Origins
What Is Anaerobic Fermentation in Coffee?
A 2022 study found a sealed anaerobic coffee fermentation is dominated by different microbes than the lactic acid bacteria popular coffee writing usually credits for it.
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Notes from the roastery: what we buy, how we roast it, and what we have learned building coffee programs on the Gulf Coast.
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Origins
How Is Green Coffee Imported Into the United States?
How a hundred-pound lot of green coffee actually clears US Customs and FDA prior notice before it reaches a small roaster, and what that process costs.
Origins
What Is Carbonic Maceration in Coffee?
Carbonic maceration borrows wine's 'intracellular fermentation' claim, but the one peer-reviewed study on coffee cherries never actually measured it.
Origins
What Is a Coffee Cherry?
A coffee cherry has five layers around its seed and usually two of them inside. What happens to the fruit after picking is why the same shelf can hold both a washed an...
Origins
What Is Mucilage in Coffee?
Mucilage is the coffee cherry's sticky inner layer, and it is 84 percent water over a pectin gel rather than the sugar coating everyone describes. What it is made of, ...
Origins
Why Is High-Altitude Coffee Better?
Growing higher raises the sugar in a coffee seed by a large, measurable amount. Elevation is standing in for temperature, and the grade on the bag certifies the farm r...
Origins
How Does Green Coffee Get to the United States?
Three documents travel with a lot of green coffee on its way into the country, and one of them has an 8-hour deadline. What the route is, and how long it takes.
Roasting
What Is Coffee Chaff?
The papery flecks in your cooling tray are silverskin, the one layer of the coffee fruit that travels all the way from the farm to the roastery. Here is what it is mad...
Taste
Why Does Coffee Smell Like Coffee?
Green coffee barely smells of anything. Roasting builds the whole aroma from scratch, and it does it along four unrelated chemical routes. Which precursor becomes whic...
Roasting
Green Coffee Demystified: What It Is and How to Use It
Green coffee is the raw, unroasted seed. How moisture and bean density shape a roast, how to store it, and why the weight loss claims do not hold up.
