When it comes to home coffee grinders, there is one Holy Grail. The white whale we’ve been chasing for years. One grinder to rule them all, and in the dark roast bind them. That coffee grinder, of course, is the Baratza Forté. With a touch screen, built-in scale, micro-adjust, and particle size distribution that puts a lot of more expensive commercial grinders to shame, the Forté has been the leading “prosumer” grinder in the industry since debuting at SCAA five years ago. You can see it on some of the best brew bars in the world. And after a few years of scheming and scrimping, we finally snagged one. And after putting it through its paces, we have some thoughts about this grinder and who’s it for….
Archives for July 2018
Opinion: It’s Panama Geisha, not Gesha
The incredible story of how a few coffee seeds from Southwestern Ethiopia found their way to Panama and subsequently changed the entire coffee industry is well known, but worth repeating. …
Book Review: Where the Wild Coffee Grows by Jeff Koehler
Almost every specialty coffee lover, whether professional or enthusiast, can remember the cup that changed everything. Coffee is just coffee, until you encounter berries, flowers, and a multitude of other sensory experiences you never expected from your morning cup. Talking with other coffee lovers, I’ve found, more often than not, that life-changing cup came from Ethiopia.
Ethiopia is the motherland of Coffea arabica. The plant is indigenous to the country and it’s still home to 99% of the plants’s genetic diversity. Ethiopia is also home to the oldest coffee culture. While in many places coffee is simply a cash crop, in Ethiopia it’s a central part of life.
Yet, in spite of this, information about Ethiopian coffee is not readily available. You might have a region, the process, a grade, and if you’re lucky, a washing station. Even less information is available about the forests of Kafa, where wild coffee trees still grow.
That was until Jeff Koehler wrote Where the Wild Coffee Grows: the Untold Story of Coffee from the Cloud Forests of Ethiopia to Your Cup. Koehler set out to write a book about the original coffee drinking culture, but he discovered a story that in many ways holds the keys to coffee’s future as well….
Four Great Places to Drink Coffee in Amsterdam
Amsterdam is well known for its coffee shops, which, famously, sell more than just coffee. But if the only stimulant you’re after is caffeine and maybe a pastry, we’ve got you covered. These four cafés serve some of the best coffee in Amsterdam.
Bocca
For most of its history Bocca has been focused on wholesale roasting, but its Amsterdam café is something of a showroom for the company, and is without a doubt one of the most impressive places to drink coffee in Amsterdam. When we visited, the Gesha Village 2018 harvest was absolutely singing as a pour-over (which broke our hearts a little when we learned they were out of retail bags). With…
