The Speciality Coffee Association scoring system The Speciality Coffee Association (SCA) scoring system is still fairly new, having made its debut in 1982. The purpose was to differentiate specialty coffee from commercial coffee and to create a means of evaluating coffee quality. The system was created with the intention of making cupping more consistent and reliable. It was also intended to make it easier to communicate about coffee, especially with regard to buying and selling. While the system is well-known Read More [...]

French press: Making coffee in a cafetière. The French press or cafetiere is a great way to make coffee and probably the most widely-used coffee device in Ireland. There are many different French presses on the market but the method for making coffee with them is pretty much the same. Here are some tips on how to get the best out of your French press. Use coarsely ground beans - If you have a burr grinder, set it to a Read More [...]

How long will my coffee keep fresh? We get asked all the time, how long will our coffee stay fresh? How long will it keep in tip-top condition? And the short answer is that in general, unopened, whole beans will keep really well for up to a year, ground coffee unopened will stay fresh for about 4-5 months. Once opened, a bag of beans is at its best for around 2-3 weeks. A bag of ground coffee Read More [...]

Are single origins better than coffee blends? Believe it or not, this is a relatively new question in the specialty coffee world. For most of coffee’s history it has been served as a blend and the world’s most famous and most desirable coffees were all blends. The classic Mocha Java pairing of Mocha beans from Yemen with Java from Indonesia was probably the first internationally traded blend and it was hugely popular for several centuries. Still is. Some famous blends Read More [...]

The California Coffee Project. The University of California, Davis, has been leading a project called the California Coffee Project since 2013, with the goal of exploring the potential for growing coffee in California and developing it as a specialty crop. The project is a collaborative effort between UC Davis researchers, coffee farmers, and industry professionals. The California Coffee Project has several objectives, including evaluating the feasibility of growing coffee in California, developing best practices for cultivation, harvesting, and processing, and Read More [...]

Coffee For Cyclists You spoke, we listened. REVOLUTION. COFFEE FOR CYCLISTS. Out of the very small Dreambeans / Greenbean team, four of us are cyclists. We love coffee and we love cycling. We know how important coffee is to cycling and how seriously cyclists take their coffee. We believe in cycling. We believe in sustainability. We wanted to contribute something. We wanted to give cyclists the best coffee they had ever tried, whether they were Read More [...]

What is a cortado coffee, or a café cortado? What is a cortado? How is it different from a macchiato? And why are people everywhere  asking for it in coffee shops these days? There's a definite trend in coffee consumption towards stronger drinks with more coffee and less milk. As coffee gets better generally, our tastes is for more  flavour in our cup and less dilution, thus, the latte is giving way to the flat white, the cafe au lait Read More [...]

Coffee Supply: Global Logistics Problems. Coffee bean shortage. Update: 28 February 2022. The Tanzanian has arrived. Following further delays caused by storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin coming in quick succession, the coffee eventially got shipped and it arrived this morning. We'll be roasting today and Torero will be sent out tomorrow. Update: 10 February 2022. We've just had a call to say that our coffee has docked in Rotterdam and will be on its way to us today. So it Read More [...]

The first coffee drinkers. Kaldi the Abyssinian goatherd Legend has it that sometime around 850 AD, an Abyssinian (Ethiopian) goat herder named Kaldi was the first to recognize the potential of the beans that grew in the ancient coffee forests high on the Ethiopian plateau. According to legend, Kaldi discovered coffee after observing that his previously “irreproachable” goats became so lively after eating the berries from a certain tree that they could not get to sleep at night. Kaldi Read More [...]

Coffee Leaf Rust: An Existential Threat? In 2012 the Royal Botanic Kew Gardens in London released a ground-breaking study that used computer modelling to predict how climate change would impact the future of wild Arabica coffee plants. The bleak findings shared that if trends continue Arabica coffee could be extinct in 70 years. Headlines proclaiming coffee’s possible extinction in 2050 appeared in multiple media channels throughout the world and continues to pick up interest today. Coffee was on the endangered Read More [...]