5 iPhone / Android Mobile Apps Every Barista Should Use

A smartphone is the modern-day Leatherman: just as the latter has a tool for every job, so too does the phone in your pocket. Want to record and analyse cupping scores? There’s an app for that. Want to make sure you don’t brew your coffee too slowly? There’s an app for that. Want to record recipe ideas on the go? Well, you get the picture…

But with so many apps available, it’s hard to know which ones are worth downloading and which ones will just clutter up your home screen. That’s why I’m here to help you out. I’ve listed five must-have apps for any barista or coffee enthusiast. While not all of these are coffee-orientated, they’ll all improve your coffee experience.

SEE ALSO: Barista Camp: 5 Reasons Why You Should Go Next Year

Burger and fries, strawberries and cheese, coffee and milk smartphones. Credit: Pexels

1. Instagram

Why Instagram? There are hundreds of social media platforms out there – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, SnapChat, Google Plus, Tumblr, FourSquare, Flickr, Viadeo…  You’d never have enough time to be active on all of them. Instead, it’s much better to pick one and use it well.

And Instagram just happens to be the perfect platform, since it’s centered around images and videos. Coffee is nothing if not a sensory experience, so why not let your audience see your coffee? Say latte art is your thing and you can pour a 5-tier tulip with your eyes closed. Or perhaps you like to experiment with unusual brewing methods. Then Instagram is the perfect tool with which to show the world your talents.

What’s more, you can set your Instagram posts to be automatically shared on Facebook and Twitter – meaning you can shoot three birds with one photo.

To get the best out of Instagram, you’ll want to make sure you take interesting pictures with good composition, and provide informative and interesting captions. Instagram comes preloaded with about 15 cool effects, but advanced photographers might want to try out apps like VSCO Cam and Snapseed for more control. Oh, and don’t forget to check out our previous articles: 5 Social Media Tips For Coffee Professionals and 5 Steps to Eye-Popping Coffee Photos.

Connect with other coffee lovers on Instagram. Credit: Pixabay

2. Evernote

Let’s be honest here: do you have a notepad and pen on you? I don’t mean somewhere in a drawer in your room; I mean on you, to hand, ready to use whether you’re struck by inspiration on the train or you’re recording your brew time in the kitchen. Because I’m pretty sure that most of you don’t.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to record these things – it just means we need different tools. And Evernote is the answer to that.

You can take notes, attach audio clips, import pictures, make presentations, and even email it all to yourself from the app. And the best thing about it is that it syncs. It’s easy to download it to your smartphone, tablet, and laptop. And no matter which virtual notebook you pick up, you’ll find the exact same set of notes inside.

Oh, and if you happen to have other passions, you can also create additional “notebooks” in the same account – making it easy to stay organised.

Evernote’s the solution you didn’t know you needed. Credit: Gustavo da Cunha Pimenta

3. Cupping Lab

How often do you cup? I’m betting it’s pretty regularly. But then what do you do with all the paperwork? Because by now you must have hundreds of cupping sheets lying around, making it impossible if you actually want to refer back to one.

And of course, I’m pretty sure you do want to refer back to them – to see how different extraction parameters affect the profile, to compare your previous single origin Ecuadorian to a new one, to compare your cupping notes to someone else’s.

The solution to this is Cupping Lab, an online app dedicated to recording cupping notes with the same system as the Cup of Excellence. It’s extremely easy to use, and extremely easy to look back at later.

Using Cupping Lab couldn’t be easier.

4. SoundCloud

This one is particularly useful for the baristas, although I’m confident everyone will like it. SoundCloud allows you to listen to single songs, playlists, podcasts, and even upload your own songs (perfect for those moonlighting as musicians).

Now all of us love music – but why is this relevant for baristas? First of all, the café: some managers don’t really care about what music is playing, so long as it fits the tone of the coffee shop and has no explicit content. And I bet all baristas can relate to that oh-god-not-this-song-again-it-must-be-the-fiftieth-time-it’s-played feeling that comes with sticking a CD or playlist on repeat. Simply offer to create some unique playlists, and you’ll be listening to your favourite tunes instead.

What’s more, for those baristas looking to compete, it’s the perfect app to start designing your playlist. You can listen to thousands of songs in the attempt to find, not just the good enough one, but the absolutely perfect one. Because we all know how important every little detail is when you’re competing.

Find the soundtrack to your coffee life on SoundCloud.

5. Timer

Now I know what you might be thinking: why would you need an app for a timer when, unless you’re still using a Nokia 3310, your phone comes with one already? But chances are it doesn’t have all the functions you need.

Apps like Timer (previously Hybrid Stopwatch and Timer) not only act as stopwatch but also come with a countdown setting. This makes it perfect for brew methods like the French Press, which have a set steep time.

Most stopwatch apps also have a “laps” setting, designed for runners. But you can use this for pour overs, the AeroPress, and any other brew method where you need to record different actions at different times during the brew.

A timer is without a doubt a barista essential – and if the inbuilt timer on your smartphone doesn’t have all of these features, you’ll want to download one that does.

Timer calls it “laps”; we call it brewing with a pour over device.

This isn’t an exhaustive list of all the apps suitable for coffee lovers, but rather a list of essential apps for everyday brewing. Having these on your phone will make it easier to brew efficiently, access your cupping notes, connect with other coffee enthusiasts, and more. So get downloading!

Written by C. Whitby and edited by T. Newton.

