Flickr user Martin Westin

Same cappuccino, different price

​If you like to idle away those work hours with wordplay endeavors (who doesn't?), here's a fun one: What are the most and least expensive cappuccinos in L.A.? There is a catch, of course. This is not a menu battle between espresso machines in different parts of town or an obvious face-off between the genetic lineage of coffee beans, but a single cup at one location.

As for what makes something a "deal," we should note that we consider a good bargain the entire experience, not simply the price/taste. If you've ever made (back home in your apartment overlooking the 405), a brilliantly bare-bones dish like cacio e pepe (pasta with butter, cracked pepper and a little cheese) that you tasted for the first time during an impossibly romantic dinner in Tuscany, you know what we're going for with this deal. One last hint: The cappuccino in question is not at one of our 10 Best Coffee Shops in L.A. Get the answer after the jump.

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Flickr: nffcnnr

Will Oldham, aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy

​Be still, our hearts: Will Oldham, the musician/actor otherwise known as Bonnie "Prince" Billy, is selling his own blend of organic Kona coffee. The Bonny Billy Blend, as it's called, is a limited-edition blend of Kona Rose Coffee sold in half-pound and pound bags exclusively through Oldham's record label, Drag City.

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Coffee machine manufacturer Krups announced the nominees for its annual Best Brew Awards, which selects the best coffee shops in the country -- as long as they're located in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Dallas, San Francisco, Atlanta or Washington, D.C. (Sorry, Portland.)

Los Angeles nominees include standbys like Intelligentsia, Groundwork (last year's winner) and Urth Caffe as well as Polly's Gourmet Coffee and relative newcomer Cafe Dulce with their maple macadamia doughnuts. There's also a new twist: The awards are now open to a public vote via Facebook.

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R.E.~/Flickr

American workers spend about $1,000 a year on coffee

​If one of your resolutions this year is to save more money, you might want to start with your coffee budget. Staffing firm Accounting Principals surveyed 1,000 employed Americans about their work-related spending habits and found that almost half regularly buy coffee while they're at work -- spending about $1,092 a year, in fact, or more than $20 a week.

And that's only the beginning: in addition to buying coffee, two-thirds of those surveyed buy their lunches rather than packing last night's leftovers, spending about $37 per week, or nearly $2,000 annually. That's a total of about $3,000 on coffee and lunch, some of which was well-spent and some of which probably could have been better spent on rent and vacations and pets and other things that make happy, productive employees.

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T. Nguyen

A flat white at Two Guns Espresso

​If you walk into almost any coffee shop in the city and order a flat white, you'll most likely be steered towards ordering a latte instead. Sometimes, you'll be refused the flat white but offered a foam-less cappuccino to compensate. And while these may be acceptable (if even noticeable) substitutions for some, others may consider these sorry bastardizations of what they're really looking for: a lovely, creamy espresso-based drink smaller than a latte without the foaminess of a cappuccino. At Two Guns Espresso in Manhattan Beach, there is no need to settle for the next best thing: a flat white is a flat white is a flat white. The first choice is all yours.

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Handsome Coffee Roasters's coffee

​Handsome Coffee Roasters hoped to open their Downtown coffee bar right before the holidays, but what was supposed to be an early holiday present to coffee fiends is now a Valentine's Day gift to their fellow coffee lovers instead. According to Handsome Coffee's press release, their coffee bar will officially open in February in L.A. -- and New York.

Chris Owens, Michael Phillips, and Tyler Wells all were former high-ranking Intelligentsia employees before departing the company to launch Handsome Coffee. The trio turned an Arts District warehouse once home to a print shop into a makeshift office and headquarters, and built out the space to accommodate their roastery operations and retail coffee bar. Once open, a visit to Handsome Coffee will be a factory tour of sorts: a 13-foot glass and metal wall separating the roastery and coffee bar will give you ample view to drink up all the action.

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T. Nguyen

Clockwise: Pourover coffee at Coffee Tomo; an espresso from Handsome Coffee Roasters; siphon filters at Demitasse Cafe; a cappuccino from Broome St. General Store

​Like National Coffee Day, summing up the Year in Coffee compels a certain knee-jerk response: every year is the year in coffee. But, then again, not every year is a year in great coffee. With over a dozen new coffee shops, several new homegrown coffee roasters, and customers willing to learn about what's in their cup, 2011 was a great year for great coffee.

This great year was several years in the making, and we can credit shops Klatch Coffee, Jones Coffee Roasters, Caffe Luxxe, Venice Grind and Intelligentsia, among others, for laying the foundation. Crucially, once that foundation set, there still was plenty of room for innovation and experimentation: the great thing about the developing coffee culture here, we were told time and time again, is that L.A. is essentially a blank slate. Without the burden of a well-established coffee scene like, say, Seattle, shop owners had carte blanche to forge their own path and plant their own unique flags. And that they did.

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Since opening in April 2010, Coffee Commissary has consistently brewed top-notch beans from the likes of Coava, Sightglass and Victrola, earning a spot among our Top 10 Coffee Shops in L.A. The minimalist Fairfax Avenue cafe is finally getting a pastry program to match thanks to Naomi Shim, who previously oversaw the pastries at Salt's Cure.

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T. Nguyen

Coffee Commissary

​It used to be that you just needed one hand to count all the truly outstanding coffee shops in Los Angeles. Now, thanks to a recent surge of brave coffee geeks-turned-entrepreneurs, you need both hands to tick off all the stellar shops in the city, and maybe that isn't quite enough. We decided it was about time to stack up all those newcomers against our old favorites to come up with our definitive list of the ten best coffee shops in L.A., period.

Before we start the countdown, a word on our criteria. As coffee shops often serve as third spaces, everyone has intensely personal definitions of what makes a great café, and we're no different. We looked for shops that elevate your typical café experience with quality coffee beans, a warm ambiance, and skilled baristas who could pull perfect shots just as readily as they could smile with sincerity. At the end of the day, whittling our list down to just these ten, then ranking them, was an agonizing -- but welcome -- problem to have. If your favorite neighborhood Central Perk didn't make the cut, rest assured that it probably was number 11. And we just couldn't turn this list up to 11.

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T. Nguyen

Tony "Tonx" Konecny

​Tony "Tonx" Konecny is a bit like the Forrest Gump of recent specialty coffee history: if you look hard enough, chances are you'd find him somewhere on the scene, sipping coffee quietly in the background, observing the events he helped frame. And, even as he is taking the lead with his own microbatch roasting company, Tonx Coffee, he insists he is just part of the supporting cast to the real star of the show: the beans.

Back in the 1990s, Konecny was wearing a tie and managing risks at a healthcare company. Fast forward to 2000, when he was at Burning Man and nursing a crush on a girl in his group. Exhausted from the weeklong festivities in the desert, he almost gave up the pursuit. Then he had a cup of coffee that was spinach to his Popeye: reinvigorated, he got his moment with his Olive Oyl. After, he vowed to have at least one cup of coffee every day. That vow remains unbroken.

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