We are celebrating the finalists in the 2016 Sprudgie Awards.

Notable Roaster

Each year our readers nominate outstanding coffee roasters around the world for the Notable Roaster Sprudgie Award. Unlike many of the other categories, Notable Roaster nominees need not be brands or products that debuted in 2016; rather, we look to this award as a way for our readers to honor coffee roasting companies, big and small, that turned in an especially notable year of work.

This year’s nominees are:

Best New Cafe

Cafes are the beating heart of coffee culture, and each year we are delighted to see the cafe form grow and morph in new and exciting ways. Our readers have selected a stunning array of new cafes from around the world for this year’s Sprudgie Awards, each of which opened during the past calendar year.

And the nominees are:

Best New Product

New products drive innovation in the coffee world, for both consumers and professionals alike. Some of these products live behind the coffee bar, making your experience more delicious one cup at a time. Others are bold, public-facing products that speak directly to consumers.

The nominees for Best New Product in 2016 are:

Best Coffee Video / Film

Coffee is a multimedia platform, inspiring expression across a variety of mediums. Each year we honor an excellent coffee video or film as part of our Sprudgie Awards tradition. This year’s nominees include a feature-length film; short promotional videos; a much-discussed speech delivered at a live speaking event; a body of work across an entire YouTube channel; and a coffee-forward dramedy on Netflix.

And the nominees are:

Best Coffee Writing

Coffee’s relationship to the written word is ever-changing. From professional blogs with an industry focus to irreverent Twitter accounts and landmark expressions of personal experience, this year’s crop of Best Coffee Writing nominations takes all kinds.

And the nominees are:

Notable Coffee Producer

Without coffee producers, there would be no coffee. Artisan growers are pushing boundaries every day by creating delicious coffees that express terroir and intent in equal measure. This year’s list of nominees includes some familiar names, plus several first-time noms, including our first-ever nominee from Burundi.

Best Coffee Magazine

We are currently in a golden age for print coffee magazines, with gorgeous new glossies rubbing shoulders with established favorites. We predict a tough, close vote for this year’s Sprudgie Award for Best Coffee Magazine.

Nicest Package

Design and packaging have never been more important to the coffee experience. Each week we feature coffee branding from around the world as part of our Nice Package feature series on Sprudge. This year we’re honoring packaging with the coveted Sprudgie Award for Nicest Package.

Parlor Coffee (Brooklyn, NYC)

Five Elephant (Berlin)

La Cabra (Aarhus, Denmark)

Playground Coffee (Hamburg)

(via Dribble)

Methodical Coffee (Greenville, SC)

(via Packaging of the World)

Square Mile Coffee (London)

Best Coffee Subscription

Each year the field for coffee subscription services becomes more and more crowded, making this particular field of Sprudgie Award noms increasingly essential. Only one of the nominated services can win, but each of the finalists you selected are doing exemplary work for happy subscribers worldwide.

Best Coffee Podcast

It’s never been a better time to be a coffee podcast lover, with long-running series and newcomers alike vying for ear time on your drive home. That’s why we added this new category to the 2016 Sprudgie Awards. For the first time, here are your nominees for Best Coffee Podcast:

Finest Coffee Event

Another new category for the 2016 Sprudgies, this is an opportunity for our readers to honor unique coffee events around the world. From long-running international affairs to plucky brand new indie fairs, our first-ever field of nominees in this category run the gamut of event experiences. The first set of nominees for Finest Coffee Event are: 

Outstanding Achievement in The Field of Excellence

The most important Sprudgie Award is the hardest to define—this award is given to groups or individuals our readers seek to honor for their contribution to the wider coffee culture. Past awards have gone to remarkable coffee producers, game-changing green buyers, globe-spanning event organizers, and even an entire nation’s coffee growers. This year we’re overjoyed at the nominees you’ve selected for our Outstanding Achievement in The Field of Excellence. Your nominees are:

http://sprudge.com/vote

In this episode, we brew Camber Coffee with Third Wave Water. We talk about holiday gift giving and take a phone call from our hotline at 1-888-55-SPRUDGE.

In this episode we talk about the 2016 Sprudgie Awards. Nominate your coffee hero now at http://sprudge.com/vote.

We interview John Buckman, CEO of Decent Espresso, and talk about his brand new $1000 home espresso machine that's jam packed with a lot of innovative features.

In this week's episode, we're in Miami, Florida and interview Camila Ramos, owner of cafe ALLDAY. 

We celebrate our 5,000th feature on Sprudge.com, answer a call from our hotline (1-888-55-SPRUDGE), and speak to Andy Reiland of Cafe Imports.

Founders Zachary Carlsen and Jordan Michelman discuss the beginning of Sprudge, in the second and final part of our seven year anniversary "look back" special.

