Filter Stories - Coffee Documentaries
Filter Stories is a podcast that explores coffee through the lenses of history and science. It reveals hidden microscopic secrets about coffee and its powerful past. The show also explains how individual choices of coffee beans affect millions of people. Listeners can follow behind-the-scenes stories on Instagram. The podcast encourages subscriptions and reviews.
Episodes
Producer Toolkit: Quality Assurance, Pt 2 - The basics of good water for coffee
This episode takes you through the basics of good water for coffee.To objectively assess a coffee's quality, both producer and buyer need to taste it using the same water. But whose water standards should you choose? Why do roasters often get to define what the "right" water is? What would the coffee world look like if producers set quality standards instead of roasters?Part of The Coffee Producer
Producer Toolkit: Quality Assurance, Pt 1 - A practical guide to tasting and roasting coffee
This episode is a practical guide to tasting coffee, sample roasting and judging quality, built for small producers on a tight budget. That makes it just as useful if you’re early in your coffee journey and want to learn the basics without spending thousands on equipment, starting with a frying pan or a $30 popcorn popper.If you work in coffee, it reveals the obstacles producers face when they try
Producer Toolkit: Price, Pt 2 - Discovering the true value of coffee
What is the right price for coffee? This episode shows what the journey of price discovery looks like from the perspective of a coffee farmer. Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in collaboration with Lucia Solis, it will help you understand coffee farming better than most professionals you'll meet at a trade show.Each episode takes one part of the farming business - agronomy, proce
Producer Toolkit: Price, Pt 1 - How the commodity 'C' market works
This episode explores the strange world of the C market, where movements in the Brazilian currency or rebels boarding a random container ship decide the worth of a Colombian farmer's coffee. Yet specialty coffee still uses this number to price the coffees it says are anything but a commodity.Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in collaboration with Lucia Solis, it will help you unde
Producer Toolkit: Marketing & Sales, Pt 2 - Navigating trade shows
This episode explores what a trade show actually feels like for a farmer who flew in on money his community pooled together, why a sausage dog opened a door that hundreds of cold emails couldn't, and why learning English may be a better investment for a farmer than a longer fermentation.Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in collaboration with Lucia Solis, it will help you understan
Producer Toolkit: Marketing & Sales, Pt 1 - The power of story
This episode explores why specialty coffee is a luxury business that runs on story more than flavour.Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in collaboration with Lucia Solis, it will help you understand coffee farming better than most professionals you'll meet at a trade show.Each episode takes one part of the farming business — agronomy, processing, fermentation, storage, quality, sal
Producer Toolkit: Fermentation, Pt 3 - Is using yeast cheating? And who decides?
This episode explores why 30 cents a kilo is trivial for a large farm and unaffordable for a small one, the strange power imbalance that lets roasters define quality when nobody asks a winemaker what yeast they used, and how producers can talk to buyers who think starter cultures are cheating.Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in collaboration with Lucia Solis, it will help you und
Producer Toolkit: Fermentation, Pt 2 - The case for avoiding exciting fermentations
This episode explores why the specialty industry's obsession with exotic processing is a dangerous signal for farmers, five ways commercial microbes can make a farm more money, and what a well-run fermentation looks like on farms of very different sizes.Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in collaboration with Lucia Solis, it will help you understand coffee farming better than most
Producer Toolkit: Fermentation, Pt 1 - Nature's lottery and coffee's 3,000-year lag
This episode explores why coffee is only fifteen years into a fermentation revolution that wine and bread went through millennia ago, what's actually happening inside the tank when microbes multiply into billions on their own, and why farmers who used to ferment as fast as possible are now trying to do the opposite. Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in collaboration with Lucia Sol
Producer Toolkit: Processing, Pt 3 - Critical instruments and poisoned rivers
This episode explores how just a handful of cheap instruments can ensure quality is reproducible year-on-year, and the wastewater crisis poisoning rivers behind picture-perfect coffee farms.Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in collaboration with Lucia Solis, it will help you understand coffee farming better than most professionals you'll meet at a trade show.Each episode takes one
