re always amazed at what we find—nano-roasts in a Slabtown bike shop, Water Avenue beans appearing everywhere from an antique store to the Whole Foods meat case, and the rise of machines at shops that made their bones by turning Chemex-wielding baristas into rock stars.
The sweep of cafes and coffee roasters in town can be dizzying, but for this year’s coffee issue, we have trawled car-dealership cafes, food-cart parking lots and the wilds of Beaverton (page 14) to find our favorite new cafes of the year. In the process, we’ve discovered a wide array of coffee traditions from around the world being observed here in Portland, whether anEthiopian coffee ceremony or the Hong Kong staple of coffee mixed with milk tea.
A Passion for Organic Roasting
A Passion for Organic Coffee Roasting, by Christina Chiarelli – Its Relavant .com
“It’s very satisfying when people taste your coffee and they experience really high quality coffee for the first time,” said Ed Freedman, owner and head roaster of Shearwater Coffee Roasters.
“Very fresh, bitter-free, naturally sweet, flavorful, great aromatics.”
He’s the owner of Shearwater Organic Coffee Roasters in Trumbull — the first and only USDA certified organic roaster in Fairfield County.
They roast about 2,000 pounds of coffee beans per month, all in house. It’s roasted fresh — 20 pounds per batch — several times a week.
“Doing the small batch roasting, we’re in control and we can get you an excellent roast that’s just going to be more delicious,” said Freedman.
Cap Code Coffee Roasters
Sisters flipped over Cape Code Coffee Roasters, by Jill Radsken – The Boston Globe/ Food & Dining
But it’s not just the story. It has to be great coffee.
No one visiting Cape Cod Coffee would mistake even the aroma for commercial coffee. Inside the roasting facility are giant burlap bags filled with green beans from 14 countries and shiny copper industrial drums and hoppers. Eighty pounds of beans take only five minutes to roast, and the weekly volume typically tops out at 25,000 to 30,000 pounds.
When sisters Molly and Cate MacGregor bought Cape Cod Coffee Roasters, they were hardly java snobs.
Molly drank hers drowned in milk. “It’s embarrassing,” she says, comparing her cups of joe to Rhode Island’s popular concoction of coffee syrup and milk.
That was before Demos Young, the founder of Cape Cod Coffee Roasters, sold the sisters his business, which he started in 1970. Young, 83, stayed on to educate the women on all aspects of the small-batch business, from learning where to source beans, to what to look for in the beans themselves and proper roasting techniques. “His knowledge is pretty unparalleled,” says Cate, 30, who recently graduated from Boston University’s School of Management. “He grew up third generation on a Kenyan plantation and he has all the connections.”
Coffee Roasters: Small Business Boom
Small business carving niches in burgeoning Pearland, by Jocelyn Kerr – Houston Chronicle
Pearland’s population is more than 100,000, up from 91,000 when the coffee business opened. In 2000, the population was 37,000.
Small businesses are popping up in small shops throughout the city, often catering to urban trends s and showing how support is growing in the once-rural community for specific products and services. Some of the enterprises are small gyms or health-product stores, others specialize in food or drink items such as meat, smoothies and baked goods.
“Entrepreneurship is on the rise here,” said Cheryl Kipp, vice president of communications for the Pearland Chamber of Commerce. “We’re seeing a lot of local shops that still give us a small-town feel even though there’s so much expansion.”
Feature photo credit: JoséPedro via photopin cc