Coffee 101

HOW TO DECODE A COFFEE LABEL You see them every time you pick up a bag of Crema coffee: a label with a bunch of info about the beans inside the bag. While many of the actual words are pretty straightforward, there’s a lot of meaning behind each characteristic of the coffee. We’ll go over the basics of what you’ll typically find on a coffee bag and provide links if you want to dive deeper into a certain topic. Put on your Nic-Cage-in-National-Treasure hat and let’s crack this coffee-label code. Read through this post, then test your knowledge with a...

HOW TO TASTE COFFEE Every bag of our coffee has a section that says “tasting notes” followed by three descriptors, typically a fruit or two and something sugary like toffee or caramel. Though, sometimes, there is a floral note, or an adjective like sparkling. You may think, “Does it really taste like that?” The answer is actually, amazingly, yes. Coffee is full of chemical compounds that result in a world of flavors and aromas that anyone can experience with a little practice and attention. Let’s break it down. p.s. There’s a link to a video version of this post at...

HOW COFFEE PROCESSING WORKS Let’s compare apples and oranges--and coffee--for a second. They’re all fruits. Coffee--that stuff in your cup--comes from a bean that originally grew inside a cherry. Most people know that, of course--today, coffee’s fruity upbringings are highlighted in roasting labs and in the tasting notes on the backs of coffee bags. And yet, it’s not overly clear how coffee goes from being fruit to being, well, not-fruit.  The magic, as we’ve said, happens at the mill. The mill is where coffee is processed. And this “process” is how, one way or another, Coffee the Fruit becomes Coffee...