Coffee stories with an extra shot of history and science.
Filter Stories is a podcast revealing coffee’s hidden microscopic secrets, its powerful past, and how your choice of beans impacts tens of millions of people.
See the behind-the-scenes stories on Instagram @filterstoriespodcast.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!
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Coffee stories with an extra shot of history and science.
Filter Stories is a podcast revealing coffee’s hidden microscopic secrets, its powerful past, and how your choice of beans impacts tens of millions of people.
See the behind-the-scenes stories on Instagram @filterstoriespodcast.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!
Coffee Quality, Part 1: The birth of specialty coffee flavours
Filter Stories - Coffee Documentaries
23 minutes
3 weeks ago
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 the 1960s and ’70s to meet the trailblazers who realised coffees could taste distinctive: sweeter, brighter, cleaner.
We discover how their personal preferences became a movement, then a form, and eventually a global definition of “quality”.
Please support my work directly at Ko-fi.com/FilterStories
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Go deeper into the story of quality:
Specialty Coffee Association's new Coffee Value Assessment
2004 cupping form from the Specialty Coffee Association of America
SCAA Coffee Cuppers Handbook (4th edition, 2011)
Michael Sheridan of CQI discussing the inter-organisational politics behind the Houston Expo announcement on Lee Safar's Map It Forward podcast
Live in Berlin? Join me for a free decaf cupping at Communal Coffee on the 12th December 2025. Reserve your ticket here: https://bit.ly/4nZXyrf.
Filter Stories - Coffee Documentaries
Coffee stories with an extra shot of history and science.
Filter Stories is a podcast revealing coffee’s hidden microscopic secrets, its powerful past, and how your choice of beans impacts tens of millions of people.
See the behind-the-scenes stories on Instagram @filterstoriespodcast.
If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!