Perfect Daily Grind

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Unification: America’s Coffee Trade Organization Considers Going Global

Behind the scenes of a growing global coffee culture, two of the world’s two largest coffee trade organizations—the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) and the Speciality Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE)—are working towards a merger to unite their international memberships: more than 10,000 members in total.

If this all seems like inside baseball, we surely understand. But for coffee professionals, and especially for active members of these organizations, the drive towards unification has been the hottest of topics over recent months, and unlike the brew in your mug, it shows no signs of cooling off.

The SCAA, a 501(c)(6) non-profit trade organization based in California, generates around 8 million dollars* in total business each year; the SCAE, a non-profit membership organization based in the United Kingdom with 30 “chapters” worldwide, does around 5 million dollars in annual business—the majority of which comes from each organization’s professional education and training programs. The two organizations also jointly own World Coffee Events, an events production and promotions company that administers an annual portfolio of global coffee competitions and exhibitions around the world, including the popular World Barista Championship—this jointly owned company is itself valued at around 1.8 million dollars. Put it all together, and you’re looking at a new Venti-sized entity worth about 15 million dollars annually.

The unification process began with a vote for SCAE members, the lead-up to which we covered in April. That vote closed with a clear mandate: 51% of the total SCAE membership voted, and 86% of those voted “Favour, transfer membership.” To Americanize the term, that translates to “Heck, yes!” and represents a resounding victory for the unification movement among European coffee professionals. (A full breakdown of the SCAE voting outcomes is available here.)

Now the SCAA voting period is underway—the virtual polls opened July 5th, and are open to qualified members through August 5th (more information on who can vote is available here). Since voting opened last week, several prominent SCAA apparatchiks & well-wishers have voiced their support for unification, in Tumblr posts and Facebook screeds. That support has been met with a small but vocal faction of opposition, largely led by a core group of former SCAA Presidents. Policy papers have been published; Facebook accounts have been ruthlessly trolled. The vote continues on today, with around 30% of the membership having voted thus far, according to third-party tracking company Survey and Ballot Systems.

The greatest voice of opposition to unification has come from the Concerned SCAA Presidents Committee, an ad-hoc group of past presidents led by Donald Schoenholt (founding President of the SCAA) and including Dan Cox (1984-86), Leonor Gaviña-Valls (1985), Becky McKinnon (1998-99), Grady Saunders (1993-94), Gary Talboy (1987-88), David Dallis (1994-95), Paul Katzeff (1984, 2000-2001), Danny O’Neill (2001-2002), and Linda Smithers (1997-1998).

The committee penned a policy paper titled “10 Reasons 10 SCAA Presidents VOTE NO On Consolidation” to SCAA members and was published on Schoenholt’s blog, Coffeeman’s Diary. The paper asks questions—”why rush?”, “why no exit plan?”—and warns a post-unification trade guild “will not be American in character, temperament, or name”, a line of reasoning some have found to be dangerously nativist. Notably absent from the Concerned SCAA Presidents Committee is Ted Lingle, a founding co-chairman and former executive director of the SCAA, who has authored his own endorsement in favor of unification.

Current Executive Director of the SCAA, Ric Rhinehart, was present to answer questions at an SCAA Unification Member Forum at the Alliance For Coffee Excellence in Portland, Oregon on July 12th, attended by Sprudge. “We are not rushing into anything,” Rhinehart stated when the point was raised. “We have been at this actively at the board level for years, and took it out to our membership more than a year ago.”

The proposal for unification, according to Rhinehart, was first introduced to SCAA members at their annual SCAA Leadership Summit (SLS) in Atlanta in 2015. “We debuted and debated this concept, where it occupied roughly 80% of our conversations, including working with a professional facilitator, to get everyone’s voices on the table,” explained Rhinehart.

Sprudge contacted Peter Giuliano, the Director of Symposium at SCAA and an ardent supporter of a combined SCAA / SCAE, who told us that unification would result in a “clearly articulated research initiative” happening alongside the growing focus on coffee research underway at Texas A&M University, the University of Copenhagen, and other research institutions. For Giuliano, post-unification means “events, research, and education activity will all see a bump” for trade organization members and the coffee industry at large.

Founding SCAA President and co-author of the “vote no” paper Donald Schoenholt told Sprudge in a phone interview that his worry is for “the little guy, the individuals,” voicing concern that “the individual is going to be gone and replaced by the great collective. And if the membership wants that, that’s their right to decide. But if the membership realizes that…they might not vote the way the leadership wants them to vote.”

“The idea [of unification] is not a bad idea,” Schoenholt continued, “but this has been done so very badly. This has been done with such lack of grace, it’s making people who should be on your side be your adversary. In any merger situation—the term ‘unification’ is a very politically charged phrase, and was chosen to elicit positive responses by voters and listeners—there’s something about every merger that can go badly that you don’t anticipate. It’s the law of unintended consequences.”

Schoenholt, the de facto leader of “No” vote, isn’t aware of a grassroots movement to resist the merger beyond private emails and Facebook comments. When asked if there was a wide-reaching member movement, Schoenholt conceded, “If there are, and I would hope there are, I don’t know of them.” To some, the division seems to be drawn along generational lines; many of the protesting past presidents served before today’s generation of coffee small business owners and Barista Guild members started coffee careers.

