The latte art scene in Korea is growing at an astonishing rate, and young Lee Kang Bin is one of the talented baristas spearheading the movement. The masterful designs he is able to freehand on cups of latte have earned him tens of thousands of fans on Instagram as well as a judge’s seat at numerous latte art competitions around the world.

Armed only with a thin metal rod and a palette of food dyes, Lee Kang Bin can turn a bland cup of latte into a stunning masterpiece. From drinkable recreations of famous paintings, like Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, to detailed cartoon characters and portraits, there’s virtually nothing he can’t draw on milk foam.

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Not everyone’s a morning person, so if having a cup of coffee with your morning bagels just isn’t enough to give you that much-needed boost, maybe these caffeinated bagels can help.

Called “Espresso Buzz Bagels”, the world’s first caffeinated bagels were unveiled last week by the Einstein Bros Bagel chain. Each bagel contains 32 milligrams of caffeine, which is roughly a third of the amount found in an eight ounce cup of coffee, plus 13 grams of protein. That’s obviously not enough to justify replacing your morning coffee with one or even two caffeinated bagels, but as an extra source of energy, the combination of caffeine and carbohydrates might actually help.

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Coffee is more popular today than ever before, but many people abstain from consuming to much of it because it can really take a toll on their pearly whites. Well, thanks to the world’s first colorless coffee, you don’t have to worry about stained teeth anymore.

After getting tired of looking for a coffee drink that had the natural flavor they loved so much but didn’t stain their teeth, David and Adam Nagy, two Slovakian brothers who like strong coffee and their teeth white, decided to create it themselves. Called CLR CFF, their innovative drink is exactly what it sounds like – clear coffee, without the vowels.

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The International Food Information Council recommends a daily caffeine intake of 300 mg, while the FDA recommends 400 mg, but just one 12-ounce cup of Black Insomnia brew contains 702 mg of caffeine, which will definitely keep you up at night and may even cause some health problems.

Black Insomnia Coffee was founded in 2016 by South African coffee lover Sean Kristafor. From the very beginning, his goal was to create the strongest coffee in the world, and he managed to do it by using the stronger Robusta variety, instead of the more aromatic Arabica. The secret to its high caffeine content is apparently in the way that the coffee beans are roasted, but Kristafor is obviously not interested in revealing the process. He only says that they can make it considerably stronger, and actually had to dial it down a bit for the commercial version, just so it was safe to consume.

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Bikini Beans Espresso is a coffee shop chain with branches in Arizona and Washington where patrons can have their favorite coffee prepared and served by beautiful women wearing bikinis, g-strings or just three strategically-placed stickers.

Thanks to its attractive dress code, Bikini Beans Espresso has become hugely popular, especially among its male clientele. Apparently, a simple visit to one of these coffee shops has a way of brightening up a man’s day, and it’s definitely not just the coffee. But despite encouraging sales, impressive 5-star ratings on Yelp and thousands of followers on social media, Bikini Beans Espresso has its fare share of critics, most of which claim that the mandatory dress code of the staff is degrading for women.

That’s definitely not how the owners of Bikini Beans Espresso shops see it, though. They claim that the girl’s skimpy “uniforms” actually empower women, helping them feel comfortable in their own skin.

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If you’re into crazy taste combinations like peanut butter&jelly or pineapple pizza, you’re probably going to love this wine-infused coffee that combines the taste and health benefits of two of the world’s most popular drinks.

Molinari Private Reserve artisan coffee is the brainchild of Rick Molinari, the owner of Molinari Caffè in Napa Valley, California. He claims to have come up with the idea for a wine-infused coffee in 2013, after talking with his friend and fellow coffee roaster, John Weaver, of Wild Card Roasters LLC. Born and raised among the vineyards of Napa Valley, Molinari was convinced that bringing together “the best of both worlds” in one unique drink was bound to be a success, so he started researching ways of making it happen.

Molinari came up with a working formula within a year, and in 2014 he actually started selling his unique blend of roasted coffee and red wine, but a magnitude-6.0 earthquake that shook Northern California that year forced him to put the process of perfecting his idea on hold. He never gave up on it, though, and after teaming up with several vineyeards around Napa Valley, the cafe owner recently launched an improved version of his wine-infused coffee, and is already struggling to keep up with demand.

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Viscous Coffee, a café in Adelaide, Australia, sells a cup of super-coffee that contains five grams of caffeine – 80 times more than a normal cup of java and half the dose considered to be lethal. Called the “Asskicker”, the strong beverage comes with a health warning for people with heart problems and blood pressure issues.

