Month: April 2021

Baratza recently introduced the BaratzaGEAR lineup of accessories for some of their grinders. These include: a Single Dose Hopper compatible with most of their grinders (read our review here); accent kits that work with the Encore lineup (and sort of with the Virtuoso grinders); and an Aeropress holder / doser that is compatible (for the

I am a straight coffee and espresso sort of person. If I am being very honest, I rarely try any of the more refined milk drinks on menus these days.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am completely in support of botanical-infused oat milks, but these are just not my thing.  That being said, I am interested in coffee

Baratza recently introduced the BaratzaGEAR lineup of accessories for some of their grinders. These include: a Single Dose Hopper compatible with most of their grinders (except the Sette series); accent kits that work with the Encore lineup (and sort of with the Virtuoso grinders); and an Aeropress holder / doser that is compatible (for the

Obsession can be delicious, and it can keep you awake at night. That’s a pretty accurate way to describe my addiction to coffee and my fascination with all things brewing, though when Mark Prince asked me to write about my experience with coffee and my memories of CoffeeGeek, I was equal parts flattered and terrified. 

I have some background as a barista and even as someone who competed in a barista competition (I did very badly), but the cafe I worked at did not use scales. The owner is one of those oldschool guys who thinks the espresso blend should be a generational family secret, that espresso coffee beans should

The Acaia Pearl Scale, the one that started it all for high end, coffee specific scales with a Kickstarter campaign almost 8 years ago, is getting its second major update and overhaul, and most definitely the scale’s biggest update since it’s initial introduction. You may have noticed the Pearl model listed as out of stock

I fill up my coffee mug, set the pot down, and the race is on. I want to savor each sip, yet each passing second brings me closer to despair. I want to move forward in a straight line, yet this race is littered with stops and starts. Go too fast and I’ll get burned.

First there was the successful Kickstarter Project, raising $88,000. Next there’s the Indigogo Preorder Page, which is up to $90,000 and climbing. These have got to be some very smart playing cards. And they’re all about coffee. Vincent Lam came up with this idea of a deck of 52 playing cards he calls “Sip to

On any given sunny day in Jerusalem, you will find The Bastet in top form. The crowd overflows from the café’s small interior out into the tables arranged on the pavement at its front, cheerful and smiling; there is a pleasant familiarity among the staff itself and between the staff and the regular patrons, who

As most coffee enthusiasts know all too well, drip brewers tend to multiply. You start with a Melittacone and then a kind relative gives you a CHEMEX as a gift. Wedges are great, but what about a flat-bottomed brewer like a Kalita Wave or a NotNeutral Gino Dripper? And you are not really a true

The hills of Silverton teem with a vibrant eccentricity analogous to the hipster epicenters of Brooklyn and Portland. In the midst of counter-cultural eclecticism smack center on Sunset Boulevard is the colorfully welcoming Dayglow coffee. With a minimal, bright aesthetic the shop’s cheery mood is complemented by artisan doughnuts and chipper baristas. Catering to a

A few years ago, Able Brewing Company was bought by some of the people behind Clive Coffee, and the goal was to move the famous Chemex permanent filter maker (amongst other products) forward with new products and continued innovation in the current products. The big change was a complete redesign in the hole pattern on

If you love hearing about the history of coffee, chances are you know about The History of Coffee Podcast series, created by Professor Jonathan Morris, author of Coffee. A Global History and documentary maker James Harper. If you haven’t, get over there and start listening. It’s a fascinating walk through coffee’s history and it dispels

It’s early days yet with regards to our brand new, revitalized website and this core new piece of it: the CoffeeGeek Blog. Already, I’ve gotten some questions and frank talk about the blog, both from our promotional partners, and from a few CoffeeGeek veterans as to the purpose of this new component, and where we

Coffee aficionados might consider it blasphemous to add something to a perfectly good cup of black coffee. Yet the reality is that around two out of three U.S. coffee drinkers mix in ingredients like milk, according to research from professor Ruopeng An while at the University of Illinois.  But what comes around goes around, as

