Pu’er Coffee

 It’s been a long time since I last had a peaberry. So today, let’s brew a washed Kenya from Kindred Coffee in Australia. As many of you know, I spent a month in Australia not long ago. During that time, my café visits led me to discover more outstanding local roasters. That “shop-within-a-shop” experience—where one café introduces you to another roaster, which leads you to yet another—felt like a chain of delightful discoveries. This particular bag was an unexpected find during my visit to Exchange in Adelaide. Later, I realized that Kindred collaborates with quite a few local cafés; you’ll often spot their beans neatly lined up on retail shelves. So today, through this tasting review, I’d also like to share a bit about the roaster behind it. Australia is home to countless small-but-exceptional roasters. Regardless of their production scale, many of them rank among the world’s best in terms of green sourcing and roasting quality. Roasting, after all, is a process of revealing f...

 When you think of El Salvador coffee, what flavor notes come to mind first? Honey, caramel, brown sugar? Chocolate—especially milk chocolate—toffee, nuts? Many people are drawn to El Salvador coffees for their balance, softness, and layered complexity, which is why they’re often described as a benchmark for Central American coffee. If I had to summarize the core flavor profile of El Salvador coffee, I’d say it’s defined by a pronounced sweetness, gentle yet bright acidity, a rich and silky mouthfeel, and a satisfying sense of structure and depth. Today’s coffee, however, adds another dimension to that familiar picture. It sharpens your perception of El Salvador’s terroir at a more granular, regional level—almost filling in details you didn’t realize were missing. This is a bean with a strong flavor memory, and it’s absolutely worth a stop on your “origin-exploration journey” through El Salvador’s micro-regions. A great cup of El Salvador coffee rarely leans toward anything aggre...

 Over the past few years, rising green coffee prices have been discussed nonstop, and naturally, café pricing has climbed along with them. Take pour-over coffee, for example. In my view, pricing a cup at ¥45 is already quite fair—almost a “conscience price.” Most pour-overs today fall in the ¥50–80 range, and for rare or auction lots, prices can easily exceed ¥100 per cup. So today, let’s take a middle ground and carefully break down a ¥45 pour-over. Where does the cost really go? Before talking about cost, we need to clarify what actually makes up a cup of pour-over coffee. If you think it’s just “coffee beans + hot water,” that’s far too simplistic. When calculating cost, you can’t limit yourself to visible material expenses alone. I’ve discussed this topic with several café owners, and the breakdown can be roughly summarized as follows: Visible material costs: ~15–20% Hidden operational & labor costs: ~40–50% Knowledge & experience premium: ~20–30% Bran...

 For me, making a trip to Xiaoshan is no small thing. A one-way subway ride costs 9 yuan, which somehow already feels like crossing city borders just to be here. Walking through the streets of Xiaoshan always stirs mixed emotions in me. I don’t really recognize anything anymore, yet at the same time, it all seems faintly connected to memories buried deep inside. Maybe in a past life I had some unfinished bond with Hangzhou. That must be why, in this life, I struggle my way here again and again, just to leave a mark in my own story. Xiaoshan was where my Hangzhou journey first began. Even as time passes and visits become rare, I still hope to find moments that move me or surprise me when I return. Today, I want to talk about a café called Muchun Coffee , located at No. 24 Baichilou Road, Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou. It was recommended to me by a friend long ago, saved and bookmarked for ages, quietly waiting for the right moment of fate. Sometimes my encounters with cafés feel ver...

 When we order coffee in cafés, it’s common to see certain drinks on the menu offered in “large” and “small” sizes (and let’s not bring up that brand that contradicts itself). But in reality, most espresso-based drinks already come with a naturally fixed serving size by design. Those so-called size options are often nothing more than a blunt, convenience-driven modification for consumption scenarios. I’ve long felt that cafés perhaps shouldn’t think in terms of “large” or “small” at all, but rather in terms of purpose-specific coffee cups . Today, I want to talk about where this idea comes from. This isn’t the first time I’ve thought seriously about this topic. Early last year, when a certain brand launched an 8-ounce cortado, it sparked plenty of discussion within the industry. In the world of specialty coffee, the idea of using a purpose-designed cup for each drink reflects a deep respect for coffee culture and the consumer experience. It shifts thinking away from the purely pr...

 When people order espresso-based drinks at cafés—especially milk drinks topped with beautiful latte art—it almost always brings a small moment of joy. The unspoken rule of “let the phone take the first sip” naturally kicks in, and a photo is taken before anything else. Sometimes, the visual impact of latte art even outweighs the actual flavor experience of the coffee. And although I personally care more about taste, I have to admit that when a cup comes with an intricate, well-balanced, and beautifully integrated design, it still makes me genuinely excited and pleasantly surprised. So this raises an interesting question: how did latte art, built on espresso, start becoming popular in the first place? Today, let’s take some time to talk about that. I did quite a bit of research online, and to be honest, there doesn’t seem to be a single, definitive historical account. However, its development can generally be traced back to the second half of the 20th century. Espresso machines w...

 This question is something I’ve noticed quite frequently over the past year while café hopping. Of course, it’s not a new topic for me—I’ve already touched on it multiple times in previous articles. Personally, I’ve encountered it so often that I’ve almost become “desensitized” to the idea of filtering crema from an Americano. But if we take a more rational step back, the reason many cafés now promote over-extraction–style Americanos is fairly clear: they’re chasing a cleaner, more stable, and smoother mouthfeel, while trying to avoid unpleasant flavors. From my point of view, over-extraction–based Americanos and traditional “espresso + water” Americanos follow fundamentally different extraction and brewing logics. In that context, removing the crema can be a 1 + 1 > 2 kind of optimization. However, if it’s just a standard espresso shot that’s brewed normally, then filtered for crema, and only afterward diluted with water, I personally feel it would be better to leave the cr...