Coffee culture is weaving its way into more and more homes, especially during these times. Media consumption is at an all-time high, and the rise of the “coffee influencer” is expanding its reach to cater to those who want to stay updated with industry news, bean and equipment reviews, or tips on how to make a better cup! If you’re a budding home barista, or someone who just wants to be updated with everything and anything coffee-related, we’ve listed down several coffee professionals who are definitely worth your Like and Subscribe. Check them out! James Hoffmann James Hoffmann / Youtube James Hoffmann is the 2007 World Barista Champion, co-founder of Square Mile Coffee Roasters in the U.K., and author of The World Atlas for Coffee—definitely no stranger to the coffee scene. In just three years, his YouTube channel has amassed a wide range of content that appeals to both the budding brewer and the seasoned barista. Even someone with just a sliver of interest about coffee is bound to find something informative or entertaining on his YouTube channel. Come for: Product Reviews, Recipes, Tutorials and Guides, Coffee Trends Junichi Yamaguchi @junichi_yamaguchi / Instagram Love latte art? Then @junichi_yamaguchi is the man to follow on the ‘gram. Junichi Yamaguchi has seen much success in the realm of visual coffee art, winning the Coffee Fest Latte Art Championship in 2014. If the Ballerina pattern is your favourite form of latte art, then you have Junichi to thank for popularising it. Bless your Instagram feed with beautifully-poured cups, mouthwatering canelé photos, and café life at Junichi’s @here.kyoto. The reverence to this marriage of coffee and art is evident in every well-composed (and perfectly-poured) photo. Come for: Latte Art, Design Inspiration Scott Rao Scott Rao / scottrao.com Scott Rao is one of the most influential coffee thinkers in the industry. His books and classes have inspired many to look past the old and dusted rules of coffee-making, in favour of an approach that involves mixing technical concepts with practical application. While he is better known as a consultant for café and roasting businesses, his blog contains insightful nuggets of coffee wisdom about brewing and roasting for the advanced learner. Come for: Coffee Roasting Tips, Brewing Concepts, Industry News Gail Williams Seattle Coffee Gear / Youtube Everyone has their favourite auntie, and Gail Williams is ours. Getting into home espresso could be daunting, but Gail breaks that wall down with her undeniable charm and humour that she sprinkles in every Seattle Coffee Gear review. You don’t have to be in the market for an espresso machine. These videos are informative, entertaining, and wholesome at best. Sadly, Gail recently retired from her role, but she has left a decade’s worth of content that will undoubtedly be enjoyed for years and generations to come. Come for: Espresso Machine Reviews, How-tos, Coffee Q&As This may only be a handful of personalities who've influenced and inspired the coffee scene with their valuable contributions and insights. We are sure there are many others out there, and we'd like to know who your favourites are in the comments section below! Words by Jon Choi @theheadbean

In efforts to better connect the coffee roasters with you, the coffee drinkers, we are embarking on a new series - 'Roaster on Roster', where we feature our partner roasters on the MORNING marketplace and spend some time catching up with them about their projects, inspirations and also their lives outside of coffee. First in line on our 'roster' is Patrik Rolf of April Coffee Roasters. A few months ago, we jumped on a video call with Patrik to have a chat with him and among other things, check up with him on how things are in Copenhagen, the experience of opening a coffee store in the midst of a pandemic as well as his other passion projects (hint: April Coffee Brewer). About the RoasterPatrick Rolf is the founder of April Coffee Roasters based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He started his journey in Coffee with Da Matteo, spent two years as Head of Roastery at Five Elephants in Berlin and was a Brewers Cup winner in Sweden as well as the runner-up for the 2019 World Brewers Cup Championship. Leon: Patrik, how are things and what is the COVID situation like now over in Copenhagen?Patrik: I think the situation at the moment is fairly within control. In Europe, overall, it's moving in the right direction. We were one of the first countries in Europe to quarantine so we got in quite early, from mid March to the end of April where not many people went out and there were restrictions.After that, it kind of opened up and from the middle of June, it was almost business as usual. There are still some restrictions but it's actually working fairly okay. I think the main challenge now is just the lack of tourism. L: How has this affected your business directly?P: I think it's affected us in a few different ways. First of all, we're a wholesale company in the sense that we sell all around the world, and different markets