A cup of espresso has about 60mg of caffeine, while a serving of standard filtered coffee has about 150mg of it, depending on how it is prepared. The Asskicker contains five full grams of caffeine, which Viscous Coffee owner Steve Benington says is enough to provide 12 to 18 hours of “sustained up-time”. But the high caffeine content means it shouldn’t be consumed in one go, but slowly, over a period of four hours.

Benington says he came up with the idea for the Asskicker when an emergency department nurse asked him for something that would keep her awake and alert for an unexpected night shift. “She consumed her drink over two days and it kept her up for almost three days — I toned it down a little after that and the Asskicker was born,” he recalls. Nowadays, the complex concoction is made with four espresso shots, four 48-hour brewed cold drip ice cubes, 120ml of 10-day brewed cold drip and is finished with four more 48-hour brewed cold drip ice cubes. “Each cold drip ice cube is approximately equivalent of a bit more than two shots of espresso in caffeine,” Benington explains.

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There’s no denying that water plays a huge part in the overall quality of coffee, which is why most respectable coffee shops use filters to get rid of excess minerals or chemicals that might negatively impact the taste of their brews. But now there’s an even better way to ensure that your morning cup of coffee tastes just right – introducing Aquiem designer coffee water.

The brainchild of a group of entrepreneurs in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Aquiem is “enhanced water” that has first been purified to zero mineral content and then enhanced with all-natural essential minerals to enrich the flavor, consistency and even the aroma of coffee. “What you definitely do not want is to have things like zinc and lead, fluoride, chlorine and large amounts of calcium in the water. All of that effects the taste of the coffee,” Aquiem co-founder Rob Vidacovich told Daily Coffee News. “What does have a favorable effect on coffee are things like magnesium, potassium, and a certain right blend of calcium.”

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German company Kaffeeform combines dried coffee grounds and biopolymer to create stylish-looking coffee cups and saucers that are not only durable and dishwasher-safe, but even smell a bit like coffee.

For every cup of coffee you brew, about two tablespoons of grounds wind up in the trash. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but just think about the millions of coffees consumed around the world every single day, and you’ll start to see the problem. Sure, some of those coffee grounds are recycled as fertilizer or beauty products like face masks, but most of it ends up at landfills. It was while contemplating this issue that German designer product designer Julian Lechner came up with a radical new and sustainable way of recycling coffee grounds – turning them into tableware.

Lechner first came up with the idea of using coffee grounds to create eco-friendly crockery while attending university in the Italian city of Bolzano. “We were always drinking coffee at university,” he remembers. “Before classes, after classes, meeting friends, hanging out at espresso bars—all the time. And that’s how I started to wonder, What happens to all that coffee? It was all just getting thrown away.” He began consulting with his professors about ways of using coffee grounds to create a solid material, but it took him years to actually come up with a viable solution.

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Winter, a 42-year-old coffee fanatic from Houston, Texas, is on a mission to have coffee at every Starbucks coffee-shop in the world. Given that Starbucks operates on almost every corner of every street of every city in America, not to mention thousands of shops around the world, Winter seems to have set himself an impossible goal. Yet, he’s already been to 11,676 Starbucks branches, and he won’t rest until he’s been to each and every one in the world – that’s at least 10,000 more to go.

Born Rafael Lozano, he legally changed his name to ‘Winter’ because he didn’t want his credit history confused with his father’s. Over the years, Winter, a computer programmer, has spent over $160,000 on Starbucks coffee and on traveling to cafes across 38 different countries – including shops in London, New York, Paris, Egypt, Kuwait, Turkey, Japan, and Lebanon. That’s about 25 percent of his earnings and three months of travel a year on coffee runs.

He’s a self-proclaimed caffeine addict, who at one point, used to guzzle 29 cups of coffee a day. Interestingly, he actually prefers artisanal coffee from independent stores, but he appreciates that Starbucks tastes the same everywhere. His first visit was in 1997, and he almost immediately decided that he had to go see all the branches in the world. “It was a completely random idea that came to me when I was in Plano, Texas while discussing the growth of Starbucks in the greater Dallas area,” he said.

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Latte art has become very popular in recent years, with more and more talented baristas using the fragile milk foam as a miniature canvas for their artworks, but Japan’s Kohei Matsuno is already taking the delicate art form to a whole new level with his amazing 3D latte masterpieces.

