Los Delirios Labor Diaries
Our current Nicaragua Flor Azul lot comes from Milton Canales and the Los Monos section of his family’s Los Delirios farm. It was shade-grown and […]
Our collective blind spot
Intelligentsia’s Chicago Roasting Works is located in a light industry area a few miles west of the Loop, the center of the city’s financial and […]
Cafe X: This is not a joke
Henry Hu is the Founder and CEO of Cafe X, the robotic café that opened to curious customers in San Francisco in January. It has […]
Bloom San Francisco 2017
There are so few outlets in the world of coffee dedicated to the exchange of ideas. Bloom, a young event run by the Barista Guild […]
Extraction Theory, and You!
“Extraction is a measure of the solubles yield. It is also expressed as a percentage, comparing the amount of coffee flavoring material in the beverage […]
Introducing the Buyer’s Notebook
Today we introduce a new podcast feature we are calling the Buyer’s Notebook — the stories behind our coffees in the words of the buyers who bought […]
Serendipity and Revival in Ethiopia
Years ago I heard someone draw a distinction between luck and serendipity. He said that luck is an accident. Dumb luck. Serendipity, on the other […]
An Unnatural Purchase
Nearly seven years ago, in early 2010, my colleague Geoff Watts wrote five lines that threw shade at natural-processed coffees and cast a long shadow […]
Introducing the Intelli Sourcing Sessions
I used to have a coffee blog. Over a period of nearly seven years, I published more than 500 posts related to my work with […]
Conan O’Brien Visits Intelligentsia
A couple of weeks ago, we got a surprising phone call from The Conan O’Brien Show. Seemingly, there’s a producer on the show named Jordan Schlansky […]
Brewing Iced Tea on a Fetco
As Spring attempts to establish a hold – we’re starting to seeing warmer weather in our home city of Chicago. Yes it snowed during the […]
Brewing Iced Coffee on a Fetco
Last summer we saw countless stories about iced coffee in the press. Most of these focused on the various ways of doing it at home, […]