For their part, SCAA leaders are cautiously optimistic about the coming voting results (and thrilled by the previous returns from Europe). When asked what members could expect should the vote pass, Rhinehart told Sprudge, “If you’re engaged, you’ll notice having more resources and things like more camps, more training, more competitions, and more opportunities to interact with the association.”

But don’t mistake unification for a sure thing. “What we have seen is that the anti-unifying forces are energetic, and are making their voices heard,” says Giuliano. “I don’t want to take anything for granted. People thought Brexit was no way, and then look what happened.”

SCAA/SCAE unification voting for SCAA members began on July 5th and will conclude on August 5th. For more on the vote, check out Liz Clayton’s coverage for Sprudge from May 2016.

We still don’t know what’s happening with the “i”.

This story is developing…

*Figures on SCAA, SCAE & World Coffee Events corporate scale quoted from SCAA Director Ric Rhinehart at the SCAA Unification Member Forum in Portland, Oregon on July 12th, 2016. 

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World Barista Champion Berg Wu: The Sprudge Interview

On June 25th, 2016, barista competitor Berg Wu became the first person from Taiwan to win the World Barista Championship, an annual international exhibition of coffee skill staged this year in Dublin, Ireland. This was a landmark win for not just Berg Wu, but for recognition of the high quality of coffee culture in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan (officially the Republic of China). Taiwan has triumphed on the national stage once before when Pang-Yu Liu took home top honors at the 2014 World Cup Tasters Championship. Together we can see a clear trend: the establishment of Taiwan as a major force in world coffee culture.

Berg Wu is now, and forever more, a World Barista Champion. We caught with him from Taipei for his first major English-language interview following his landmark win in Dublin. Below we learn more about Simple Kaffa, Berg Wu’s cafe in Taipei, gain some insight on the unorthodox methods he used to win (portafilter ice bath, huh?), and ask his advice for future generations of competitors.

Hello Berg Wu, and congratulations again from all of us at Sprudge. First, please tell us more about your cafe, Simple Kaffa — are you a roaster as well as a coffee bar? Where are you located? What equipment do you use there? We hear you are famous for your green tea rolls…tell us more, please!

My coffee shop, Simple Kaffa, is “hidden” in a selective shop in a basement, making it a little bit difficult to find. Some magazines even list us as one of the most hidden coffee shops in Taipei. But the location is actually good because it is in a very popular shopping area in Taipei. Due to the limitation of the place, we are not roasting our coffees there. We placed our roaster, which is now a Diedrich 5kg, in another place. In our coffee shop, we have a La Marzocco GB5 espresso machine with two group heads, and Mahlkonig EK43 and La Marzocco Swift grinders. We use other grinders such as Anfim, Robur, Vario K30 Air, Major, etc., in the roastery for training and other usages.

We started our coffee shop in 2011 but it didn’t go well in the first year. Specialty coffee is a trend but not part of the culture yet. Desserts, or afternoon tea, on the other hand, attract more people’s attention than coffees. So we started to try to make desserts by ourselves based on our limited skills of baking. The matcha roll is one example of success. We think one reason is that we tried at least 8 kinds of matcha tea and made 8 rolls and invited friends to come and “cup” those matcha rolls. We let them vote for their favorites and then we decided to use the most loved one. The process was fun.

Simple Kaffa has become a place where people will come when they need a cup of good coffee with a piece of nice cake.

You have competed at the World Barista Championship before — what made this year different?

This year we were fully aware of various situations we might encounter in a world competition. The milk, the grinder, the temperature, and humidity of Dublin. Take the milk for example. We’ve been struggling with milk since the WBC in Rimini 2014, because in Taiwan, most of the milk is UHT. We were not capable of testing various milk from small dairies and immediately finding the milk that might work the best for our coffee. So for this purpose, we purchased almost all milk we can find in Taiwan and tried to improve with our ability of milk cupping.

Berg Wu competing in 2014. [File Photo]

What does it mean to you to become the first World Barista Champion of Taiwan?

I am very proud. Because this is a way to let the world know the potential of coffee industry in Taiwan. Although we still consume more tea than coffee, the industry is getting mature. The “coffee impression” of a city matters to us when we travel. And I really hope that the world can now have a very good coffee impression on Taiwan now. Not just dumplings, night markets, and foot massage.

We are very curious about one of your techniques — soaking your portafilter in cold water before pulling espressos. Tell us about why you did this, and what was your research process to reach this decision? Was the water flavored in any way?

This method is just for this coffee, which is full of delicate aromas of flower and citron. These kind of aromas are small molecules and disappear very quickly when being heated. That’s why we didn’t want the espresso to be re-heated by the bottom of the portafilter after extraction. This method might work for other floral, light, refreshing coffees, but might not suit for coffees with bigger molecules of aroma. So we flipped the portafilters over and poured the iced water mainly on the bottom and the spout, where espresso touches after being extracted.

The bottom of the portafilter is just cold, not chilling cold. Our intention was not to cool down the espresso. We were just trying to avoid the espresso being reheated. And the last question is interesting—we’ve never thought about this, but no, the iced water is not flavored. It’s just normal drinkable water because our intention is to decrease the temperature to showcase what has already in it, not adding flavors to it.

You served just 0.3cm of microfoamed milk in your milk drinks — why did you make this choice?

To be honest, if the rules allow it, we would rather not to pour any foam because this coffee is very delicate and complicated in flavors and I think foam will hinder a person from sensing those delicate flavors. For us, 0.3cm offered a perfect balance between taste and latte art.

