The Journal

The Journal.

Essays on origins, on mycotoxins, on the ritual of making coffee at home. Written by us. Published when they are ready.

Blaq Coffee Panama Janson Gesha. Green Tip Gesha from Boquete, Panama.

What is Gesha coffee

Gesha is a single variety, not a region or a process. Floral, tea-like, light on the tongue. Rare because it yields little and demands altitude.

Blaq Coffee jars stacked with whole beans. Organic single-origin specialty coffee.

What is organic specialty coffee?

Organic is a claim about the farm. Specialty is a claim about the cup. What each half of the phrase covers, what neither tells you, and why the overlap is thin.

Malaysian Liberica coffee, whole bean. The rarest of the three commercial coffee species.

Liberica vs arabica vs robusta

Three species, one table. What separates arabica, robusta, and the rare third coffee we roast.

Two open Blaq Coffee jars of roasted beans side by side with a brewed cup, on a warm marbled surface.

Washed, natural, honey: how process shapes the cup

Process is what happens to the coffee cherry after picking, before it dries. Washed gives a clean, bright cup; natural gives fruit and body; honey sits betwe...

A Blaq Coffee jar and a bowl of roasted beans on a raw, marbled clay-toned surface.

Organic by practice, and what that actually means

Organic by practice means grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilisers, even when the farm holds no certificate. Certification is costly and slow; many ...

A just-opened Blaq Coffee jar of freshly roasted beans stacked on a second jar, a brewed cup behind.

Ritual & Sensory

How fresh should your coffee be?

Roasted coffee is at its best from about three days to four weeks after roasting. The date that matters is the roast date, not the best-before. We post withi...

One Blaq Coffee jar alone on a plain ground, labelled single origin.

What does single origin mean?

Single origin means the coffee in the bag comes from one place: one farm, one lot, one harvest, not blended with beans from elsewhere. It lets you taste a sp...

A glass bowl of roasted coffee beans on a plain white ground. A sample, set aside.

Aflatoxins in coffee, explained

Aflatoxins are compounds produced by certain moulds on poorly stored crops. Here is the plain version, and how we test our green beans for them.

Close view into an open Blaq Coffee jar of roasted beans. The bean, examined before anything else.

What is ochratoxin A in coffee?

Ochratoxin A is a mycotoxin: a by-product of mould that can grow on green coffee in storage and transit. Common, usually trace, almost never mentioned. We sc...