The Guide

A parking lot, somebody warming up a flat-six, and a cup that matters more than it should.

SL28 was not created in a Scottish lab. We have some corrections to make.

Sixty grams per litre, a proper bloom, and drawdown by three thirty.

Ten years is a long nap, even for a bear.

Newport, boats, marine layer. Fifteen minutes from where this started.

What changed in processing while we were asleep — and it changed a lot.

Terroir-mapped, organic, grown in the Eastern Ghats — and roasted in a café in Indiranagar.

Forty-five seconds, twice the coffee’s weight in water, and a swirl. It matters more than we believed.

Lake Tahoe, and why your water boils at 199°F up there.

Everyone bought a grinder that year. Most bought the wrong one.

The year the kitchen became the café.

San Diego before it wakes up is a different city entirely.

North on Highway 1, into fog that never quite burns off.

The company is gone. The six-forty habit is not.

We are going quiet for a while. Here is the honest version of why.

Imbibe put our bottle next to Blue Bottle’s. We are still a bit pleased about it.

The only date on the bag worth reading.

Know your order. Move down the bar. Tip like they remember your name, because they will.

Coarse grind, filtered water, no heat, twenty-four hours. That is the whole recipe.

Buy the grinder before the machine. We will keep saying this.

Two words that look similar on a bag and mean quite different things.

A morning walked end to end, one cup at a time.

Four ways to foam milk using things already in your kitchen.

That stuff in the screen is coffee oil, and it is why your brew tastes off.

A cezve, a low flame, and the one stir you only get to make once.

Alan Adler on brew temperature, frisbees, and why most coffee makers run too hot.

Same bean, different pressure, and one surprising fact about caffeine.

Picking, pulping, fermenting, washing, drying. The five steps nobody photographs.

Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, SL28, Gesha, Pacamara — and why the label tells you more than you think.

Coffee is 98% water, and almost nobody thinks about it.