Recently a Coffee Review reader sent in a request that we post information on our website about cortado, a relatively obscure coffee beverage in North American cafés. I searched the reference pages, thinking some mention of it had to be buried in the “espresso cuisine” section. But no, no cortado was to be found. Most serious coffee drinking café denizens are able to precisely define the
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.
Those Little Scoops
How many of you measure coffee using a tiny scoop that came with your coffee maker? Maybe things are different around an august group of coffee aficionados, but I just returned from a weekend retreat and all I could find was a subminiature spoon. I resisted the urge to remove it from my hosts’ residence for evaluation, but I suspect it measured between 5 and 7 grams of coffee. This let me to a
Porta-filter densation
I was talking to Scott Callaghan the Australian barista champion just before he left for London for the World Barista Championship and I mentioned to him about “densation.” It’s a clumsy word but its similar to the principle that occurs with the sorting of green beans in a good dry-mill where you have a ‘densimetric’ table that is on an angle and when it vibrates the larger beans go to the top and
Making Sense (or Not Making Sense) of Words for Roast Color
Pawel, in a recent response to my blog “Boomeranging to Super Light Roasts,” asks whether he should order his favorite coffee, a Sumatra Takengon Gayo Organic from the Aceh region, at “City+” or a somewhat darker “Full City.” He answers his own question, quite correctly I think, by writing that there is only one way to find out, and that is by trying both versions. But his response reminded me
Boomeranging to Super Light Roasts
It occurred to me again as we were cupping five beautiful single-origin samples from two of the leading new-paradigm roasting companies (call them third wave , fourth wave – whatever wave we’re on now) that some of these exciting, ground-breaking roasting companies may be edging toward, well, too light a roast. What an irony – even five years ago in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live you
Jamaica
Jamaica has long grown coffee, at one time, for a short while, it was one of the world’s largest producers of the crop. Much of the coffee comes from Jamaica’s famed Blue Mountains. Despite its reputation for quality I, like many coffee professionals, cannot remember a time in which it actually was great. I traveled to Jamaica recently to better understand the industry there and why the coffee is
Mission Coffee Can.com – Web series about coffee?
Coffee has never been successful on TV. We keep trying, but thus far, I think it’s fair to say that the beverage coffee just doesn’t translate well to the screen. Why I’m not sure, having a foot in both subjects, as a producer for much of my adult life, and a coffee lover and writer. I’ve been to all the major cable TV networks and heard the same responses when I brought them coffee concepts. The
World Coffee Conference – New twists at a global meeting of coffee and government leaders
Demand has been increasing faster than supply for a number of years now. This is a typical cycle after a disastrous and widely felt historic low. But it seems that this may not be an ordinary cycle and most producers may not be able to recover to meet the rising demand as new and powerful challenges emerge. I must admit that I came to World Coffee Conference really expecting a mind numbing
Espresso. Is Your Coffee Too Fresh?
As with many subjects related to coffee you will find a variety of opinions regarding freshness within the coffee industry. Take for example the question of storage, for every roaster that recommends storing your coffee in the freezer or refrigerator there are many more that perish the thought. No matter the number of roasters that extol the virtues of hermetically sealed, nitrogen flushed, one
Steep or Brew? One and the same or different?
There are many unknowns in coffee. Regardless of how scientific some of us can make it sound, most of the brewing practices are a product of tradition, not science. At best, it’s practical observation, a very good first-step in scientific inquiry, but hardly definitive. Let’s take the agitation of grounds during brewing, sometimes called turbidity. One analogy expressed is that of a clothes
Understanding the Geisha Cultivar
Like many people in coffee, the Geisha cultivar in Panama fascinates me. I’ve done as much research into its history, as well as other Ethiopian cultivars, as anyone. While I have a lot to say on it here I want to focus on some aspects of its history that were unknown to me until a few days ago and relate a period of its history I haven’t heard before. Most people who know of the Geisha know of
Honey Coffees: A Mostly Sweet Deal
I’ve spent the last week with Graciano Cruz in El Salvador, cupping lots of coffees, many of which are honey coffees he is working on. Honeys are a style recently being experimented with quite a lot in Central America, also called pulped natural and pulped sundried coffees elsewhere. In traditional wet-processing coffee cherries have the skin pulped off and then the fruit layer, called mucilage,
The Humble Flat White
I read an article today in an industry newsletter that Starbucks/Seattle’s Best Coffee is joining forces with Subway and Burger King to improve their coffee to try and compete with McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts success with espresso coffee. Espresso coffee has now contributed to an enormous profit turn-around in several of the world’s largest corporations. So we are obviously talking about very big
Coffee Tasting Sheets and the ‘Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle’
Recently I was involved in a couple of tasting programs. One was a roasters’ competition for espresso and another was research for a rural industries organization evaluating coffee cherry maturity on taste quality. In both cases it was necessary to use tasting sheets. For the cherry maturity tasting, we used the Cup of Excellence® Tasting sheets devised by George Howell. These sheets were a
Picking Ripe: Not as easy as it sounds
In most places around the world coffee is harvested by hands. Quite often in marketing for coffee from various regions and farms they extol the virtues of selective hand harvesting. Everyone claims to only pick ripe red cherry. But how ripe? And how evenly ripe? The reality is most coffee is not harvested as ripe as it could be despite marketing claims. Does the ripeness of the cherry matter? I
Kenya supply chain
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to travel to Kenya (if you follow @coffeereview on Twitter you already know that.) Although the purpose of the trip was to attend the African Fine Coffee Conference and Exposition in Mombasa, I was able to spend a few days exploring coffee farms and processing facilities north of Nairobi. Whenever I travel to coffee producing countries I am always struck by
Report from Kenya: The Ruiru 11 Controversy
As part of a just completed trip to Kenya, I visited some farms and coops in the classic Kenya growing regions northeast of Nairobi. Before arriving at the coffee, however, we enjoyed a day’s run past giraffes, rhinos and other impossible creatures around Lake Nakuru, a lake particularly famous for the clouds of flamingos that turn the pale blue water of the lake pink with their reflections. Not
Haiti Coffee – A Glimmer of Hope
A few weeks ago Kenneth Davids and I were asked to roast, cup and assess two samples of Haitian coffee. This request came in before January’s devastating earthquake and its horrific consequences struck Haiti. As I write, news outlets continue to report on the tragedy while charitable organizations step up their efforts to supply labor, material and money to those in need. In light of this
Coffee Shops in Portland
Portland, my home town, is a great place to drink just about anything. We have outstanding local craft beers, micro-distillers, world-class pinot noir from nearby Willamette Valley, and, yes, some amazing coffee roasters and coffee shops. Stumptown, Portland Roasting, and Kobos come to mind. If you're looking for a place to grab a quality cup, both Stumptown and Kobos coffee shops will
Illy, a leading global coffee company tackles sustainability and stumbles
As more food industry leaders adopt visible sustainable procurement, private firms weigh the value of their own in-house approach versus partnering with existing public initiatives – even competitiveness guru Michael Porter is talking about it. A common groan sounded recently when Andrea Illy, the chief executive of the esteemed Italian coffee roaster (Trieste-based illycaffé S.p.A.)
