Cupping can be seen as a funny way to evaluate and taste a table of coffee samples by determining their differences and our preferences, but if we look at it from a professional point of view, is more complicated. Key decisions are taken by cupping according to our business, such as checking and improve our roast profile (and our roaster), thinking about at how the potential of that sample can …
Consistency is one of my favourite coffee-related terms and it also sounds great, isn’t it? Consistency is the key and overlooking it, it’s a common mistake that most company does. It doesn’t matter if you are in the specialty business or in the chain one. I’m obviously a specialty coffee lover but what we (specialty coffee) should embrace is that consistency is a strong point of a chain; we can …
The aeropress was invented in 2005 by Alan Adler, who is famous for several inventions such as the Aerobie Pro flying ring which holds the Guinness World Record for the longest throw. The aeropress was designed to make a cup at a time. It reminds a syringe with a cylinder that fits inside another one. This tool relies on pressure to extract the flavours: a plunger pushes the air down …
I used to drink coffee just as a fuel so it wasn’t a good relationship at all. I used to make it with a moka pot adding sugar after brewed it to cover the unpleasant experience. Just after many years I realised what I was used to drink: a “first wave” coffee, hard to smell and lacking of good flavours. Mostly a burnt liquid (made especially with robusta beans) with …
When we refer to pesticides we need to consider a wide range of substances like herbicides, fungicides and insecticides.Unfortunately, coffee is one of the most sprayed crop in the world. The majority of the studies say that up to 250 pounds of fertilizers are sprayed per every single acre of non-organic coffee. Roughly 90% of the coffee are non-organic. So basically, we need to use pesticides whenever we want to …
Read moreThe harmful role of pesticides and how to minimise their impact
Still in America, the trip continues just up north: from Colombia to Guatemala. And yet again, Jesuit priests are supposed to be the ones whom first introduced coffee in Guatemala. Initially, around the mid-1700s it was meant to be just an ornamental plant. After a century, coffee starts replacing indigo and cochineal as synthetic dyes collapsed both markets. Coffee became then a crop along with oils, cocoa and bananas. Then, …
I have always believed that we make our own destiny. By better understanding the impact we human beings have on nature, we need to learn the impact we are already causing on climate change. What threatens the production of coffee? Deforesting, farming and burning fossil release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. By doing that, we are rising the global temperature causing the so-called phenomenon “greenhouse effect”, a natural process in …
Read moreCoffee countries are in jeopardy. What’s the coffee industry up to?
Today It’s time to kick-off with the “Latte Art” section. I start with a question. Does latte art really matter? It’s not precisely define who invented latte art and when he/she did it. There were two guys that were practicing latte art around 1980s and 1990s: David Schomer, owner of Espresso Vivace coffee shop in Seattle along with Luigi Lupi, a passionate educator of the coffee industry. In U.S. Schomer …
Not so long time ago I wrote down something about La Marzocco, one of the world most famous company of high-end espresso machines that every coffee lover knows. You can have a look here . Today it’s the turn of the Modbar AV ABR or Automatic Volumetric Auto Brew Ratio. I’m not sure if we can consider this machine like a precursor of the Fourth Coffee Wave or not (you can …
Coffe comes in waves. Waves are like trends, a step to do to keep up with the evolution. Actually, coffee started before any of these trends; in the 15th centuries coffee became famous in the coffee houses of the middle east and after a couple of centuries it was popular in Europe as well. The first wawe The first wave of coffee brought coffee to the people and not only …