More Context, Please | 25, Issue 17
Issue 17 may feel like an odd milestone for a publication named 25, but it coincides with our rapidly approaching fifth anniversary, both as a publication and as a unified organization.
Like most things over time, elements of 25’s initial approach slowly wore away; others became more pronounced. In planning this year’s publication, we looked back over what we’d achieved so far and questioned if our opening assumptions—about our readership and our role as a publication within both the SCA and the broader coffee sector—still held and matched with our vision and mission as a global trade organization.
After our review, we decided to embrace those things we’re uniquely placed to do—and that you’d already shown us you were most interested in (insights from academic research, thoughtful perspectives on business and sustainability). We’d always tried to add more context to the plain-language retelling of academic work: What does this mean? How could someone apply this to their daily work in coffee? You’ll now find that context not only woven through each feature, but encased in an introduction by a member of our editorial review team.
Other changes—like a move to publish biannually instead of quarterly—are the result of other behind-the-scenes happenings. Many of the SCA’s knowledge development projects (the Coffee Science Foundation’s academic research, the technical office’s development of standards, or collaborative sustainability initiatives) move at a slower pace; publishing less frequently means we can collate more of these insights together, further contextualizing them. Even in our more business-focused features coming later this year, a little distance from the relentless turnover of trends or volatile market movements can yield better quality insights to help drive decision-making.
So, just what will you find in this fresh iteration of 25? We open with a quick review of a long-term project just now coming to light—the SCA’s new standards development protocol—before exploring the beginnings of two similarly long journeys in different facets of coffee sustainability. First, Dr. Selena Ahmed shares findings of a systematic review of what we know (and need to know) about climate’s impact on coffee quality—a project that began all the way back in 2018 and will impact years of research to come. Later, Namisha Parthasarathy links an examination of the value coffee’s extrinsic attributes can achieve with a call for the deanonymization of Indian coffee, offering insights into some of Indian coffee’s unique attributes as well as some of the exciting things happening in the country’s nascent specialty coffee industry.
In research, Sara Yeager and Jiexin Liang share their most recent published findings: how roast level, brew temperature, and brew color are linked and an articulation of the equilibrium extraction nature of cupping, respectively. Expressing coffee through color or equations may not be the most expected fields of coffee research, but both their papers hold interesting implications as to how a coffee’s sensory attributes are expressed. Finally, as COVID-19 shines a light on the cracks of a fragile network, Erika Koss thoughtfully examines our notion of “coffee’s middle people” in viewpoint, highlighting the many ways in which value is created—if not captured—by unexpected actors.
In some ways, putting together this vision for 25 in 2022 felt like a much smaller mirroring of the juncture at which specialty coffee finds itself now: just as expanding audiences and fragmented preferences invite us to revisit our basic assumptions about the specialty coffee sector, I hope this new version of 25 encourages you to question what it is that you (in life or in business) are uniquely suited to do—and what you might stand to gain by embracing this kind of intentional change.
JENN RUGOLO
Editor, 25
We hope you are as excited as we are about the release of 25, Issue 17. Both the print edition and the availability of these features across sca.coffee/25 wouldn’t have been possible without our generous underwriting sponsors for this issue: Tempesta Barista Attitude, BWT water+more, and TODDY. Thank you so much for your support! Learn more about our underwriters here.