Whether you're just beginning your journey into the world of botanicals, or a seasoned vet looking for a refresher, this guide will highlight some of the essential functionalities that botanicals may bring into your life, from stress management to immune support. Explore some of the practical ways you can incorporate these botanicals into your lifestyle for a more holistic approach to your health. How Might Botanicals Improve Health? Meet adaptogens, a type of herb that may help the body combat stress and fatigue. Two great examples of this are Ashwagandha and Tulsi, botanicals that are thoug ..read more

Coffee is all about repeatability, and there's nothing more repeatable than cold, hard numbers. If you nail your extraction and your cup is perfect, you're going to want to replicate that. Unless winging it is your thing, putting yourself at the mercy of guesstimates, taking careful notes and keeping track of numbers is the best way to ensure your coffee is on point every time. We've talked about the importance of measuring by weight instead of volume, so we're going to dive into the next step: grinding. Specifically, we're talking hand grinders and the level of control they afford. A Brief Hi ..read more

Your Nose Smells Coffee In 3D By Zac Cadwalader for Sprudge “All of our senses come through in stereo. Except smell, arguable the most important one for drinking coffee. Our ears tell us which direction sounds come from, our sense of touch does the same with sensations, and we can tell what part of our tongue is lighting up with different flavors. Even the two little cameras that are our eyes work together to create a three-dimensional image. So why then, not our nose?” Light roasted coffee is out, medium roasts are in By Jordan Montgomery for newGround “In the early days, specialty coffee w ..read more

Four years and over $33 million in settlements later, Kona coffee farmers have finally won the suit against 20+ defendants for misleading labeling and advertising of “Kona” coffee. Retailers were accused of using the Kona name on ground and whole-bean coffee products that, according to lab tests, “contained little or no such coffee.” Alongside Jamaica (another oft-mislabeled coffee), Kona is viewed as a source of impeccable coffee. Hawaiian coffee is rarer than other coffees, meaning that not a lot is harvested annually. Unlike Brazil, which produces roughly 7 billion pounds of coffee a year ..read more

Lactic fermentation: What roasters need to know By Thomas Wensma for Perfect Daily Grind “For some coffee producers, experimental processing methods are a useful way to elevate coffee flavour and quality. At the same time, more roasters and consumers are increasingly being drawn to these advanced processing techniques, and in turn are being exposed to new ways of experiencing coffee. One of these methods is lactic fermentation: a process championed by the innovative La Palma y El Tucán in Colombia. Classified as anaerobic fermentation, the process involves creating an ideal environment for th ..read more

A Brief History Of Alternative Coffee Substitutes By N.C. Stevens for Sprudge “It turns out, coffee can be a bit of a loose concept once we develop a taste for it. For nearly 200 years, scarcity, austerity, and ingenuity have all helped coffee drinkers drink coffee that, well, isn't coffee. Now, 21st century health concerns and a booming beverage market drive entrepreneurs to launch new coffee substitute products using some old school recipes and some new tricks. But what exactly are these drinks substituting? And why are we faking our coffee in the first place?” What Emoji Tell Us About the ..read more

Bean Ink: Why Coffee And Tattoos Just Might Be The Perfect Pairing By Jenn Chen for Sprudge “When she learned that Mahlkönig had a tattoo artist in their booth at Expo this year, Kat Padlan, operations manager at Lucky's Coffee Roasters, immediately signed up. It was past due time and seemed like a sign from the universe. 'I thought, 'Well damn, if there isn't a better time to get a coffee tattoo in the coffee city of Portland, at the biggest coffee convention in the world, I don't know what better timing it is,'' she told me.” Does steam injection affect the nutritional value of milk? By As ..read more

What's the future for pour over coffee? By Thomas Wensma for Perfect Daily Grind “In recent years, we have seen some major changes in how coffee shops and competitors prepare pour overs - largely with an overarching focus on controlling as many extraction variables as possible. In line with this, a much wider range of manual and automatic pour over brewers are now available - with some models designed to impact brewing variables in different ways. So it's clear that pour over coffee is changing. But what might the future hold?” Nordic Coffee Fest: A Sustainable Celebration of Nordic Coffee C ..read more

First Impression Fresh Roasted Coffee (located at 1136 Walnut St. Ext., Sunbury) is nestled in the Susquehanna Valley in the former Sunbury Textile Mill, an hour's drive from Pennsylvania's capitol. Pulling up to the espresso-and-tan behemoth that is our building, you have your pick of parking space, but we recommend the ones closest to the door on the right. They're reserved for you, after all. We've Got So Much In Store Your first look at the innerworkings of Fresh Roasted Coffee (and Positively Tea and Positively Botanicals) is our storefront. Racks on racks of almost everything we sell sit ..read more

One Lie And A Truth: Pink Bourbon's True Origin By Zac Cadwalader for Sprudge “What's in a name? Would not a rose by any other name smell just as sweet? Have Geshas lost their price-fetching nuance now that we've done away with that problematic 'I'? (Most of us anyway.) A name is a name is a name, a collection of sounds and letters signifying an unchanged referent. But what if the name is… wrong? Thus is the case with the Pink Bourbon. There were two things we thought we knew for certain about one of the hottest varieties on the planet right now: its cherries were pink and it was a Bourbon. T ..read more