have shut down at different times. I feel that now we're back on track. There are a lot of companies that have it a lot worse than we do.L: We understand that you used to visit origins quite often, and so from now henceforth, how do expect for it to be different?P: Obviously now it's not the time to go to origin, so we haven't been traveling at all like we did. We did a few trips late last year - Ethiopia, Kenya, Costa Rica early in the year (which we always do), so that's fine. We did have a few scheduled trips for this time in the summer to Ecuador, Burundi, Brazil and a few other places, which we canceled. It is fine because everyone understands and we're doing it virtual now instead. Everything is online, we do zoom discussions with our farmers, we get videos from the farms and we take samples, so actually very little has changed.Of course, it's nice to go and visit them. But I mean, if this whole COVID-19 has told us anything, it is that online is still a pretty solid way to communicate.L: It's quite interesting now that you mentioned, because I used to go to origin quite a bit but now I find myself speaking to the farmers even more and having phone calls with them on WhatsApp, FaceTime, and I don't think I have spoken to them as often as pre-COVID.P: I mean, humans are an inherent social race, right? We're social animals and I think this whole COVID-19 has highlighted that quite clearly, as in how people communicate more diversely, and almost more than before, because they found a way of communicating or being social. There's been a lot of discussions going on about what will happen post-COVID, as to if more people will stay in the rooms and just do online conversations. But I think social interaction is never going to be enough. Just meeting someone, physically, is so important for us, so as a species, we're going to continue doing that. Nevertheless, interesting times and again, it's always like this, with every disaster it will bring about positive and negative things so there's definitely some good stuff coming out of this whole period as well.L: So, Patrick, just a side question, because everybody knows you are into coffee, the big question is, were you always into coffee, what were you doing before coffee and what got you into coffee?P: I started in coffee about eight years ago, and started because of Da Matteo in Gothenburg. I was just a regular in their coffee shop and was doing some consultations regarding marketing and business development with a company I had together with the founder of da Matteo - Matts.So I’m in coffee because of one person more than anything else and it's a person called Matts Johansson, who started Da Matteo. He was and is a huge inspiration for me today as well and if I didn’t meet him, I would never have ended up in coffee because he introduced me to everything to do with coffee. I competed in coffee before I started working with coffee as well. I competed in a barista cup and that was very much because of him as well, because he allowed me to hang out in their lab to train.I got into coffee because my idea at the time (which definitely has changed) was that coffee was very quality focused, that is was very craft-focused and authentic. I had an idea that people cared a lot about what's going on and how they can make stuff better. Not sure if I believe that today, but it doesn't really matter because I'm on a different path. That is basically the short story of it all.L: I think everybody got into coffee in a certain way because it helped craft a certain part of their career or just meeting people. Meeting people for me was actually the most important thing in coffee. L: Anyway, I'm gonna soldier on with the questions, because there's quite a bit. We can talk about one of your projects - the April coffee store and showroom. With most of your brand and customer base being very widespread globally, what made you open up a store in Copenhagen, in the midst of a pandemic? And obviously, about this controversial statement you mentioned a few times about how the world doesn't need another coffee shop or roastery. P: Which I still hold very true to that. For us it is a daily challenge to justify our existence in this industry. Which is why we try to do the things we do.The coffee store came out of a few things. So initially, because of COVID, very early on, when people started to understand that this will become a thing in Europe, I had some quite interesting discussions with Maxwell in February about this - we kind of saw this coming.When we went into quarantine here in March, the industry, from one day to another just became so negative. People had a lot of these negative thoughts but I wanted to go out of the quarantine time to have done something positive, because I don't see a reason for why any situation in life should just be negative, it can be both positive or negative at the same time.So we signed a contract for this space, right in the middle of the quarantine, and spent the duration of the quarantine building it, it took about a month and a half. So one, because