Producer Toolkit: Processing, Pt 2 - Drying mistakes that ruin coffee quality
This episode explores the simple drying mistakes that compromise months of careful work, and the low-cost fixes that protect a coffee's shelf life and flavour.Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in collaboration with Lucia Solis, it will help you understand coffee farming better than most professionals you'll meet at a trade show.Each episode takes one part of the farming business —
Producer Toolkit: Processing, Pt 1 - Coffee rockstars and picking’s brutal economics
This episode explores why chasing avant-garde processing before nailing the basics is a trap for most producers, the brutal economics behind selectively picking and ways to sort coffee cherries in the wet mill. Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in collaboration with Lucia Solis, it will help you understand coffee farming better than most professionals you'll meet at a trade show.E
Producer Toolkit: Farming, Pt 3 - Starved soils and vanishing labour
This episode explores what plants really need from the soil beneath them, and the labour shortage forcing farms to rethink how the work gets done.Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in collaboration with Lucia Solis, it will help you understand coffee farming better than most professionals you'll meet at a trade show.Each episode takes one part of the farming business — agronomy, pr
Producer Toolkit: Farming, Pt 2 - Water crisis, risky genetics and cash flow crunch
This episode explores the growing water crisis in coffee farming, why farmers are drawn to risky coffee varieties and coffee farming's hidden cashflow traps.Part of The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in collaboration with Lucia Solis, this series will help you understand coffee farming better than most professionals you'll meet at a trade show.Each episode takes one part of the farming bus
Producer Toolkit: Farming, Pt 1 - Low harvests and profit blind spots
Welcome to The Coffee Producer Toolkit, a series made in collaboration with Lucia Solis.This series will help you understand coffee farming better than most professionals you'll meet at a trade show.Each episode takes one part of the farming business — agronomy, processing, fermentation, storage, quality, sales — and lays out what the best farms are actually doing. In this first episode, we cover
History: Guatemala’s Inconvenient Truth, Pt 2
Specialty coffee changes the story for the indigenous people of Guatemala. Coffee as a tool of oppression finally offers hope....and then something a bit more complicated.This episode explores the tension between the values of the Mayan communities who grow coffee, and the values that drive the specialty coffee movement.Many of the signals we typically look for in our coffees - super-specialty fla
History: Guatemala’s Inconvenient Truth, Pt 1
When you buy a bag of coffee labelled fifth-generation family farm, it feels like a good choice.But in Guatemala, that label might actually be a signal for a more uncomfortable truth.This episode explores how land has been understood, used, and eventually fought over in Guatemala for centuries between indigenous people, Europeans and those in-between.It’s a story of what happened immediately after
History: Surrogates - Anything but the coffee
What happens when coffee disappears?This is not a thought experiment! It’s happened many times in history: War, blockades, tariffs, ideology, health panics, sanctions, supply shocks. When coffee is not around, people still need something warm, comforting, and familiar. And throughout history, people have reached for coffee surrogates: roasted plants and grains engineered to look like coffee…but do
History: Ethiopia’s wild coffee forests
Most coffee is grown on vast plantations using machines, pesticides and fertilisers. But in Ethiopia, coffee grows wild in humid forests surrounded by birds. And that wild coffee matters more than most of us realise. It is the genetic ‘library’ we can turn to find new varieties to help us keep coffee thriving in the face of climate change. But the communities who live alongside them and have safeg
History: Hamburg and Europe’s coffee trade
On a long walk through Hamburg, somewhere between the fish markets and giant cranes, you might stumble a giant bronze coffee bean looks like its crash landed from space. But this giant coffee bean represents a staggering fact: one in every three cups of coffee drunk in Europe has passed through Hamburg. In the first half of this episode, we explore the many profound ways coffee shaped one of Europ
Introducing: Series Three of A History of Coffee
We’re back with more stories about the tiny psychoactive seed that changed the world and continues to shape our lives today.
Is it possible to follow the story not just to Ethiopia, not just to a single town, but all the way back to one tree?
We’ll uncover the uncomfortable history of Guatemala — a story about who inherited the rich volcanic soil, and who was forced to work it.