The Coronavirus is responsible for so many horrible things: so many people dying from COVID-19 and so many more suffering the after effects of losing a family member. Those who had COVID and survived sometimes have lingering health issues. On the business side, countless cafes around the world have had to shut their doors, lay

The streets of Sofia, Bulgaria are composed of airily beautiful, albeit a dilapidated mishmash of Post-Soviet, European, and Ottoman architecture. Down a street corner, a few blocks from the bustle of the city center lies one of Europe’s premier coffee roasters: Dabov Speciality Coffee. More akin to a coffee laboratory than a cafe, the flagship

When I first fell in love with espresso and was learning how to make it at home, there were basically four types of machine technologies out there that could make actual espresso (I’m not including stove top boilers and camp espresso devices): Manual Machines, based on levers that would use your hand strength to push

With our new website, we find the need to hire a new Advertising Sales Manager to help our website move forward so we can continue to produce exciting new content, and deliver new features to our readership base. The successful candidate will be a key component in making this website rich, vibrant and successful. The

Before we even get into this, a reminder: this is not a review we’re publishing here. It’s a first look, based on initial impressions and first uses of the machine. Any conclusions or opinion I draw from this early look could completely change by the time we publish our full review on this machine. That

We all have a beloved coffee friend (or editor) who swears up and down that they can detect the distinct taste of paper filters in the cup, regardless of how much rinsing is done before brewing. The type of filter and manufacturing process does not matter—bleached or unbleached, processed with oxygen or more worrisome chemicals—their complaints

The US Postal Service (USPS) announced on April 9, 2021 that they were releasing a set of four new stamps in booklets of 20 that celebrate all things espresso. And they are absolutely gorgeous. Espresso drinking in the United States is at an all-time high and is now featured on new Forever stamps issued by

I was going through my RSS feeds (I use Feedly for that) searching for interesting stories to write about in the world of coffee and espresso, and noticed I had a “NY Times Coffee” RSS feed subscribed to. Turns out, it was Oliver Strand’s old beat when he used to write for the Times under

That banner you see above is at the top of various pages on the website and drives you to our Sweepstakes page, where you can enter the contest up to 12 times.  We’ve got some amazing prizes. The grand prize is the Breville Barista Express espresso machine, an all in one and the number one

In my previous blog post, I wrote about what brought us to this new, completely revised and in some ways re-imagined CoffeeGeek website. This time around, I want to tell you about all the cool features and new things we’ve launched with this version, and also give you a preview of our next two phases!

I remember reading about this thing over on the old CoffeeGeek website; the OXO Single Serve yada yada thing. (ed.note, it’s now on this new site too). A little $15 contraption that the review promised would do excellent pour over coffee, in a very automated format. You just add rinsed filter, freshly ground coffee, and

Every time I travel outside of my home country, Israel, I’m surprised by how harder it becomes to find good coffee. It’s not that good coffee doesn’t exist abroad, of course; I have, throughout my travels, collected memories from specialty cafés and stores where I drank a wonderful flat white, a mouth-watering espresso, a truly

April 1. A date many think of as April Fools day, and certainly ten years ago, many folks in the old CoffeeGeek forums felt some information about a brand new hand grinder might just be an April Fools prank. But it was not. That was the day that Barb and Doug Garrott, of Orphan Espresso,

This has been a long, long road! But it’s finally here. Welcome to the new CoffeeGeek.com! Can you believe it? We’re going to be celebrating all month and we roll out the new website, introduce you to the new Blog team, and start rolling out all the new content. We are also launching a pretty

Wow, color me incredulous, but I thought coffee and espresso were already a plant-based beverages! But of course, this is Starbucks we’re talking about and we all know Starbucks as primarily being a milk vendor that flavors heaps and heaps of milk with some coffee flavor. Considering milk is definitely not a plant-based beverage, they