Your phone can help you get more out of your coffee experience – if you find the right app. Phil Wain analyses the options
The rise of speciality coffee since the mid-2000s has been simultaneous with the rise of smartphones, apps and social media. Early adopters of both social media and quality coffee used Twitter to connect and find the best places to drink coffee. In those days it was easy for us to find each other as both Twitter and the coffee community were smaller. Forums such as coffeeforums.co.uk were – and still are – another great source of knowledge and opinion.
As smartphones became more popular, apps enabled more people to explore third wave coffee, especially in terms of café recommendations. Early online guides such as Young and Foodish’s Top 10, Charmaine Mok’s Time Out guide and the collaborative Google Map at philwbass.com were soon replaced by Derek Lamberton’s app London’s Best Coffee (now owned by Paced Group and rebranded as Best Coffee). It’s undoubtedly true to say 21st-century technology enabled the growth of coffee appreciation.
Coffee finder apps
Apps that help you find great coffee can essentially be divided into those curating content and those relying on user-generated content. Keeping up with café changes, openings and closures is a demanding task and the more information an app includes, the more there is to update. Users also have different needs: sometimes it’s about finding the best coffee in London, sometimes it’s just about finding any decent coffee nearby. We tested a number of apps extensively so that we could recommend those that performed well in user experience (UX), content and being up to date.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Oct - Nov 16 (issue 29) من Caffeine.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Oct - Nov 16 (issue 29) من Caffeine.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
The Future Of Decaf?
A US company claims its pouch extracts caffeine without harming flavour
Great Coffee Shouldn't Cost The Earth
Caffeine’s editor-at-large Tim Ridley explains how to lower the environmental impact of your coffee-drinking habit
What The F**k...Is Honey Processing?
Apart from natural and washed coffees sits a whole other category, as Sierra Wen Xin Yeo explains
The grind
SEASONAL COFFEE
Tea with purpose
Michelle and Rob Comins explain how tea can be a force for good
Ten years on
We celebrate the London Coffee Festival’s first decade with a look at its successes
Chocolate and espresso pavlova with fennel roasted grapes
This year I’m giving coffee centre stage on the Christmas dessert table. I firmly believe coffee shouldn’t just be an afterthought to accompany dessert, it should be the dessert – but aside from that, it just makes sense.
Bitter Barista
Latte art competitions have been milking it for too long – they used to be fun, but now their focus on the wrong things is harming barista skills, says our cantankerous columnist
What The F**k ...Is The Maillard Reaction?
It’s just one of the elements you need to know about if you’re going to roast coffee successfully, as Edgaras Juška explains
Work Wonders
Coffee gets people through the working day. So it stands to reason that better coffee produces better work – and in some places the two are in perfect harmony, says Phil Wain
