The Soul of Coffee
By Peter Giuliano There is an academic discipline that studies the way human beings relate to food and the culture we develop around the ways we eat and drink. It’s called foodways and it documents and analyzes what we do in regards to food and why we do it. Foodways looks at our traditions of …
The (Coffee) World is Flat
By Peter Giuliano Coffea Arabica and Homo Sapiens have a lot in common. Both evolved in Ethiopia, and crossed the Red Sea before fanning out all over the globe. The human race inhabited and spread its culture through every corner of the world, and the diversity and beauty of human expression is a marvel to …
Welcome to your Virtual Community
By Peter Giuliano In 1993, computer scientists at Cambridge University in England decided to attach the feed from a video camera to the brand-new invention called the internet, and in the process created the first webcam. This webcam was trained on a coffee pot in a break room, so the scientists could see how much …
Roasters Guild Retreat
Celebrating 10 Years of Educating, Uniting and Advancing Craft Roasting By Phil Beattie In the late ’90s, the café culture in the United States was rapidly accumulating new faces, including pilots, engineers, and pretty much everyone else with a 401(k) who was hoping to cash in on the burgeoning specialty coffee marketplace. As the café …
The 2011 United States Barista Championship Competition Season
By Marcus Boni Sometimes I wonder how many times I’ve had to describe exactly what a barista competition is to someone who isn’t closely familiar with the Specialty Coffee Industry. My canned response usually starts with “Are you familiar with a bartenders competition?” and then I go on to talk about the basic service and …
Dollars and Sense: The Business Rationale for Training
By Shanna Germain If you’re in the specialty coffee business, you probably know a great deal about employee training. You’ve read articles, you understand the reasoning, and you likely have a system set up to train new and continuing employees. Chances are good that you also agree with the philosophy that says that having well-trained …
Creating a Common Language for Quality
By Craig Holt No system for evaluating coffee quality is perfect. The Q Coffee System, however, has been a great help to me as a specialty coffee importer and, I would guess, to many others in the specialty industry. While the vast majority of our clients today are skilled and thoughtful cuppers, we used to …
Dare to Differentiate: SCAA Certification Programs
By Ellie Hudson Matuszak Differentiation. It is a word that many of us, as specialty coffee professionals, use and occasionally even overuse. It is a word and a concept that some love and others loathe. It is highly specific in meaning but can also be used as a catch-all to describe the ultimate goals and …
Educating the Industry
By Peter Giuliano One thing that makes coffee special is that it takes so many skilled professionals to reveal its natural beauty. The skills of the farmer, miller, cupper, roaster, and barista are essential to specialty coffee, and SCAA has, since its inception, taken responsibility for cultivating, teaching, and setting the standard for coffee education …
Getting to Know Tim O’Connor
Q: Who are you and what do you do in coffee? A: Let’s reverse the order of that question–what I do in coffee is hard enough to answer! I’m actively involved in a number of businesses as well as serving as president of the SCAA. I’m based in Santa Cruz, California and most of my …
The FNC´s National Coffee Research Center (Cenicafé) was awarded with the Blue Planet Prize 2010-2011
For more than 70 years Cenicafé has researched on themes that include coffee production, harvesting methods, wet mill processest, quality, by-products management, and natural resource conservation. The protection, recovery, and appropriate management of soils and water sources have always been a priority to Cenicafé. The reduced use of harmful substances to the environment is possible …
High Prices Jolt Coffee Market
By Marvin G. Perez Rising food prices are eating into corporate earnings, and the coffee industry is no exception. For seasoned traders paying the current price above $2.30 for a pound of Arabica beans this may not be so shocking, especially if they lived through the price spike to $3.18 a pound seen in 1997. …