Yet again, another year has passed. And as I did last year, I’ve been looking back at everything that happened in coffee this year. From meeting the Northwest’s first certified coffee sommelier, to following local innovations in cold brew coffee, to attending the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s 27th annual conference and watching the World Barista Championships finals in Seattle, all sorts of things happened in the Northwest coffee world in 2015. Sit back grab one of your favorite personalized photo mugs, fill it with your best coffee, and enjoy. Take a look below to see what Caffeination Cascadia covered in the last 12 months.
Way back at the start of the year we were already looking forward to some of the things 2015 was to bring (cat cafés, the World Barista Championship and more among them). Later in January, I checked in on how Northwest coffee and chocolate producers fared at 2015’s Good Food Awards (which promptly inspired me to make espresso chocolate sauce). As they were in season, we explored three great, locally roasted Burundian coffees, and did the same with Brazilian coffees. I personally had a ton of fun researching my list of the top 10 Northwest coffee shop names, as well as investigating the reasons why Seattle is at the epicenter of the bikini barista phenomenon.
Going into spring, I checked in with some of your favorite local wineries to hear about their favorite local coffee shops; meanwhile, some of your favorite coffee shops and roasters shared their favorite Northwest wineries. Then we heard the extraordinary story of Bad Boys Brands, a group of ex-convicts building a coffee and lifestyle brand from scratch. In April, when the Specialty Coffee Association of America brought its annual conference to Seattle for a second consecutive year, I walked the conference floor, sampled exceptional coffee drinks of all kinds and watched the finals of the World Barista Championship as it was being broadcast live. Around the same time, we saw two innovative collaborative projects that blurred the boundaries of the coffee world by pairing roasters with artisan ice cream makers and chocolatiers.
During the long days of summer, we found some great cafés that stay up as late as we do. We also made the most of our leftover coffee by putting it in our gardens, ice cube trays, baked goods and body scrubs. As temperatures soared, we checked in on the state of cold brewed coffee in 2015 and noted trends including single-origin cold brews, nitro cold brews and hopped cold brews. During tourist season, I recommended the best coffee shops to visit in each of the region’s three largest cities (for visitors and local stay-cationers alike). I listed the top 10 Northwest-based coffee chains by number of locations, which ranged in size from three-location micro-chains to a certain Seattle-based mega-chain with 21,000 locations and counting. I sought out coffee from outside of the Northwest being served at local cafés, and provided a recipe for DIY coffee liqueurs.
As summer turned to fall and days started to get colder, we featured four caffé corretto combinations guaranteed to warm you up. Pertaining to beer, we updated our coffee beer recommendations, and stopped by all the tables with brews incorporating coffee or chocolate at Elysian’s Great Pumpkin Beer Fest. We also kicked five beer-based recipes up a notch by replacing the standard beers in the original recipes with richer, heartier coffee beers. We also got a chance to chat with Erik Liedholm, the Northwest’s first certified coffee sommelier.
For the holidays, we rounded up some great coffee subscriptions to give as gifts and we considered the coffees and coffeehouses of Instagram in a round-up of the Northwest’s most Instagrammable cafés, which came after an earlier round-up of the best Northwest-based coffee Instagrammers to follow.
The year in coffee certainly didn’t disappoint, and I’m as excited about the things to come in the next 12 months as I was about 2015 this time last year. See you in 2016!