Tell us more about your winning coffee, please.

The coffee I used is a 2015/2016 crop of washed Geisha from Finca Deborah, Panama. Deborah is a very new farm because this is just their second year of exporting Geisha. This farm is very special because we all know that elevation is a key factor in coffee quality and its elevation is 1950 meters above sea level. I respect the producer, Jamison Savage, very much because creating Deborah at this elevation, and in such isolation and against so many odds has been a great challenge. We believe a focused dedication and a commitment to quality are keys to their success.

Deborah gives something very unique that nobody can identify. It’s in the finish and leaves a beautiful lingering aftertaste that comes and goes for hours. Very honey-like, but unmistakably floral. The coffee also contains an entire bouquet of flowers, like the farm, as well as fruits (dark and tropical), but the cup is round and not one particular flower reveals itself in any obvious way—except for perhaps the coffee flower. It’s elegant in this way, unlike so many other coffees. The complexity is so high that I am very addicted to it myself.

Wow, that sounds incredible. How did you adapt such a fascinating coffee for your signature drink? And where did the idea of using an oil diffuser come from?

I like this coffee’s complexity very much. I like its aroma and juiciness in shorter extraction and I also like its long and lingering finish in longer extraction. This coffee makes me realize there are things that a barista cannot do with an espresso because we are just trying to sacrifice less. But with this signature drink, I am able to showcase all nice aspects of this coffee’s complexity. As for the oil diffuser, we all like aromas but I think aromas are mostly nasal and disappear very quickly. So I wanted the aroma to become flavor by infusing the drink with pressure.

Who would you say has been your greatest inspiration as a barista competitor?

That will be Gwilym Davies because he was very humble and calm. When I watched him competing, I wish that someday I can be as calm as he was on the stage.

Gwilym Davies [File Photo]

If you could give advice to any new barista competitor, what would you tell him or her?

Have faith in yourself and your team, set up a goal and try to solve the problems ahead one by one. Whenever you feel lost or helpless, try to remind yourself of that goal. Don’t forget why you compete.

Do you have anyone you would like to thank?

My wife, Chee. She is not just my wife but also my coach, my life partner, my mentor, and my best friend.

Thank you so much, Berg Wu!

Sprudge Media Network’s coverage of the 2016 World Barista Championship was made possible by direct support from Urnex Brands, Nuova Simonelli, and KitchenAid.

The 2016 World Barista Championship lives at SprudgeLive.com, the worldwide leader in coffee sports. 

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Nolan Hirte of Proud Mary Coffee: The Sprudge Interview

Nolan Hirte

Back in May, we reported on an interesting bit of news: Proud Mary, a coffee roasting & cafe brand based in Melbourne, Australia, have plans to open a wholly owned and operated Proud Mary cafe in Portland, Oregon. It’s news that first broke via Broadsheet, an Australian food, beverage, and culture publication with offices in Melbourne and Sydney. In that Broadsheet feature, Proud Mary owner Nolan Hirte announced his intentions for the Portland market and ruffled a few feathers along the way.

“I honestly reckon it’s harder and more risky for me to do another three cafes here in Melbourne,” Hirte told Broadsheet, “than it is to go to the other side the planet and do something I know really well, in an area where there’s nothing.” Hirte went on: “One of the big holes there is service. Not in restaurants, not in bars. In coffee shops and cafes.”

If you’d reckon that coffee folk in Portland, Oregon—an established coffee town if there ever was one!—might not take too kindly to an outsider seeming to knock their service style and declaring the existing coffee scene to be “nothing”, well, you’d be right. Our reblog of the Broadsheet feature was shared widely on Facebook and Twitter, especially by readers in the Pacific Northwest, and the commentary around it was, let’s say, not entirely positive.

But as can happen in this fast-moving digital news age, we had questions of our own for Hirte that went beyond his quick hitter in Broadsheet: were those quotes taken wildly out of context? Did he really think the coffee scene in Portland was “nothing”? Was he just, in the great Australian tradition, stirring a bit of shit?

To learn more we sat down for an interview with Nolan Hirte, and offered him a chance to clear the air. What we found was a passionate, excited coffee entrepreneur looking to bring his unique blend of rare coffees and comfortable cafe service to a new and growing market. Inside Hirte’s spacious new Alberta Street cafe / restaurant hybrid space, early phases of construction are underway—he could be open in time for Christmas.

Sprudge co-founder Jordan Michelman spoke with Nolan Hirte via email. 

Some of your quotes in the Australian food and beverage publication Broadsheet rubbed folks the wrong way here in the States. Is there anything about that interview you would like to speak to?

Firstly I would like to apologise if you read that article. It sounds like I am having an attack at Portland and the US. There was some truth in the things I was trying to say in that article; however, it was taken way out of context.

I did not write the article. It was written after a conversation with Nick Connellan, a journalist from Broadsheet. I didn’t get the chance to read it over prior to publishing, and he was unaware that it would be taken negatively in the U.S. I think this statement would have been less offensive and have been more accurate if it had said:

“I honestly reckon it’s harder and more risky for me to do another three cafes here in Melbourne than it is to go to the other side of the planet and do something I know really well, in an area where there’s nothing quite like the cafe model we have flogged to death here.”

