The Reading Room

The Bunn My Cafe is one of the best all around pod brewers on the market.  The unit allows for an excellent water temperature of 200 F from the stainless steel boiler.  The cup size is adjustable from 4 oz to 12...

Recently on the Roaste Facebook page an article was posted about making iced coffee the "cold" way. This  intrigued me. The formula given is 1/3 cup ground coffee beans to 1 1/2 cups of water (can be doubled or tripled)....

Over the years I've expanded my knowledge of coffee and have explored both various blends from many roasters and with that several different brewing methods.    My initial thoughts for this blog post were to discuss the various brewing methods I...

After learning about Lorie Obra’s covert “Drunken Coffee” project in our roaster interview last week, biscotti’s Spidey Sense was tingling off the charts when we learned our assignment this week was to interview Josh Kelly, co-founder of Higher Ground Roasters. ...

For the last few years, some roasters have been actively establishing relationships with farmers.  These direct trade relationships bypass many parties that typically exist between the farmer and roaster, thereby bringing the roaster closer to a coffee’s origin (think Slow...

Hey, remember when biscotti interviewed Kona Earth a few weeks ago?  We became so captivated with the special conditions for coffee farming in Hawaii that we pressed our editors to send us on a vacation “business trip” to Hawaii for...

Cup of Excellence international jury came to Guatemala City during the week of May 24-28. They managed to award 28 farms, the largest number since 2002, in ANACAFE'S headquarters just before the Pacaya volcano started to through volcanic rocks and...

This week, biscotti talked to Jim Cannell, owner of Jim’s Organic Coffee.  Based in West Wareham, MA, Jim’s is a wholesale roasting company, founded in 1996. But we didn’t say it was his *first* roasting company, because – well, it...

Armeno Coffee Roasters must be one of the coolest places to work in the coffee business.It's housed in a former grain mill that sits atop a stream in Northborough MA.It's a huge old wooden framed building.  Bags of green coffee...

Without question, going into this week’s “roasterpost,” biscotti was on a roll.  Two roaster interviews down – one via email, the other via phone interview, thirty-three thirty-five (two more added this week!) to go.  So, we connected w/ Gary Strawn,...

biscotti was feeling pumped, because last week’s inaugural “roasterpost” was well received – by the roaster, by ROASTe, and by our the people who “like” our Facebook page.  But last week’s interview was conducted by email.  This week we were...

/files/u707/chazzano_logo_14.jpg" vspace="3" width="150" align="left" border="0" height="116" hspace="3" />biscotti has been on a siesta the last few weeks, but we are back now, launching a new feature.  Since ROASTe carries more than 700 different coffees from thirty-three micro-roasters (and counting), we...

At ROASTe we brew A LOT of espresso.Here are some espresso tips for you to brew better espresso coffeeEspresso Tip 1: Use an espresso blend rather than a single-origin coffee.   Single-origin coffees from Panama, Hawaii, Colombia etc. might be...

Last weekend (May 1-2), the sleepy town of Pahala, on the southeast side of the Big Island, woke up.  For the second year, it celebrated its increasingly famous crop: coffee.   The Ka‘u Coffee Festival was a small affair with...

Drinking gourmet coffee from great coffee roasters like ours, you'll experience a much wider variety of aromas and flavors than when drinking a standard cup of Joe from your neighborhood bodega. Keep your tastebuds tuned to 5 specific tastes in...

No collection of great coffee would be complete without a representative from the epicenter: Seattle. At Caffe D’arte, supreme coffees prepared with a wood-fired roaster not only preserve an Italian art form, we also set a standard of excellence that...

OBDULIA PEÑA This courageous woman, widowed many years ago, raised and educated four children who are now active professionals. She runs 1.5 HA Finca La Isla near the tidy village of Pueblo Nuevo in the Guayabal de Síquima municipality, where...

Traditionally, the fermentation process for pulping coffee beans has been used. It begins by soaking the beans and then removing the water, which carries the hydrolyzed mucilage; this is a natural process in which the flora in the coffee bean...

To date most of my amateur cupping has been single-origin coffees.  This is because it was suggested to me, and it’s naturally easier to evaluate a coffee’s taste and mouth-feel profile when you are only tasting one type of bean. ...

/files/u3/iStock_000007628238XSmall_0.jpg" width="283" align="right" height="387" />"When she returned with the steaming coffee, I had just read the last page. Isabella sat down opposite me. I smiled and slowly sipped the delicious brew. The girl wrung her hands and gritted her teeth,...

Do you prefer whole bean Ethiopian Organic Sidamo light roast, or Candy Cane Flavored Decaf ground?To purists, they're at opposite ends of the spectrum./wp/wp-content/uploads/files/uploads/lexus.jpg" width="250" vspace="10" hspace="10" height="168" align="left" title="If Ethiopian Sidamo were a car" alt="If Ethiopian Sidamo were a...