we need this industry to also display that we can do positive stuff in the midst of a pandemic and I'm convinced that when we get out of this, people still have this need of social interaction, we have a need of interacting as well, as a company.Also because, as you say, we've been very international from day one, and we're going to continue being that but we also want to be more local and we want to support the city that we're in.Now we're interacting with the people of Copenhagen on a daily basis. Plus, we always had so many people traveling to Copenhagen, wanting to meet us, but our roastery has always been off limits and we don't accept visits. So it's cool to finally have a space where when people travel in and they want to try our coffee, we can tell them to come by our shop and we’ll brew some coffees for them. So rather than doing a coffee shop, it’s more like creating an April living room, where you can come and hang out with us and try some of our coffees.L: What type of customers walk into your store? Are they existing customers or new people that you meet?P: Mainly Danish, of course, but it's a good mix. In Denmark or especially Copenhagen, we have a lot of very quality-focused people within the food and beverage world. The restaurant scene in Copenhagen is quite developed. So we have a lot of people that are interested in food and beverage from before, we also have our neighbours on the street. There are a lot of people who have never interacted with April before. Even though we are established in the coffee world we have a lot of people that have never heard about us before that walked into our doorsL: What was the inspiration behind the living-room format for the April Coffee store? P: Back to the question where you mentioned in the beginning that the world does not need another coffee shop and the way I see it is that we did not create another coffee shop but we are actually creating an experience that you don't get anywhere else. One, because we serve 100% coffee, there's nothing else. Two, because of the design and the feel of that place. We teamed up with one of the most established Danish furniture designers - House of Juhl, on all of our interior. This is not your average coffee shop. We are trying to create an experience.It's just a space where you come for the experience more than anything else and then hopefully you get to taste some really, really, really good coffee.L: The second project that I would like to talk about is your April Coffee Brewer. Can you tell us more about what this product is about and also how your experience was launching this new product into the consumer market? P: For the April Brewing kit we had one very simple goal in mind, and bear in mind, we haven't succeeded with that goal yet, but it was that I wanted to win a World Championship. A part of that was also to bring something else to the table at the Brewers Cup. It's been a discussion for a long time but the Brewers cup feels more like a sourcing competition rather than a brewing competition. It's so much about the green coffee you're working with more so than anything else. I wanted to change the focus there and actually bring a brewer that I created myself to emphasise the brewing aspect of the competition. It's been a three year process. I first brought it to Brazil in 2018 where I had the highest compulsory but then one of the judges thought I had poured too little coffee in his cup but I didn't say much about it.So the thing with the brewing kit and what we improved in Boston was that we had the highest score by far. In the final, we were four points higher than anyone else, but the Chinese girl had a stronger compulsory than I had so she ended up winning by 0.2 points. When you prepare a flatbed brewer versus a cone brewer, you'll realise that in the colder temperatures (and the colder temperatures are very important when you compete), the cone brewer is going to create a more acidic taste experience that is not as balanced as a flat brewer. A lot of people when they compete, if you look at their score sheets, they start with quite high points at the hot temperature, but then the judges will cross over your score and write something lower after, because the attributes in the temperature changes doesn't benefit the cup.The judges will taste your cup of coffee for the last time in the lower temperature as well. So that needs to be the best experience of the cup.A lot of the focus with the brewing kit was to make an experience that maximises the taste quality of the mid to lower range (temperatures) in the cup and you do that by creating a bit of harmony and structure, with a better mouthfeel to the coffee as well, making everything fit together a bit. That was the goal. It took us about three years to do it with ten prototypes. It was always important for me that we're not launching this product before we proved that we can do good stuff with it and I think second place in the World Championship was kind of the tipping point there where it's like, “Okay, we've got the highest cup-score in the world