One shortcut to following the global coffee scene is to track the movements of Tim Styles, such is the Australian barista’s knack for turning up at seminal shops at the right time. He’s worked stints at Ray Cafe in Melbourne, Joe the Art of Coffee in New York, Flat White in London, Intelligentsia in Venice (California) [...]

The London cafenatic’s Tour de France is a kilometre long, with no hills or turns from start to finish. It departs from look mum no hands, a garagehouse coffee shop at 49 Old St, and arrives at Rapha Cycle Club, a pop-up gallery, boutique and coffee bar at 146-148 Clerkenwell Rd.

Behind the top-scoring performance of Michael Phillips in finals of the 2010 World Barista Championship, held on the 25th of June at London’s Olympia Exhibition Centre, was a single idea: how can the processing of coffee beans influence a barista’s calibrations? That may at first seem a snore of a technical question unlikely to electrify [...]

It was past the morning rush and my pre-caffeinated eyes coasted halfway through the coffee menu at Blue Bottle Coffee ‘s new Brooklyn roastery before getting stuck onto a road barrier listed only as SG-120. I shifted my gaze into reverse, spotted the familiar signposts espresso and macchiato and tried to make use of all [...]

“The British capital won’t be a coffee capital,” I wrote in April 2009, “until the taste for excessively milky coffees recedes and the best coffee shops look beyond espresso to filter- and siphon-brewed coffees. I’d also like to see more coffee shops sourcing and roasting their own beans.” One year on, those conditions have been [...]

L’omino con i baffi – “the little man with the moustache” – is closing shop and leaving Italy, much to the consternation of both stovetop espresso and Italian design purists. To cut costs, Bialetti announced it would close its Moka Express production plant in Omegna, 50 miles northwest of Milan, and move it – and [...]

Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Ace Hotel, 18 West 29th Street, New York