Recognizing and Celebrating Past SCAA and SCAE Award Winners
By Ben Pitts This year’s Global Specialty Coffee Expo in Seattle marks a landmark occasion — it’s the first event post-unification of the Specialty Coffee Associations of America and Europe (SCAA and SCAE). This is a seismic shift, and it’s during this exciting time when we reflect on those who have played a huge role …
Honey Is Making Life Sweeter for Coffee Farmers
By Janice Nadworny When Food 4 Farmers started working with coffee farming communities in 2011, the reason was clear: coffee income alone was simply not enough to put food on the table year round for most farming families. This income gap was laid bare when, in 2012, coffee leaf rust started making its way through …
Java Jog Goes Global
After a one year hiatus, the Java Jog for a Cause event is back in Seattle and ready to welcome coffee aficionados, runners, walkers and friends for this annual fun run and fundraiser. Since 2013, Java Jog for a Cause has raised more than $75,000 for women in coffee growing communities in Ethiopia and the …
Sustainability Collaborations That Work
We know that collaboration is hard. In this webinar, we talk to knowledgeable panelists about their most successful and most disastrous collaboration approach and how they made it work.
Partial Dissolved Solids: Evaluating an Extraction Curve
Sponsored content provided by Swiss Water Process By Mike Strumpf Nothing gets me excited about the technical aspects of brewing quite like the Brewers Cup competition, and attending the U.S. Coffee Championship Qualifying Events got me thinking: What would it look like if we created an Extraction Curve that shows dissolved solids levels throughout extraction …
Cuisinart Launches an Automatic Pour-Over Brewer
The Cuisinart PurePrecision™ Coffee Brewer has recently earned the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) Home Brewer Certification. This machine provides an authentic pour-over brewing process by executing three vital variables. These variables are precisely controlled to create coffeehouse-like perfection. First, broad water dispersion evenly saturates all the grinds, then allows them to “bloom,” extracting their optimal flavor. Next, …
What is Specialty Coffee?
By Ric Rhinehart When I first wrote this article in June of 2009, I identified the fragile chain of custody for specialty coffee and the collaborative work that is necessary to deliver a better coffee experience that can be measured. This remains true today, but it is important to note two other thoughts on the …
Supplier-Side Management: With the Farm, With the Cup & With the Market
By Michael Kaiser For coffee suppliers, a complex system is required to produce specialty coffee. From farming, to milling, to export of the coffee, as well as keeping up with the trends and demands of the industry, producers are challenged with a heavy responsibility of influencing and maintaining the overall quality of the coffee on …
Specialty Coffee Retail Standards
By Sarah Leslie Attendees at Re:co Symposium in Atlanta last year had the opportunity to visit four different “cafes” over two days in one hotel ballroom. The coffee service organizers Stephen Morrissey and Laila Willbur intended to emphasize the diversity in specialty coffee retailing. For each coffee break, volunteers and staff created four distinct service …
The Impact of Roasting on Coffee’s Flavor
By Rob Hoos In life, we say that it isn’t so much the destination, but the journey itself that is important. With coffee, it is no different. One can arrive at the same end color—of both whole bean and ground coffee—with similar objective measurements (bean density, moisture content, solubility, etc.) and have the coffee taste …
Sorting it All Out: Counter Culture’s Use of an Optical Sorter for Roasted Coffee
By Timothy Hill Thinking about the consistency of anything is daunting, whether you are staring at a bag of rice, pondering how it is possible that every single individual grain is almost exactly the same, or thinking about a barista behind the counter pulling espresso after espresso. The topic of consistency is one of those …
Nothing Wrong, Something Right
By Todd Mackey There are those times that stand out amidst harder seasons. Days where the mere absence of any issue and lack of conflict can be stunningly beautiful, when “nothing immediately wrong” is wholly special and can stop one dead in their tracks. Then there are stretches where even the rain has sunshine glistening …