Caffeine - December 2016 - January 2017

En este número

It used to be that pulling the perfect shot or roasting the perfect bean was seen as an art, but it seems that the coffee industry is looking increasingly to technology to measure and repeat each process to achieve consistent results.

The automatic drip brewer isn’t a new invention – in fact, it has been around for more than half a century – but the latest wave of machines are convenient, good-looking and able to produce a tasty cup of coffee time after time.
Turn to page 22 to see our reviews of three of the latest to reach the market.

Technology can be used in many ways, not only to help us brew a cup of coffee but even perhaps to make coffee in the first place. On page 30, David Burrows explores the idea of synthetic coffee, made from scratch in a lab. With the challenges global warming brings, and diseases such as leaf rust threatening coffee crops, could this be the solution to our future caffeinated needs?
As much as global problems affect coffee, the coffee industry affects the world – and not always in the positive way we’d like to believe. On page 20, The Bitter Barista asks if the industry treads as lightly as we would like our customers to believe, and if we’re really in the position to save the world one coffee at a time as some think we are.

If your specialist subject is coffee, you might like to take our exam on page 18 for the opportunity to purchase one of only six bottles of Mr Black Panama Geisha left in the world. If your tastes are more modest, perhaps a coffee beer would be more to your liking. Turn to page 26 to discover the best on the market.

Lastly, on page 34, our roving reporter Brian Williams takes his ever-weakening Brexit pound and tries to buy a coffee in one of the world’s most expensive cities, Hong Kong.