Coffee 101

All coffee falls into one of two categories: commodity and specialty. Commodity coffee is coffee that is traded just to get the job done. You often don’t know where it was grown or details about who grew it. Its flavor is less complex and is often a bit more bitter. The name of the commodity game is quantity. Specialty coffee is entirely about quality. All coffee is graded on a 100-point scale. To be considered “specialty,” a coffee must score at least an 80*. In this way, specialty coffee stands as the direct alternative to commodity coffee. It’s not that...

HOW TO BREW COFFEE 101 Coffee is composed of a world of chemical compounds. When you grind whole bean coffee and introduce water to those grounds, some of those compounds (specifically soluble flavor compounds) are imparted to the water. This process of imparting is called extraction and it’s how we get brewed coffee. The best brewed coffee has an even extraction, full of all of the great stuff and none of the not-so great stuff. A skilled brew is all about learning how to finesse the three three key variables that determine how many particles end up extracted: temperature, turbulence,...

DECAF COFFEE: DEBUNKED We’ve got a secret: we love decaf coffee. (Ok, so maybe it’s not exactly a secret and we certainly don’t intend to keep it one!)   Decaf coffee is often viewed as caffeinated coffee’s slightly worse relative that’s usually just there for those times when you physically can’t handle any more caffeine. But, regardless of the reason you may reach for a cup of decaf coffee, we’re here to tell you that it doesn’t have to taste bland, bitter and lifeless.   There’s a better way to make coffee decaffeinated and it involves just a bit of science...

Myth: All coffee that’s processed using organic methods will be certified ‘USDA Organic’ and is better quality than non-certified coffee.   Busted: Many coffee farms use naturally ‘organic’ methods to grow coffee and cannot afford the costly and time consuming process of becoming a certified organic farm. USDA certification has nothing to do with the inherent quality of the crop or price paid for the coffee. ‘Is your coffee organic?’ can be an unintentionally loaded question. Maybe we’re hoping that organic coffee means that we aren’t ingesting ‘bad’ chemicals or that the farmers took better care of their land or...