I know. I can’t believe it’s New Year’s, either. I could have sworn I only just wrote my wrap-up of 2013. But so much has happened in coffee since then that it must have been a full year—it just took looking back at the last 12 months to realize it. Here are a few of my highlights.
- This year I was excited by trends that blurred the boundaries between coffee and other specialty beverages including wine, beer, spirits and sodas alike. All the way back in January, we saw the birth of a new Portland festival dedicated solely to coffee beer, one which highlighted major trends in the field. We saw coffee cocktail recipes that incorporated everything from gin (one of the clever concoctions from Marcus Boni of Bonavita) to amaro (in a new approach to coffee with spirits at Seattle’s coffee cocktail-focused Corretto). We saw cold brew treated like a specialty beverage in its own right, filling kegs and earning tap space alongside craft beers at savvy establishments over the summer, and we saw coffee turned into artisan soda at Café Medina in Vancouver following a trend in matching espresso and tonic.
- Coffee even forayed into legal gray space, incorporating cannabis in bottled cold brew from Mirth Provisions (the most read Caffeination Cascadia article to date!) and drawing crowds for bulletproof coffee tastings at a little Seattle lifestyle shop called Trichome. Meanwhile, tea found its way into artisan wine, beer and spirits alike, and espresso proved itself as a perfect match for savory food, finding its way onto your burgers, cheese and barbecue sauce.
- Another event had a successful first year: Convergence brought together the brightest minds in tech, art and coffee in a south Seattle warehouse for a night of nothing more than fantastic coffee, cocktails and conversation to match. The Specialty Coffee Association of America also chose Seattle as the site of its first ever two-year iteration of “The Event,” the colossal convention that draws more coffee growers, baristas and professionals than any other. 2014 was a success and 2015 is gearing up for the same again in April.
- The most fun to research were Seattle’s signature coffee drink, the Medici; an experiment with beer and coffee blending; a comprehensive guide to the subtleties of professional coffee cupping; a profile of two Northwest coffee consultants trying to change the way you experience coffee; and guides to your favorite distillers’ and brewers’ favorite cafés, with mirror round-ups of your favorite coffee shops’ favorite distilleries and breweries.
- We celebrated the holidays with chocolate from the lightest to the darkest for Halloween, the best after-dinner coffees on Thanksgiving, two rounds of coffee gifts for Christmas (which of course will work for birthdays and thank yous year-round), and National Coffee Day with—what else? We took coffee-in-hand field trips around the region, explored rich international coffee and tea traditions carrying on across the Northwest, and found all the Northwest coffee shops featured in movies. There were guides to the best shops with live music, cafés that give back to their communities, a continuation on coffee shops that aren’t just coffee shops, resources for learning more about both tea and coffee in the Northwest, and how to make your wedding coffee bar amazing.
There was far more in between, and there will be far more in the next 12 months. Here’s wishing you good coffee, tea and chocolate throughout 2015. Happy New Year!
