Knowledge Base
Coffee & Tea Guides
Brew better and explore more — buying guides, how-tos, and explainers for every coffee and tea ritual.
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Second Crack in Coffee Roasting: The Sound of a Bean Breaking Down
Second crack is the sharp, crackling fracture of the bean's cell walls late in a roast, and it is the moment roast character starts to overwrite origin character.
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Nekemte Coffee: Inside Ethiopia's Western Wellega Origin
Nekemte is the historic trade name for coffee from Ethiopia's western Wellega zones, known for large beans, semi-forest growing and a fruit-and-spice natural cup.
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Meru Coffee: Mount Kenya's Dry Northeastern Flank
Meru grows coffee on Mount Kenya's dry northeastern flank, where a rain shadow, a big fly crop and farms shared with tea, miraa and dairy build a softer, sweeter Kenyan cup.
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Embu Coffee: Inside Mount Kenya's Quietest Coffee County
Embu sits on Mount Kenya's southeastern shoulder between Kirinyaga and Meru, growing the same volcanic-soil, double-washed coffee as its famous neighbors with a fraction of the recognition.
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Murang'a Coffee: Inside Kenya's Cooperative Factories
Murang'a grows coffee on the Aberdare ridges between Nyeri and Kiambu, where smallholders pool cherry at cooperative factories to make juicy, red-fruited washed lots.
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Kiambu Coffee: Kenya's Estate County on the City's Edge
Kiambu is Kenya's most estate-dominated coffee county — red volcanic soils, colonial-era plantations, SL28 and SL34, and a softer, chocolatey cup being squeezed by Nairobi's expanding suburbs.
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Espírito Santo Coffee: Inside Brazil's Conilon Heartland
Espírito Santo is Brazil's conilon (robusta) heartland — clonal lowland plantings and irrigation on one side, a genuine mountain arabica zone on the other.
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Matas de Minas Coffee: Brazil's Steep, Smallholder Forest Region
Matas de Minas is the forested, steeply broken eastern corner of Minas Gerais, where family farms hand-pick slopes no machine can climb and produce Brazil's sweetest, fruitiest, most acidic cups.
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Mogiana Coffee: Brazil's Railway Region and Its Red Soils
Mogiana is the Brazilian coffee region named after a 19th-century railway, where iron-red terra roxa soils and hilly ground at roughly 900 to 1,100 meters build an unusually sweet, chocolatey cup.
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Sul de Minas Coffee: Inside Brazil's Biggest Arabica Region
Sul de Minas, widely called the world's largest arabica region, is smallholder cooperative country: rolling hills, natural processing, sweet nutty-chocolate cups.
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Cerrado Mineiro Coffee: Inside Brazil's First Coffee DO
Cerrado Mineiro, the flat savanna plateau of western Minas Gerais, was Brazil's first coffee Denomination of Origin, and here is what that seal actually certifies.
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Paraíso Coffee Variety: Brazil's Rust-Resistant Catuaí Cross
Paraíso MG H 419-1 is a dwarf Brazilian arabica bred from Catuaí and a Timor Hybrid for rust resistance without the flat cup that dogged early Catimors.
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Acauã Coffee Variety: Brazil's Drought-Tolerant Workhorse
Acauã is a Brazilian arabica selection from a Mundo Novo × Sarchimor cross, prized for rust resistance and unusual drought tolerance on hot, mechanized farms.
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IAC 125 RN: The Nematode-Resistant Brazilian Coffee Variety
IAC 125 RN is a compact Brazilian IAC selection bred to pair leaf rust resistance with root-knot nematode resistance, the underground threat that quietly dismantles coffee roots.
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Sln.9 Coffee Variety: Rust-Resistant Arabica With a Fine Cup
Sln.9 crosses the Ethiopian collection Tafarikela with Hibrido de Timor to give arabica a rare combination of real cup quality, bold beans and rust resistance.
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Kent Coffee Variety: Typica's Rust-Tolerant Pioneer
Kent is the early-20th-century Typica selection from the Mysore hills that became the first arabica chosen for leaf-rust tolerance — and the parent of S795.
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Chichontepec Coffee: El Salvador's San Vicente Volcano Region
Chichontepec is one of El Salvador's six official coffee regions, wrapped around the San Vicente volcano, where Bourbon, Pacas and Pacamara grow shade-grown and washed into a soft, sweet, balanced cup.
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Kirinyaga Coffee: A Guide to Kenya's Mount Kenya Origin
Kirinyaga, a county on the red-soiled slopes of Mount Kenya, has become one of Kenya's most sought-after specialty origins, prized for its SL28 and SL34 varieties, meticulous double-washed processing and vibrant, juicy cups.
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Nyeri Coffee: Inside Kenya's Celebrated Highland Origin
Nyeri, a highland county set between Kenya's Aberdare Range and Mount Kenya, ranks among the country's finest coffee origins, pairing iron-rich red volcanic soils and SL28/SL34 varieties with the double-washed factory system that yields a bright, blackcurrant-driven cup.
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Composting on the Coffee Farm: From Pulp and Husk to Soil
Coffee processing leaves behind tonnes of pulp, husk, and mucilage; composting and vermicomposting turn that byproduct into a nutrient-rich soil amendment that recycles potassium and nitrogen, builds organic matter, and keeps waste out of rivers.
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Gapping a Coffee Plantation: Infilling Missing Trees
Gapping—also called infilling, supplying or beating up—replaces individual dead or missing coffee trees within an established block to defend plant population and yield, a lighter-touch alternative to renovating or replanting a whole stand at once.
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De-Pulping Coffee: How the Cherry Skin Comes Off
De-pulping is the first machine step of washed and honey coffee, mechanically stripping the cherry skin and most of the pulp within hours of picking to leave parchment coffee still coated in mucilage.
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Destoning: How Dry Mills Remove Stones From Coffee
Destoning is the dry-mill step that pulls stones, metal, glass and other dense debris out of green coffee using a gravity table and airflow, protecting grinders, roasters and the people who drink the coffee.
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Coffee Price Floors: How Minimum Prices Protect Growers
A coffee price floor sets a minimum a grower can be paid when the C market falls below the cost of production, ranging from the Fair Trade Minimum Price to old export quotas and privately negotiated contracts.