Coffee Quality, Part 3: When the “quality” myth hits the farm
For twenty years, the 2004 cupping form profoundly shaped the specialty coffee world. But on the hillsides of coffee farms, some of the form...
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The Science of Coffee
The Science of Coffee is a journey into coffee's hidden microscopic secrets to help you make even better coffee at home. Across six episodes, documentary maker and coffee professional James...
The Science of Coffee Podcast Guide
Listen to The Science of Coffee, a Science & Medicine podcast by James Harper. Stream 34 episodes in English, follow new audio stories, and play episodes online on Radio and Podcast.
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Coffee Quality, Part 2: How “quality” became a myth
If you ask two specialty professionals what makes a high-quality coffee, you’ll likely get a surprisingly consistent answer: clean, sweet, j...
Coffee Quality, Part 1: The birth of specialty coffee flavours
For the longest time, coffees were dull and bitter. But then a small group of pioneers changed the world. In this episode, we travel back to...
How specialty coffee woke up to water’s role in flavour
For the longest time, the coffee community only cared about water’s impact ruining espresso machine boilers and kettles. But what about wate...
The two ingredients in water that ruin your coffee, and the ancient story behind them
550 million years ago, earth was perfect. We had perfect water for coffee AND we were living in a vegetarian paradise! But then Earth change...
Getting great water for coffee, step-by-step. Part 2: How to measure and treat your water
Water massively impacts your coffee’s flavours. But most of us struggle to fix our water because water science is confusing… …until now! In...
Getting great water for coffee, step-by-step. Part 1: Alkalinity, hardness and why it matters
Water massively impacts your coffee’s flavours. But most of us struggle to fix our water because water science is confusing… …until now! In...
Farm to port: why specialty costs more
Every time we open a bag of beautiful specialty coffee — like Erick Bravo’s from Finca El Chaferote in Huila, Colombia — we’re drinking some...
Why one Colombian farmer chose specialty, and the other walked away
I travel to Colombia’s Huila region to answer a question that’s puzzled me for years: if specialty coffee pays more, is better for the envir...
The hard business of selling beautiful coffee, part 2
Volume. Cheap. Lame flavours. This is the traditional way of growing coffee in Brazil, and almost every farm does it this way. But what if y...
The hard business of selling beautiful coffee, part 1
Volume. Cheap. Lame flavours. This is the traditional way of growing coffee in Brazil, and almost every farm does it this way. But what if y...
The Speed of Heat: How to roast more coffee, faster!
To roast coffee faster, you need to turn up the heat….right? No! In this episode, we explore the three powerful methods of heat transfer tha...
Coffee Roasting: How baby plant food transforms into delicious coffee flavours
A mother coffee plant gifts its baby everything it needs to grow—a green seed packed with food. But when we roast coffee, we hijack that gif...
Fruit juice or creamy almonds? Your guide to controlling cold brew flavors
When I started making cold brew this last year, I treated it like hot brew filter coffee. But no matter how I adjusted the grind or tweaked...
Hot vs Cold: The science behind temperature and taste
For years, I used cold brew as a last resort—the only brew method to tame dark, oily beans that were too bitter for hot water. Then one day,...
Introducing: Season 3 of The Science of Coffee
We’re back with another series of The Science of Coffee—and this time we’re diving even deeper into coffee’s hidden microscopic secrets! Ove...
Freshness and Grinding, Part 2: How grinders work deep inside
Deep inside your coffee grinder, tiny changes can have massive consequences. This episode takes you deep inside Mahlkönig’s grinders to show...
Freshness and Grinding, Part 1: Protecting your coffee’s flavours
For your coffee to taste its best, it’s crucial you buy fresh roasts and grind fresh.… .….Or maybe not. When I began creating this episode,...
What Is Good Science? Part 2: How to think like a scientist
In the last episode, I discovered that rinsing my Chemex filter papers was a waste of time! As a result I’ve managed to claw back over seven...
What Is Good Science? Part 1: How to brew coffee like a scientist
Should you rinse your filter paper before making a filter coffee? Almost everybody in coffee internet says you should. But what if most of c...