championship, we got a silver medal (we wanted a gold medal, but that's how it is - come back for that later on)”, then it was time to launch it. It's been a great experience. It's been challenging, because COVID happened the month before we were supposed to launch. So it's been a bit disruptive to our production lines but apart from that it's been a good experience.L: Let's talk about your capsules, your coffee line. What was the tipping point for you to decide to use this Nespresso compatible format to share your coffee? P: It was the fact that at a point when I tasted Nespresso for the first time, many years ago, instead of saying “this tastes off”, “it’s not nice”, “I don't like this”, “It's not quality” etc. So most people kind of disregarded it as just something that Nespresso does. But whenever I taste coffee products I don't like, I get excited. It's the same that we have this cold brew line but I don't like cold brew. So instead of saying, we're never going to make cold brew, we say how do we do a cold brew that April likes - likewise with the capsules. Generally capsules didn’t taste good, they had extractions issues, and a lot of materials issues (where everything was plastic in the beginning).Then we asked ourselves, “How do we do a tastier one?”. That was the only incentive. Business wise, it didn't really make any sense back then. We pushed a bunch of money into trying to make a tasty version of a capsule and it’ll be years before we recover the money we invested into making the capsules the way that we do.I looked at Nespresso, the same way I do at La Marzocco and you guys have understood that as well right? Because you guys are creating your own machine. What Nespresso did was to create a brewing system, right? They didn't create a capsule, they created a brewing system - a machine that you can brew some kind of coffee beverage with. To me that was amazing, because now we have a platform and you creating another machine now, which I hope is better. But I think the format of a capsule is amazing, it's consistent, fast and tasty (if you do it well).I think the biggest struggle with selling coffee as a product if you’re talking about coffee beans, it's the fact that someone needs to brew it. You sell them a bag of espresso beans, they need to take it home, start up their machine, dial into the grinders and I would say 9 out of 10 times our coffee doesn't taste the way that it should, because someone else has to brew it. Which is what makes it difficult. Whereas with a capsule, we can guarantee 100% of the time that our coffee will taste exactly like we intended it to taste. It's a fantastic product. So I'm super excited and have been for years since we started this whole product and I feel we're getting on top of it. Not convinced still, being as small as we are, it's a hard product to push because it's really a volume product.L: Yeah, we get quite a bit of requests for your capsules from this part of the world, especially the Costa Rican Volcan Azul. Predominantly in Singapore, people prefer a bit more chocolate and then if it's honey and fruit in a way where you still have chocolate people will likely reach out to those coffees. Do you roast your coffee differently for capsules?P: Yes, which you have to. We can’t go into too much specifics but the thing is for this brewing format, the temperatures and pressures are quite different from any other type of extraction. So, you can't really roast it the way you normally do, like how a lot of people take their espresso roast and put it into capsules.Nespresso machines or your machine are not La Marzocco machines. It's not nine bar pressure, nor the same flow rate so it goes without saying that it's a different type of brewing and a different type of brewing requires a different kind of roasting. It's just like how we differentiate the espresso and filter roast where it doesn't make any sense to make one roast profile for both filter and espresso because you have a pressurised brewing method and an unpressurised brewing method with two vastly different flow rates. There's no way that the optimal version of a roast will be awesome for both. It might be good for both but if your goal is to make the best version of a coffee, having the same roast profile is just lazy.L: Yes, it's absolutely important that we are aware that there is no one roast fits all for the brew method or the way you enjoy your coffee. So that's why we exist and why there’s specialty coffee. Moving on to the next topic. We observed that all your projects are very design centric. We'd like to know where your inspiration comes from? We know that you love to do things that infuse a local craft, a certain artisan craftsmen or certain ceramists, whether from Japan, Korea etc.. We want to know what's your inspiration and how do you come to these design decisions when it comes to April.P: First of all, thank you for acknowledging that it looks good and there's effort in the packaging. But the key thing is that we put the beauties on the inside first. The idea is that inside comes first, so