story behind the cup
The Business Behind Specialty: Micro Festival El Salvador Day 2
The final day of Micro Coffee Festival El Salvador started bright and early – perhaps a little too bright for those who’d been enjoying …
Producer Insight, Barista Skills—Micro Festival El Salvador Day 1
Micro Festival El Salvador is a one-of-a-kind event (if we do say so ourselves). A coffee festival in a producing country, it’s dedicated to …
How Indonesian Specialty Farmers Combat a Challenging Climate
A café manager once described their two coffees to me like this: “The Sumatra, well it tastes like coffee. Just what you’d expect coffee …
Why a Salvadoran Mill Believes in Relationship Coffee
Today, Andres Salaverria is the fifth generation of his family to work in coffee. He’s also led the way in experimental processing, invested in …
How to Choose the Best Shade System for Your Coffee Farm
Shade trees have numerous benefits: they’re associated with better cup profiles as they allow the coffee to ripen slower, they may provide additional income …
Why Sustainability Must Be Community-Oriented and Community-Led
There are many areas in which Ixil Guatemalans want to see progress: education, health, food sovereignty, economic diversification, and coffee leaf rust (la roya) …
Coffee Careers: 7 Rules to Barista Like a Boss
We all want to be the best barista possible. The question is, how do we do that? Is it a case of the longer …
Pressure Profiling: The Key to Perfect Extraction
Specialty coffee is an innovative industry. It seems like there’s a new way to improve our coffee every year—if not every month! Recently, the …
Kalita Wave: The Story & Brewing Guide
Kalita Who? The Wave is another offering from Kalita Co., the family-owned Japanese company which has been making coffee equipment since the 1950s. The …
Hydrosols: How to Make Brewing Water as Aromatic as Perfume
Imagine this for a moment: Someone hands you a glass of clear water. You lift it to take a sip, but as your nose …