Kohei Matsuno used to work in an Osaka restaurant where he used latte art to surprise his clients. However, he noticed people are not so easily impressed with the usual designs on their cups of caffeinated beverages anymore, so he decided to step up his game. He had become an expert at creating traditional Japanese landscapes, popular manga characters and realistic portraits on milk foam, but he still felt restricted by the flat surface of his delicious canvas. To make things really interested he began using large amounts of milk foam to design all kinds of cute shapes, decorating them with with a sharp utensil, usually a toothpick. This ingenious trick has made Kohei one of the most popular latte artists in Japan. Using the alias “Mattsun”, the young barista now spends his days taking ideas from his fans and turning them into delicious reality.

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21-year-old Vincent Francisco Navarro, from Baguio City, Philippines, is an emerging visual artist who uses ground coffee as the main medium of his art. He collects used coffee grounds and recycles them as paint, thus giving the waste product new value and purpose through aesthetics.

The city of Baguio produces around 300 tons of garbage every day, and authorities are still looking for environment-friendly ways of storing and disposing of the waste. Local artist and environmentalist Vincent Navarro decided to do his part by proving recycling can be of great help against the build-up of garbage in an ingenious way. After doing extensive research he started exploring the possibility of creating beautiful works of art with coffee grounds collected from a large gourmet coffee chain. He spent ten months creating portraits of coffee farmers from the Benguet region of the Philippines, using nothing but coffee and used grounds. Inspired by the months his spent as a volunteer aiding coffee farmers in Benguet and Cordillera, Navarro created his works as tributes to the “toil and sweat” these hard-working people put into growing “the best-tasting and rich coffee beans”.

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If you’ve ever wanted to drink your own face, now’s your chance. Taiwanese cafe chain, Let’s Cafe, uses a special latte printer that creates portraits of customers directly on their delicious caffeinated drinks.

Let’s Cafe is a chain of small kiosks offering “fast but good coffee” to shoppers on the go all around Taiwan. Faced with the challenge of competing with larger more established cafe chains, they had to come up with a truly original gimmick in order to attract customers. Let’s Cafe needed something not even big players like Starbucks could compete with, and they found it in the ridiculously accurate coffee printing machine. All users have to do is upload a photo from their mobile phone to the coffee dispenser machine and after the cup has been filled with the caffeinated beverage of their choice, the incorporated printer uses edible ink to sprinkle their photo on the milk foam. While talented latte artists do a great job of creating beautiful designs using rudimentary tools and a steady hand, there are certain limitations to their techniques, whereas this coffee printer is able to produce photo-realistic images.

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Metro St. James, a French-themed cafe in Sydney, Australia, has been open for only three months but it’s gaining popularity fast thanks to an ingenious promotional offer that allows customers to pay for their coffee with kisses.

It’s no joke. During the month of June, people who choose to drink their coffee at Metro St. James between 9 and 11 am get the chance to pay for their order in kisses. “We’re bringing romance back! Take your partner to the café from 9-11am in June and surprise them with a kiss when you order your coffee. We’re not accepting your money, just your kisses,” the cafe’s Facebook page reads. But while the staff isn’t available for kissing, you don’t necessarily have to be a couple to take advantage of this original promotion. If you’re brave enough, you can just pick a random stranger from the streets, or an office buddy you’ve always had a crush on, all that matters is the kiss look genuine. In Metro’s cute promotional video, one of the waiters says: “We’ll watch you. It has to be a real kiss … a true kiss. I can see if it is a fake kiss. I am kind of a specialist.” So no cheating!

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If you’re a fan of coffee and Japanese anime, you’re going to love these amazingly detailed latte portraits of famous Japanese cartoon characters. They are the creations of Twitter user, Sugi, who only started doing latte art a year ago.

I’m a big fan of coffee art, whether it’s executed directly on a cup of joe or on a canvas, using the delicious medium as paint, so when I saw these incredible works of anime art I just couldn’t resist sharing them with you guys. If you thought latte hearts and leaves were cool, Sugi’s designs are probably going to blow your mind. The talented Japanese barista only took up coffee art last April, but she is already able to create unbelievable portraits of anime characters like Sailor Moon or Naruto in stunning detail. Using only toothpicks, chocolate syrup for the dark areas and cocktail syrups for the other colors, Sugi hand-draws two-three of her beautiful artworks every day. So far, she has created over 800 latte masterpieces, and posted photos of them on her Twitter page.

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