Coffee Tao

Currently brewing and enjoying some Rwanda Musasa that I bought at the recently-opened Stumptown on Pine St. here in Seattle. I was a fan of the coffee shop that used to be where Stumptown now stands; it was called Aurafice and while I admit the coffee wasn’t very good, it had a scrappy, old-school […]

A wonderful article in Mental Floss describes the role coffee played in the Civil War, from the ways soldiers prepared their beans to the outrageous price Southerners paid for coffee ($60 per lb.!). One thing I couldn’t help but find charming–if anything in war can truly be called charming–was how the frontline Northern and […]

Hacienda La Esmerelda is making waves this year as the “most expensive coffee“; after years of leading the Best of Panama auctions, the most recent crop commanded an astonishing 160% of last year’s price and tops out at retail around $130/lb.
But it’s not the world’s most expensive coffee.
That honor belongs to Kopi Luwak, an Indonesian […]

Two weeks ago a coffee roaster from Norway had an idea. Tim Wendleboe was excited about the newest crops which had just come in, and really wanted to get his customers to try them in their “native” state–no cream, no sugar, just the characteristics of the coffees themselves. But how to get the […]

If you’re not making your coffee with a laser then you’re clearly doing it wrong.

Your coffee not racy enough? Need a little more spice in your Sumatran? There’s one way to give your love affair with your daily cup a little more oomph and go a little more green in the process: give it a corset.
Jennifer George sews “coffee corsets” for your cup that takes the […]

Summer’s pretty definitively over, but you can hang on to what sun is left with this cold-brew-based drink that’s as good as it is simple to make.
There are plenty of systems for cold-brew (or “toddy”) coffees, but if you’re new to making cold-brewed coffee at home, it’s easy enough. Just measure into a sealable […]

In 1982 the National Coffee Association, representing the major coffee providers such as Sara Lee and Kraft, launched an awareness campaign offering a solution to type-A go-getters trying to come off of–I’m not kidding–cocaine. It suggested caffeine as a safe, legal pick-me-up for putting in those extra hours, and the campaign had everyone from […]

(This is part three of a three-part series addressing the debate of Fair Trade vs. direct trade, their political ramifications, and why I prefer direct trade. Read Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.)
In Part 2 I discussed why I don’t think Fair Trade is the best option for getting the best beans at […]

(This is part two of a three-part series addressing the debate of Fair Trade vs. direct trade, their political ramifications, and why I prefer direct trade. Read Part 1 here, and Part 3 here.)
Many socially-conscious coffee lovers peek into the windows of their local shops looking for the tell-tale sticker with the Fair Trade […]