We explore what
Science: Coffee Quality, Pt 3 - When the “quality” myth hits the farm
For twenty years, the 2004 cupping form profoundly shaped the specialty coffee world.But on the hillsides of coffee farms, some of the form’s byproducts have been disadvantaging producers. In this episode, we follow two producers whose lives collided with the myth of universal quality. These stories reveal how a single idea of “quality” can close doors for the people with the least power in the su
Science: Coffee Quality, Pt 2 - How “quality” became a myth
If you ask two specialty professionals what makes a high-quality coffee, you’ll likely get a surprisingly consistent answer: clean, sweet, juicy, bright. To an outsider, they would be forgiven for thinking coffee quality is universally defined.But the truth is more sober.In this episode, we examine how a simple cupping form helped create a universal idea of quality. We then look at the evidence th
Science: Coffee Quality, Pt 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
Science: How specialty coffee woke up to water’s role in flavour
For the longest time, the coffee community only cared about water’s impact ruining espresso machine boilers and kettles. But what about water’s impact on coffee flavour?In this episode, I tell the story of how the specialty coffee community came to understand water chemistry: the pioneering work of the computational chemist Christopher Hendon and British roaster Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood, the genes
Science: Why prehistoric rock ruins coffee
550 million years ago, earth was perfect. We had perfect water for coffee AND we were living in a vegetarian paradise!But then Earth changed—violently. The planet shifted from a peaceful, plant-eating paradise to a darker, more brutal world. And in this new world, the chemistry of water was forever altered.This is the wild story of how earth-shaking forces and the spirits of long-dead critters rui
Science: Water, Pt 2 - How to measure and treat it
Water massively impacts your coffee’s flavours. But most of us struggle to fix our water because water science is confusing……until now! In this special collaboration with Lucia Solis (Making Coffee podcast), I guide her through the two most important concepts you need to understand to get great-tasting water for coffee: hardness and alkalinity.We go step-by-step through:• Why these concepts matter
Science: Water, Pt 1 - Alkalinity, hardness and why it matters
Water massively impacts your coffee’s flavours. But most of us struggle to fix our water because water science is confusing……until now! In this special collaboration with Lucia Solis (Making Coffee podcast), I guide her through the two most important concepts you need to understand to get great-tasting water for coffee: hardness and alkalinity.We go step-by-step through:• Why these concepts matter
Science: Farm to port - why specialty costs more
Every time we open a bag of beautiful specialty coffee — like Erick Bravo’s from Finca El Chaferote in Huila, Colombia — we’re drinking something that’s been on a long journey.And I mean long! Over 1500 kilometers north up and down the Andes mountain range, a distance more than twice the height of France.Along the way, it passes through dozens of hands, machines, and decisions. We follow it throug
Science: Why one Colombian farmer chose specialty, and the other walked away
I travel to Colombia’s Huila region to answer a question that’s puzzled me for years: if specialty coffee pays more, is better for the environment, and brews tastier cups—why don’t more farmers grow it?I speak with two producers in the same region whose choices couldn’t be more different. One stakes his future on specialty. The other opts out.Their decisions come down to more than passion or a har
Science: The hard business of selling beautiful coffee, Pt 2
Volume. Cheap. Lame flavours. This is the traditional way of growing coffee in Brazil, and almost every farm does it this way. But what if you wanted to produce beautiful, distinctive flavours instead—and make a living from it?In this episode, we travel to Fazenda Paraíso in Minas Gerais, Brazil, where farmer Vicente Pereira and his daughter are on a steep learning curve finding buyers for their b
Science: The hard business of selling beautiful coffee, Pt 1
Volume. Cheap. Lame flavours. This is the traditional way of growing coffee in Brazil, and almost every farm does it this way. But what if you wanted to produce beautiful, distinctive flavours instead—and make a living from it?In this episode, we travel to Fazenda Paraíso in Minas Gerais, Brazil, where farmer Vicente Pereira and his daughter are on a steep learning curve finding buyers for their b
Science: How to roast more coffee, faster!
To roast coffee faster, you need to turn up the heat….right?No! In this episode, we explore the three powerful methods of heat transfer that revolutionised roasting. We’ll journey from humble beginnings—when roasting three kilos took half an hour—to machines that now roast hundreds of kilos of coffee in the time it takes you to boil a kettle. But beans roasted at lightning speed look strange, and
Science: The chemistry of coffee roasting
A mother coffee plant gifts its baby everything it needs to grow—a green seed packed with food. But when we roast coffee, we hijack that gift and turn it into something else: flavor.But what is flavor, at a microscopic level? What actually happens inside the bean when heat meets those nutrients?In this episode, we shrink down to witness the Maillard reaction up close—a wild chain of molecular coll
Science: Fruit juice or creamy almonds? Your guide to controlling cold brew flavors
When I started making cold brew this last year, I treated it like hot brew filter coffee. But no matter how I adjusted the grind or tweaked the brew time, I hardly got any differences in flavor…Then it hit me: cold brew isn’t just a slower hot brew—it’s a completely different game with its own rules!In this episode, I speak with leading coffee researchers who break down the microscopic dance betwe
Science: Hot vs Cold - The science behind temperature and taste
For years, I used cold brew as a last resort—the only brew method to tame dark, oily beans that were too bitter for hot water. Then one day, I took a chance on a Guatemalan Gesha and brewed it cold. The result? A massive explosion of florals I’d never tasted before. That single cup sent opened my eyes into how extraordinary cold brew can be.In this episode, I speak with world-leading coffee scient
Introducing: Season 3 of The Science of Coffee
We’re back with another series of The Science of Coffee—and this time we’re diving even deeper into coffee’s hidden microscopic secrets!
