Knowledge Base
Coffee & Tea Guides
Brew better and explore more — buying guides, how-tos, and explainers for every coffee and tea ritual.
Explainer
Nutrient Deficiencies in Coffee Plants: A Diagnostic Guide
A field guide to diagnosing nutrient deficiency in coffee plants — reading the leaf symptoms of nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, iron, zinc and boron, using the old-leaf versus new-leaf mobility rule, and confirming the call with soil and tissue tests.
Explainer
Coffee Renovation and Replanting: Renewing an Aging Plantation
Coffee bushes stay highly productive for only a window of years before age, woodiness and disease erode yields — this guide explains how renovation and rehabilitation renew a declining plantation without losing all its income at once.
Explainer
Drainage in Coffee Farming: Managing Wet, Waterlogged Soil
Coffee roots need oxygen and hate waterlogged soil, so good drainage protects trees from root rot and stunting — this guide covers where it matters and the surface, subsurface and raised-bed methods that keep excess water moving safely.
Explainer
Where the Money Goes in a Cup of Coffee
The green coffee in a café drink or retail bag is only a small fraction of the price, which is why retail margin dominates the final cost, the farmer's share stays tiny, and prices rarely fall.
Explainer
Global Coffee Consumption Trends: How Demand Is Shifting
Coffee demand is being reshaped by two forces at once: mature high-per-capita markets that are broadly flat, and fast-growing emerging and producing-country markets where premiumization and new formats are pulling millions of new drinkers into the cup.
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Vertical Integration in Coffee: Backward and Forward Explained
Vertical integration is when one coffee company controls several stages of the chain at once; this guide explains backward versus forward integration, the strategic logic of margin, quality and resilience, and who ends up capturing value.
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Incoterms in the Coffee Trade: FOB, FCA, CIF and Where Risk Passes
Incoterms are the three-letter ICC rules — FOB, FCA, CIF and the rest — that decide who pays freight, who insures the cargo, and exactly where risk passes from seller to buyer in the green coffee trade.
Explainer
Coffee Trade Finance: How Coffee Moves From Farm to Roaster
Trade finance is the working capital and payment machinery that lets coffee move from farm to roaster, funding the gap between paying growers at harvest and being paid by buyers months later.
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Mundo Maya: The F1 Hybrid Arabica Often Confused With Mundo Novo
Mundo Maya is a modern F1 hybrid Arabica from World Coffee Research, CIRAD and ECOM — a rust-tolerant, high-yielding cross of a Sarchimor line and an Ethiopian landrace, often confused with but unrelated to Brazil's traditional Mundo Novo.
Explainer
Milenio Coffee Variety: An F1 Hybrid, Not an Heirloom
Milenio, catalogued as H10, is a modern F1 hybrid Arabica that crosses the wild Rume Sudan landrace with a rust-resistant Sarchimor line, giving high yield, a fine cup and rust resistance, but seed that cannot be saved true.
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Evaluna Coffee Variety: A Modern F1 Hybrid Arabica
Evaluna is an F1 hybrid Arabica developed by the CIRAD-ECOM program and catalogued by World Coffee Research, pairing an Ethiopian landrace with a rust-resistant Catimor-type parent to deliver high yield, cup quality and leaf-rust tolerance through hybrid vigor.
Explainer
Casiopea Coffee: The Caturra x Ethiopian F1 Hybrid Explained
Casiopea is a modern F1 hybrid Arabica crossing Caturra with a wild Ethiopian accession, prized for high yield and floral high-altitude cup quality but propagated only clonally because its seed does not breed true.
Explainer
Coffee Moisture Meters: How They Work and How to Read Them
A coffee moisture meter reads the water content of green or parchment coffee in seconds, but these capacitance and resistance devices are indirect tools that must be calibrated against the oven-drying reference method and read alongside water activity.
Explainer
Coffee Conditioning and Resting Bins: The Reposo Stage
Conditioning, or reposo, is the weeks-long rest that dried parchment coffee spends in ventilated bins or silos after drying and before hulling, letting moisture equalize between and within beans so water activity settles and the lot stabilizes.
Explainer
Mechanical Coffee Drying: Guardiolas, Heat and Moisture
Mechanical coffee drying uses guardiola drums, silos and static beds to dry parchment quickly in humid climates and at scale, but only clean, gentle results come from keeping temperatures low and stopping at 10-12% moisture.
Explainer
Color Sorting of Green Coffee: Optical Defect Removal at the Dry Mill
Color sorting is the high-speed optical step at the coffee dry mill where CCD and near-infrared cameras scan each green bean and fire air jets to eject black, sour, immature and insect-damaged beans and foreign matter.
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Cacahuatique: El Salvador's Eastern Coffee Highland
Cacahuatique is El Salvador's small, eastern-most coffee region, an ancient eroded highland straddling Morazan and San Miguel that grows washed Bourbon and Pacas and carries the historical imprint of president Gerardo Barrios, an early promoter of Salvadoran coffee.
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Tecapa-Chinameca: El Salvador's Eastern Coffee Region
Tecapa-Chinameca is one of El Salvador's six recognized coffee regions, set in the volcanic east around the Tecapa and Chinameca volcanoes and the Alegria highlands, known for washed, Bourbon-family cups that are sweet, balanced and clean.
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Liming Coffee Soils: Correcting Acidity for Better Yields
A global guide to liming coffee soils: why plantations turn acidic, how agricultural lime corrects it, calcitic versus dolomitic choices, setting a rate from a soil test, and where gypsum fits in.
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Cover Crops in Coffee Farming: Building Soil the Living Way
Cover crops are low-growing plants sown between coffee rows to protect and build the soil; legumes like perennial peanut, crotalaria and mucuna fix nitrogen, suppress weeds and curb erosion, though they compete for water and need managing.
Explainer
Windbreaks in Coffee Farming: Sheltering the Crop from Wind
Windbreaks — belts of taller trees planted perpendicular to the prevailing wind — shelter coffee from the desiccation, blossom loss and branch breakage that strong winds cause, and a semi-permeable break protects far more ground than a solid wall.
Explainer
Coffee Planting Density and Spacing: A Grower's Guide
Coffee planting density — how many trees per hectare and how they are spaced — shapes yield, disease, and how long a plot lasts; here is how traditional wide spacing, high-density systems, and variety stature fit together.
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Weeding and Weed Management on the Coffee Farm
Weeds compete with coffee for water, nutrients and light, hitting young trees hardest; this guide explains manual, mechanical, cultural and chemical weeding, the clean-circle practice, and why living ground cover often beats bare, erosion-prone soil.
Explainer
Coffee Farm-Gate Price: What Growers Really Receive
The farm-gate price is what a coffee grower is paid at the first point of sale, and it is only a share of the export price after transport, milling, exporter and middleman margins are deducted.