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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...
Potato Taste Defect: What Roasters Need to Know
Editor's note: A version of this article first appeared in Daily Coffee News on December 20, 2017. Spuds, yams, tubers – baked, boiled, fried, mashed… There’s almost no limit to the versatility of the root vegetable we often associate with Idaho or Ireland. It might surprise you to know that there...
Understanding Extraction
What really happens during extraction? There are some things we know, and some things that are still a little muddled. This week I did a few experiments in hopes of tightening up our understanding of how extraction works. What we know about extraction: We know that water is an excellent solvent....
A Coffee Buyer’s Glossary of Contract Terms
Editor's Note: A version of this article first appeared in Perfect Daily Grind on November 28, 2017. There are a lot of perks to being a coffee buyer: traveling to origin, meeting producers, experiencing the coffee harvest. As glamorous as this role can be there is a ton of work that comes between...
Producer Interview: Edith Meza Sagarvinaga of Finca Tasta in Satipo, Peru
As part of Royal Coffee’s continued series of interviews with coffee producers, I am pleased to introduce Edith Meza Sagarvinaga, a coffee producer from Peru who recently sold coffee to Royal Coffee for the first time. Edith and her brother Ivan are second generation coffee producers and started...
咖啡产业链之危地马拉见闻
Chris Kornman近期刊发在Royal Newsletter的关于产业供应链的文章很及时，他的感受与我最近到访危地马拉的经历有着异曲同工之妙。 正如Chris所说，咖啡处理和出口是与农业生产过程分开的两个独立环节，对于Royal的很多危地马拉咖啡供应商来说这是一个不争的事实。 出口商CAMEC 例如，来自危地马拉不同产区包括节枝庄园、Huixoc庄园、Limonar庄园以及安提瓜火山地区的的羊皮纸咖啡，都集中到一个名为CAMEC的危地马拉城的咖啡出口公司处理厂储存，这家家族企业建立于上世纪50年代，Royal和这家公司有着长期的合作关系。...