Over the past year, narrative audio producer and coffee professional James Harper has scoured academic journals, ventured deep into coffee farms, and conducted bold tasting experiments.
Now, he’s weaving those discoveries into captivating audio stories that rev
Science: How grinders work deep inside
Deep inside your coffee grinder, tiny changes can have massive consequences.
This episode takes you deep inside Mahlkönig’s grinders to show you how coffee is ground and the importance of particle sizes on flavour.
If you’re a home coffee lover, you could easily spend thousands of dollars on your coffee grinder. But after diving deep into the R&D of grinder manufacturing, I learned that
Science: Protecting your coffee’s flavours
For your coffee to taste its best, it’s crucial you buy fresh roasts and grind fresh.…
.….Or maybe not.
When I began creating this episode, I was convinced that ‘fresh is best’. But, after delving into the science of coffee freshness, I don’t believe that anymore.
This episode goes deep into how diffusion and oxidation changes a coffee’s flavours.
You’ll learn what it takes to store your coff
Science: How to think like a scientist
In the last episode, I discovered that rinsing my Chemex filter papers was a waste of time! As a result I’ve managed to claw back over seven days of my life left on earth.
But why stop there?
The coffee industry is full of elaborate ways of brewing and savouring coffee: fancy drippers, cold metal balls, “slurp-able” cupping spoons.
These are very fun, but how many of them actually affect the
Science: How to brew coffee like a scientist
Should you rinse your filter paper before making a filter coffee? Almost everybody in coffee internet says you should.
But what if most of coffee internet was wrong?
In this episode, I show you how I try to answer this question like a professional sensory scientist would.
It’s hard. It’s frustrating. But ultimately, it’s worth it because I end up saving seven days of my life left on earth!
P
Science: Why don’t we see more organic coffee farms?
Farming coffee organically is amazing because soils are more alive, birds and insects are more plentiful, farmers avoid getting sick with agrochemicals.
But, if it’s so great, why is less than 10% of the world’s coffee grown organically?
The fact is, going organic is hard. Much harder than growing coffee conventionally.
In this episode I show you the story of one of Central America’s most suc
Science: The magic of soil
The world’s farming soils are deteriorating quickly.
Conventional coffee farming where plants are grown using agrochemicals allowed farmers to reap huge harvests these last 70 years. But these agrochemicals have been at the expense of soil health.
I travel to Honduras to explore a potential solution: organic coffee farming.
Come with me as I show you the organic farming tricks of Don Rufino, o
Science: Roasting made easy
Roasting coffee can be maddening. Just 4° Celsius is enough to make the same green beans taste distinctly different! And there are so many things roasters can play around with: temperature, time, fan speed, drum speed, types of probes…the list goes on and on.
So, if you want to start roasting yourself, where do you start!?
In the first half of this episode, I interview one of the world's leadin
Science: How roasting transforms coffee beans
What flavours do you want from your coffee?
Every coffee bean begins its life green. And if you brewed it up without first roasting it, you’d get a yellow-green cup of grass-flavoured water.
But, as soon you apply heat to a bean, the flavour can morph to from something quite vegetative to a very acidic unripe fruit, then a very sweet fruit, and eventually dark roasted flavours.
This is the magi
Science: Do you and I taste the same flavours?
Ever wonder why you and your friends can taste the same coffee, but you can’t agree on the flavour notes?
Join me as I explore this metaphysical mystery! I speak with leading scientists and ask: are the flavour receptors in your nose and mouth the same as mine? How does music and the shape of a cup affect what we taste? What about our different cultural backgrounds and language?