I’m well aware how amazing and now somewhat saturated the coffee scene in Portland is. It’s considered the mecca of coffee in the States. I’m also aware how competitive it is there. The difference for us is not the coffee, but more the cafe model. When I said the biggest gap between the States and Australia was “service” I didn’t mean I think the service is bad in the States at all. It’s amazing; however, it’s a completely different style to what we have here.

This is the fundamental reason why we want to come over to Portland: we want to surround ourselves with the best in the industry and try and make a difference. I actually couldn’t think of a better place on the planet for it, the audience is right and the stage is set. I am sure Portland will really appreciate all the little things we do that make Prouds special.

What draws you to Portland as opposed to any other US city?

There is something special in Portland, you can see it in the people that live there and in its amazing surroundings. We think the audience in Portland will really appreciate all those little details and extra things that go in to making Proud Mary what it is.

Nolan speaks at Sustainable Harvest’s Let’s Talk Relationship Coffee in Melbourne, Australia.

There’s a number of Australian cafe brands moving to the US — do you think the work done by Mark Dundon & Russell Beard has helped to blaze a trail? Do you expect more Australian entrepreneurs to open up Stateside?

Mark and Russell are always blazing trails, but to be honest I think the fact that there is a number of Australian café brands moving to the US has more to do with the Australian café model being thrashed out hard here and the opportunities that can be seen elsewhere where this café model is really only just beginning to take off. I think we will see the Australian café model spread Stateside for sure.

You’ll be bringing over a chef from Melbourne—will you be bringing baristas from Melbourne as well?

Yes, I am bringing over one of my good friends and old Head Barista Calum Oliver. He brings with him a wealth of experience and passion. After finishing up with us around three years ago he went on to be the coffee director for Jones the Grocer and then most recently helped set up the coffee program for Heston Blumenthal’s ‘The Fat Duck’ restaurant whilst it was in Melbourne last year.

For our readers who have never visited, can you tell us a bit about the Proud Mary experience in Melbourne?

The Proud Mary experience starts the moment your foot steps in the door—you are stepping in to our home and we want to treat you that way. We will find you a seat, bring you some water and the coffee and food menu, which will often include specials as some ingredients are only in season for a fleeting moment and we want to be able to show them off while they are at their peak. Our model is closer to a restaurant with table service, but maybe a little more relaxed and loud.

We roll our own oats. We make our own curd, yoghurt, and cheese in-house. We even make our own kombucha and fermented kefir drinks. The list goes on and on. This obviously doesn’t even mention the coffee, which as you know, we also take that very seriously and make every effort to understand where we are buying and sourcing our coffee from and the impact that it can make. We have been supporting and showcasing the hard work of the farmers for many years now.

What parts of the Proud Mary experience do you think will most resonate with Portlanders, and why?

It is really important to us that we know where our ingredients come from, how they were handled, and how they can benefit us all. The way we eat can be beneficial not only to us but the planet we leave behind. We recognise the hard work it takes to produce superior products and we want to support those that care about the bigger picture. I think that Portlanders will really appreciate being able to get a range of genuine artisan products often made in-house all under one roof.

What parts of the Proud Mary experience won’t be coming over to the States, and why?

Vegemite because Vegemite.

Proud Mary Portland will be located on Alberta Street and 20th, opening late 2016. Visit Proud Mary’s official website for updates.

 

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Coffee Cocktails: The 3 Rules for Using Syrup

Love coffee cocktails? Not sure how to create your own? Never fear: designing cocktails isn’t as intimidating as it may seem. In fact, if you start using carefully chosen simple syrups, I’m confident you’ll soon have a menu full of unique, fun, and delicious drinks.

However, when using simple syrups, there are some common mistakes that people fall into. So from choosing your flavours to how much syrup to use, here are three key things to consider.

SEE ALSO: Coffee Cocktails: How to Make Your Own Simple Syrups

An endless choice of flavors. Credit: Heydrienne via Flickr

1. Flavor

When it comes to syrups, if you can dream it up, you can make it happen. Experiment with edible flowers, spices, herbs, seasonal fruit, and even candy to create unique flavors. Don’t be afraid to get specific, either: honeycrisp apple syrup is a popular autumn hit at my café, Three Crowns Coffee.

Of course, with all these options, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by choice. So if you’re working on a syrup for a specific drink, start with the coffee’s tasting notes. Opting for a syrup that highlights or complements flavors already in the coffee can lead to an incredible drink.

Remember that the flavoring agent isn’t the only thing affecting the flavor, either: try different types of sugar for different syrups. A clear, “straightforward” syrup will probably suit white sugar. But if you want added complexity and an undertone of molasses, try raw sugar or one of its variants. For added floral impact, use honey. And if you’re really feeling adventurous, melt down some candy in some water.

What flavor would these add to your syrups? Credit: Elisa Azzali via Wikipedia

2. Consistency

Just as weight is incredibly important in making coffee, it’s also important in making syrup. And consistency is only possible when you weigh out your ingredients every single time. This is particularly important because you’re dealing with sugar; since sugar is granulated, just like coffee, it tends to sit unevenly. Visually estimating the weight in a measuring cup will produce different results in every batch.

But consistency isn’t just about weighing the ingredients before you begin. It’s also about how you cook them. So never bring your water to a boil. This will evaporate it, which will then throw off the ratio of sugar to water. If you’re worried, then technically you could make simple syrups with cold water – but the sugar will melt much faster and much more consistently in hot water. I normally set my hot water kettle to 205℉/96℃ for this reason.

