Coffee Chronicles: Upcoming Events

Because nobody has enough to do this time of year, why not take some time to further your coffee education? Though you can taste dozens of amazing coffees on your own in New York City, there's really nothing like tasting and cupping and thinking about coffee flavor with the people intimately connected with its preparation, roasting, and sourcing. For the curious, or hoping-to-be-convinced, there are some amazing events coming up in the very near future.

Scandinavian Coffee Tasting
Thursday, December 2, 4:00pm
Veronica People's Club (105 Franklin Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn) Free

Scandinavia is known for being among the most progressive regions of the coffee world (perhaps all that darkness is inspiring). Some stealthy visitors from Norway have arrived with treats from Kaffe, Solberg & Hansen, and Tim Wendleboe (Norway), Coffee Collective (Denmark) and Koppi (Sweden). NYC isn't often lucky enough to taste coffees from this far afield. Come out and taste! But you might want to stay away if "dark roast" is your thing.

Public Cupping at Cafe Grumpy
Saturdays, December 4 & 11
Cafe Grumpy Chelsea (224 West 20th Street, Manhattan) Free

Grumpy plays host to regular, informal talk-and-taste coffee cuppings. Come by and taste what coffees Brooklyn-based roaster is working on these days, and anything else delicious that's come their way!

Coffee 101
Wednesday, December 15
Joe (9 East 13th Street, Manhattan) $25 gets you the beginner's ropes: everything you've always wanted to know about why specialty coffee is worth pursuing but were afraid to ask? (Hopefully there's a discount for Frank Bruni.)

Beginner Espresso Lab
Thursday, December 16
Counter Culture Coffee Training Center (37 West 26th St., Suite 400, Manhattan) $150 For all the people talking themselves into a home espresso machine for Christmas, or just hoping to become more educated snobs/consumers in the wild, Counter Culture's highly skilled training labs are the place to start knowing what you're talking about. It's an all-day course: these ladies don't mess around.

And the best part about going down the coffee rabbit hole is that it seems to be infinite—so look for more coffee event roundups here soon. Surely you don't know everything yet.