charcoal remove bitterness coffee

How activated charcoal can remove bitterness from coffee

Dr. Monika Fekete shares a home experiment to demonstrate how activated charcoal can remove the bitterness from coffee. I’m taking these challenging times as an excuse to indulge in online shopping for locally crafted beans, and to play with home-based coffee experiments.
Read More
Automation and consistency in the café

Automation and consistency in the café

Mocopan Coffee’s Babin Gurung on why consistency of products and services is one of the key factors to operating a sustainable business and how automation can help. Consistency is a constant topic in our conversations, mainly because there is very little margin of error when working with a product such as coffee.
Read More
taste coffee

How do we taste coffee?

Dr Monika Fekete dissects sensory pathways and how taste molecules bind to receptors, one at a time, to give us the ultimate sensory experience in the cup. Coffee is not only a feast for the senses, but one of the most complex beverages we consume, from a chemical point of view. Dissecting this multi-sensory experience in order to identify distinct flavours in your brew can be a difficult task, even if you have worked with coffee for many years. Understanding how the human body receives and processes chemical signals through smell and taste can be helpful towards getting a grip on those elusive flavours.
Read More
cafés adapt change

Coffee Industry Survey

With restrictions starting to lift, Prime Creative Media is undertaking an industry sentiment survey, to help companies understand where their various industries are placed. The submissions are anonymous and will form the basis of a report that will be shared freely across Prime Creative Media’s various platforms, along with industry associations and government bodies.
Read More
how bulk brewing equipment has improved

How bulk brewing equipment has improved as expectations increase

Maurizio Marcocci of Service Sphere looks at how bulk brewing equipment has improved as customer expectations increase. A few years ago, the words “filter coffee” would conjure thoughts of bitter, black, and American sludge served from a pot that had been sitting on the diner, café, work, or kitchen counter for several hours.
Read More
COVID-19 plan

ASCA on setting a plan for COVID-19

ASCA President Kieran Westlake shares steps to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on cafés and small businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic is on course to be the most destructive economic issue since the Global Financial Crisis, due to its unprecedented nature and scale of the outbreak. This is especially true for individuals and families living week to week, as well as businesses that are reliant on face-to-face customer transactions, like cafés.
Read More
growing a successful coffee business

Lessons learned growing a successful coffee business

Espressology’s Instaurator shares some valuable experiences that can help grow a new coffee business and set an existing one up for further growth and success. In the first year of my little garage roasting business, I managed to double the turnover. In the second year, I doubled it again. In the third year I doubled it yet again. That was eight-fold growth rate in just three years. 
Read More
correct tamping techniques

Correct tamping techniques for consistent espresso extraction

Mocopan Coffee’s Babin Gurung on correct tamping techniques to achieve consistent espresso extractions.  Correct tamping is one of the most understated skills necessary for even extraction. How hard you should tamp, whether it matters, and the future of automatic tampers still sparks conversation behind the coffee bar. Tamping is important for even extraction, but the difference of ideas come around the technique involved. Over the years, I have seen, heard, and read about various tamping techniques and found some work better than the others.
Read More
Why grinds become coarser when the grinder heats up and how it impacts extraction

Why grinds become coarser when the grinder heats up and its impact on extraction speed

Dr. Monika Fekete discovers why coffee grinds become coarser when the grinder heats up and how it changes the speed of espresso extraction.  Dr Monika Fekete is the Founder of Coffee Science Lab. Ice, fresh, cold milk, and a perfectly balanced espresso shot are the key ingredients to a delicious iced latte over the summer months. The warm, balmy nights might give you a head-start waking up your machine and grinder from their slumber. But as the day goes on, your perfectly dialled-in shots will speed up and you will need to adjust your grinder a bit finer. 
Read More