what’s within the capsule is substantially more important than the packaging of the capsules. So the relationship between quality of taste of coffee and design, is that we don't care about design, taste quality first. Then when it comes to design, as we do with most things in April, all the design is made in-house. So we have two partners that we work with, a guy called Max Duchardt in Berlin, and then an illustrator called Ryoto Miyaki in Tokyo. Those guys are the ones that are doing the design work for our brand. It's very little of me interfering, so I can't take any credit for that, because it's really just their version of April. We let them do their thing but obviously I also have a clear direction and idea of how I want it to look. Part of the foundation of April is that when we work with partners it’s the same as when we work with the farmers - we don't go to our farmers to tell them how to farm coffee or how to process coffee. We choose farmers that have a specific integrity in their taste and their approach because their coffee is amazing. We are not farmers, we are coffee roasters, so it’s the same thing with design, we choose people that are very skilled at what they do and then we let them do their thing and then we decide in the end whether it fits us or not but we would never go in and micromanage someone that is very good at what they do.L: Patrik some people might also be interested to know that other than coffee, what other hobbies or passions do you have? P: Inspiration-wise nothing really came out of coffee. Linking back to how I started in coffee, and my assumptions about the coffee industry, the longer I am in the industry, the harder it is to find that quality, coffee is a hobby science at best so I am not convinced that coffee is getting the respect it deserves by professionals. So a lot of my inspiration I find are from other industries.In terms of interests, I have been studying philosophy for a few years now. I have always been interested in any kind of physical activity, which in my world translates to lifting stuff in the gym. Which basically sums up to training my body and mind. Meditations in various forms which in my world translate to journaling, reflection, walking and being alone in quiet (without any form of distractions).I just appreciate quality in general, I find people in Copenhagen and around the world that do quality stuff and go and meet them. One of our coolest features in our coffee store is this indigo-dyed curtain with the April logo on it that is dividing the two shops - that is hand-dyed by these awesome indigo farmers in Japan. So that is kind of like a hobby and interest of mine.L: Are you reading something interesting now?P: I have a few books that I read continuously everyday that are more so a reminder, which would be Marcus Aurelius’ ‘Meditations’ (which is also something I travel with). Very recently, I am re-reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, ‘Talking to Strangers’ - super interesting especially with the Black Lives Matters movement that has been active recently, it’s a great way to get a perspective on things.There is something else that I have been interested in: There is a foundation in Canada, Munk Foundation, where it’s a very wealthy family that have started something called the ‘Munk Debates’. It is a relatively old concept but I’ve recently discovered it because they have now a series of interviews regarding COVID-19. They have historians, economists, thinkers on 10 episodes discussing how the world will look like after COVID-19.L: Last question - What is your morning ritual/routine like?P: I wake up at 5.30am every single day and after taking a shower I am out the door at 6am. What I like drinking now is actually tea, I am really into cold extractions with tea, so I take that with me in the morning and walk out the door to go for a walk for about 30 minutes - just walk without doing anything or listening to anything. It’s a great way to start your mind, I try not to think about anything. After that I go to the coffee store, usually there at around 7am and then have my first coffee at eight o’clock. Today my first coffee was a pourover made by Jo here at April, a Red Honey Processed Gesha from Volcan Azul. L: That’s a fancy morning coffee!P: I should say that our store is fancy, we are doing good stuff. There’s no average qualities here and we only bring in the best we can get. L: Patrik before we leave I would like to say thank you so much for being on Roaster on Roster. We’d like to thank you for your positivity, your dedication to quality, your passion to the craft and your constant need to collaborate with people who also understand quality. Please keep safe in the meantime. We look forward to visiting you some day, or maybe you could swing by. P: I would actually love to, it is on my list. Last year, I was very close but I am definitely coming. It will be super cool to hang out with you guys. Watch the full video feature of this conversation with Patrik on our IGTV! And check out Patrik's coffee capsules over here.

