By Evan Gilman, Creative Director, Indonesia Green Buying Team, CQI Arabica Quality Evaluation Instructor Article Summary: Royal Coffee’s Evan Gilman reflects on the abrupt handover of the Coffee Quality Institute’s (CQI) Quality Evaluation program to the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA), a...
Editor’s note: This article was first published by Roast Magazine‘s January/February 2024 issue, and is reprinted here with permission. Freezing Green Coffee An Evaluation of the Impact on Sensory Quality Over Time By Chris Kornman and Isabella Vitaliano Between the months of December 2022 and...
Editor's note: This article was first published by Roast Magazine's September/October 2023 issue, and is reprinted here with permission. Technically Speaking: How Microbiome Activity During Post-Harvest Processing Affects Volatile Compounds in Coffee By Isabella Vitaliano Coffee is a highly...
“Every Act of Creation is First an Act of Destruction” -Pablo Picasso Lately, I’ve been speaking with my roasting students in the big-picture mode about their superpowers. Roasting is often spoken of in esoteric chemical terms or couched in industry-specific language that can sometimes alienate...
Editor's note: This article was first published in Roast Magazine's May/June 2021 issue, and is reprinted here with permission. Grinder Alignment: An Evaluation of Consistency, Cupping Settings, and the Impact of Roast Degree Experiment design, operation, summary and analysis by Chris Kornman and...
Editor's Note: We’ve made a PDF available to you, as well as uploading it as a publicly available Cropster form, so you can choose it—it’s called “Deviation Production Cupping (Royal).” Cupping: Time Honored and Honed for Purpose Cupping coffee is one, if not, the best-known methods for evaluating...
A Taste of Perception: Examining Bias in Side-by-Side Coffee Tastings By James Scott, Crown Barista Over here at The Crown, we taste a lot of coffee--so much that we probably spit out more than we swallow (can you believe that?). Between slurps, we describe each coffee in as much detail as...
Our industry is multidisciplinary and international; it’s important to maintain clear means of communication as well as mutual understanding of quality standards. Here follows a translation of our article “Cupping Basics - How to Set up & Execute A Great Tasting Experience” into Spanish in...
How to Set Up and Run a Coffee Cupping: A Step-by-Step Guide Cupping is the coffee industry’s more-or-less standardized practice for sensory evaluation. Using aromas and flavors it is possible to determine the quality potential of a given coffee, the success of a roast, and/or the presence of...
If you’re a cocktail connoisseur, you may have noticed a trend developing among your mixologist friends. The food and beverage industry has been steadily returning to the use of locally produced ingredients and preparing everything in-house. Of course, eating locally and seasonally was once the...
Editor's note: This article originally appeared in Daily Coffee News on November 22, 2017. In what might be a foolhardy attempt to correlate two of coffee’s most complicated concepts, I’ve dedicated a significant portion of the past few months to examining the relationship between the water...
Sugar is not a common topic of conversation in specialty coffee - at least, not in the 'one lump or two?' sense. While focusing on how to improve the taste and quality of our product, we’ve forgotten that the vast majority of coffee consumers take their coffee with cream and sugar. Without the...
Passing the Q Becoming a certified Q grader was a long time goal of mine, a way to prove to myself that I am a coffee sensory professional. Even though I have been cupping coffee five times a week for over a decade, I was still apprehensive to take the test, not to mention the price...
Editor's Note: A version of this article originally appeared on Daily Coffee News here on December 5, 2016. One of my favorite things about coffee is the potential for a multitude of experiences and opinions. No two people experience a coffee the same way, and while leaders in the industry are...
When building a blend, having a set of goals is key. What is the ideal blend for your particular situation, and what is your situation, exactly? For green buyers, constant maintenance of one’s position is a necessity, and some blends are built out of this necessity. Coffee is an agricultural...
