I’m thrilled to contribute to the first edition of the new coffee magazine @readingstill_ ! Published by the lovely people of @bonjourjacob_ , the magazine features beautiful photography, a deep-dive into Lisbon’s coffee scene, and some wonderfully written articles.
I wrote about pre-batch espresso, as I felt I wasn’t receiving enough grief online this month 😅. More seriously, pre-batched espresso is a topic I get asked about often, and I believe the conversation around it tends to skip one salient point: pre-batched espresso, the way it is done at @projectzero.coffee and @beta_coffee in Australia, tastes *better* than fresh espresso. The reason is based in sound coffee science. Want to know more? Read the article …
Thanks to @michaelharrisph for opening my eyes to the profound difference between filtered and not filtered espresso. And hat tip to @jimseven for recognizing ages ago that crema is, indeed, rubbish
Coffee speaks constantly about inclusion.
But who gets included, and on whose terms?
In Harambee: Reflections on “Including” Women in Coffee and the Gender Coffee Paradox, Dr. Erika Koss examines the tensions that sit beneath the industry’s language of empowerment, where visibility and opportunity often coexist with unequal labour, invisible work, and structural imbalance.
Borrowing its title from the Swahili word for “pulling together,” the article moves through Kenya’s coffee sector and beyond, questioning what collective progress really looks like when the systems beneath it remain uneven.
Not a simple critique, but a reflection on the paradoxes the industry still struggles to confront.
Read in print in Still. Issue 00.
Text by @aworldinyourcup
Lychee Bomb.
A Pink Bourbon from Huila, Colombia, produced by Luis Marcelino at Aroma Nativo.
A micro-lot built through a double fermentation process, moving from whole cherry to a second controlled stage, shaping the profile toward lychee, guava, and dense tropical fruit.
Selected for the launch of Still and shared with our community alongside the magazine.
Now available at Bonjour Jacob.
Come taste it.
Coffee doesn’t just evolve through taste, it evolves through risk.
In Huila, Colombia, Luis Marcelino approaches processing as something to be built, where fermentation becomes a space of control and uncertainty at once, each variable — time, pH, yeast — pushed and adjusted, sometimes lost along the way. At Aroma Nativo, what makes it through isn’t accidental, it’s shaped, tested, and selected through that process.
Not everything works, and most of it isn’t meant to.
But behind the profiles we taste, there’s a question the industry doesn’t always answer: who carries the risk of experimentation?
Read in print in Still. Issue 00.
Text by Owen Racer
From law offices to a matcha counter imagined after a trip to New York, to a café first seen through a letterbox, Francisco Amaral brought Comobå to life.
What started small turned into something that keeps growing, shifting, resisting labels, and shaped by the people and moments passing through it. Never meant to stay still.
Read in print in Still. Issue 00.
Interview by soraia__martins
Photography by @lytakai___
