The Journal

Fermentation, roasted.

Fermentation as craft. Roasting as calibration. Notes from producer to cup.

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Hands sorting ripe red coffee cherries by hand at El Vergel Estate

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Producers

Papayo: the cultivar the lot is named for

Most coffees are named for a place. This one is named for a plant — a rare Colombian cultivar with outsized beans, grown on small plots at El Vergel. Here's what the variety does before the fermentation ever starts.

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Reforest Project growers gathered outside a farm building in Caldas, ColombiaProducers

Named after a tree

Our Guamo lot isn't named for a village or a farm. It's named for a shade tree — and for a project betting that planting more of them is ...

3 min read
A waterfall falling through the green slopes of Mt. Elgon in eastern UgandaProducers

Norman Mukuru built it twice

An agronomist who built a coffee network for one of Uganda's largest exporters, opened his own yard on Mt. Elgon, and rebuilt it when the...

3 min read
Producers holding Cup of Excellence certificates, medals and trophies in EthiopiaProducers

The truck driver who came home

For years Mulugeta Muntasha drove other people's coffee. Then the climate changed, coffee came to his village, and the station he built i...

3 min read
Aerial view of El Vergel Estate in Fresno, Tolima — blue-roofed processing sheds surrounded by forest and coffee plotsProducers

The orchard that became a coffee farm

An avocado orchard in Tolima, lost to disease in 2006, replanted in coffee by Martha Bayter and turned by her sons into one of Colombia's...

2 min read

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Taste the Difference

Theory meets cup. Every article on this journal points back to coffees you can try at home.

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