Coffee and Climate Change: Reading Past the Headlines
By Emma Sage, SCAA Coffee Science Manager By now you have likely heard of the new scientific study published last week in the online peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE that has sparked a flurry of doomsday headlines for coffee. The study is a collaborative effort between researchers at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in London and the …
12th Annual Roasters Guild Retreat Highlights
This summer, the Roasters Guild held their annual Retreat at Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, WA. With just under 250 attendees, this was the largest Retreat yet and welcomed over 60% first timers. By all accounts, this event was a resounding success, with 99% of post-event survey respondents reporting that they would recommend the Retreat to …
Regional Perspectives from SCAA International Education Partners
For our most recent issue of The Chronicle, we explored many different aspects of traveling as a coffee professional. As a global trade organization, SCAA works with coffee folks from around the world through many of our programs, events, and committee work. We’d be remiss to write about coffee travel and not include something about …
SCAA Coffee Science Origin Trip: Reflections of a Facilitator of Learning
By Emma Sage, Coffee Science Manager, Specialty Coffee Association of America As the Coffee Science Manager I am constantly brainstorming the differing ways I can use my skill set to communicate the science of coffee to SCAA membership. When I began daydreaming about an origin trip that merged science and technological advances with specialty coffee, …
Building Bridges: How to Have a Meaningful Coffee Travel Experience
By Peter Giuliano, Director of Symposium, Specialty Coffee Association of America Coffee travelers come from a variety of places: most often it’s someone from a roasting company – whose job it is to buy coffee – taking deeper responsibility for their supply chain. More often lately, it is a barista or shop owner who seeks …
Traveling With Purpose
By Tracy Ging, Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, S&D Coffee and Tea Specialty pioneers broke new ground when they began traveling to origin. What once was a nameless and faceless commodity came alive with stories, photos, and relationships. Our sense of taste changed. Places, faces, pride, and familiarity now contribute to our definition of great coffee. Travel …
Salzburg Café Diaries: Searching for the “Coffee” in Coffeehouse
By Shauna Alexander Mohr, Consultant In June, just after the World 2012 Barista Championships concluded in Vienna, my family traveled to Salzburg. Intentionally, I didn’t ask around in advance about good cafés or roasters. Instead, I wanted Austria’s grand coffeehouse tradition to reveal itself spontaneously. This approach had worked for me a few years ago …
Don’t Wave Your Stink Fist: Some Tips on Being a Coffee Traveler
By Craig Holt, Founder, Atlas Coffee Importers Coffee is such a great gig. It allows many of us the opportunity to visit a broad variety of cultures in some of the world’s most beautiful places. Having been given such an opportunity, I think we as coffee travelers need to go out of our way to …
What I Learned From Walking: South Sudan, Cultural Sensitivity, and the Search for Wild Coffea arabica
By Emma Sage, Coffee Science Manager, Specialty Coffee Association of America Disclaimer: I went to Africa with no idea what to expect. I could not imagine the right way to ready myself for my trip with World Coffee Research (WCR) to South Sudan. In the end, I prepared only in the most silly and superficial ways. …
Korea’s Exploding Interest in Specialty Coffee
By Kyonghee Shin, Freelance Writer, Apprentice Roaster at Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters In 2007, a serial-drama titled Coffee Prince hit Korean television screens; with 20 percent of Korean households tuning in weekly. The main character was a girl who pretends to be a guy in order to be hired as a barista at a café …
Exploring Guatemala with Max Quirin
An Interview by Lily Kubota How did you end up working in coffee? I started pushing the big wooden forks for turning over the thin coffee layer on the patio at the coffee mill by the family house in Coban ever since I can remember, maybe being three years old. I always spent most of …
Guatemala Head Bleed: Some More Tips on Being a Coffee Traveler
By Craig Holt, Founder, Atlas Coffee Importers The first installment of this series about being a good coffee traveler touched on cultural issues. I explored the value of teaching yourself about more than just the coffee culture of the places you visit, and discussed the importance of not greeting people with your stink fist. I …