Hi!
You’re part of a carefully hand-picked, high-grade, top quality group of people granted access to the first edition of New York Coffee, a newsletter that makes sure you know more about coffee than all of your NYC friends.
Who’s this for?
NYC and anyone who loves coffee in it. I make sure there’s stuff in here for coffee professionals, too.
What you’ll get
A feed of new, notable coffee shops as they open. More importantly, whether or not it’s worth going to deep, deep Brooklyn for a cup, or if you should just stick to your usual haunts.
What the roasters & shops you already love are up to. What’s new? No coffee year-over-year is quite the same—you what you like.
World coffee updates and trends. I’m following newsletters, visiting coffee fests, and following any page that even looks at a coffee bean on Instagram so you don’t have to.
New recipes! I’ll be posting recipes for flavor syrups, spice combos, and whatever nonsense trend is making my feed blow up. If it’s good, it goes to you.
This week’s coffee shop spotlight!
This week (and every week, in my heart) we’re highlighting Dayglow coffee in Bushwick. With a lovingly looked-after storefront and insanely inventive recipes, Dayglow is likely 2023’s best NYC new café. Just to prepare you for the pure bliss, here’s a sampling of their menu:
Totoro – Black sesame, activated charcoal, distilled coffee, orange blossom, two types of raw honey, coconut, and oat [milk]
Belafonte a la Zissou – Distilled coffee, juniper berry, angelica root, grapefruit campari, white verjus
Phantom Thread – Espresso, soursop, guava, coconut palm sugar, champagne vinegar, cherrywood smoke infusion
Meanwhile, their shelves display dozens of coffees from roasters all around the world. Check out the absolutely-bonkers-list of options on their website. YMMV at the Brooklyn store, as they switch it out a lot. No worries, though—if you can’t find what you want, you can always get wasted at their in-house brewery. And then get another coffee after.
If you also get there on a weekend [Fri/Sat/Sun] around 5pm, head over first to the nearby Bunna Café for their Ethiopian coffee ceremony.
After all that, what more convincing do you need? Do they have vegan options? Of course. Are their weird recipes actually good? They’re amazing. Any other questions?
You can ask me on our next coffee date, at Dayglow.
What’s new, Jude?
Nothing. This is the first newsletter!
Dearest readers, I spoke too soon! I started writing this article last week, and in my ruminations over word choice, the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide was released! (wow! cool! yay!)
It’s all about green (unroasted) coffee and its price trends globally.
It’s by Emory college, who summarize donated data from 115 companies around the world. The stats seem to be sound 😍, but the data is much more indicative of commodity coffee—specialty coffee prices are less affected.
Some key observations [$ amounts are per pound]:
Coffees grown in Panama, Ecuador, and Bolivia had the highest three-year median prices ($9.77, $5.25, and $4.60).
Brazil had the lowest ($2.23).
Towards the end of 2020, commodity coffee prices doubled ($1.12→$2.25), and as of 2023 are finally coming back down ($1.73). That’s the New York C price, which is different from the FOB price (down $0.10 from 2021–2023).
88+/100 ranked coffees from small lots get the highest prices by quite a bit, at $10.58 in 2023. Pre-roasted.
This whole study matters more if you’re a roaster or if you drink a lot of folgers, so I’ll leave it at that. If you’d like to know more, fill out the form on their website.
Break time! I’d like to ask you to share this. Or, if you can, convince your friends, family, heist crew, ex-bosses, and even your cat to join. It’s a better spent ten minutes than meowing for food (it’s why they’re the ex-boss…).
And now…
Coffee news!
This week is huge for coffee news! If you want to get straight to the recipes feel free to skip this section.
2024 Coffee Stats Report
First and foremost, the Coffee Facts & Statistics 2024 [America] report is OUT!
Some key findings:
Black coffee popularity is going down, now with only 18% of people preferring it [from 40.9% in 2022].
51% purchase coffee at a coffee shop at least once a week.
66% of americans make coffee at home every day, preferring K-Cups and similar methods.
