Passion Projects
The redemption story arc begins with heartache and outrage and ends in a triumphant comeback, which is why it’s premature to pin the genre on a return of specialty-grade coffee in Haiti or the parallel personal turnaround of Joey Stazzone, […]
Unlike some of the other events in the US Coffee Championships held in April at the Specialty Coffee Expo in Seattle, the Brewers Cup and Barista Challenge are high theater, mini-plays performed for your mind and heart as much as […]
You’re allowed to simply enjoy the taste of good coffee. If you can pluck out familiar aromas and flavors, all the better. If you deem that $4 well spent, growers and roasters and brewers have done their jobs. Everyone is […]
Over time, I may try to woo you with talk of coffee grind particle distribution and total dissolved solids (TDS). I’ll warily tiptoe into debates about brew methods or maybe tunnel down the rabbit hole of coffee varietals. It might […]
Tasting notes: A story of coffee. Real tasting notes included. Brighter aromas of the emergence of a new farmer and international investment. The pleasant mouthfeel of a unique and complex journey, with a bitter aftertaste of geopolitics. British colonists brought […]
I sat at the bar that surrounds the massive roasting machine at Portola Coffee in Costa Mesa, CA, during a “cupping” event, sipping two different samples of new coffee from—surprisingly—Myanmar, searching my palette for notes of plum or berry lemonade […]