Filter Stories - Coffee Documentaries Podcast
1) Stateless
Mikhail is a specialty coffee barista. But he’s stuck on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. He doesn’t want to be there and he’s trying to get off. But he can’t. There are boats and planes...Show More
2) Coffee Quality, Part 3: When the “quality” myth hits the farm
For twenty years, the 2004 cupping form profoundly shaped the specialty coffee world. But on the hillsides of coffee farms, some of the form’s byproducts have been disadvantaging producers. In th...Show More
3) Coffee Quality, Part 2: How “quality” became a myth
If you ask two specialty professionals what makes a high-quality coffee, you’ll likely get a surprisingly consistent answer: clean, sweet, juicy, bright. To an outsider, they would be forgiven for thi...Show More
4) Coffee Quality, Part 1: The birth of specialty coffee flavours
For the longest time, coffees were dull and bitter. But then a small group of pioneers changed the world. In this episode, we travel back to the 1960s and ’70s to meet the trailblazers who realised...Show More
5) How specialty coffee woke up to water’s role in flavour
For the longest time, the coffee community only cared about water’s impact ruining espresso machine boilers and kettles. But what about water’s impact on coffee flavour? In this episode, I tell the ...Show More
6) The two ingredients in water that ruin your coffee, and the ancient story behind them
550 million years ago, earth was perfect. We had perfect water for coffee AND we were living in a vegetarian paradise! But then Earth changed—violently. The planet shifted from a peaceful, plant-eat...Show More
7) Getting great water for coffee, step-by-step. Part 2: How to measure and treat your water
Water massively impacts your coffee’s flavours. But most of us struggle to fix our water because water science is confusing… …until now! In this special collaboration with Lucia Solis (Making Coffee...Show More
8) Getting great water for coffee, step-by-step. Part 1: Alkalinity, hardness and why it matters
Water massively impacts your coffee’s flavours. But most of us struggle to fix our water because water science is confusing… …until now! In this special collaboration with Lucia Solis (Making Coffee...Show More
9) Farm to port: why specialty costs more
Every time we open a bag of beautiful specialty coffee — like Erick Bravo’s from Finca El Chaferote in Huila, Colombia — we’re drinking something that’s been on a long journey. And I mean long! Ove...Show More
10) Why one Colombian farmer chose specialty and the other walked away
I travel to Colombia’s Huila region to answer a question that’s puzzled me for years: if specialty coffee pays more, is better for the environment, and brews tastier cups—why don’t more farmers grow i...Show More