Q&A Coffee Podcast with Scott Rao

In this post, I’d like to dive into our sample roasting system at Prodigal.

In 2009, James Hoffmann famously stated “crema is rubbish.”

Weber EG-1 grinder and “The Bird” brewer I often get asked versions of “what grind setting would I use for a v60 and the xyz grinder?”

As third-wave coffee has evolved over the past 25 years, we’re probably at or near the extremes of a few long-term trends: roasts have gotten lighter, roasters use fresher green, on average, than ever before, menu offerings have decreased in number, often…

View fullsize Last week I had the fortune to visit Colombia, this time spending a few days in Nariño and Medellin.

Some of you may not know that I owned several cafes from the mid-90s to 2012.

This is an ai’s rendition of my former cafe.

At 22, I left university and decided to open a coffeehouse.

Decent Espresso has done it again.

There are a few common utterances about coffee that perplex me.

Now that I’ve used the Ceado Hoop brewer for several months, I have a few tips to share with readers.

My sincere thanks to Peter Jones of Idle Hands Roasting and Trident Cafe, and to Benjamin Paz of Beneficio San Vicente, for their help with this post.

Given that coffee color is the best predictor of flavor, color measurement is a useful tool in roasting quality control.

Like many of you, I’ve seen the Ceado Hoop here and there, and never paid much attention to it.

There are currently a few ways to control roasts; from most common to least common are: gas valve % (power settings) inlet temperature exhaust (environmental) temperature PID curve management GAS % (POWER PROFILE) Most roasters operate by gas % or “power…

I recently spent twelve days in Colombia.

The names “holiday blend” and “house blend” don’t exactly get the pulses of third-wave consumers racing.

Disclaimer: I’ve worked with Decent Espresso from the start, helping to plan and design the DE1.

I’d like to share a brief overview of the quality-control protocols we use at Prodigal.

When we started Prodigal, I took a leap of faith on an optical sorter from Alibaba.

Each week at Prodigal we get a few messages along the lines of “how should I brew x coffee?”

I’m pleased to announce Prodigal’s new monthly subscription!

Kerckhoff Coffeehouse, UCLA Occasionally I have the urge to post about something unrelated to coffee.

NextLevel PULSAR $65 The hottest new dripper of 2023 is also the best manual dripper ever made.

Lessons from Pulsar and Filter3 A few years ago, Jonathan Gagné coined the term “no-bypass brewing.”

When I was in Rotterdam in August, I had coffee with my friend Han.

Birth of the first effective BBP When I wrote The Coffee Roaster's Companion in 2014, I coined the term “between-batch protocol,” something I had been teaching and honing with clients for several years.

As many of you know, the much-anticipated NextLevel Pulsar launched earlier this month.

In the past few years, several well-known coffee experts, scientists, and grinder manufacturers have measured and publicly discussed grind particle-size distributions.

A while back, Kody reached out to me to discuss workplace injuries among baristi.

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.

Water can be a confusing topic.

“Resting” coffee after roasting is a hot topic, and apparently a confusing one at that.

Why I chose IMF for Prodigal I’ve been asked dozens of times why I chose IMF for Prodigal, and not Loring or Probat.

Photo courtesy of Dear Coffee Buyer by Ryan Brown Since starting Prodigal, I’ve been thinking a lot about sample roasting.

Ahead of the launch of Prodigal, Mark and I cupped for a minimum of one hour each morning.

Lessons from the first month We received multiples more inquiries than we had coffee available.

“Transparency,” like “sustainability,” is a word thrown around too often.

Welcome to my semi-annual Holiday Coffee-Gift Guide.

Years ago, the main concerns about water for coffee were “don’t scale up your espresso machine,” “don’t make coffee with very hard water,” and “don’t use water that tastes or smells bad.”

Last month I posted a request on Instagram for 88-point coffees, with the promise to promote any samples that I (and a Q-Grader friend) scored 88 in a blind cupping.

Many people wonder why roaster automation is not better or easier.

If you read the coffee-internet enough, you are guaranteed to be more confused about roasting than you were before reading it.

I’ve had access to an old Probat electric sample roaster recently at a friend’s roastery.

After a few weeks of hearing several online misconceptions about my work, I thought I’d take the opportunity to share what I do for clients on a weekly basis.

Boston Masterclass I’m pleased to announce my first in-person roasting masterclass in three years.

For most of 2021, Ryan Brown and I offered Facsimile, a novel coffee subscription wherein each month we sent subscribers four coffees and Ryan and a coffee-expert friend cupped the coffees with subscribers via livestream.

Filter 2.0 We’ve all tried to make good filter coffee in an espresso machine.

Roasters often debate the merits of “omniroasting” but I have never heard someone discuss what I think is the most important determinant of whether one should omnniroast: quality of espresso extraction.

5 Things Learned in 5 Cuppings by Ryan Brown, Founder of Facsimile Coffee I selfishly started Facsimile because I wanted a good excuse to cup with experts from around the world.