Best of all, I
Science: How to be a better coffee taster
So you’ve just taken a sip of a very rare coffee, and flavours of passion fruit explode in your mouth.
But here’s the thing: that flavour of passion fruit is not coming from your mouth. It’s not even coming from your nostrils. It’s being picked up behind your eyes!
In this first episode of The Science of Coffee's second series, I unravel how our sense of smell and taste works to help you be a be
Introducing: Season 2 of The Science of Coffee
We're back with another series of The Science of Coffee!
Across 10 science stories, narrative audio producer and coffee professional James Harper takes you on a journey into coffee's hidden microscopic secrets.
James has spent the last year traveling to Central America, Greece, Norway, Switzerland and interviewing dozens of the world’s leading coffee scientists. This insights will help you appr
History: America’s love affair with coffee
America is coffee-obsessed. From Central Perk’s red couch being the centre of major plot twists in Friends to the fact the average American drank more than two cups a day.
And the conventional explanation is pretty straightforward: an English colonist introduces coffee to Jamestown in 1607. 150 years later Americans rebel against the British by throwing tea chests into Boston harbour and drinking
History: Italy’s democratic espresso culture
One morning back in the ‘80s, Howard Schultz walks out of his Milan hotel, stumbles into an espresso bar, and fundamentally changes coffee history.
He discovered (and then popularises) the iconic, timeless Italian coffee experience: Rich thick coffee, an affordable price and great theatre.
But this Italian ritual is surprisingly young, so young that Howard Schultz was in school while some of i
History: Haiti, Colonialism and Coffee
Haiti was once the biggest, most profitable coffee growing region in the world.
But today Haiti is one of the world’s poorest nations where you can’t get a bag of Haitian beans delivered to Berlin in a week for love nor money.
In this second episode of Series Two of A History of Coffee, we show you how colonialism and racism dragged Haiti into poverty, and the role of coffee at the centre of i
History: How coffee houses changed the world
A coffee shop is a lot more than just a place to drink coffee. The seats and sofas encourage you to invite a friend, and chat.
And chatting is powerful: ideas that emerge from these caffeine-fuelled conversations give birth to modern finance and even the founding of great artistic and scientific institutions.
Meanwhile, other ideas threaten those in power, and have led to many attempts to ban co
Introducing: Series Two of A History of Coffee
We're back with more stories about the tiny psychoactive seed that changed the world and continues to shape our lives today.
In Series Two, we reveal how the invention of the coffee shop revolutionised societies, why colonialism, racism and coffee have kept once prosperous Haiti poor today, how Italy's revered espresso culture was created, and we debunk many myths around America's supposed love a
Science: Sonic Seasoning
Imagine you’ve got a cup of coffee in front of you. You haven’t tasted it yet. You therefore don’t know what it tastes like, right?
Wrong. Some scientists argue that you actually do know what it will taste like (more or less), and the act of tasting simply confirms what you have already imagined it will taste like. And that’s because a growing body of research is revealing that sight, sound and
Science: Latte Foam
When was the last time you picked up a cappuccino with a mountain of foam perched on top? Maybe these are the cappuccinos you make every morning at home.
I personally really, really dislike them! The foam is cold, raspy, and gets in the way of the actual coffee liquid.
How much better would your mornings be if, instead, your cappuccino had that creamy, silky “microfoam” you find in a specialty c
Science: Espresso Technology
A good espresso is a sublime experience: rich, sweet, and wonderfully caffeinated.
But, who woke up one morning and thought to themselves, ‘I’m going to build a contraption that forces a tiny amount of super hot water with incredible pressure through a bed of very finely ground coffee’?
Well, the fact is, the first “espresso” machine built 150 years ago was awful in almost every way. Worst of a
Science: Plant Genetics
How can you make better coffee at home? Well, an easy way is to buy higher quality beans.
But, I’m concerned this is going to get harder and harder for you in the future.
Climate change is making coffee taste worse while also pushing farmers into financial hardship.
In this episode we explore how genetic development can produce a coffee tree that might save the day. Is there a wild coffee tr
Science: Coffee Extraction
How you brew your coffee dramatically affects what you taste. And I do mean dramatic! Brewing up the same bag of coffee beans can taste like a slice of heaven, or a slap in the face.
