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To compete or not to compete…hmmm

So, I’ve been claiming that I’m gonna finally compete this year at the regional barista championships. Last year I had the privilege of being on the opposite yet “just as scary” side of judging both the Western Cape regionals and National Championships which left me with mixed feelings and thoughts and ongoing discussions. But… Look at my [...]

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One Vu too far?

One Vu too far?

Cape Talk’s Solly Philander was busy with a live broadcast at TRUTH. Prestwich, along the fan walk earlier, and part of their promo was to hand out free vuvuzela’s to those walking past who could blow one. Unfortunately, a few FIFA representatives thought that wasn’t a good idea…at all. BUT, they left them all behind [...]

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More brew options? Or are we and our customers fine with espresso?

Hmmm. Been thinking of a brew counter where we have different brew method options and a dedicated barista who is not making espresso-based drinks. Not a new idea internationally but not done so often in SA. Like plungers, drip-filters, our Abid filters, syphon filters, Aero-press. The reason? My best cuppa this week was a tie [...]

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Espresso cultural imperialism?

Have you ever had an Italian or someone who prefers and/or only knows the Italian style of making espresso coffees moan about your short-shot, too much coffee packed into the porta-filter, etc etc? It hasn’t happened to me in a while but I know our friends at Espresso Lab mentioned something a while back. Anyway, [...]

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A fourth coffee wave brewing? Hmmm…

As any geek in a field, I subscribe to several of the better RSS blog feeds regarding all things coffee[1.from baristas' thoughts, to espresso machine companies, to enthusiasts, to...you get the picture] and finally got around to some of the latest unread ones. After a brief skim-read through the titles I instantly had my attention [...]

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A brief overview of some exciting things recently

So it has been a while since I even thought of blogging because we’ve been rather busy and decided, now that my time is “freeing up” what with our awesome launch and a couple of functions following all closely after each other, I wanna share some of them with you. SO here we go (in [...]

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“You don’t purposefully buy Fair Trade coffee?!”

No we don’t purposefully buy Fair Trade coffee. We might have some, I don’t really know or mind1. “But why Zane? How could you? You keep going on about caring etc etc but now you tell us this.” as long as the farmer is getting a good price for a good product, I don’t personally [...]

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