No matter how you brew it, where you drink it, or if you take it black or with some milk and sugar, people love coffee. So much so that in the US alone, we drink more than 500 million cups each day. But many of us don’t know much about the beans that we brew. For starters, coffee is not a bean at all, but instead is the seed of a coffee cherry. It was said to have been discovered by a 9th century goat herder who saw his herd “dancing in the moonlight” after eating the mysterious red fruit.

And while coffee is grown in much sunnier places than Oregon, it’s become the cultural juggernaut it is thanks inpart to the Pacific Northwest. For more than a century, our region has played a key role in the waves of coffee innovation and cultural consumer shifts. Today, Oregon is home to barista champions, international coffee importers, roasters big and small, and even cutting edge coffee technology. From the mighty Stumptown to a DIY roasting scene in inner SE, we’ll meet the caffeinated folks keeping Portland a coffee destination.

Chapters
0:00 What is your earliest coffee memory?
0:35 “For me coffee is ultimately about connection.”
1:15 What the coffee means to the PNW
1:40 Tasting a $2000/lb Black Jaguar Geisha
2:50 Meet local coffee legend, Phuong Tran
3:15 “Wow! This is how coffee’s made?”
4:21 Tracing our love of coffee back to the 9th century
4:39 The goats were dancing in the moonlight
5:04 Boston Tea Party marks turning point for coffee in the US
5:27 First Wave Coffee
5:59 Second Wave Coffee
6:15 Pioneering efforts of Pete’s and Starbucks
6:38 Third Wave Coffee
7:02 History of Stumptown Coffee Roasters
7:34 Coffee pricing crisis disrupts the industry
8:05 What is Direct Trade?
8:40 Evaluating coffees through cupping
10:05 How does raw coffee get to Portland?
10:40 Warehousing 5 MILLION pounds of coffee
11:10 Buckman Coffee Factory
11:53 A recipe for roasting
12:05 “It’s actually the seed inside of a cherry.”
12:15 A stepbystep guide to coffee roasting
12:56 Meet the microroasters: Keia & Martyn’s Coffee
13:25 Creating a different narrative for who roasts coffee
13:48 “I want people like us to be able to afford our coffee.”
14:00 Creating an Equity Pricing Model
14:28 Opening a popup cafe at the Lloyd Center Mall
14:52 Welcome to the Specialty Coffee Expo
15:28 US Coffee Championships
16:00 Practice makes perfect for the US Barista Champ
16:46 “Going to coffee shops was my teenage rebellion.”
17:14 Becoming a coffee content creator at MorganDrinksCoffee
17:41 Competing in the US Barista Championships
18:29 Wenbo Yang on moving from China to Portland for the coffee
18:45 Exploring a new coffee technology: robotic baristas
19:12 How do you teach a robot to make coffee?
20:03 What will the next wave of coffee look like?
20:40 “We humans have a very strong relationship with the coffee plant.”

At the heart of everything foodie are the ingredients themselves—and nowhere in America is the obsession over ingredients more than in the Pacific Northwest. These are the stories behind the foods you love. Learn more at https://www.opb.org/show/superabundant/


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