Coffee Knowledge
Ask ten roasters what makes one bag of coffee taste different from the next, and altitude, processing, and roast level will come up fast. But underneath all of that sits something more fundamental: the coffee variety — the specific genetic line of the plant the cherry grew on. A washed Ethiopian
Coffee Knowledge
Caturra is a natural dwarf mutation of Bourbon that let farmers pack far more trees into the same hectare. It became one of Latin America's most planted varieties — and the parent of an even more famous one.
Coffee Knowledge
Typica isn't just another coffee variety — it's the trunk of the family tree. Nearly every Arabica you've tasted owes something to a small number of plants that left Yemen centuries ago.
Coffee Knowledge
Walk past a Liberica tree in fruit and you'll likely do a double take. The leaves are the size of your hand, the flowers are noticeably larger than an Arabica's, and the deep red cherries hang from a tree that towers well above the coffee you're used to picturing.
Coffee Knowledge
Few coffee varieties have a rags-to-riches story like Gesha. A tree once dismissed as low-yielding and unremarkable now sells for more than any other coffee on Earth.
Coffee Knowledge
A bag that says "blueberry" or "jasmine" isn't lying to you — and it isn't flavored, either. Here's how the SCA Flavor Wheel actually works, and how to train your own palate to find what it's pointing at.
Coffee Knowledge
Erecta is one of Uganda's two great native Robusta types — a tall, upright shrub whose growing habit shapes how farmers work the land, and whose Congo Basin origin story is more tangled than it first appears.
Coffee Knowledge
Ask a roaster to name the two varieties that most of the world's Arabica descends from, and Bourbon is always one of the answers. Bourbon coffee isn't a single farm's secret or a modern breeding project — it's a centuries-old natural mutation
Coffee Knowledge
If you've spent any time reading about Brazilian coffee, you've probably run into the word "Conilon" and assumed it was some exotic variety you'd never heard of. It isn't a variety at all — Conilon is simply the name Brazilians use