Consistency allows you to control the strength and sweetness of your syrup. Credit: Dvortygirl via Wikipedia

3. Balance

Knowing when to use simple syrups can be just as difficult as knowing what flavors to create – and just as important. Get to know your customers, both as a demographic and as individuals. If they like particularly sweet drinks, then lean toward the sweet. If they don’t, then be careful not to overdo it with the syrups. That being said, don’t be afraid to be a little heavier handed for customers new to specialty coffee who want something sweet to drink.

As for what is “too much”, ultimately balance is the key. Especially when creating specialty drinks. Simple syrups are a powerful way to infuse flavor into a drink, and rarely is more than an ounce needed. Often half an ounce will suffice. Don’t forget to take into account the size of the drink, too.

Consider the other ingredients in the drink, as well. If you use cocktail bitters, then you’ll almost certainly need a sweetener to counteract the otherwise bracing bitterness. But if you’re simply trying to sweeten a latte or cappuccino, you’ll likely need less.

Although this may be difficult to begin with, it’ll get easier with practice. Study classic cocktail recipes for some direction, and learn by trial and error – soon you’ll have an almost instinctive grasp of what will work.

Using these will require sweeter syrups – or a heavier dose. Credit: Scott Schiller via Flickr

Flavor, consistency, and balance: the three crucial factors for a successful syrup-based cocktail. Remember these and, no matter how creative or experimental your drinks become, they’re bound to be a success. So start mind-mapping ideas, and have fun!

Still not sure where to begin? Start off with our recipe for lavender syrup – we’ve even supplied a cocktail recipe to use it in.

Written by E. Squires and edited by T. Newton.

Perfect Daily Grind

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7 Good Cafes In Sukhumvit, Bangkok: The Sprudge Coffee Guide

The center of Bangkok’s fledgling coffee community is in the Sukhumvit area, sandwiched roughly between its 55th and 63rd side streets, or sois. This is a guide to (some of) the coffee shops therein. Within a three-kilometer radius, with no shop more than a 10-minute walk from the next, a person could feasibly visit all seven of these spots in a single day. But while it’s perfectly acceptable to use this as a jumping off point for exploring Bangkok coffee, the actual best way to do so is to simply get here, find a shop, and ask, “Where else should I go?”

That was what I did about a half-hour after arriving in the city for what essentially amounted to a 36-hour layover on my way home to Cambodia from the Thai coast. Within 10 minutes of sitting down at Roots Coffee on Soi Sukhumvit 55—which just so happened to be the closest reputable establishment to the Airbnb, according to a pre-trip Google search for “good coffee bangkok”—three baristas were huddling around a scrap of paper poring over the question, debating ideas, areas, and opinions on Thai coffee.

This is standard practice in Bangkok: shops where you find not just a willingness but an enthusiasm for sharing information about other shops.

So the Roots baristas made me a list, and a schedule for the next day based around opening times and my girlfriend’s only requested activity in the city: a midday jaunt to the Thai Red Cross’s Snake Farm—which, by the way, is highly recommended. In fact, I’d make it my only non-coffee Bangkok recommendation. Come to Bangkok for the coffee, and stay for the snakes, which you can watch being milked and have your picture taken with, Britney Spears- style.

But really—you should come for the coffee.

Hands and Heart Coffee

With early opening hours and a slightly out of the way location on the south side of main thoroughfare Sukhumvit Road, Hands and Heart is a perfect place to start a day of drinking coffee. But the shop, entirely devoted to cold brew and hand-dripping on the AeroPress and Kalita Wave, is a destination throughout the day—not just 7 a.m. The barista on bar during my visit explained that a recent bloom in the popularity of drip coffee among the city’s Instagramming youth—combined with Hands and Heart’s stark white decor—make the shop a preferred spot for selfies. But Hands and Heart is more than that. Its coffee-forward model highlights roasters from around the world—most recently it featured a selection from Has Bean Coffee and The Coffee Collective. With a second location opening in the commerce hub of Siam Square in April, it’s clear that the passion put into the pared-down model—the coffee menu essentially boils down to black, white, hot and cold—is working.

Hands and Heart Coffee is located at 33 Sukhumvit 38 Alley. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Kaizen Coffee Company

The year-old Kaizen Coffee Company is a two-story shop tucked away in a small urban strip mall on Sukhumvit 63, meaning it can be easy to miss, even with its indoor spiral staircase. Look out for a tell-tale cold-drip orb in the window, as well as faint traces of an Obi-Wan Kenobi blue-color scheme on the facade—you’ll find it. The shop is owned by two brothers and offers everything from espresso to siphon to one of the city’s only nitro cold brews. Although Kaizen doesn’t roast its own coffee, there are plans to start within the year—for now though, Kaizen subcontracts a company to produce its own imprint featuring beans from Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America, which are brewed alongside options from other local and international roasters. And while Kaizen is known for its excellent coffee, its food menu is insane—think everything from egg-based savory Australian-style sandwiches to a litany of pastry-case offenders. Kaizen is already a lynchpin in any Bangkok coffee tour, but expect it to only get better—kaizen, in Japanese, is a philosophy espousing the pursuit of continuous improvement.

