Tag: Brash Coffee

Part-time Atlantan Anna Russ left a corporate job in oncology research to focus on Ayurvedic medicine, including a line of holistic teas: Teaney. The easy-to-make teas (they require no steeping, just mixing in milk or water) have already amassed a fan base in Atlanta.

Food Network star and self-described coffee curmudgeon Alton Brown started drinking coffee in grade school. Where in Atlanta can a coffee purist find shops that care about their beans without unwittingly subjecting its guests to a Portlandia sketch? Brown and another outspoken coffee evangelist, Jason Dominy, who previously worked with Batdorf & Bronson, spill the beans.

The new 1,500-square-foot Brash space at the Atlanta History Center will feature a Modbar, allowing baristas to profile espresso. In other words, the Brash baristas will be able to match the coffee preparation to fit the exact humidity and temperature in the air.

Brash Coffee is opening its first Atlanta store on the Westside in early summer 2015. In 2011, owner Matt Ludwikowski was working at Octane and took a trip to El Salvador with one intention: work directly with coffee farmers to learn as much about coffee as he could. He practiced what he learned and, two years later, opened the first Brash Coffee store in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Two years ago, Matt Ludwikowski went to El Salvador to help a friend set up a computer lab in a small, impoverished community. While driving up a volcano there, he discovered a tiny coffee community called Laguneta. Ludwikowski, who had worked for Octane, ended up spending a week walking around the country, talking to farmers and other locals about the coffee there. Fast forward twenty-four months or so, and Ludwikowski has been back to the area sixteen times, negotiated terms for land and water use, hired and trained workers to pick and process the coffee, and produced 2,000 pounds of coffee from a place from which people had never tasted coffee before, he says.