Depending on which side of the world you’re reading this from, you’re probably either trying to reclaim some sense of normalcy, or (like myself) still stuck in a lockdown. Whichever case you find yourself in, you may be one of the hopped-up caffeine heads that have decided to act on their much-needed fix by becoming a home barista. The rise of the home barista shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. With the sheer amount of people who love to drink coffee, it was inevitable that a good number would eventually dabble into brewing at home. What might have begun as experimenting at home could now be a full-blown ritual for a lot of home brewers. One thing to note, is that while the French press and pour over brewers have been around for a while, it is recently that developments in home espresso have gotten exciting. If you wanted to have an espresso at home, you were often stuck with having to buy yourself a single group espresso machine or a fully automatic coffee maker. With the advent of several manual espresso makers, and the lowering costs of building better machines, the espresso has definitely become much more accessible. Of course, how can we forget the entry of the Nespresso system, in being able to deliver espresso shots with just the push of a button? These newer technologies have helped to enable a culture of brewing at home that has made it exciting to see what people have been making at home. The home barista, without the benefit of what would classify as a formal coffee education, can get their education from fellow home baristas, or from the vast expanse of the internet. Without the biases that can come from brewing a particular way, the home barista is allowed a much wider opportunity to experiment without the judging taste buds of a paying customer. A great advantage a home barista has is that their limits are defined by their creativity and their willingness to acquire the equipment to brew. A home barista can have as much gear as their wallet will allow them and can mix and match different kinds of gear to make for different brews. Whether you’ve started mastering the art of a pour over, experimenting with a manual espresso brewer, or went all out with a café-like setup at home, there’s just no denying that the home barista is here to stay. Words by Ryan Uy @thenameisrye

In the world of streetwear, there is Supreme; for whisky enthusiasts, there are the aged whiskies of Japan and in the world of specialty coffee, the Gesha reigns atop the pedestal of the most sought-after coffees in the world. It seems, that whenever some obscenely priced coffee comes out onto the market, you’re almost guaranteed that it will be of a Gesha varietal. You’re also more likely to see Gesha coffees being used by champion baristas when competing at huge coffee events, with different baristas likely sourcing their coffees from the same company handling the same exclusive farm. There definitely is an excitement from both the home brewer and the professional barista when presented the opportunity to either brew or consume a cup of these highly-prized coffees, but it might help to bring some context as to where exactly these coffees come from. Although both the terms Gesha and Geisha have been in regular use for the better part of over a decade, the origins of the coffee come from the Gori Gesha forest in Ethiopia. In the coffee world, “Gesha” typically refers to the coffees from Ethiopia and other countries where they have begun harvesting these coffees, while “Geisha” came into the lexicon from the award-winning Panamanian variety that has been setting records since it’s debut at the Best of Panama show in 2004. It doesn’t come as too much of a surprise that some of the world’s best coffees would come from the historical birthplace of coffee, but what really brought the Gesha coffee to international fame was when a Panama Geisha coffee from Hacienda La Esmeralda reached a (then) record price of $21/pound. Suddenly, coffee aficionados and roasters around the world were scrambling to get their hands on these incredibly special coffees. So what exactly makes these coffees special? From an objective standpoint, Gesha coffees have been consistently scored highly by licensed Q-graders (individuals who have been certified to score coffee based on a particular set of metrics). Regardless of whether they’re the Ethiopian or Panamanian variety, these coffees have ranked very highly at coffee auctions, often setting records wherever they are. With a wide variety of tasting and cupping notes like jasmine, lime, rose, strawberries, and honeysuckle, it is no surprise that Gesha coffees are often used at barista competitions to truly bring great flavors forward. At the end of the day, it’s a simple question of economics. With the high demand for great quality Gesha coffees and an obviously limited crop or supply, you can expect to continue paying high prices for a cup of these great coffees. They are obviously not economical to be for your daily brews but when the opportunity arises to try some Gesha coffee, take a chance and excuse yourself for a once-in-a-while splurge to taste why these coffees consistently set the bar. I guarantee they’ll be worth your while. Words by Ryan Uy @thenameisrye