Kaizen Coffee Company is located at 582/5 Soi Ekkamai 26-28 (Tai Ping Tower). Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Ekkamai Macchiato

This shop was just a month old when I stopped in on my way from Kaizen. From the outside, Ekkamai Macchiato looks like the house of someone with more sensibility and style than you. And in fact it is—the owner’s. Before it was a multi-roaster, Thanawit Kittikosin’s coffee shop was his childhood home. The kitchen where he now brews coffee (from a rotating cast of local roasters including Phil Coffee Company, Roots, and Bottomless Espresso) is also where he cut his teeth experimenting with drip coffee as a teenager. As the neighborhood shifted, however, and after insistence from friends and family members that he turn his coffee hobby into a business, Kittikosin began renovations on the house, converting its downstairs into a cafe and upstairs bedrooms into co-working spaces. The installation of a La Marzocco Linea Classic completed the transformation, and Ekkamai Macchiato opened its doors as both the newest and one of the oldest faces in the fledgling coffee district.

Ekkamai Macchiato is located at 6/2 Ekkamai 12 Khlong Tan Nuea, Watthana. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

One Ounce for Onion

Founded simply as Onion, a small eyeglasses shop, more than half a decade ago, the store that now occupies a low-slung, wood-paneled building within a maze of Ekkamai alleyways has become an all-purpose clothing store stocking brands that would make even the most twill-and-selvedge-clad consumer’s heart sing. But if you go, you’ll likely need a boost from One Ounce for Onion, a side-car coffee spot with seasonally rotating, manually pulled espresso at its heart. Using coffee roasted in-house under the Brave Roasters imprint, the coffee focus here is Thailand—although some beans are imported, the vast majority are domestic. The barista working when I visited explained that the intent with Brave and Onion is not just to make a good cup of coffee, but also to prove that good coffee can be made out of Thai beans (like the Flag Bearer Espresso blend). Of all the espresso I drank in Bangkok, Brave’s, whether for its standout packaging or complexity of flavor, stood out the most. And like at Kaizen, Onion’s brunch menu is killer. You can get a popsicle on top of a waffle here, for Pete’s sake!

One Ounce for Onion is located at 19/12 Ekamai 12 Road Klongton-Nua, Wattana. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Phil Coffee Company

Speaking of Pete, “Phil” is not a person’s name but an acronym for the four founders: Peter, Han, I Ping, and Laura Wang. Han, I Ping, and Laura are siblings, having moved with Peter, their father, to Bangkok from Kuala Lumpur when they were young. Phil itself was born three years ago out of an idea hatched in Melbourne, where Han was in college studying psychology. While his classes weren’t inspiring, Australia’s reverence for coffee was—Han drank in that culture before dropping out of school and bringing the less conventional aspects of his education home. It didn’t take much to rope his sisters and dad into the business, and after a brief training stint in Taiwan, Han started a small roaster in a warehouse space on the outskirts of Bangkok. With some consultation from Ink and Lion Café, Phil began as a wholesale operation only, then moved to its current space, at the end of a circuitous alley off Sukhumvit 63, to meet the growing demand of its inner-city customers for a more convenient pick-up location. Phil currently offers a dizzying variety of both Thai and foreign single-origin coffees and blends—some of the packaging mascots of which just so happen to be adorable birds and bears.

Phil Coffee Company is located at 21, Sukhumvit 61, North Klongtan, Wattana. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Ink and Lion Café

The “ink” in Ink and Lion represents the artwork lining the walls of this small micro-roastery just a three-minute walk (through a grocery-store parking lot) from Phil. The lion is a nod to La Marzocco’s trademark spirit animal, which peers out from a GB5 at the packed cafe space of laptopped patrons. Where Ink and Lion really comes into its own, however, is when the two halves of its name come together in its coffee. Each coffee roasted in-house is designed from the ground up, from origin to roast profile to packaging. An artist works with married owners Kiak and Pui (full names Adithep Pinijpinyo and Nongphan Tangtaweekul, respectively) to tailor each calligraphed bag to the tasting notes of the coffee inside it. At last visit, three single-origin coffees from Ethiopia, Colombia, and Chiang Mai were featured, in addition to a full-bodied blend roasted at Pacamara Coffee, itself only a 20-minute walk away. Born in Bangkok, the couple spent time in the mid-aughts in the Bay Area, when the idea to bring a cafe model like Blue Bottle Coffee or Four Barrel Coffee back to Thailand was hatched. Four years ago, they returned to bring that idea to fruition, and business has been brisk ever since.

Ink and Lion Café is located at Ekamai 2, Sukhumvit 63. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Roots Coffee

It’s maybe fitting that Roots is last on this list, seeing as it was the first shop I visited in Bangkok, the shop I visited most, and is also considered the de facto godfather of the city’s movement toward specialty coffee. The Roots in Sukhumvit is on the bottom floor of a self-billed concept space/mall/gathering ground called The Commons that in reality looks like the concrete-and-glass library of the future. The roastery-cum-cafe was established as the coffee-focused arm of food-forward all-day eatery Roast, which has an excellent outpost on the Commons’ fourth floor that is worth a visit regardless of the time of day. The Commons’ ground floor is a market of restaurants and food stalls offering everything from Thai food to pizza, tacos, artisanal pot pies, and specialty coffee, courtesy of Roots. And special it is. In 36 hours, with a bit of assistance, I consumed three cold brews (which rotate monthly depending on the whims of the seasons and baristas), including two flavored with homemade peach extract and a third done up with nut milk and chocolate; three espressos; and countless mini and very delicious biscotti, which just sit at the end of the bar in a big glass jar, waiting for you to eat as many as you deem appropriate for the amount you’ve paid into an “honesty” container.

