Fresh Ground is a blog for global nomads and kindred cosmopolitans. Plan your own trip, or follow along with my guides to cafes and reviews of the world's best coffee in Asia, Europe, North America, and beyond.

Prufrock Coffee, London

Prufrock Coffee, London

Prufrock Coffee is home to Gwilym Davies, 2009 World Barista Champion. The affable, scruffy bearded barista who lives on a boat has assembled a talented supporting cast at two locations in London. My favorite is Prufrock Cafe on Leather Lane, a large, airy and colorful space, inviting you to linger...
ST.ALi - Coffeebar, Cafe, Roastery in London

ST.ALi – Coffeebar, Cafe, Roastery in London

ST.ALi is an Aussie transplant that opened a London location in the Spring of 2011. They hope to “showcase our love for things that, while simple and accessible, are undeniably delicious,” which is a mission statement I can agree with. The cafe itself is massive, comprised of a ground floor...
Searching for the Best Coffee in London (Pt. 2): Coffee Crawling

Searching for the Best Coffee in London (Pt. 2): Coffee Crawling

  There are a number of cafes I want to highlight from my trip to London that I didn’t get to spend enough time in for a long write-up. Here are some quick impressions, take them for what they are and use them to plan your own trip! Taylor St....
Searching for the Best Coffee in London (Part I): Notes Music & Coffee

Searching for the Best Coffee in London (Part I): Notes Music & Coffee

Earlier this summer I took a trip back to the US to visit family, having been abroad for the past year and a half. A stopover in London was the same price as a direct flight, making it a perfect opportunity to explore the Anglo coffee world and meet some...
Searching for the Best Coffee in Stockholm - Part 2

Searching for the Best Coffee in Stockholm – Part 2

Here’s part two recapping my Easter visit to Stockholm (click here if you missed part one). As it turns out, most shops were closed during the Easter holiday, but we did manage to stop at Drop Coffee and Snickarbacken 7, while peeking in at a couple other places. Cupcake STHLM...
Latest entries
Looking for Instagram Research Participants!

Looking for Instagram Research Participants!

If you didn’t know, when I’m not obsessing over coffee I’m working on a masters in applied cultural analysis at Lund University. Lately I’ve been researching mobile photo sharing as a practice that is changing our relationship to ourselves, our surroundings, our daily lives, and more. While taking pictures of your dinner might seem trivial...
Video: "Shit Baristas Say"

Video: “Shit Baristas Say”

Don’t take it personally, barista friends. :) At FRSHGRND.com we try to showcase companies and individuals that are passionate without undue pretense or unwanted judgment. Nevertheless, the stereotype is amusing and it’s always good to make sure you’re not crossing the line into self-caricature when you talk about coffee. Video by Sprudge.com, filmed at Four...
Coffee & Cream in High-speed Slow Motion

Coffee & Cream in High-speed Slow Motion

Modernist Cuisine has put up two videos of cream being poured into black coffee in high-speed slow motion. While most of us probably only combine milk with espresso, preferring to taste brewed coffee in all its unadulterated nuance, the video is pretty mesmerizing. If only they’d done the same thing with a barista pouring latte...
Moving To New York!

Moving To New York!

I’ll be moving from Sweden to New York in a week. I’m really going to miss Sweden; the people, the lifestyle, the scenery, the food, everything. But after living outside the US for more than three years, and away from my girlfriend off-and-on for the past year, it will be great to be back in...
Photography: Other than coffee in Malmö, Sweden

Photography: Other than coffee in Malmö, Sweden

October saw Malmö getting quite a few visits from coffee industry folks from as far off as Japan. These days it seems like the world is a really small place when you can bump into people at multiple points on the globe by chance. File that under #firstworldnovelties. But if you didn’t have the pleasure...
Does 'Specialty Coffee' have an image problem?

Does ‘Specialty Coffee’ have an image problem?

The video above (which I find funny, I don’t know about you) has been making the rounds today. It’s similar in tone to an older video, below, that makes fun of customers with similar attitudes. Of course the videos aren’t perfect representations – the majority of quality focused cafes are actually trying to serve a...
Coffee Gear Review: Soehnle Kitchen Scale

Coffee Gear Review: Soehnle Kitchen Scale

The trajectory (or descent?) into coffee madness usually starts with an experience at a quality focused cafe, which leads you to buy better beans, which sparks the realization that your home setup is inadequate, followed by the purchase of a better grinder and some kind of manual brewer. At this point you start to realize...
Searching for the Best Coffee in Stockholm - Part 1

Searching for the Best Coffee in Stockholm – Part 1

Another post long overdue! During Easter break I took my first trip up to Stockholm (“sthlm” to the Swedes), riding one of the cheap Veolia trains that look like they’re from the 1950s. Stockholm at Easter is a city full of people relaxing in the park, barbecuing, or vacationing out in the country. Those good...
Photography: Cafe Scenes from Malmö, Sweden

Photography: Cafe Scenes from Malmö, Sweden

It’s been about a year since I moved here, and Malmö is growing on me. It’s a beautiful city when the weather becomes bearable and it’s just big enough to offer some of the dynamism, diversity, & opportunity that a real city should have, but small enough to feel relaxed and peaceful in the quiet...
Emil Eriksson of Johan & Nyström, prepping for World Brewers Cup

Emil Eriksson of Johan & Nyström, prepping for World Brewers Cup

This marks the first year of the World Brewers Cup, a coffee competition similar to the World Barista Championship, though instead of espresso it’s focused solely on brewing coffee. The goal seems to be to do for manual brewing what the Barista Championships have done for espresso, pushing the leading edge of knowledge, technique, and...
Solde Kaffebar - Malmö, Sweden

Solde Kaffebar – Malmö, Sweden

This post is incredibly long overdue given that one of the first people to welcome me to Sweden was Dan Stenqvist, blogger, barista extraordinaire, and roaster for Solde Kaffebar in Malmö. It’s been about nine months since I arrived, and I think I’ve been to Solde more often than any other coffee bar in Malmö....
ChansBros Coffee - Seoul, Korea

ChansBros Coffee – Seoul, Korea

This is my girlfriend Claire’s debut post here – she’s also quite a coffee geek and still working in Korea for the next couple months. Look forward to a few more of her posts from Korea in the months ahead! Several months ago, I moved in with some friends in Itaewon, a diverse neighborhood in...