Experts Say These Are the Year’s Best New Coffee Products

Each year, the Specialty Coffee Expo — the nation’s largest coffee event — gathers its team of well-caffeinated experts together to dole out awards for the best new products in the industry. Past winners have included brands and products that have gone on to become fast favorites and major successes, like Cometeer’s frozen coffee capsules, a winner back in 2019. Over the weekend, the 2023 rendition of the awards took place in Portland, OR, and the following six products are the ones deemed most impressive by the Expo’s panel of experts.

Acaia Ion Beam

Acaia

Best New Coffee Accessory

Acaia Ion Beam

• $150.00 at acaia.co

If you grind your own beans, you’ve likely encountered an unseen enemy: static electricity. The act of grinding produces static, which makes your grinds “sticky,” leaving a mess on your counter. It’s why some of our favorite grinders, like those from Fellow, incorporate anti-static technology into their designs. But what if you already have a pricey grinder that’s lacking such tech? That’s where the Ion Beam comes in. Affixed to a tripod (or held like a flashlight), this nifty device boasts an industrial-grade ion generator that blasts a continuous flow of charged ions at your grounds as they come out of your grinder. These ions eliminate static, ensuring a clean grind. Designed to be portable, the Ion Beam can be used with any grinder.

Torani Puremade Toasted Black Sesame Syrup

Torani

Best New Specialty Coffee Beverage Additive

Torani Puremade Toasted Black Sesame Syrup

• $11.99 at torani.com

Torani is no stranger to flavored coffee syrups — the San Francisco-based brand is a fixture at many top coffee houses nationwide. Its latest flavor enhancer brings a flavor to coffee that’s about as unexpected as olive oil: toasted black sesame. Sweet, savory, earthy and nutty, this flavor is like a leveled-up hazelnut. It’s also part of Torani’s Puremade line, which eschews artificial flavors, colors and preservatives in favor of all-natural ingredients.

Breville Barista Touch Impress

Breville

Best New Consumer Coffee Preparation and Serving Equipment

Breville Barista Touch Impress

• $1,199.96 at breville.com
  $1,499.95 (20% off)

Breville’s new Impress series continues to, well, impress. Following up on the Express Impress winning a 2022 Red Dot Design Award, Breville has given the Impress treatment to the already-impressive Barista Touch. This superautomatic espresso machine is equipped with Breville’s Impress Puck system that combines intelligent dosing with assisted tamping, auto-correction and a 7º barista twist finish that will make pucks so perfect you won’t even want to extract espresso from them.

Latte Art Factory Bar Pro

Latte Art

Best New Commercial Coffee Preparation and Serving Equipment

Latte Art Factory Bar Pro

• $1.00 at

If you run your own coffee business and are looking to up your latte art game, then this new piece of professional kit is for you. The Latte Art Factory Bar Pro does everything for you but the art: it can foam dairy and plant-based milk at different textures and temperatures, and its built-in touchscreen makes it easy to choose the exact style of frothed milk you need for whatever drink you’re making.

Rarebird Redefined

Rarebird

Best New Coffee Product (Open Class)

Rarebird Redefined

• $17.50 at rarebird.coffee

Many people love coffee — and the energy boost they get from caffeine — but avoid it due to sensitivity to caffeine’s less-desirable effects, like jitters and heightened anxiety. Redefined from Rarebird is an entirely new take on coffee that swaps out caffeine for paraxanthine (Px), a natural metabolite of caffeine that provides a similar energy kick without caffeine’s nasty downsides. It’s available in 4- and 12-oz bags of whole-bean, medium-roast, single-origin Colombian coffee.

Art of Tea Ginger Spice Chai Concentrate

Courtesy

Best New Specialty Non-Coffee Beverage Standalone

Art of Tea Ginger Spice Chai Concentrate

• $40.00 at artoftea.com

More of a tea drinker? No worries, the Specialty Coffee Expo has something for you too. The best new non-coffee product is a concentrate from Art of Tea. This modern twist on a chai latte blends black tea with cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, clove and sugar, and all it takes is dissolving the mix in hot water or milk for a delicious at-home chai latte.

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