Roots Coffee is located in The Commons at Thonglor 17, Sukhumvit 55. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

This isn’t it for Bangkok coffee though—there are dozens of other spots worth your hard-earned baht throughout the city—but it should be plenty to keep you busy for a day.

Now go to Snake Farm, take some cool snake photos, post them with lots of snake emojis, and thank me later.

Michael Light (@MichaelPLight) has written previously for GOOD Magazine and Wag’s Revue. Read more Michael Light on Sprudge.

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Hong Kong: Stylish Quality At I Love You So Coffee

In the ribcage-like network of streets that make up Hong Kong’s evolving Sai Ying Pun district, a quiet yet devastatingly stylish new coffee spot can be found in a space that once housed a kindergarten. Hints of its former incarnation can be seen in the wrought-iron depictions of Disney characters at the entrance, but otherwise, it’s a new start—the signature geometric lines of Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, who was tasked with the interior design, and a set of dramatic glass-and-steel concertina windows immediately tells you this particular venue is not quite like its neighbors.

I Love You So Coffee (ILYSC) is less a stand-alone cafe and more a coffee concession that takes up the front of house at the 8,000-square-foot Potato Head, the zeitgeist-nailing Balinese lifestyle brand that opened its first Hong Kong venue earlier this summer. Set among working-class barbershops, tiny estate agents, and local diners, ILYSC has just recently started catching the attention of bleary-eyed commuters and curious denizens, who can now either grab a brew starting from 7:30 in the morning, or take a cheeky midafternoon coffee break in the eccentric, brightly colored lounge/bar beneath its futuristic canopy of hanging greenery.

Just as the Potato Head concept is new to Hong Kong, ILYSC’s pedigree is perhaps better known among Tokyoites, who had the chance to experience its first incarnation as a tiny coffee pop-up that operated during British design collective Tomato‘s 25^th Anniversary Exhibition “O,” hosted in the Japanese capital earlier this spring. That particular project was conceived by Trey Shores, the global development director for PTT Family, the company behind the Potato Head brand. Something of a brew nerd himself, Shores’s coffee journey has included stints under the tutelage of veterans and legends such as George Howell and Scott Rao, the latter playing a key part in the design of I Love You So Coffee’s program along with Fuglen Coffee‘s head roaster Kenji Kojima.

For the Hong Kong opening, they tapped the expertise of Vassily Lissouba, an international coffee trainer and barista who cut his teeth at Rao’s legendary Cafe Myriade in Montreal, Canada. It should come as no surprise then that the brew bar showcases beans from Vancouver’s 49th Parallel Roasters (a longtime Myriade co-conspirator), five varieties of which I was lucky enough to try over the course of one stormy afternoon, along with fresh croissants from Bread Elements (one of Hong Kong’s best purveyors of quality carbs). The bar will more likely host two to three seasonal offerings that will rotate every two to eight weeks.

There was an Ethiopia Deri, a fabulously fresh and zingy coffee that 49th Parallel describes as being full of Meyer lemon and yellow-plum flavor; I added “a slight touch of jasmine tea” and “juiciness that keeps going” to my own notes. Another Ethiopia coffee, the Bokasso (like the Deri, also from the Sidamo region), is also a fresh crop release, which is apparent the moment this silky coffee touches down on your palate: a light, cucumber freshness makes it incredibly easy to drink, and I thought it also showcased a slight shiso-like pizzazz. We also sampled 49th Parallel’s Colombia Buena Vista (“smells like gummy bears!” tweeted the roaster back in June), Guatemala Poaquil, and Guatemala San Juan. The only espresso we tried was an Ethiopia Biftu Gudina (aka “Epic Espresso”), brewed to precision using a Decent Tamper and a two-group La Marzocco Linea PB espresso machine with built-in scales in the drip trays. Everything else? Surprisingly, batch brewed on a FETCO.

The thing about batch brew, Lissouba admits, is that it’s a method with an unfortunate reputation, something he’s adamant should change. “Unless you’re lucky, you’ll end up being served coffee that is likely to have been brewed more than an hour and a half ago,” he says of cafes that give batch brew a bad name. “By then, it will have developed sour, astringent flavors, and lose most, if not all of its vibrancy. It’s no wonder people go for the freshness of a pour-over, if given the choice. But if done right, some of the best coffee of my life came out of batch brew,” he says with a shrug. “The quality of the extraction is great.”

Giving it a go won’t break your bank, in any case. Currently, batch brews are priced at HK$30 (US $4) a cup, whereas the pour-overs are more in line with typical Hong Kong prices at HK$50 ($6.50) a pop—a system that Lissouba hopes will encourage more customers to try it out. “Two of my favorite products are coffee and pastries,” he explains. “Coffee is complex, aromatic, and unique. Pastries require a high level of cooking and preparation. When you have both, you can have a highly enjoyable gastronomic experience without paying for a fancy restaurant.”

With I Love You So’s combination of a super-stylish environment, killer beans, and consistent brews, we can’t imagine declaring anything less than love for this little neighborhood coffee bar.

I Love You So Coffee is located at 100 Third Street, Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

Charmaine Mok is the digital editor-in-Chief at Hong Kong Tatler. Read more Charmaine Mok on Sprudge.

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