Sprudge is an American

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

founded by Zachary Carlsen and Jordan Michelman and based in

Portland, Oregon Portland ( ) is the List of cities in Oregon, most populous city in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the Pacific Northwest region. Situated close to northwest Oregon at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, ...

, focusing on "coffee news and gossip".

History

Founded in 2009, Sprudge is a coffee news and lifestyle website. It is the flagship blog of the Sprudge Media Network, which manages sister sites Sprudge Maps, Sprudge Live, and Sprudge Wire. In its first three months of existence, the website was called "The Sprudge Report" and was a direct visual parody of the

Drudge Report The Drudge Report (stylized in all caps as DRUDGE REPORT) is an American-based news aggregator, news aggregation website founded by Matt Drudge, and run with the help of Charles Hurt and Daniel Halper. The site prior to the 2020 United States p ...

. Today, the site focuses primarily on coverage of the modern specialty coffee industry, coffee history, and coffee within cultural and sociopolitical contexts. It publishes a breadth of City Guides, as well as includes a job board for those seeking careers in the industry. Sprudge came under scrutiny after publishing the name of an anonymous author of a blog titled "The Bitter Barista", resulting in the termination of the author's job. In 2013, Jordan Michelman and Zachary Carlsen received the Distinguished Author Award from the

Specialty Coffee Association of America The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) (also SCA Specialty Coffee Association, post-2017), founded in 1982, was a non-profit trade organization for the specialty coffee industry. With members located in more than 40 countries, SCAA rep ...

. The Sprudge Media Network was recognized as a 2017

Webby Award The Webby Awards (colloquially referred to as the Webbys) are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over three thousand industry experts a ...

Honoree in the Cultural Blog/Website category. In 2016 th
Coffee Sprudgecast
was launched, a podcast featuring interviews with business owners, baristas, and other members of the world coffee community. The Coffee Buildcast, a subset of the Coffee Sprudgecast, focuses on new coffee shops under construction. In 2018, Michelman and Carlsen co-wrote ''The New Rules of Coffee: A Modern Guide For Everyone'', an illustrated guide to coffee published by

Ten Speed Press Ten Speed Press is a publishing house founded in Berkeley, California, in 1971 by Phil Wood. It was bought by Random House in February 2009 and became part of their Crown Publishing Group division. History Wood worked with Barnes & Noble in 196 ...

, a division of

Penguin Random House Penguin Random House Limited is a British-American multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was or ...

. Their second book, ''But First, Coffee'' was published in 2023 by Union Square & Co. focusing on brew methods and diverse coffee recipes. Sprudge teamed up with

South by Southwest South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has conti ...

to curate the Roasters Village, an extension of the 2018 SouthBites Trailer Park food program at the festival. Today the concept of Roasters Village lives on within the Sprudge site as spotlighted links to current interesting coffees available for purchase online.

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://sprudge.com American blogs Coffee culture Websites about food and drink Companies based in Portland, Oregon Internet properties established in 2009