Science: Coffee Quality, Pt 2 - How “quality” became a myth
If you ask two specialty professionals what makes a high-quality coffee, you’ll likely get a surprisingly consistent answer: clean, sweet, juicy, bright. To an outsider, they would be forgiven for thi...
8 Dec 202525min
Science: Coffee Quality, Pt 1 - The birth of specialty coffee flavours
For the longest time, coffees were dull and bitter. But then a small group of pioneers changed the world. In this episode, we travel back to the 1960s and ’70s to meet the trailblazers who realised...
8 Dec 202523min
Science: How specialty coffee woke up to water’s role in flavour
For the longest time, the coffee community only cared about water’s impact ruining espresso machine boilers and kettles. But what about water’s impact on coffee flavour? In this episode, I tell the ...
28 Juli 202525min
Science: Why prehistoric rock ruins coffee
550 million years ago, earth was perfect. We had perfect water for coffee AND we were living in a vegetarian paradise! But then Earth changed—violently. The planet shifted from a peaceful, plant-eat...
28 Juli 202538min
Science: Water, Pt 2 - How to measure and treat it
Water massively impacts your coffee’s flavours. But most of us struggle to fix our water because water science is confusing… …until now! In this special collaboration with Lucia Solis (Making Coffee...
14 Juli 202543min
Science: Water, Pt 1 - Alkalinity, hardness and why it matters
Water massively impacts your coffee’s flavours. But most of us struggle to fix our water because water science is confusing… …until now! In this special collaboration with Lucia Solis (Making Coffee...
14 Juli 202526min
Science: Farm to port - why specialty costs more
Every time we open a bag of beautiful specialty coffee — like Erick Bravo’s from Finca El Chaferote in Huila, Colombia — we’re drinking something that’s been on a long journey. And I mean long! Ove...
23 Juni 202554min
Science: Why one Colombian farmer chose specialty, and the other walked away
I travel to Colombia’s Huila region to answer a question that’s puzzled me for years: if specialty coffee pays more, is better for the environment, and brews tastier cups—why don’t more farmers grow i...
9 Juni 202546min