Taste is the biggest reason for why people drink coffee, at 83% of responses claiming so.
Do I trust this study? No. The survey demographic is heavily skewed, there is no mention of surveyed controls, and they use “it’s their favorite coffee” instead of the truth: “people like this”. However, the industry trusts this study, so your favorite coffee shops might change because of it.
Stats nonsense: Coffee articles are rife with bogus science. I’ll be checking methods & demographics for y’all so you aren’t tricked by Big Bean. The responses for this survey were largely from persons age 25-75 (not many Gen Z’s), skewed very female (986f out of 1325 total responses), and most were everyday coffee drinkers already.
Sprudgie Awards
Did you guys know this was a thing? Pacific Foods (the alt-milk & soup people) fund an award for top-in-class coffee roasters, producers, products, media, and cafés.
It’s a great place to check out if you’re looking for knowledgeable people to follow and new coffee. You know dayglow got a nomination, right 😉?
The page of nominees is here.
Other stuff
Italian researchers created “the most complete sequencing yet” of the genome of Coffea Arabica. It purported that location-modulated arabica differences were caused by chromosomal rearrangements, and not gene activation (organisms reacting to their environment) as much as was previously thought. Basically, it means we’re about to know how to customize coffee flavors without relying on hyper-specific tropical climates.
If you missed it, spraying the beans as they go in the grinder prevents static and “clumping” of coffee grounds. If this is new to you, up your spraying to four sprays as you grind. Thanks James Hoffman!
Panther Coffee is doing a popup inside Shopify’s headquarters on today (Feb 3) from 5–10pm. It’s also a latte art competition. Instagram ad here.
The Recipe Section
Even though I’m more of a winter/warm spices person, every now and again we need a little reminder of Spring. In that spirit, today we have a banger:
lime & matcha
The sweetness and acidity from the lime mingle with the bitterness of the matcha to make a drink that puts you in a springtime field in the countryside, lush with healthy leaves of grass gently billowing in the wind.
Tl;dr: It taste good.
Keep in mind this is an iced drink, and if you make it hot your milk will curdle and you’ll have a pretty awful time.
For the syrup
1 cup sugar
5/8 cup water
15 small limes, or 10 lemon-sized ones
We’re going to need about 1/2 cup lime juice and the zest from all of the limes
On medium heat:
melt the sugar and water with lime zest, then
add in the lime juice as it hits a boil.
move to low-medium heat, and lightly simmer for 35 min.
You really can make this with whatever citrus, but the amount will have to change thanks to the acid type and concentration1.
For the drink
crushed or nugget ice
1-2 tsp matcha/cup (YMMV, read the bag!)
our fresh lime syrup
vanilla syrup (simple syrup if you don’t have)
Make the matcha according to bag instructions with a whisk. If you don’t have a matcha whisk + setup, it might be clumpy and bitter. You can steam it or quickly blend it to reduce clumpiness, but the bitterness will still be there.
Fill a cup with the nugget ice about 80% of the way, and then pour the matcha to the ice line.
Mix in about 1oz lime syrup (2 tbsp), taste, add vanilla to assuage the leftover bitterness up to about .75oz, less if the vanilla is good. Add a bit more lime syrup on top as the lime flavor will need to shine. This is a sweet drink, but a delicious one. If sweet isn’t for you, add less vanilla.
Garnish with a fully peeled avocado lime zest.
For a less aggressive lime drink, check out Jeffery Morgenthaler’s lime cordial.
Thanks for tuning in!
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Enjoy your coffee!
If you want to learn more about acids and their role in citrus, please check out Corpse Revived’s article on the topic. Most notably, lime has more malic acid, which has ramifications if there are other acids in your drink. You can read a bit on that in that lime cordial recipe as well. If switching citrus, try aiming for the same amount of juice (1/2 cup) and always as much zest as you can get. I haven’t tried all of them, but the worst case you can add more simple syrup in your coffee if it isn’t sweet enough and more citrus syrup if it isn’t flavorful enough, or boil it down.