Episode Two: Italian Coffee

Episode Two of Coffee Canon focuses on Italian coffee. We often associate Italy with espresso, but the truth is that true espresso didn’t exist until about 1950. Developing It took the work of key inventors, businesspeople, and visionaries who saw coffee not for what it currently was, but for what it could be.

In this episode I feature a radio interview by Professor Jonathan Morris. You can listen to the whole thing here. Also, he wrote a fascinating paper on Italy’s coffee journey: check it out here.

Enjoy the episode, and feel free to reference the sources below if you’d like to read more. Also, don’t forget to sign up for the Coffee Canon email list if you haven’t already.

Colin

Episode Two Sources:

 

Episode Two Transcript:

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Episode One: Japanese Coffee

In this first episode of Coffee Canon, we take a look at Japan: a culture rich with history and tradition. Today, Japanese people love coffee – they’ve invented entire brew methods that the rest of the world adopted – but it wasn’t always this way. We study how and why Japan went from rejecting coffee outright, to embracing it completely. We discuss the people, companies, and timeline that pushed Japan to becoming a leader in specialty coffee – and we hear from some coffee experts along the way.

Enjoy the episode, and feel free to check out the sources below if you want to read more. To continue the discussion, hit me up on Twitter or Instagram.

Colin

Episode One Sources:

 

Episode One Transcript:

Continue reading Episode One: Japanese Coffee

Introducing Coffee Canon

Over the past two years I’ve been making The Boise Coffee Podcast – a show about coffee. It started out as a bit of an experiment – I was still trying to figure out if doing an audio show about coffee even made sense. I tried a variety of different formats for the show including opinion-based episodes, interviews with business owners who work in the coffee industry, and history-focused episodes centered around specific narratives. Through research for these episodes, I realized that coffee’s history isn’t at all what I thought it was. I learned about key individuals who pushed both the coffee crop and the beverage forward, and as I dug deeper and made more episodes, it became clear that these stories aren’t widely known.

I decided it was time to take The Boise Coffee Podcast, which for all intents and purposes was a beta test, and turn it into a show focused on these narratives surrounding coffee. I wanted this new show to be primarily concerned with facts – real events and real people. This is where the name stems from: the word “canon” refers to agreed-upon events that are accepted as genuine and having happened the way they are described.

This show is primarily concerned with history and how coffee went from essentially an unknown crop to the billion-dollar industry it is today. But, I also want to discuss the current state of that industry. To do that, from time to time I’ll invite a guest onto the show to talk about some aspect of coffee and the community that surrounds it today.

If you want to look further into any of the episodes or topics that I cover, all of the sources used to research the episode will be available in both the show notes, which you should be able to read straight from your podcast client or app, as well as the accompanying blog post that I’ll post here on the blog.

Coffee Canon will probably revisit some topics that I originally covered in The Boise Coffee Podcast – to be honest, some of the stories are just too good to not re-share. And on that note, all episodes of The Boise Coffee Podcast will remain live – you can always go back and listen to episodes and interviews from the last two years.

Finally, there’s a super-secret email list for Coffee Canon – I’ll be sending out previews of upcoming episodes and links to articles or videos that coffee drinkers might enjoy. To get on that list, simply click here and put in your name and email.

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about the show, feel free to shoot me a note on Twitter – my handle is @BoiseCoffee. Thanks for listening – and make sure you subscribe to the show! Episode 1 is launching in just a week on October 16th.

Colin