Colombia’s Cafe Tinto: a Cultural Symbol

Tinto coffee is the most popular coffee beverage in Colombia, where coffee is a famous export and a cultural symbol. Whenever someone asks for a cafe Tinto in Colombia, it means they are ordering a strong and dark black coffee with added sugar. Tinto is a staple drink in the country, and its preparation is …

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Burundi Coffee Flavor Profile

Burundi coffee has great potential. Because of its distinct terroir, it tastes more like a Latin American coffee than that of its African neighbors. Look for Burundian coffee from November to May from shops and roasters. What is the flavor profile? Burundi coffee is bright and sweet, with a balanced acidity and a complex layering …

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Tanzania Coffee Flavor Profile

Coffee generates 20% of Tanzania’s income. The country’s economy is based upon farming. Today, they sell most Tanzanian coffee to Japan, Italy, and the United States. Tanzanian farmers grow mostly Arabica beans, but produce Robusta in the northwest corner of the country. Their most famous bean is Tanzanian peaberry, which fetches the best reviews and …

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The Catuai Coffee Variety

Catuai means “very good” in the Guarani language. It is a good coffee, but not a great one. Catuai is a high-yield Arabica coffee, developed in Brazil. People who grow it want to harvest the most beans per acre of Arabica coffee plants. In this guide you’ll learn all about its origins, flavor profile and …

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Nicaraguan Coffee Flavor Profile

Crisp, acid, and having a snap are ways people define the character of Nicaraguan coffee. Nicaraguan coffee has a sweet and rich taste. It is well balanced, medium bodied, and pungent. You get strong tastes of bitter and sweet balanced together. Some coffee is heavy with the bittersweet taste of over-ripe fruit. Others blend citrus …

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Indonesian Coffee Flavor Profile

Most (75-90%) of Indonesian coffee are Robusta beans and used to make commercial coffees. Indonesians mostly grow these commercial beans on large plantations with industrial agriculture. You must seek out the single origin, small farm, organic coffees to find something special. 

Indonesia is an archipelago made up of a thousand islands. Some of these have flatter fields and terraced hills that work for plantation agriculture. Others are high islands, centered upon a volcano, whose soils make some of the best coffee. 

The best Robusta beans are dark roasted into espresso beans, and sometimes blended with Arabica. Small farms can grow Arabica beans that highlight the terroir of this country. 

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Costa Rican Coffee Flavor Profile

Costa Rican coffee is full-bodied and rich. People describe it as comforting, sweet, inviting, and chocolaty. Costa Rican coffee consistently wins awards as the best coffee. 

The country has been encouraging innovation towards even higher quality coffee. The government gave out free land for those who would farm coffee in 1891. They also once gave seed coffee for free to farmers. Even today, the government sponsors research into how to make their coffee even better. 

Costa Rica is a small country with a big name in the coffee world. They export 90% of the coffee they grow, which makes up less than 1% of the world’s coffee. This 1% includes many award winners and other top coffees. Costa Rican coffees reflect this elite status with their prices, but bargains are always to be found.

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Ethiopian Coffee Flavor Profile

Ethiopian coffees are sweet and show a wide variety of natural flavors, depending on the region or the roast. The most desired flavor is blueberry, which can be found in the best Ethiopian coffees. Ethiopia is famous for other fruit flavors, like strawberry and melon. 

It’s no surprise that Ethiopia produces some of the best coffees in the world – it is the birthplace of coffee. Coffea arabica, the coffee plant, hails from Ethiopia. They have been caring for the coffee bean for longer than anyone else.

Ethiopia also makes an art out of drinking coffee. Coffee is a community occasion. Any meeting of people will include coffee, served black with sugar. This ceremony starts with roasting the beans. As people smell the beans roasting, they draw near to drink coffee with friends and strangers. 

In this guide we’ll explore the coffees of Ethiopia and the nuances of their flavors.

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Coffee TDS: Measuring Strength and Extraction

Coffee is both art and science, but science has become increasingly predominant in recent years.

Thermometers measure brew water temperature, timers measure pours and brew times, and scales weigh grounds, water and brewed coffee/espresso.

One of the newest gadgets are refractometers, which measure total dissolved solubles.

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