“Practice makes perfect” That statement rings true when it comes to brewing your favorite cup of coffee. Experienced baristas and long-time home brewers may already have their favorite go-to recipes, but for a coffee aficionado that is just getting started, there are a great number of resources to help you with brewing at home. Having the fancy pour-over kit, all-white kettle, and a Bluetooth scale might be on the wish-list of every aspiring brewer, but a little extra help goes a long way, and the following 3 apps should provide some good help in perfecting your brew. The apps presented are all free-to-download and should give you a varied experience and great practice to help you perfect that brew. Filtru (Free: Android/iOS) The Filtru app may be the newest one on the list but it probably possesses the nicest interface of the 3. All 3 apps provide brewing guides, but the Filtru app adds some great features like the ability to add your own brewing recipes, provides visual cues for grind size, and is compatible to pair with a variety of Bluetooth scales to help track your brewing. Apart from following their recommended guides, you can also choose to upload your own recipe and share it with other Filtru users. Brewmaster (Free: Android/iOS) The Brewmaster app comes to us from Acaia, makers of some of arguably the best Bluetooth brewing scales in the industry. Although Acaia has several apps available to download and pair with their scales, the Brewmaster app is designed to push you to log your brews and help you to monitor your progress in your brewing. The flipside to using the Acaia apps is that you will need to have an Acaia scale to pair with. coffee.cup.guru (Free: Android/iOS) The coffee.cup.guru app is a popular choice on both iOS and Android app stores, and has a great selection of recipes depending on your preference. Apart from providing the several recipes and brew guides from the World Aeropress Championship, you can also mark your favorite recipes and log your own personal ones. Words by Ryan Uy @thenameisrye

Tasting profiles exist to help customers select a coffee, and provide an expectation of how the cup tastes once brewed. In the industry, they influence purchase decisions at the cupping table, or release candidates for roast profiles. More than mere flavour notes, they often include other attributes such as mouthfeel, texture, finish - things that complete the experience of coffee-drinking. More precise notes such as Blueberry, Tea-like, and Creamy are slowly edging out generic descriptors such as Bold, Smooth, and Strong. One word in particular, commonly hollered in cupping tables and pourover bars around the world, is juicy. The use of juicy is perplexing because it feels both generic and specific at the same time. It seems to be a quality of good coffee, yet it lacks the detail of other common flavour notes. We started to wonder about the definition and use case for it, so we called a friend (five, actually) this week, and asked them to spill the juice. James Hoffmann (@jimseven) of Square Mile Coffee and YouTube fame, offers the following: “Juicy, as a descriptor, suggests a lovely combination of fruit acidity and sweetness. It’s more of a fresh fruit acidity, but should be well balanced with the sweetness of coffee to make it pleasurable.” This confirms that juiciness in coffee is indeed a pleasant quality. It’s interesting to note that James won the World Barista Championships in 2007 using two single estate coffees that, at the time, were not commonly pulled as espresso. “Light, delicate, fresh” were used to describe his coffee, and in a competition scoresheet that rewards balance and sweetness along with acidity, it wouldn’t be wrong to assume that the man was pulling juicy espresso thirteen years ago. Miki Takamasa (@mikitakamasa) of Koffee Mameya adds some insight and inclusion. While we ourselves often associate light roasts with juiciness, Miki-san states that it “...can only be found in coffee that has been perfectly roasted and extracted. It’s clean, vibrant, even if it’s dark roasted”. Next up is Monique Buensalido (@sinongnanaymoe), a PR and Digital Media Executive from Manila, whose home and office are walking distance from multiple coffeeshops. Monique is the quintessential Specialty Coffee fan, always eager to try new origins and flavour profiles. She goes for the definition of juicy as “...when drinking the coffee feels and tastes like I bit into a fruit and I’m chewing it. I often equate juicy coffees to chewy, fruity ones.” This definition is interesting, because it suggests this specific combination of flavour and texture. Still, another comment we received, offers complexity as a reason to use the word. Joma Rivera (@yomarivera), celebrated bartender and Bar Manager at Kafe Utu, shares “...when I describe a coffee as [juicy], it is going to be [a] fruit forward cup. Think of apples, blueberries, strawberries, pears, etc. Aside from the flavour profile, the coffee should have a medium complexity and not only highlighting a single flavor”. Our final definition comes from a well-travelled coffee friend, who has worn multiple hats in the coffee industry. From podcasting (before it became cool), to roasting, to competing in coffee competitions, to judging the same competitions, to running his own kissaten, we could not think of a better individual to ask to “drop the hammer” on this, so to speak. The following is an excerpt from Jay Caragay (@onocoffee) of Spro Coffee: “I think of it as eating an orange. One that’s bursting with liquid (juicy) when you bite into it - it’s also succulent, with the ideal flavor of orange. A taste experience that makes you salivate when you think about it. It’s that but in delicious anticipation. How I think that applies to coffee is when you’re cupping/tasting a coffee and you get that salivating reaction. I think it’s a very positive attribute/characteristic.” As per Jay’s definition, juiciness is a positive quality that goes beyond specific flavours and textures. This single descriptor encompasses and ticks multiple attributes, and rather interestingly, suggests that excitement and memory are part of the flavour experience of coffee. Which of the four are most similar to how you perceive juicy coffees? Do you have your own unique interpretation of what makes a coffee juicy? Let us know in the comments below!