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Good Food Awards 2019
This was my first year as Co-Chair for the Good Food Awards, hosted by the Good Food Foundation which exists “to celebrate, connect, empower, and leverage the passionate and engaged, yet often overlooked, players in the food system who are driving towards tasty, authentic, and responsible food in...
Café Touba
There is a wealth of diversity in the way people prepare and consume coffee around the world. The cultural exchange that comes out of international interaction, and especially out of colonization, creates new traditions like Café de Olla, a Mexican beverage I’ve written about previously. These new...
Café de Olla
Editors note: A version of this article first appeared as a two-part series in Barista Magazine Online on August 7 and August 14, 2018. For a limited time, you can enjoy our version of this beverage at The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room Café de Olla: Native to Mestizo Mexico In many...
Treading Water: A Practical H2O Guide for Coffee Professionals – Part II: The Sensory Data
Editor's Note: A version of this article first appeared in Daily Coffee News on August 29, 2018 Treading Water A Practical H2O Guide for Coffee Professionals Part II - The Sensory Data In the first half of this series, we took a shallow dive into the deep pool of information on the chemistry and...
Producer Interview: Miriam Monteiro de Aguiar from Brazil & Hirut Berhanu from Ethiopia
Royal sources coffee from every corner of the globe and I am always amazed at how much all of us at origin have in common despite the vast distances between us. I recently interviewed two women working in the coffee industry, one from Brazil and one from Ethiopia. Miriam Monteiro de Aguiar from...
Advanced Roasting with Jen Apocada at CoRo in Berkeley
Advanced Roasting Class Upcoming - Register Here This course takes place over 2 consecutive days Thursday, September 13th, 9am - 4pm (lunch provided) Friday, September 14th, 9am - 12pm The Crown's Advanced Roasting 2-day course offers an array of tools to equip roasters to dramatically improve...
Nicaragua and Coffee 2018: Navigating Weather, Civil Strife, Roadblocks, and Low Prices
Nicaragua and Coffee 2018: Navigating Weather, Civil Strife, Roadblocks, and Low Prices (and still delivering great coffee!) After suffering in recent years from loss of production due to the effects of La Roya, this was supposed to be a year of recovery for the Nicaragua coffee economy....
Coffee Trivia Benefiting Grounds for Health
Maybe you saw the Sprudge Shout-Out last week, maybe you've been keeping up on our Events page... But in either case, the night of coffee-related trivia is fast approaching. Register in Advance Here Advance registration guarantees a spot in the evening's festivities and entitles you to a...
Treading Water: A Practical H2O Guide for Coffee Professionals – Part I: Chemistry & Conditioning
Editor's Note: A version of this article first appeared in Daily Coffee News on August 15, 2018 Treading Water A Practical H2O Guide for Coffee Professionals Part I - Chemistry and Conditioning With the emergence of scientific manuals like the SCA’s Water Quality Handbook and the Maxwell...
Procedimientos y Protocolos de Catación
Our industry is multidisciplinary and international; it’s important to maintain clear means of communication as well as mutual understanding of quality standards. Here follows a translation of our article “Cupping Basics - How to Set up & Execute A Great Tasting Experience” into Spanish in...
Roasting on the Quest M3s
Over the past year, one component of our weekly Crown Analysis writings has gained attention with a demographic we weren’t used to hearing from home roasters. This welcome attention isn’t something we take lightly, and we want to thank all of you who have gotten in contact with us. The Behmor is...
The Imbalance
Edith Gonzales and Rosi Quiñones from Royal wrote a grant proposal for the Canopy Bridge travel grant offered to help finance sourcing trips for businesses interested in visiting coffee producers. Edith and Rosi’s proposal won funding to pay for airfare for Mayra Orellana-Powell (Royal’s Marketing...
How Dissimilar Origins Shaped the Industry
Editor's Note: A version of this article first appeared in Coffee T&I Magazine, June 2018. Download a PDF here, including fully cited references. Coffee often exists as a routine, a caffeine delivery mechanism, well before any of us begin taking pleasure in its flavor. Like many things in...
Taiwan’s Coffee Scene
I visited Taiwan last winter to promote a book about coffee roasting that I co-authored with Naoki Goto, Tim Wendelboe, and the book’s editor, Lulu Wang. I was excited to experience and learn more about the coffee scene, as well the food scene in Taipei and elsewhere on the island. I heard the...
New Crown Events & Classes Added
Culture, Conflict, and Coffee: Tastings from Uncommon Origins Paired with History You Haven’t Heard (at Blue Bottle in Culver City, Los Angeles) - FREE Register & Learn More Here! Saturday, August 18th, 2:00pm – 4:30pm We’d like to explore a little about why the roasted seed of a fruit,...