03.06
Gerry Leary, who is seeing impaired, was led by his curious passion and love for good food to start his own coffee company when he as introduced to coffee roasting on a visit to San Francisco in the early 90′s. After learning the audible cues of coffee roasting, Gerry began searching for a job with several companies, but was unable to find anyone who would hire him, unconvinced that he could roast by smell and sound alone. So Gerry opened his own roastery and later bought a struggling coffee shop to learn more about his coffee and his customers.
The film was created by Ira Chute for Whole Food’s online magazine Dark Rye and offers an inspiring look at how far motivation can take a person, no matter what obstacles they may face. Beautifully filmed and heartwarming. Grab a fresh cup and enjoy.
The Unseen Bean
02.25
The Madrid-based coffee bar, Toma Café partnered up with Visual Shakers, a local film studio to develop this short and hypnotic look at the Chemex brew method. The process is beautifully filmed, edited and will easily inspire you to brew another cup. Enjoy.
01.20
In the latest celebrity specialty coffee sighting, singer/songwriter/actor and kleptomaniac Landon Pigg is seen falling in love over Stumptown Coffee in Brooklyn.
The video for his single “Coffee Shop” was filmed in the Greenpoint café, Brooklyn Label, where the star can freeze time long enough to steal apples, scarves, balloons, and even a bicycle (the worst kind of thief) to woo his equally melodramatic love interest.
If you have an affinity for roller derby or Ellen Page (guilty) you may recognize Pigg from the 2009 film “Whip It” where his role as a guitar playing heart throb first began on the big screen. Directed by Lenny Bass who’s no stranger to videos in coffee shops.
01.15
Stumptown just released the latest installment of their video series, which in the past has captured the beauty and the process of hard work that takes place at origin, now highlights the passion for coffee from within Stumptown’s own walls.
The film shares an honest and poetic behind-the-scenes look at Stumptown and serves as a tribute to the coffee loving team who live for the work that they do. It’s a well polished glimpse of the industry for the professional coffee crowd or just the coffee curious, with the kind of aspirational sheen you’d expect from a Levi’s commercial.
Created by Trevor Fife, the filmmaker who’s famous for the opening credits of True Blood and the BMW Unscripted series, does the specialty coffee industry far more justice than the Travel Channel has. Brew a fresh cup and enjoy.
Trevor has been a long-time collaborator with Stumptown: traveling to source with Duane starting in 2006, shooting films on farms like Guatemala Finca El Injerto, and traveling across Colombia, Ethiopia and Kenya, blending clean, pristine digital images with gritty and textural Super 8 and 16mm film. His work is not only easy on the eyes but captures the living, breathing spirit behind the coffee farms and the surrounding communities.
via Stumptown Coffee
12.26
Darth Vader, a moka pot and Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport are combined with the dark side of coffee brewing and stop motion animation in the latest video from Coffee Circle.
Using the Force to bring a bit of light (and quality) to one of the evilest of brew methods, the moka pot, this video will make Star Wars fans and coffee lovers alike grab their AeroPress Lightsabers to protect the Empire from terrible coffee.
11.26
Another day, another beautiful video from Coffee Circle. This one takes a look at espresso, one simple step at a time. Very zen. I think I’ll have another.
The perfect shot of espresso is one of the greatest gifts you can enjoy in your day. It’s hard to describe unless you taste it. However, in this video you find the most important steps of preparation to follow on your way to achieve a great espresso. Enjoy! - Coffee Circle
10.01
Short, sweet and inspiring. This quick and quirky film was created in response to the theme “fika” for Motion Monday—a website that showcases short animation projects from student’s at Hyper Island, a digital design school in Karlskrona, Sweden.
My favorite of the submissions is this simplified expression of a Moccamaster at work by Steffen Lyhne. You can browse more of them at Motion Monday.
[hat tip Simon Ålander]
09.24
From the peddlers of the internet’s best coffee video comes another gem. This time, Coffee Circle has turned the production value up to 11, while dialing down the content to pure gear lust. No tutorial or deeper meaning beyond the simple message, “good coffee, good gear.” A sales pitch at its core, but pure art on the surface. It’s subtly themed for autumn and the year’s greatest holiday—Halloween. Brew a fresh cup and Enjoy.
Video by Florian Döring for Coffee Circle
08.20
Since the early days of brew method videos, there’s been an impressive evolution in the quality of the videos being produced. From the academic, to the clever to the action packed—tutorial videos have become a way for coffee companies to educate consumers, market themselves and have a bit of fun in the process.
The latest addition to the brewtorial archive comes from Cartel Coffee Lab in Arizona. Using the same “Stranger Than Fiction” notations as their earlier video, their latest—also produced by Ah Dios—gives the mid-century modern Chemex a southwestern flair.
08.17
NPR ran a nice piece yesterday featuring Peter Giuliano (who recently departed from Counter Culture) and Allie Caran, who opened Artifact Coffee in Baltimore this summer, that highlights specialty coffee’s focus on coffee quality and its diverse flavors.
Increasingly, specialty roasters are working directly with coffee growers around the world to produce coffees as varied in taste as wines. And how are roasters teaching their clientele to appreciate the subtle characteristics of brews? By bringing an age-old tasting ritual once limited to coffee insiders to the coffee-sipping masses.
The writer, Allison Aubrey, visited a cupping at Artifact to learn about tasting the flavor nuances in coffee and some of the characteristics that help them develop.
Listen to the full story on NPR
