国内咖啡赛道竞争日趋白热化，一边是华为、李宁、中国邮政等跨界巨头争相入局，另一边则是部分品牌黯然退场。百胜中国近期动作频频：一方面全力押注意大利咖啡品牌Lavazza，计划到2025年开出千家门店；另一方面却宣布将逐步终止旗下COFFii & JOY在中国市场的运营。这一进一退之间，折射出怎样的市场逻辑？Lavazza能否在竞争最激烈的价格带之外，凭借纯正意式基因打开局面？本文为你梳理事件全貌与背后考量。 [more…]

Now that you have a semi-automatic espresso machine at home, choosing beans becomes the top priority. The machine is just a tool—the beans are the source of flavor. Choose the right beans, and even an entry-level home machine can produce delicious espresso and milk coffee. The core needs for choosing beans for a home machine: home machines usually aren't as stable in pressure and water temperature as commercial machines, so when choosing beans you need to pay more attention to [more…]

Playing with SOE on a home semi-automatic machine is where many coffee enthusiasts find the joy of leveling up. SOE means making espresso from single-origin beans, and it delivers a strikingly distinct flavor profile that lets you taste the unique character of a growing region. Although home machines have limited extraction conditions, with the right beans and well-tuned parameters, SOE can still perform in a way that's well worth looking forward to. [more…]

Drip coffee bags, also called filter-hanging coffee, break the need for complex equipment to brew specialty coffee. You don't have to worry about the grind size of the coffee beans, nor do you need a specific pouring technique. Just open the drip bag and hang it on your cup, pour in hot water, and you can recreate the joy of drinking pour-over coffee. It is the top choice for many office workers. [more…]

As coffee has entered people's view and gradually become a part of life, the ways of enjoying coffee are no longer limited to the joy brought by pour-over. There are many ways to make coffee; besides the simple pour-over, there are also espresso, cold brew, siphon, and other methods~ Perhaps you often [more…]

You've just added a semi-automatic espresso machine at home, and now the most agonizing question is: for your very first bag of beans, what exactly should you buy? Buy something too expensive and you worry about wasting it; buy something too cheap and you worry it'll taste bad; and the endless recommendations online just make your head spin. Actually, the logic behind choosing beans for a home semi-automatic machine isn't complicated at all—just remember three sentences and you're set. First sentence: [more…]

Espresso is an indispensable drink for many people every day, but faced with a dazzling array of espresso beans, choosing can often feel overwhelming. This article lays out the approach to buying espresso beans in one go, according to different needs and scenarios. Choosing by need — For beginners: Front Street Coffee Classic Blend. Excellent crema performance, high fault tolerance, traditional Mamba recipe. [more…]

One of the most fascinating aspects of Arabica flavor is the imprint of its origin. Even though they are all Arabica beans, those from Ethiopia, Colombia, or Brazil often perform noticeably differently in the cup. Origin is like a coffee's flavor business card—once you understand it, you have a direction for choosing beans. Ethiopia is the birthplace of Arabica, and the cof [more…]

Once you've been drinking coffee for a while, many people find themselves circling back to the same few familiar names: Yirgacheffe, Mandheling, Blue Mountain. These mainstream origins certainly have their strengths, but the map of the coffee world is far vaster than the regulars on the shelf. Shift your gaze just a little to the side, and you'll often stumble upon surprises. The so-called [more…]

Stretching between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn lies a coffee belt. Every producing region along this belt tells its own coffee story through its unique altitude, soil, climate, and cultural traditions. For pour-over enthusiasts, understanding a region's terroir is like traveling the world with a flavor map in hand. The story begins with Ethiopia [more…]

Those who chase crema often reach a fork in the road: the thicker the crema, the richer the flavor, but the delicate floral and fruity notes tend to blur along with it. Richness and clarity are like the two ends of a seesaw—finding your own balance point is more worth pondering than simply piling on more crema. The essence of crema is carbon dioxide, lipids, and proteins. [more…]

"This coffee is too bitter—I just can't drink it." If you've ever had this thought, it may not be that you dislike coffee—it's that you haven't found the right flavor. Traditional espresso beans mostly take a rich, intense route, with bitterness and roast character as the main notes. But Front Street Strawberry Candy coffee beans take a different path: fruity espresso. Its espresso smells [more…]

When people mention Panamanian coffee, most only have two words in mind: Geisha. After the Hacienda La Esmeralda Red Label Geisha rose to fame, Panama almost became synonymous with Geisha. But what is truly interesting is its complex terrain and scattered micro-regions—it is precisely these hills and valleys that have propelled Panamanian coffee to the forefront of specialty coffee. [more…]

In the world of specialty coffee, micro-lot is a term that sets hearts racing. It might come from a small east-facing plot on an estate, or from a small batch of green beans processed separately in a single fermentation tank at a processing station. The yield is often only a few dozen bags, and once they're sold out for the season, you'll have to wait until next year for that same flavor. This sense of exclusivity, [more…]

There are many ways to brew coffee, from the siphon method that feels like a chemist conducting an experiment, to simple extraction methods like the French press. Among them, pour-over may be the one with the most room for experimentation. Most brewing tutorials online are for a single serving, so how do you brew for multiple people? Attentive readers may have noticed that most brewing tutorials [more…]

Once you've decided to start making cold brew, the first question is always the same: which beans should I buy? Today, we're giving you three bean plans based on two dimensions—budget and taste—so whether you're just "casually drinking" or "seriously savoring," you can find the right match. Plan One: Beginner's tasting type (spend a little first to test the waters). If you're making cold brew for the first time, don't [more…]

Once you have a coffee corner at home, whether it's a semi-automatic espresso machine or a moka pot, the most headache-inducing thing is often not how to use the machine, but what beans to buy. The equipment determines the lower limit, while the beans determine the upper limit. An ordinary machine paired with the right beans can still make delicious coffee; conversely, even the best equipment, when paired with unsuitable beans [more…]

Once you have a coffee corner at home, whether it's an espresso semi-automatic machine or a moka pot, the most headache-inducing thing is often not how to use the machine, but what beans to buy. The equipment determines the lower limit, while the beans determine the upper limit. An ordinary machine paired with the right beans can still make delicious coffee; conversely, even the best equipment, when paired with unsuitable beans, [more…]

Treating a De'Longhi as a window rather than an appliance — this is the shift in mindset many veteran home coffee enthusiasts have adopted. With the same machine, rotating through beans by origin is like bringing a world coffee map into your kitchen. This article documents a set of origin rotation bean selections that have been tested and proven on a De'Longhi. The starting point for the rotation is Brazil. The reason is very [more…]

Roasted espresso coffee beans are in an active degassing phase, and paying attention to the roast date when choosing beans can help you plan your drinking rhythm. Freshly roasted coffee beans accumulate a large amount of carbon dioxide inside. If you extract immediately, the bubbles can easily interfere with the contact between the water flow and the coffee grounds, making the espresso's crema coarse and the flavor astringent. [more…]