For our seven year Sprudgeversary, we take a look back to 1998 when founders Jordan Michelman and Zachary Carlsen first met.

We're back in Portland and discuss our summer of build-outs.

Live at Four Barrel Coffee in San Francisco, we interview Sarah Wiener, Good Food Awards; Jenn Chen, Coffee Marketer; Noah Sanders, Sprudge Staff writer; and host a special "What's The Ish Trish?" segment with Trish Rothgeb, Coffee Quality Institute / Wrecking Ball Coffee.

We do it live in Emeryville, California at the Counter Culture Coffee Training Center. Guests include Mokhtar Alkhanshali, Port of Mokha; Katie Carguilo, Counter Culture Coffee; Richard Sandlin, Royal Coffee; and Devorah Freudiger, Equator Coffees & Teas.

We're live at Scandinavian Embassy in Amsterdam! Featuring Cerianne Bury, Karina Hof, Stijn Braas, and Rikard Andersson.

We do it live in Berlin, Germany.

Over a little bistro table on the back wall of Fontaine we transformed this cafe into a salon, interviewing some of the most influencers in Paris coffee today. They included Antoine Netien, co-owner and master roaster at Coutume Café, the enormously influential Parisian coffee roasting brand now with locations in Tokyo and Osaka; Mihaela Iordache, a Romanian classical guitar prodigy who gave it all up to follow her ardent love of coffee, and is now the head roaster at Belleville; Nicolas Piégay, whose KB Coffeeshop in Pigalle was among the first to serve good coffee in the French capital; and David Nigel Flynn, an American expat in the grand Parisian tradition whose influence has helped transform coffee in France, and who today co-owns Belleville Brûlerie and La Fontaine de Belleville.

We're live at the Liquor Rooms in Dublin, Ireland with Urnex World Barista Championship Ambassadors. We bring on guests from all over the world in this very special episode.

In this episode Zachary Carlsen interviews Sprudge staff writer Anna Brones.

On June 5, 2016 we taped Sprudge After Dark at the Classic Stage Company in New York City. A showcase of stand-up comedy from Jenna Gotthelf, live drag performances by Mini Horrorwitz and Kimberly Clark, a dance performance by Janet Konz, and live interviews with Liz Clayton, Sam Penix, Sam Lewontin, Oliver Strand, and Matt Buchanan.

Please enjoy this condensed version of the show featuring interviews with guests and performances by Kimberly Clark. 

Visit Sprudge.com for more!

Special thanks to Everyman Espresso, Eric J. Grimm, Allison, and Andrew.

We're back in Portland but our bags our packed for New York City where we'll be hosting a live Off-Broadway taping of the Coffee Sprudgecast! Join us on Sunday, June 5th at the Classic Stage Company!

In this episode we discuss coffee cheeses, Colombia AeroPress Championships, our new Los Angeles staff writer Tatiana Ernst and much, much more!

In this very special episode, Jordan Michelman and Zachary Carlsen record from Palm Springs, California.

Jordan Michelman and Zachary Carlsen return for another fun-loving episode of the Coffee Sprudgecast. Zachary's Yellow Bourbon is dead, and is very sad about it, but that doesn't stop them from reviewing last week's incredible Sprudge stories from around the world. 

Zachary Carlsen and Jordan Michelman return to Portland, Oregon after two weeks of traveling between the 2016 London Coffee Festival and UKBC and the 2016 SCAA Expo and USBC. 

We do it live in Atlanta, Georgia at the M Rich Center for Creative Arts during the SCAA Expo week at a party thrown in partnership with KitchenAid.

Featuring live interviews with Laila Willbur (2014 USBC Champion), Stephen Morrissey (2008 WBC Champion), Tyler Wells (Nice Coffee) and Felipe Croce (Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza).

We're at the London Coffee Festival and speak to James Hoffmann of Square Mile Coffee about coffee chaff butter, rye bread made with coffee, cascara chocolate, espresso soft serve, cascara soda, among other things. We also chat with Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood of Colonna and Smalls who have unveiled their newest product: very high-end pods for Nespresso machines.

Hosts Jordan Michelman and Zachary Carlsen interview Nathanael May of Portland Roasting Co. in Portland, Oregon. They discuss Portland Roasting's future plans at the Portland International Airport and talk about the complexities of judging barista competitions. 

The music in this episode is performed by Alan Adler, inventor of the Aeropress, playing on a wind instrument he made himself!

Zachary Carlsen and Jordan Michelman discuss the Barista Action Figure, now almost 15 years old, Blue Bottle Cold Brew in a can, cafes around the world, and much, much more in this very special episode of the Coffee Sprudgecast.

Jordan Michelman and Zachary Carlsen answer some coffee queries from old acquaintances, take a look back at some of the features published on the Sprudge Media Network over the last week, talk about e-newsletters, and generally have a nice coffee time.