Coffee Tao

In a nod to the classic style of apprenticeship from ye olden days, the Lincoln, Nebraska, coffeeshop Cultiva Coffee is offering a literal apprenticeship program for baristas, roasters, and even managers.
By “classic” I mean that applicants would travel to Lincoln and stay in the owners’ home, working at the shop 30 hours a week in […]

Despite its color, coffee is basically 95% water. You might guess as a result that water quality is critically important to whether an otherwise fine coffee tastes great or just okay–and you’d be right.
Recently Klaus Thomsen of the Coffee Collective felt that the city line water in his native Copenhagen was negatively affecting the […]

It sounds like a Zen koan, but there’s a method behind the madness of the question. People typically associate arabica beans with specialty (i.e., good) coffee and Robusta beans with commodity (i.e., bad) coffee. But the specialty coffee craze of the last twenty years has had an effect on the coffee market, an […]

Oftentimes, your only thought in grabbing that morning coffee is getting the needed jolt to get through your work day. But do you ever wonder where that jolt comes from? Sure, everyone knows it’s the caffeine, but what is caffeine? Where does it come from, and why does coffee have it?
Caffeine, which […]

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 […]

(This is part one 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 2 here, and Part 3 here.)
If you spend enough time in the coffee industry, it’s almost impossible not to get mixed up in a cause. […]

One of the most common questions I get asked as a “coffee guy” is, “how can I get my coffee at home to taste as good as it does at the coffee shop?” A lot of people just assume that the shop is using better beans, which is often true; but buy some of […]

The Specialty Coffee Association of America has finished creating a certification course that gives instructor accreditation to train cupping judges. The five-day course administered by members of the SCAA can teach you to train other people to accurately cup coffees. You can read the full extent of the requirements and training procedure right […]