Update: It’s the 118th Street Breakfast Cart! We just wanted to build some suspense.

Last weekend, Bwog’s crack team of bracketologists debuted the Bwog Coffee Showdown, with the goal of finding the best cup of coffee in Morningside? Sure, you can read about Linsanity on any sports page, but only Bwog’s Sports Desk can provide in-depth coverage of Columbia’s very own pursuit of the perfect brew. With all the rigor of a Frontiers of Science lecture slide and the detailed analytic methods employed only in Physics for Poets, we bring you the next round in our coffee showdown.

The Result: Our highly trained panel of coffee connoisseurs assembled in a top-secret campus corner to once again blindly taste four coffees: Hamdel, the breakfast cart, and a pair of Starbucks—at 110th and Liz’s Place in the Diana. In a surprising outcome, the breakfast cart put on the show of the tournament so far, advancing after a unanimously decided victory. The 110th Starbucks put up a fight, while Hamdel and the Diana Starbucks were far less impressive. The breakfast cart moves on to face Joe in the semifinals. More reactions are after the jump.

bracket

Cup #1 (Breakfast Cart)

“very self-confident”

“smells yummy… like a burnt brownie”

“the marriage material of coffee”

“nice mediation between bitterness and flavor”

“very solid roast”

Cup #2 (Starbucks 110th)

“the awkward younger sibling of cup #1”

“a tiny bit burnt”

“more of a blue-collar feel”

“not that friendly”

“not as rich as #1”

Cup #3 (Hamdel)

“sort of metallic”

“doesn’t have much flavor”

“very sour”

“acidic and scary”

“very harsh”

Cup #4 (Starbucks Diana Center)

“a little disappointing”

“smell is flat… looks like a lake”

“the runt of the family”

“feels empty… leaves you wanting more”

“very watery”

Final Rankings:

1. Breakfast Cart

2. Starbucks 110th

3. Starbucks Diana Center

4. Hamdel

 

Methodology: Bwog took a feather out of Joe Lunardi’s cap and constructed our very own bracket, seeded by public opinion. Morningside’s 16 best cups compete with each other in the battlefield of our judgement—a gaggle of freshman staff writers frantically gulping coffee in between classes. In each of four preliminary editions, four brands face off to determine the Final Four. After two dramatic semi-finals, we’ll use a final double blind test to determine the over all winner, and throw in a poll to see if your biases agree with our findings.

Recap: In the previous two matches of the first round, both Joe and Oren’s—seeded 1 and 2, respectively—emerged victorious to net themselves a place in the semifinals. While Oren’s came away with an easy win after trouncing Café 212 and Crumbs (whose coffee was the worst yet tasted) and knocking Brad’s aside, Joe narrowly avoided an upset at the hands of Brownie’s.