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Catracha Implementing Climate Edge Meteorological Technology
A few weeks ago, I summarized a Climate Edge report issued by Dr. Peter Baker regarding the meteorological data gathered on Jose Alejandro Solis’s Finca Huixoc. Our friends Lowell and Mayra Orellana-Powell of Catracha Coffee recently installed 7 of the Climate Edge NEXO meteorological stations...
Shrubs and Switchels: North American Heritage
If you’re a cocktail connoisseur, you may have noticed a trend developing among your mixologist friends. The food and beverage industry has been steadily returning to the use of locally produced ingredients and preparing everything in-house. Of course, eating locally and seasonally was once the...
The Intersection of Climate and Coffee on Finca Huixoc
It all started with a pretty benign suggestion. Bob Fulmer mentioned the long history of Alfred Klein and coffees from Finca San Carlos to me in passing, and dropped a line introducing us. What followed, over the course of a few weeks, was an exchange totaling over 5000 words and eventually...
Mejor de Huila
In January, Rosi and I flew to Colombia to attend the Mejor de Huila competition and auction organized by InConexus and Royal Coffee. We met up at the Bogotá airport with our fellow cuppers, an international coterie of coffee professionals from Asia, Europe and the US, to catch a flight to...
糖是如何影响咖啡味道的？
关于咖啡，糖似乎是个不能回避的问题，特别是对于精品咖啡而言。 虽然我们不断改善产品的味道和品质，但还是有很多客人会习惯往咖啡中加奶油和糖。 但如果没有这些习惯加糖加奶客人，咖啡产业可能也不会发展到今天。 但问题是，咖啡是一杯个体感知产品，每个人都知道自己想要的产品是什么样的，而且已经成为一种饮用习惯。当然，我们希望我们的顾客都能品尝到我们想要让他们品尝的味道。 尽管如此，你无法阻止你的顾客往咖啡里加糖，这样只能让你的客人越来越少，据统计大约48%的咖啡饮用者，或者说将近一半的咖啡饮用者都习惯往咖啡中加糖。那我们为什么不能满足他们的需要呢？...
Hats off to the Middleman
In the Third Wave coffee market, where the unique qualities of the producer, region, and altitude are popular to tout, the specialty coffee industry has contributed to a romanticized story of how coffee is sourced. The storyline which most consumers understand as 'direct trade' follows a roaster...
Exploring Coffee Bypass
Last month I spent a few weeks playing with the rate of extraction, and came up with some interesting findings. Notably, I learned that the majority of extraction happens within the first 90 seconds of brewing; by that point most of the solids that are going to wash out of the coffee bean and into...
Dispatch from Sensory Summit
Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend Sensory Summit, hosted by the Roasters Guild at UC Davis. This is the third year the Roasters Guild, who hoped to host an event to complement Retreat, has hosted this incredible weekend. It’s designed to “...educate, inform, and inspire the Specialty...
Dark or Light? A Caffeinated Query
Hang up your hats and tie up those high horses, the great caffeine debate can be put to rest. All roasts are created equal. That's right. Under normal circumstances an 8oz cup of light roast has about the same amount of caffeine as the same serving of dark roast. Ready to dive down the rabbit...
Focus on Espresso: Mexico, Brazil, and Sulawesi
I love espresso. There's nothing quite so delightful as pulling a shot, tasting it, making small adjustments, and eventually watching the beautiful tiger stripes of a perfect dial. It's such a pleasingly tactile experience, and for someone who's spent years behind a humming, hot espresso machine,...
Royal Coffee Ethiopia Origin Trip 2017
Royal Coffee recently took a trip to Ethiopia, where we met with various exporters and producers, and explored the country from bustling Addis Ababa to remote Gedeb. We visited the production facilities that have brought us such wonderful Ethiopian coffee over the years, and our customers were...
New Crown Curriculum Classes in March & April
We're adding a number of new classes to the calendar in March and April for 2018 before we head off to Expo in Seattle. Fact & Folklore: Coffee's Culture & Cultivation - a Interactive Lecture & Tasting at Pulley Collective - NEW! Tuesday, April 10 @ Pulley Collective in Oakland - $20...
Cacao + Coffee Roasting Summit
Join Royal Coffee, Inc. and friends for an exploration of roasting knowledge, from cacao to coffee. Together, we will taste cacao, chocolate, and coffee samples with a focus on flavor changes caused by roasting, and discuss in detail the significance of raw material composition and heat...
Back on the Horse
Harar has always held a special place in my heart. One of the very first coffee trips I ever took involved meeting The Man in Harar, Mohamed Abdullahi Ogsadey, quite literally a Somali King with four wives and nearly 50 children. I was seven. For years, Royal Coffee was the exclusive...
Barranquilla es la Capital de la Salsa
If you haven’t recently studied a good map of Colombia, I recommend it. I have a cheap but pretty good atlas I picked up on sale when the Emeryville Borders went out of business a number of years back. I like to study it occasionally; it’s my idea of a good time. Running South to North from the...