So, what exactly is happening at a microscopic level when water swirls through coffee grinds? Why does boiling water extract certain flavours, while letting the kettle cool for five minutes make it taste markedly di
Science: Water For Brewing Coffee
A newer, updated version of this episode is out — listen here instead!
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Water really matters when you’re brewing coffee. Different waters can dramatically change how a single coffee will taste.
But what is the right water for the best coffee?
In this episode I will give you the answer, but I will first take you back billions of years to tell you the story of a single mineral and how it's
Introducing: The Science of Coffee
The Science of Coffee is a journey into coffee's hidden microscopic secrets to help you make even better coffee at home.
Across six episodes, documentary maker and coffee professional James Harper takes you deep into the world of water for coffee, coffee extraction, plant genetics, espresso technology, latte foam and sonic seasoning.
Subscribe to The Science of Coffee here: https://link.filter
Coffee’s Ticking Time Bomb
Sri Lankan coffee has delicious notes of chocolate and caramel. But it’s basically impossible to find, and we’re going to bet you’ve never drank it.
But that's really odd, because Sri Lanka has the perfect climate to grow coffee, and was once one of the biggest coffee growing countries in the world.
But Sri Lanka was the victim of an ecological ticking time bomb. And this bomb is still ticking
Is really expensive coffee really worth it?
Would you ever pay £75 for 100g of coffee beans?
Today I'm sharing the most popular episode from Adventures in Coffee, a sister podcast to Filter Stories that I co-created.
I'd love to know what you thought of these Adventures in Coffee episodes so we can make an even better show for series 2. Just drop your thoughts in this 5 minute survey here: http://bit.ly/AIC_Survey
You can listen to mor
Coffee Cycle Saturdays
Today I'm sharing the story of a coffee drinker, Jools Walker, and how coffee helped her complete an inner journey.
Listen to more episodes from Adventures in Coffee here: https://link.filterstories.org/300V4jS
Read Jool's book, Back In The Frame: https://amzn.to/2NTbb0r
Piano music written and performed by James Harper. Use ProfilePrint to find the coffee your customers loved last year (
History 6: The Future of Coffee?
Do you grind your beans fresh before brewing your coffee? If so, you are helping overturn a race-to–the-bottom with deep roots in colonial extraction that today is leaving millions of coffee farmers impoverished.
Or, at least, that’s what many specialty coffee companies would like you to believe. The truth is a lot less rosy.
In this final episode of A History of Coffee, Jonathan and James expl
History 5: Desperately Seeking Sustainability
When was the last time you bought a coffee that was Fairtrade certified?
Certifications make it easy for consumers to put their ethics into practice. But, hidden beneath the glossy sticker is a maze of complications and paradoxical outcomes.
In this fifth episode of A History of Coffee, Jonathan and James explore where coffee certifications came from, how they tried to stop coffee’s devastating
History 4: A Dark Bitter Powder
How do you drink your instant coffee? If you’re like most of the world, you fill your mug with milk and sugar to sweeten the taste.
By adding milk and sugar to your instant, you helped bring new growers - and consumers - into coffee, but arguably contributed to a crisis that left hundreds of thousands of people malnourished.
In this fourth episode of A History of Coffee, Jonathan and James ex
History 3: Coffee Catches Fire
A hundred years ago one Brazilian man owned so many coffee trees he could fill every inch of a European country with them.
But why does Brazil grow so much? And who is drinking these lakes of caffeine?
In this third episode of A History of Coffee, Jonathan and James explore how industrialisation dramatically and permanently strips away Brazil’s forests, and why coffee becomes a part of the Ameri
History 2: Slavery, Suffering and Affordable Luxury
Why do we get upset when we’re charged $36 for an ordinary cappuccino?
The answer flies us to the Caribbean where white Europeans make black Africans suffer.
In this second episode of A History of Coffee, we uncover how colonialism squeezes the price of coffee, and how that changes European culture forever.
Future episodes are already out on the ‘A History of Coffee’ podcast channel! https://
History 1: A Five Gun Salute to the Origins of Coffee
Here’s a surprising fact: coffee was only invented around the time Michelangelo was chiselling his statue of David.
Why did it take so long for humans to invent the cup of coffee?
In this first episode of A History of Coffee, Jonathan and James unpack how humans figured out that delicious flavours were contained in the roasted seeds of a coffee tree’s cherries.
