When we started Prodigal, I took a leap of faith on an optical sorter from Alibaba. I don’t think I have to tell you the rest of that story ?.  After Mark spent months on Whatsapp with the manufacturer, only to realize the manufacturer didn’t really understand how to use the sorter for coffee, we gave up. The machine was simply too difficult to program.  Immediately after that, I had the fortune of running into Kacper from Coffee Machines Sale at World of Coffee in Athens. Kacper pulled me to the CMS booth, telling me I’d like what he was about to show me, and that he was going to gi ..read more

Each week at Prodigal we get a few messages along the lines of “how should I brew x coffee?” These messages imply some confusion about coffee brewing. I receive many messages about roasting with a similar implication. If you have several non-defective coffees, all roasted to similar degrees, there is no need to change anything other than the grind setting when brewing each coffee. If you spend time on internet forums, you’ll read countless posts by people who believe they need a wildly different approach to optimize different coffees. In the days before the coffee refractometer, it was common ..read more

    I’m pleased to announce Prodigal’s new monthly subscription! Subscribers will receive discounts, access to exclusive subscriber-only coffees, and can rest easy knowing they will never miss out on a great offering. There are several ways to join: Prodigal Combo, our flagship subscription, includes two different coffees each month: One 250-gram bag of Prodigal's fresh releases & One 150-gram bag of Prodigal's premium coffees Standard includes two 250-gram bags of Prodigal's fresh releases Premium includes two 150-gram bags of Prodigal's premium coffees ..read more

  Kerckhoff Coffeehouse, UCLA   Occasionally I have the urge to post about something unrelated to coffee. But if there is a way to connect a post to coffee, I will. This post is not about making great coffee; it’s about happiness. It’s also about how some of our coffee-career trajectories and current trends in third-wave cafe design may be decreasing our happiness.  I hope you will listen to one of the podcasts I link to in this post. I have never experienced so much wisdom packed into two hours. Without exaggeration, I think you may find either podcast life-changing.  Ba ..read more

    NextLevel PULSAR $65   The hottest new dripper of 2023 is also the best manual dripper ever made. This should surprise no one, since astrophysicist-coffee nerd Jonathan Gagné collaborated with NextLevel to design it. Every detail of the Pulsar is just right: the gentle shower spray, the height of the shower screen, the amount of turbulence, the valve, and the heavily creped filter paper. I’ve received an extraordinary number of messages similar to “I am not even dialed in yet, but my first Pulsar brew was already better than my best pourover.” Those messages are testam ..read more

Lessons from Pulsar and Filter3 A few years ago, Jonathan Gagné coined the term “no-bypass brewing.” The phrase refers to brewers that force all of the brewing water to pass through the coffee bed. In this post I’d like to discuss a few simple lessons no-bypass brewers have taught me or reinforced.  The “other” type of bypass  The term “bypass” usually refers to water seeping through the wall of a pourover filter above the level of the grounds. This is distinct from the bypass feature of a batch brewer.  Batch brewers such as Fetco and Curtis and Bunn machines have a secondary ..read more

When I was in Rotterdam in August, I had coffee with my friend Han. She asked me two interesting questions when I told her I had been in coffee for 30 years:  What changed over the past 30 years?  What beliefs did you once hold and decide were wrong?  Those questions seemed like the basis for an interesting blog post, so thank you Han for the inspiration.  What changed over the past 30 years?  Well, everything and nothing, depending on your point of view. The big trend changes are obvious: light roasts are more common, high-quality green is more common, data collection ..read more

A while back, Kody reached out to me to discuss workplace injuries among baristi. He offered to write this guest post to hopefully help baristi avoid pain and injury. This post is strictly educational, and not medical advice. I am grateful to Kody for his generosity and his patience while waiting for me to publish this post. -Scott My name is Kody Johnson D.C. I am a Chiropractor board certified in electrodiagnostic medicine (used to diagnose nerve issues like carpal tunnel), and interestingly the only other work I have had is in the third-wave coffee industry. Having worked for both third-wa ..read more

Serving coffee at Sweet Spot Kaffee in Munich I recently spent two weeks with John and Bugs from Decent Espresso, doing demonstrations of the DE1 as well as my forthcoming Filter 3.0 basket, throughout the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. We did sixteen demonstrations in twelve cities, and it was a blast. Our hosts were incredibly gracious and generous, and everyone who came to the events seemed to enjoy the vibe and the coffee as well as the insights about extraction we have gained from using the DE1.  As always happens when I spend time with John, we honed many of our id ..read more

In the past few years, several well-known coffee experts, scientists, and grinder manufacturers have measured and publicly discussed grind particle-size distributions. Some have even rented or borrowed expensive machines that offer relatively precise measurements. Despite the increased interest in PSDs, our understanding of how burr geometry affects PSD is rather crude, and I don’t believe any of us have a clear idea of what an optimal PSD looks like. We may be vaguely aware of wanting fewer fines for filter coffee than espresso, and there is general agreement that “boulders” (particles much l ..read more