The Bloom — coffee

Here at Kohana, you don’t have to go far to find someone who can testify to how hard it can be for women in the world of coffee. Just find our founder, Victoria, who can attest to the challenges women face—from the plantation to the executive suite—in our favorite industry. The issue is especially acute in the third world, where the women who grow and harvest much of the coffee we love face more than their fair share of burdens. In addition to a daily struggle to maintain hope in the face of endemic poverty and difficult working conditions, they...

Last time out, we looked at how to set up a proper coffee cupping, the practice of consciously sampling the coffees we love. Now we’re ready for the fun part: actually tasting some! Coffee has three main components: Aroma, taste, and body. In a cupping session, you’ll explore all three. There are whole guides to the process, but here are the basics: Taste several coffees at once. The more you taste, the more comparisons you can make, and the more comparisons you make, the more apparent the differences between individual coffees become. Since it’s these differences that lead us to...

Thankfully, coffee isn’t what it used to be. Gone are the days of horrific gas station cups filled with overheated mud so lifeless we can be forgiven for thinking it came from a pot brewed during the last World War. In their place are magnificent custom roasts carefully curated and treated like the fine wines they resemble, complete with flavor notes that speak of things like berry and nutmeg, hazelnut and hay. For many coffee drinkers, such language is a bit of a mystery. We drink our coffee, and we love it, but rarely do we pause to tease it...

Coffee is always finding new ways to amaze us. These surprises might arrive in a bean we’ve never tasted or that moment when we realize all that blossoms into being when we combine the simplicity of beans with the element of water. Yet coffee hides other secrets, too, and these revelations may surprise you even more:  The magic of coffee is believed to have been discovered in 9th century Ethiopia when herders saw their goats experience a burst of activity after eating coffee berries. They took the berries to a local holy man, who turned them into a drink that...