The answer has nothing to do wit
Introducing: A History of Coffee
A History of Coffee is the story of how a tiny psychoactive seed changed the world and shapes our lives today.
Across six episodes, documentary maker James Harper and professional historian Jonathan Morris narrate how humans race coffee across oceans to keep up with demand for this addictive drink.
Coffee creates enormous fortunes for some, and misery for others. Sometimes the environment bene
A Girl on a Coffee Farm
Sofía is a teenager living on a coffee farm and was going to school five days a week. But a year later, she’s studying only on Saturdays.
This might sound trivial, but I’m going to take you on a journey to show you why this undermines an industry worth over $30 Billion.
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A list of charities working in the coffee sector: https://sritson.com/Good-Hands-in-Coffee-Beta
Buy your next c
Be careful what you dream (it may come true)
You’ve just achieved a life goal. Now what? Dream bigger? Quit while you’re ahead?
When Federico Bolaños fulfills his dream of helping a young Salvadoran win one of the hardest championships in coffee, he wants to aim higher.
But his business partners tell him he risks losing their business.
What Federico does next will change his life and El Salvador in ways he wants, and in ways he doesn’t.
Why El Salvador isn’t bringing back coffee
El Salvador used to grow a quarter of the world’s coffees. Today, it’s barely more than a rounding error. As coffee production fell, illegal migration to America grew.
But there are many Salvadorans who want to grow coffee again and give Trump fewer reasons to build a wall. What’s holding them back?
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Buy your next coffee from a marginalized farmer: http://www.marginalizedfarmers.org/
A Eulogy for Tito
Hector “tito” Vargas passed away in December 2019.
We honor him by playing the season finale of the Duolingo Spanish Podcast.
Correction: Tito passed away from a gunshot wound and not a heart attack. It's unknown at this stage whether it was suicide or murder.
Visiting Panama? I recommend Oscar as your guide: http://muchogustopanama.com/ Use ProfilePrint to find the coffee your custome
Is your coffee building Trump’s wall? Part 5: How can we support marginalised coffee producers?
You buying a coffee from El Salvador and Trump building a border wall have nothing in common.
Or do they?
Over five episodes, we explore a story of El Salvador. We confront massacres, wide inequalities and the specialty coffee you drink today.
Buried deep in this story is a group of people our coffee dollars are neglecting across the world.
Part 5 explores how we can direct our coffee dollar
Is your coffee building Trump’s Wall? Part 4: The Rich and the Marginalised
You buying a coffee from El Salvador and Trump building a border wall have nothing in common.
Or do they?
Over five episodes, we explore a story of El Salvador. We confront massacres, wide inequality and the specialty coffee you drink today.
Buried deep in this story is a group of people our coffee dollars are neglecting across the world.
Part 4 asks whether we are denying economic opportuniti
Is your coffee building Trump’s wall? Part 3: Requiem for a Coffee Republic
You buying a coffee from El Salvador and Trump building a border wall have nothing in common.
Or do they?
Over five episodes, we explore a story of El Salvador. We confront massacres, wide inequality and the specialty coffee you drink today.
Buried deep in this story is a group of people our coffee dollars are neglecting across the world.
In Part 3, we discover what it takes to almost kill cof
Is your coffee building Trump’s wall? Part 2: El Savage
You buying a coffee from El Salvador and Trump building a border wall have nothing in common.
Or do they?
Over five episodes, we explore a story of El Salvador. We confront massacres, wide inequality and the specialty coffee you drink today.
Buried deep in this story is a group of people our coffee dollars are neglecting across the world.
In Part 2, we reveal why our economist nicknames his
Is your coffee building Trump’s wall? Part 1: A tale of two El Salvadors
You buying a coffee from El Salvador and Trump building a border wall have nothing in common.
Or do they?
Over five episodes, we explore stories of El Salvador. We confront massacres, wide inequalities and the specialty coffee you drink today.
Buried deep in this story is a group of people our coffee dollars are neglecting across the world. People who decide to migrate north.
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If
Big and Small in El Salvador: Part 3
We meet a man who came from humble beginnings who has achieved what Armando and Maria have only ever dreamed about.
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Taste Maria’s coffee and support Filter Stories by joining the Indiegogo crowdfund here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/filter-stories-who-grew-your-morning-coffee#/
See the Filter Stories live show in Berlin on the 1st and 4th of October 2019: https://www.faceboo
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