To Blend or Not to Blend

This post is an exploration of Blending: why businesses blend coffee, why I believe some roasters choose to blend, and why others don’t. I also suggest why blending has a bad rep within the Specialty Industry. For a very long time “coffee” was a...
Distribution Test Results

Distribution Test Results

Testing distribution methods for espresso is turning out be quite a journey. This post is another step toward understanding what’s actually going on between the grinder and espresso machine. If you’re new here: three weeks ago I sent out a survey about distribution...

WBC 2016 Rules Shake-up

Just before the weekend you may have stumbled upon a press release from World Coffee Events. It details some significant rule changes to the World Barista Championship for 2016 onwards. See the article here. I’d like to spend this week exploring and discussing...
Distributing for Espresso

Distributing for Espresso

Last week I sent out a survey with a single simple question: How do you distribute for espresso? Distribution is the act of evening out the coffee grinds in an espresso machine’s basket before tamping. This helps the water pass through all of the coffee grinds at the...
Let’s Talk About Roasting

Let’s Talk About Roasting

This is a post about how to talk about coffee roasts. It isn’t a post about how to roast coffee (although there’s some nuggets in there). As I was typing up a post about extraction evenness in regards to roasting (which I promise I will get to soon), I realised...
Brew Local, Act global

Brew Local, Act global

Could even extractions save the industry? Yes. Sort Of. This is a condensed version of a talk I gave in Shanghai and Taipei last year for Tamper Tantrum. If you’d like to see the original – where I talk about extraction and include some more detail –...