Stories

• Coffee culture in the Philippines

  Long before pour-overs, there was kapeng barako, the sachet at the sari-sari store and the kapihan on the bench outside. Where specialty coffee actually sits in that picture.

  

• The history of Philippine coffee

  A Spanish friar planted the first trees in Batangas in the 1740s. A century later the Philippines was the world's fourth-largest coffee exporter. Then a blight took nearly all of it. Here is that history, plainly told.

• What altitude does to a coffee

  Height is printed on every bag we sell and read as a score more often than it should be. What the number actually describes.

  

• Direct trade and local agriculture

  Buying from the farm rather than from the market, and the problems that does not solve.

  

• Understanding the washed process

  The fruit comes off before the coffee dries. What that removes, what it reveals, and why it is the hardest process to hide behind.

  

• What a micro-lot is

  The word is on half the bags in specialty coffee and means very little on its own. Here is what it means when we use it.

  

• Choosing Philippine coffee

  The country grew coffee in volume once, lost it, and is quietly growing it again. Why we buy from the highlands we live beside.