The recently debuted Starbuck's Reserve Roastery in Seattle is garnering a lot of attention. Starbucks describes their new venture as an "Immersive Combination of Cafe, Roastery, and Restaurant" that offers the"Rarest of Coffees from Around the Globe, Roasted to Perfection." Roast Magazine and Daily Coffee News have published a couple pieces about it: Inside Starbucks' New Reserve Line HQ,
Journal
Coffee Review publishes regularly scheduled monthly coffee tasting reports according to our editorial calendar as well 100-point wine-style coffee reviews throughout the month. Our Journal page is where we share news, updates, and general blog posts to keep readers and industry professionals up to date about Coffee Review and other topics of interest to coffee lovers.
Coffee in Cuba
MSN recently published an article that lists "The World's Best Cities for Coffee." The piece doesn't offer much explanation for its selection criteria other than a short introduction: "When traveling, coffee lovers need to know where to go to escape the substandard American-style brew most hotels serve. There are cities that define themselves by their coffee culture, and that should not go
How Does Starbucks Rate?
Today, MSN Money Market Watch features an article titled "10 things Starbucks won't tell you." It's an interesting piece that shares mostly negative information such as Starbuck's famous Pumpkin Spice Lattes (PSL) contains chemicals and artificial colorings but no actual pumpkin. And, the Double Chocolatey Chip Frappuccino has more than 500 calories. According to the article, the first thing
October Article: HarVee Award Winners
For our October article we will report on the results of a competition among roasters at the interesting Let’s Talk Coffee event coming up in Panama October 9-12. As a result, our October tasting article will be published on Monday, October 20. Let’s Talk Coffee is a long-running annual event sponsored by coffee exporter/importer Sustainable Harvest. It attracts several hundred coffee
HarVee Roaster Awards, Let’s Talk Coffee, Panama
I’ve been at the Let’s Talk Coffee annual event in Panama over the last few days, and this last Thursday night presented awards to roasters for best retail-roasted presentation of coffees sold (as green coffee) by Sustainable Harvest, a long-established specialty green coffee importer whose business model is built around building sustainability throughout the coffee supply chain. Coffee Review was
Cupping Calendar Changes
The article “Coffees of a Single Variety, from a Single Lot,” originally scheduled for publication in October, has been postponed to November, with cupping occurring in October. Submissions for this article (“Coffees of a Single Variety, from a Single Lot”) should reach Coffee Review between October 14 and October 23. Roasters may not submit more than two samples for this cupping. Samples for
Iselle Not Too Bad?
We heard from Kelleigh and Brandon at Big Island Coffee Roasters. It's great to hear that they didn't get hit too bad: First of all, thanks so much for your concern and support! All in all, we didn't get hit too bad, though we may not have power or steady internet connection until next week. Fortunately, we have a rusty, old generator to power the coffee roasters on! Thanks to our wind
Iselle Makes Landfall in Hawaii
We're tracking the progress of tropical storm Iselle, which is bringing 60 mph winds and heavy rains to the coffee growing areas in Hawaii. According to the Weather Channel, Iselle made landfall at 2:30 a.m. HST about five miles east of Pahala in the Ka'u growing district. There have already been reports of structural damage, trees downed, power outages, and some flooding. Roofs were reportedly
Welcome to Our New Site
Welcome to our new website. If you have visited CoffeeReview.com in the past, the new look and feel will be obvious. We've added new navigation and search functionality to make it easier to find the articles, reviews, and blogs that you are looking for. The website will be faster and more stable. For visitors using a mobile device, the site should be much easier to read and browse. We're
Hawaii Reviews Coming Soon
Our August tasting article, featuring coffees from Hawaii, should post on Wednesday, August 6. Not a lot of Konas – apparently the small Kona farmers who retail their coffees directly to consumers have more demand than they have coffee and so feel they have nothing to gain by risking a review. Nevertheless, we will report on a handful of very fine Konas with their quiet distinction well served by
Meet Our New Mascot – Lani
We're pleased to introduce Coffee Review's new mascot, Lani. Very sweet but, yes, we resisted suggestions to name her Sugar. Coffee has never tasted as good as it does after 4:30 am wake-up calls for potty training.
Home Roaster Competition 2014: A Long Way from Iron Skillets
Recently Henry Chang, a passionate home coffee roaster (when he’s not pursuing his successful career as an obstetrician/gynecologist), sponsored a contest for his home roaster Internet correspondents. He asked Coffee Review to act as judge. As busy as we were, we agreed, since both my co-cupper Jason Sarley and I are strong supporters of the home roasting community even though our reviewing work
U.K. Coffee Reviews
In 2013, we reviewed coffees from 12 countries, namely the United States, Canada, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, China, Netherlands, Guatemala, Italy, Slovak Republic, Switzerland, and Sweden. The United Kingdom was noticeably absent from the list. London (and the U.K. in general) has a thriving specialty coffee scene that rivals that of other well known U.S. coffee-crazy cities like Seattle
Melbourne Has the World’s Best Coffee?
According to an article in the Melbourne Herald Sun, Booking.com surveyed more than 1,000 of its users from around the world and determined that Melbourne, Australia has the world's best coffee. Really? This conclusion merits a little closer look. First, at Coffee Review, we always point out that there is no such thing as a "best" coffee and, by extension, no city with the "best" coffee. We
A Tribute to the Life of Wicha Promyong, Doi Chaang Coffee
In 2011 I spent several days at the Doi Chaang coffee cooperative in northern Thailand. There I encountered the extraordinary Wicha Promyong, the inspirational leader of the Doi Chaang coffee cooperative and its sister company, Doi Chaang Coffee. Shockingly and unexpectedly, Khun Wicha succumbed to a heart attack on Thursday, January 23, 2057 (2014) near Doi Chaang Village in Chiang Rai Province,
Where Coffee is Hot: By Country
We're wrapping up our "Where Coffee is Hot" series by looking at Coffee Review readership by country. In 2013, we hosted readers from 233 countries and territories, which must be just about all of them. We'll look at our readership three ways: total readers in 2013, per capita readers in 2013, and percentage growth from 2012 to 2013. Total readers in 2013 is somewhat predictable. Countries
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 near the top for Coffee Review readership or per
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 full year of 2013. Here are the top ten states for
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, but frankly, it didn't change the results much at
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 on Coffee Review traffic in 2013. Not surprisingly, New York, Los Angeles,
