Coffee Tops Water, Typica Mejorado, and 3D Printing with Coffee Grounds

• This hill tribe is teaching coffee-making to travellers in northern Thailand

  By Justin Meneguzzi for National Geographic

  “A hands-on farming day with the Lahu hill tribe offers travellers a unique insight into how remote communities are working towards a more sustainable future. Like a finely brewed macchiato, roasting your own coffee beans is a layered affair. Standing at the bench of a makeshift mud-brick hut deep in northern Thailand's fertile forests, coffee farmer Lo-Ue Jayo is about to guide me through my first coffee-making lesson using a 72-year-old Probatino roaster.”

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• New study claims coffee is more popular than water in the US - but what about specialty coffee?

  By Tasmin Grant for Perfect Daily Grind

  “It's something of an understatement to say the US loves to drink coffee. For almost as long as the country has existed, US Americans have been consuming coffee - and the amount only continues to increase. On 19 September, the National Coffee Association (NCA) published its autumn 2023 National Coffee Data Trends Report, which monitors the biggest evolving trends in US coffee consumption over the past seven decades. The report found that coffee remains US Americans' ‘favourite' beverage - with 63% of those surveyed drinking coffee every day.”

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• A Conversation with the Authors of the 2023 Coffee Barometer

  By Nick Brown for Daily Coffee News

  “As it has in past editions, the Coffee Barometer made a massive splash throughout the coffee industry upon its latest release two weeks ago, as it outlined some of the largest failures (and opportunities) related to corporate sustainability in coffee. The report and its companion interactive website read something like a counterpoint to typical corporate sustainability reports in which companies conveniently ignore the fact that they are contributors to — or beneficiaries of — the very problems that they are claiming to solve.”

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• What is Typica Mejorado & will it become more popular in coffee shops?

  By Thomas Wensma for Perfect Daily Grind

  “At the 2023 WBC, […] several of the top six competitors chose to use lesser-known varieties - including winner Boram Um with Pink Bourbon and second runner-up Jack Simpson with Ombligon. Representing Hong Kong, fourth runner-up Dawn Chan also used a more exclusive variety called Typica Mejorado. Dawn sourced the coffee from Finca Soledad in Ecuador. Not much is known about the origins of Typica Mejorado, nor its market potential.”

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• How much do coffee and wine actually have in common?

  By Jordan Montgomery for newGround

  “They are also both ritualistic beverages linked to people's habits. This could be associated with the caffeine and alcohol content of each drink, and how our brains and bodies react to them. The ‘energy boosting' quality of caffeine and its association with improved productivity has led to its habitual consumption during the day. On the other hand, alcohol increases serotonin levels and other neurotransmitters in the brain, which can induce feelings of relaxation, sociability, and confidence. As such, people drink it to unwind, often in the evenings and paired alongside food.”

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• Don't throw out those used coffee grounds—use them for 3D printing instead

  By Jennifer Ouellette for Ars Technica

  “Most coffee lovers typically dump the used grounds from their morning cuppa straight into the trash; those more environmentally inclined might use them for composting. But if you're looking for a truly novel application for coffee grounds, consider using them as a sustainable material for 3D printing, as suggested by a recent paper published in DIS '23: Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference.”

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