Editor's Note: This article first appeared in Daily Coffee News on December 12, 2018. It is reprinted here with permission. A Roaster’s Guide to Understanding Coffee Plant Types Coffea arabica has evolved dramatically over the course of history, rising from humble under-canopy trees growing wild...
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...
Auctioning is perhaps one of the most convoluted and least efficient ways to complete a coffee transaction. It also happens to be one of the very first means used for trading green coffee. It persists today as the primary method for purchasing coffees from nations such as Kenya and Tanzania, and...
A few recent shipments from Mexico brought matters of international shipping to our attention once again, but in a very positive manner. These two shipments in particular came in tasting absolutely fabulous. So, how come these coffees came in...
Editor's note: this story first ran in Daily Coffee News on May 14, 2018. On January 14, 2018, Tanzania’s Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa dissolved the Tanzania Coffee Development Trust Fund, claiming it was redundant and depriving farmers of their money. At the same time, he directed the...
What do you call a coffee that is neither fully washed nor dried in the cherry... and more importantly, what does it mean when we say Pulped Natural, Honey Process, or Semi-Washed? In the world of coffee, there are basically two ways to process post-harvest. You can minimally process before...
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...
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...
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...
Editor's note: This article was updated on July 16th, 2020. To learn more about Ethiopia, check out our webinar, "What's Happening in Ethiopia?" with Max Nicholas-Fulmer, Caitlin McCarthy-Garcia, and Haile Andualem. Ethiopia is, arguably, the most important origin in specialty coffee. It appears...
Your Green Coffee Supplier: The ABCs At this juncture in my career my personal satisfaction comes from the undeniable fact that individuals, families, and organizations in both coffee roasting facilities and coffee producing regions rely on me and Royal Coffee to be their purveyors of...
Chris Kornman's recent supply chain article published in the Royal Newsletter could not have been more timely for me. His observations resonated with my own experiences from a recent trip to Guatemala. As Chris explained, coffee milling and exporting services are often separate from farm...
...or The (Supply) Chain Will Keep Us Together Between 2008 and 2015, I lost weeks of my life to layovers and time zone changes travelling between the United States and coffee farms in Brazil and East Africa. It was 100% worth the time I can’t have back: the opportunity to meet and speak with...
We have been observing and collecting data in Santa Elena as part of the Catracha Quality Project to improve upon green coffee processing strategies. (See related Catracha articles here). But once the coffee is ready to ship from Honduras, we cannot ride along in the container as it makes its...
For the last several weeks, members of the Catracha Quality Project have been presenting results of a data survey conducted during the 2016 harvest season in Santa Elena, Honduras. To go back and read some of that work -- which includes detailed process maps and an analysis of correlation between...
