It’s early days yet with regards to our brand new, revitalized website and this core new piece of it: the CoffeeGeek Blog. Already, I’ve gotten some questions and frank talk about the blog, both from our promotional partners, and from a few CoffeeGeek veterans as to the purpose of this new component, and where we plan to take it.
It’s no surprise there’s several popular coffee-related blogs online already. The big one is Sprudge, which has been around since 2011, and they’ve built a small media empire out of their efforts. There’s also Daily Coffee News, (DCN) run by my friends at Roast Magazine and there’s also Perfect Daily Grind, (PDG).
All do an excellent job at what they do. I learn a lot of industry information from these sources, and if you don’t have them in your RSS feeds, you really should. Some have more sponsored content than others, but that’s the whims of commerce and capitalism. As long as they are very up front about it, it’s better for the readers to know.
With the exception of PDG, these other blogs are almost entirely industry, professional barista, and roaster focused. PDG has a really nice consumer channel in their blog setup, and has some great content specifically geared towards consumers. Again, very much worth checking out.
The CoffeeGeek Blog
I’ve already written about why CoffeeGeek hasn’t had a blog up until this point, so I won’t repeat it here. But I will reiterate that our new Blog will fill some big holes in content arenas the other sites are not filling. Here’s some of them:
Geared to Specialty Coffee Consumers
Our Blog Contributor team all know that content for this new Blog must always have a consumer-first slant. We are not an industry magazine. We are not a professional barista website. We are not a commercial roaster information source. We fight for the specialty coffee consumer, and everything we post in the Blog has this as a background mission statement.
Because we’re geared to consumers, we will not let any sponsorship bias or slant influence what we publish as original content. We do have a new “promotional content” category on the CoffeeGeek Blog, which is part of our native advertising program and it helps us continue to run this website and pay our writers and site expenses, but these posts will be clearly indicated and we have a set of ethical standards that must be followed by our advertising partners. Posts made under the promotional banner will not have any kind of editorial influence on any of our Blog’s original content, now or ever.
Mini Reviews
The bread and butter of CoffeeGeek is our Review Section. We’ve authored seven (and counting) white papers, refining them over the past fifteen years on how to review coffee and espresso equipment. Scientific method and a ridged testing standard is laid out in these papers so that I can provide our readership with a completely honest, and unbiased, objective take on a product, good or bad. We don’t shy away from posting reviews of bad products either, no matter who advertises on our website.
This methodology is carrying over to a new type of review we’ll be publishing soon on CoffeeGeek: the Blog’s “Mini Reviews”. They are mini in name only: the care and attention paid during the review process will have as much gravitas as our main section Reviews do. They’re so exacting, that some of our Blog Contributors are chomping at the bit to dip their hand into the process, but I will be “reviewing” their ability to write them up to the established CoffeeGeek standard before they can regularly publish them.
ed.note: with our 2024 redesign, we have moved the Mini Reviews from the Blog section to the brand new Snapshot Reviews section.
Techniques
A few of our Blog Contributors are genuine home coffee geeks themselves, and they’ve been tasked with writing up technique articles, sometimes taking your favourite brewing method or device way outside the box, to think of new ways to enjoy coffee. So many brewing techniques got their start on CoffeeGeek: the Aeropress’ inverted brewing method, the ‘no knock’ tamping method, the hand touch test for maximizing frothed milk’s sweetness, and many more. With the new Blog, we want to continue to explore new and alternative techniques for making coffee and espresso better.
Coffee Reviews
I’m still working on the details for this, but we will have 3 people reviewing coffees formally for the blog, but in a very distinct “CoffeeGeek” style. Espresso-primary coffees will get a completely different set of review parameters compared to brew-primary coffees. One of my reviewers is a Q grader, the other two are former WBC and Cup of Excellence Judges. We’re taking these seriously.
Seed to Cup
Seed to Cup is a mantra with our Blog team; a goal is to educate in a fun and interesting way our consumer coffee audience on the entire seed to cup story. We want to highlight the seasonality of coffee, the work farmers put into growing it, and the efforts buyers and roasters go to, in order to present a special cup of joy to you out of your espresso machine or pour over device.
Industry News Relevant to Consumers
We will have plenty of Blog posts covering industry news, events, and developments, but only when they are 100% relevant to coffee consumers. We won’t be covering trade shows as much, but when we do, they will be with a full focus on relevancy to consumers.
Historical Articles
I admit it: I’m a massive history nerd. I even have a bachelor’s degree on the subject. I feel knowing the history of coffee and espresso — where it came from, how it developed, how trends changed over time, and what was once popular and why — helps us also move coffee and espresso forward. We’ll have a good share of historical article in the Blog.
International Scope
I’m very proud to say that four of our founding Blog Contributor staff are based outside of the US and Canada. My goal is to present international stories, cafe reviews, culture slices, and stories that let you know what coffee is like elsewhere around the world. I love finding out about coffee culture in other parts of the world, and I hope you do too. Speaking of which…
Culture and Creative Writing
I’ve saved this one for last, but in some ways, it’s the most important one for me and this new CoffeeGeek Blog. I’ve given my team of seven blog contributors the free hand to pitch and write blog posts on coffee and cafe culture, talking up the entire concept of the third place and where coffee lives and moves within our lives. In addition, I’ve encouraged our blog writing team to explore creative writing on the subject of coffee and espresso.
If we can deliver you five minutes of reading pleasure, enjoying a creative writing piece about a subject you yourself are passionate about, I’ll be a happy person. Some of my most favourite “hobby / passion” blogs on other subjects always include a creative writing component. I haven’t seen this much in coffee world, so we’re going to deliver it for people who love good coffee and espresso.
And that’s it. I hope we can deliver, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading this space daily.
Mark has certified as a Canadian, USA, and World Barista Championship Judge in both sensory and technical fields, as well as working as an instructor in coffee and espresso training. He started CoffeeGeek in 2001.
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
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Mark Princehttps://coffeegeek.com/author/markprince/
