This week, Daily Coffee News published a summary of a surprisingly readable white paper by the Clean Label Project about decaffeinated coffee and the dangers of Methylene Chloride (or dichloromethane, CH2Cl2 for the scientists in the room). It circled the office this morning -- senior trader Jeri...
Chris Kornman, Education and Lab Manager of The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room briefly discusses the fabled Gesha coffee variety, the evolution of the plant's genetics and flavor profiles in anticipation of some new Crown Jewel releases. For more information on coffee plant types,...
Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in Daily Coffee News on February 7, 2019. It is reprinted here with permission. This is the second part of a two-part coffee plant type series, the first of which published in Daily Coffee News on December 12, 2018, and was reprinted here on the Royal...
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: This article first appeared in Daily Coffee News on Thursday, March 15, 2018. Despite the fact that coffee comes equipped with a natural insecticide (caffeine), it is still susceptible to sporadic insect infestation. Royal Coffee experienced a pest-related incident that affected...
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: This article originally appeared in Daily Coffee News on November 22, 2017. In what might be a foolhardy attempt to correlate two of coffee’s most complicated concepts, I’ve dedicated a significant portion of the past few months to examining the relationship between the water...
A version of this article originally appeared on Daily Coffee News here on March 8th 2017. This article was co-authored by Colleen King & Rosi Quiñones Part I : GMOs In part one of this series, we explore the Non-GMO certification movement, and discuss its relevance to the specialty coffee...
An undervalued, understudied coefficient in our series about analyzing green coffee (Part I - Moisture and Water Activity, Part II - Screen Size, Part III - Visual Defects) is density. The fact of the matter is that we don’t have a complete understanding of the myriad factors influencing green...
One of the big pieces of recent news at Royal is that we’ve elected to cease contracting Methylene Chloride decaf. The reasons are nuanced, but a recent conversation with founder Bob Fulmer made it clear to me that the decision was made at least in part in principle. While the impact of Royal...
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...
Let's cut to the chase: I need to issue a few corrections. Lucia Solis, of Scott Labs (not to be confused with the similarly named entity that helped develop the SL-28 variety in Kenya, for example. That Scott Labs no longer exists as such, but is now the National Agricultural Laboratories, a part...
This week we’re back on the grading table, this time focusing our attention on visual defects in green coffee. In many ways, green coffee defects share some similarities with screen size. They both impact the way coffee roasts and tastes and equally can have financial ramifications in terms of...
Download the printer-friendly PDF In Part I of this series on analyzing green coffee, we focused in a lot of detail on the water – specifically the relationship of a green coffee’s water content and activity to its safety, longevity, and potential for browning reactions in the roaster. This...
Download the printer-friendly PDF Bob & Max’s Note: If you are a coffee roaster doing wholesale business with any number of large-format retailers in the United States, you’ve probably been hearing the phrase “HACCP” with more regularity. In an effort to provide the best customer service we...
