Coffee News
Coffee Review regularly publishes coffee tasting reports and 100-point wine-style coffee reviews as well as news and updates of interest to coffee lovers and our readers. News, updates, and blog posts below appear in reverse chronological order.
The Top 30 Coffees of 2013
View list of Top 30 Coffees of 2013 Coffee Review introduced 100-point reviews to the specialty coffee industry in 1997. Over the years since then we’ve cupped tens of thousands of samples and produced reviews for nearly 3,500 coffees. We are often asked, “What is the best coffee?” To which we give the obvious answer: […]
Rejoice at Low Coffee Prices? What about Fair Trade?
On Monday, the LA Times ran an article titled Coffee drinkers rejoice: Price of beans hits four-year low. Now, we’re glad that favorable weather conditions are helping increase coffee production. And, you certainly can’t blame consumers (or the LA Times) for welcoming lower prices. However, keep in mind that lower green coffee prices can […]
Preview of October Article and Reviews
In the new world of high-end specialty coffee, botanical variety of the tree has become one of the main ways to differentiate and describe small lots of fine coffee. Grape variety has long been a differentiator in wine, of course, and increasingly dominates description and selling of certain fruits and vegetables. But botanical variety of […]
Agtron Numbers: A Sweet Spot?
An Agtron machine reflects light on a sample of coffee in order to objectively and accurately assign a number to the beans’ roast color. The smaller the number, the darker the roast. If you’re interested in some additional background, refer to a blog we posted in 2010: http://bit.ly/1b7fLNR. The reason that I started thinking about […]
A Morning Cup by Jason Sarley
Many readers ask us about the best way to brew coffee, and the short answer is: whatever way is best for you and your tastes is the surest way. Although there are some worthwhile guidelines that can help even a first-time brewer prepare a good cup of coffee, I follow three fundamental rules: How-Hot, How-Much, […]
Coffee Review Readership in Taiwan Surpasses Australia
Earlier this year, we speculated that Coffee Review readership in Taiwan could exceed that of Australia if traffic growth rates continued. Well, it has happened, at least for September. Visits from Taiwan leapfrogged those from Australia, making Taiwan our fourth largest source of visitors, after only the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. If […]
Guatemala Cupping: Sneak Peek
Sneak peek from the lab… According to Kenneth: “We have cupped about twenty Guatemalas with about ten more to go. We’ve encountered a very wide and impressive range of cup profiles, particularly in the way they reflect the cup tendencies of various botanical varieties of Arabica, from deep, meaty Pacamaras to intense, high-toned, perfumy Geshas. […]
Is Coffee Bad For Your Health?: “Better is More”
This week, the highly respected Mayo Clinic published findings that suggest excess coffee consumption, defined as more than four cups per day every day, increases the likelihood of early death in people under the age of 55. The study concluded, in part: “On the basis of these findings, it seems appropriate to suggest that younger […]
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Currently the predominant style in high-end, artisan roasting is certainly light roasting or medium-light roasting, which allows the roaster to highlight the character of the bean rather than the roast. However, there is no question that many coffee lovers still prefer the bittersweet bite of dark roasts, even if the subtle varietal characteristics have been […]
Sneak Peek: Honduras Cupping
Our August issue, featuring specialty coffees from Honduras, should post tomorrow, Sunday, August 4. The cupping is complete. Nine coffees scored 90 points or higher. We’ll include all of them in the article. If you can’t wait until tomorrow to read about Honduran coffees, there are 4 dozen Honduran coffee reviews on the site […]
Washington Loves Coffee, But Not As Much As …
Based on reader feedback regarding last week’s “Who Cares About Coffee Anyway” blog post, it was clear that we needed to dig deeper than a top 10 list of coffee cities (based on per capita Coffee Review readership). Numerous readers asked where their hometown ranked. We decided that we needed to expand the list, perhaps […]
Who Cares About Coffee Anyway?
Well, Coffee Review certainly does. Given that you’re reading this post, you probably care. The roughly one million people who visit CoffeeReview.com each year care, at least enough to visit. But what we’re really trying to get at is which cities are most interested in coffee… most passionate about coffee, if you will? To answer […]
What’s the Deal with Decaf?
We haven’t published an article about decaffeinated coffee since July 2010. At the time, the samples we cupped “tested my optimism,” to quote Kenneth Davids. Only one of the 50 decafs we cupped earned a score of 90 points, namely Decaf South America Blend by Cafe Valverde. However, it appears that decaf drinkers in 2013 […]
Three New Capsule Espresso Systems
Convenience-first single-serve coffee brewing devices are on a roll in North America, fueled by the success of the Keurig and its K-cup capsules. In Europe, where espresso rules, the Nespresso espresso system has had similar blockbuster success. Both systems use rigid capsules rather than tea-bag-like paper pods that characterized earlier (and less commercially successful) single-serve […]
How Does One Rate Milk!?
We’re currently testing new capsule espresso systems for July’s featured article. There are three: the Starbucks Verismo, the Keurig Rivo (with coffee capsules produced by Lavazza), and a dark horse, the Singolo, with machine and capsules produced in Italy and imported by a Canadian company with distribution in the United States. We are benchmarking these […]
What’s the Best Hawaiian Coffee?
Perhaps as we approach the All-American holiday of Independence Day, it’s appropriate to consider what the “best” American coffee is. And, given that Hawaii is the only U.S. state that grows commercial quantities of coffee, it might naturally lead to the question “What’s the best Hawaiian coffee?” That is a question raised in a recent […]
Single-Serve Coffee and Espresso Reviews
Machines that utilize a pod, capsule, or K-Cup packed with ground coffee to brew a single serving of coffee (or espresso) are very popular. According to the latest data from the National Coffee Association, thirteen percent of the U.S. population drank coffee made in a single-cup brewer. We first evaluated coffees brewed on single-serve machines […]
Low Acid Coffees
We track the search terms that readers use to find CoffeeReview.com. Recently I noticed quite a few readers looking for information about low acid coffees. One reader was even trying to find out what acid was added to coffee. Well, to answer the question, acid is generally not ADDED to coffee. It occurs naturally and […]
Hype Meets the Cup: St. Helena Sandy Bay Estate
Some interesting green coffees have come into the lab recently. These were green samples, but you can probably find roasters who offer them via an Internet search. Those who have some history probably are aware that St. Helena, a tiny island located in the middle of the South Atlantic roughly between Brazil and Africa, is […]
A Brief, Early History of 100-Point Coffee Reviews
I was curious who received the first 90-point coffee review, which lead me to re-read the first Coffee Review article from 1997. Wow! “I have been convinced that the time has come to start assigning numerical rankings to cuppings as my counterparts have been doing for some time with wines, beers and cigars. These rankings […]
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