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.
Where Coffee is Hot: By International City
In 2013, Coffee Review hosted visitors from 223 countries and territories, including countless cities and town around the world. Our readers hail from famous world capitals such as Rome, Italy and Nairobi, Kenya to lesser-known Nuuk, Greenland and Apia, Somoa. However, some cities have more visitors than others and none of the above cities ranked […]
Where Coffee is Hot: By U.S. State
Last summer, we looked at Coffee Review readership by state for the second quarter of 2013. We calculated per capita readership, that is, readers normalized for each state’s population, to get an idea where people are most interested in coffee (at least as measured by Coffee Review readership.) We’ve just re-crunched the data for the […]
Where Coffee is Hot: By U.S. City
Last summer, we took a mid-year look at Coffee Review readership by U.S. city and state. We normalized readership figures to account for population differences and produce a more accurate picture of each locale’s interest in coffee, at least as measured by Coffee Review readers per capita. We normalized for Internet access and literacy too, […]
Seattle Edges San Francisco… In Coffee Anyway
First of all, for anyone who doesn’t follow NFL football, the Seattle Seahawks play the San Francisco 49’ers this weekend in the NFC Championship Game. The winner will be one of two teams that go to the Superbowl. With that as background, for an upcoming piece on online coffee trends, we started crunching the numbers […]
2014 Coffee Review Cupping Calendar
At the beginning of each month, we publish a new feature article with reviews. The planned cupping calendar for 2014 is shown below: January – Top 30 Coffees of 2013 February – Real Blend: Blends Produced from Three or More Origins March – Specialty Coffees of Brazil April – Specialty Coffees of Colombia May – Coffees […]
Arabica Anxiety and Robustas
I’m here in El Salvador for “Let’s Talk Coffee,” a yearly meeting of mostly small-holding coffee producers, roasters, importer and exporters, and development agencies. It’s sponsored by Sustainable Harvest, a long-time pioneering American importer of cooperative and small-producer coffees. I came here in part to deliver a presentation on Robusta coffees. It was part […]
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 […]
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