Coffee Knowledge

Typica Coffee: The Original Variety Farms Left Behind

Typica coffee is the oldest cultivated Arabica variety, carried from Ethiopia through Yemen and Java before becoming the dominant coffee across Latin America until the 1940s. This post traces that... Read more...

Honey Processed Coffee: Between Washed and Natural

Honey processed coffee keeps part of the sticky mucilage layer on the bean while it dries, landing somewhere between the clarity of washed coffee and the intensity of natural. The... Read more...

Washed Coffee: How the Process Works and What It Tastes Like

Washed coffee removes the fruit from the cherry before drying, using fermentation to strip away the sticky mucilage layer around the bean. That early separation is why washed coffees taste... Read more...

What Is Natural Process Coffee? Flavour, Method & Origins

Natural process coffee dries whole cherries intact, skin, pulp, and all, before the fruit is removed. The bean spends weeks in contact with the fruit as it dries, which is... Read more...

Bolivian Coffee: A Small Origin's Improbable Comeback

Bolivian coffee comes almost entirely from the Yungas, a narrow band of Andean mountains where 85 to 95 percent of the crop is grown by smallholders on plots under eight... Read more...

Colombian Coffee: Regions, Varieties, and the Rise of Castillo

Colombian coffee comes from more than 500,000 smallholder farms spread across the Andes, from the historic Coffee Growing Axis to the rising Southern Zone departments of Huila, Nariño, and Cauca.... Read more...

Ethiopian Coffee: Yirgacheffe, Sidama, Guji, and Harrar Explained

Ethiopian coffee grows across diverse highland regions, including Yirgacheffe, Sidama, Guji, and Harrar, each producing a distinct cup shaped by altitude, soil, and processing method. The country is home to... Read more...

Colombia Coffee Variety: Cenicafé's First Rust-Resistant Cultivar

The Colombia coffee variety is the rust-resistant cultivar Cenicafé bred in 1982 by crossing Caturra with the Timor Hybrid, giving Colombian farmers a head start against leaf rust years before... Read more...

Yellow Catuaí: The Coffee Variety Hawaii Bet Its Biggest Farm On

Yellow Catuai is the golden-fruited half of Brazil's 1949 Catuai cross, sharing every trait with its red sibling except the pigment in its ripe cherry skin. Find out why that... Read more...

Red Catuaí: The Brazilian Cross Bred for Yield, Not Just Flavor

Red Catuai coffee traces back to a single 1949 cross between Mundo Novo and Caturra, bred at Brazil's Instituto Agronômico de Campinas for density and yield rather than cup score.... Read more...

Caturra Coffee: The Dwarf Mutation That Reshaped Latin American Farming

Caturra coffee is the natural dwarf mutation of Bourbon discovered in Brazil around 1915, and it went on to become the compact, high-density variety that defined coffee farming across Colombia... Read more...

Castillo Coffee: How Colombia Bred a Variety to Beat Leaf Rust

Castillo coffee is the rust-resistant variety Cenicafé bred over five generations to protect Colombia's smallholder coffee farms from leaf rust, and it now makes up roughly 40 to 45 percent... Read more...

Java Coffee: The Landrace Mistaken for Typica

Java coffee variety traces back to an Ethiopian landrace called Abysinia, not the Typica lineage it was long assumed to belong to. It moved from Ethiopia to the island of... Read more...

Gesha Coffee: The Ethiopian Variety That Redefined Specialty

Gesha coffee is an Ethiopian landrace that spent decades as an obscure windbreak planting in Panama before a single 2004 harvest turned it into the most expensive coffee variety in... Read more...

Co-Fermented Coffee: Inside Specialty's Boldest Fermentation Trend

Co-fermented coffee ferments cherries or depulped beans alongside an external ingredient like fruit pulp, spices, or cacao, letting new flavours develop inside the coffee itself rather than being added after... Read more...