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Traditional round huts with thatched roofs in a rural village landscape in South Sudan.

The Ethiopia Myth: What Genetics Reveals About Arabica

For decades the coffee industry has repeated a simple story: coffee comes from Ethiopia. But modern plant genetics suggests a more complex origin across East Africa, possibly including the Boma Plateau in South Sudan.

Coffee workers sorting green coffee beans together during a quality inspection

Better Means: Knowledge Belongs to Coffee People

Knowledge in coffee is often locked behind paywalls and certifications. In The Better Coffee, shared knowledge circulates freely — join a free Conversation with The Trainers.

Smallholder coffee farmers delivering sacks of freshly harvested coffee cherries to a local buying station

Better Means: The Right to Refuse

Refusal begins when the story of coffee stops making sense. It is the moment we recognize harm, refuse to normalize it, and start building alternatives for coffee people.

Red Ink Coffee has a sibling — thebettercoffee.org

Red Ink Coffee has a sibling — thebettercoffee.org

On this website you can explore the full system of The Better Coffee. You can download The Better Coffee Standard for free, discover the structures of cooperation created within The Better Coffee Endeavour, and sign up for courses from The Curriculum — some of them are available free of charge.

Work leaves its mark on the body long before it shows up in the numbers.

Better Means: Well-being

This essay is part of a series of authorial commentaries on the core values of The Better Coffee Standard. Here, we treat well-being as a test of the system: when health, comfort, and the capacity for joy remain costs borne in isolation, everything else easily turns into a façade.

Green coffee during drying — manual sorting as part of everyday work.

Better Means: Dignity, First

This essay is part of a series of authorial reflections on the core values of The Better Coffee Standard. It looks at dignity — and at what happens when value is made conditional on quality, price, and profit, allowing people to disappear behind facades.

Freshly roasted coffee beans falling from a roaster during batch drop.

Shared Knowledge

Coffee Freshness Has No Date — It Has Chemistry

The same coffee tasted one day after roasting and three weeks later is, for the senses, two different experiences. The reason lies not in “freshness,” but in the evolution of aromatic compounds after roasting.

Lilac smells innocent. Yet it carries the same tension as coffee — between flower and decay, beauty and truth.

Shared Knowledge

From Shit to Jasmine: What You’re Really Smelling in Coffee

The same molecules shape jasmine, coffee, and shit. This text is about where aroma flips from floral to fecal — and who gets to decide what we’re smelling.

The Freedom to Leave Is Also Dignity

The Freedom to Leave Is Also Dignity

Dignity in coffee isn’t only the right to stay on the farm. It’s also the right to leave it. This is a story about choice — and why freedom matters more than heritage.

Close-up of a coffee leaf showing orange spots of Hemileia vastatrix, or coffee leaf rust, a common fungal disease.

Coffee Rust and the Farmer’s Choice

Coffee rust isn’t just a disease — it’s a decision farmers have to live with. This story follows one of those choices, made far from the cup, in the mountains of Nariño.

Timothy meets one of the Bugkalot farmers shaping a new identity for their community through coffee. Photo by Trystan James Smith

From Headhunters to Coffee Farmers: The Bugkalot Story

A coffee can be extraordinary — and still never leave the mountain. This is a story about Philippine coffee, where broken bridges, not broken trees, decide what reaches the cup.

Agronomist — The Bridge Between Knowledge and Producers

Agronomist — The Bridge Between Knowledge and Producers

Behind every coffee farm stands someone we rarely see. This is a conversation about how coffee actually survives in the field.

Coffee Blossoms Painted in Red Ink: The Story of a Rare Arabica Variety

Coffee Blossoms Painted in Red Ink: The Story of a Rare Arabica Variety

A rare Arabica mutation with red-tinted leaves and blossoms reveals a lesser-known side of coffee genetics and biodiversity.

The Nano World of Espresso: What’s Really Inside Your Cup

Shared Knowledge

The Nano World of Espresso: What’s Really Inside Your Cup

Espresso is more than flavor and caffeine. New open-access research shows what really builds body, crema, and mouthfeel — hidden structures that appear and disappear during extraction.

Women are the traditional hosts and moral anchors of Buna Kela. Their hands roast, grind, and pour — but their wisdom guides the circle toward peace and dignity.

Buna Kela — Coffee as a Moral Ecology

Coffee was never just a product. In Buna Kela, a cup is a covenant — a daily practice of peace, dignity, and shared responsibility between people, land, and life.

Scroll, Sip, Forget — Repeat. Attention Is Being Interrupted

Scroll, Sip, Forget — Repeat. Attention Is Being Interrupted

You don’t have a concentration problem. You have a problem with everything trying to steal it. This text is an invitation to slow down, stay with a thought a little longer, and notice what constant scrolling does to the way you read, think, and remember.

Pointwashing: Coffee Scores Are Just a Sticker

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Pointwashing: Coffee Scores Are Just a Sticker

Coffee scores don’t describe quality anymore. They justify price. That’s pointwashing — when sensory language stops explaining coffee and starts selling it.

This Is Why I Write About Coffee

This Is Why I Write About Coffee

This blog begins where smooth narratives end. Not with better cups or higher scores, but with language — the kind that hides harm. Red Ink Coffee exists to reclaim words and give coffee people a voice, where silence is no longer neutral.