A Boost for Your Mid-Week Slump

Brewed in traditional clay pots, this Mexican coffee has an earthy taste that’s amplified by a cocktail of spices — cinnamon, star anise and cloves — and the unique sweetness of piloncillo, or unrefined cane sugar.

Moroccans are also famous for spicing their coffee – but they don’t don’t stop at cinnamon or cloves. Real Moroccan coffee is incomplete without black pepper, because the Sahara isn’t hot enough.

This one’s only for the adventurous. The Indonesian city of Yogyakarta has a specialty coffee that involves dunking a lump of hot charcoal into your black brew. Apparently it kills the coffee’s acidity. Just wait until the charcoal cools down before sipping — or it might kill you.

Until 2018, no woman had ever reached the finals of the World Barista Championships, the profession’s top annual competition. Rojewska, a three-time champion in her home nation, Poland, didn’t just reach the finals: she won the competition. An introvert, Rojewska has since been propelled to the status of global ambassador for women in coffee — which means she needs to lecture, judge competitions and train up-and-coming baristas. You’ll never guess where she learned to brew: YouTube.

Following in Rojewska’s footsteps was never going to be easy. But Jooyeon wasn’t about to wait. The Korean barista won the world championships in 2019, marking out a future for all women in the profession by underscoring that Rojewska’s success was no flash in the carafe. She’s also a reminder that some of the world’s greatest coffee can be found in unlikely places – like the street cafes of Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city and Jooyeon’s home.

Occasionally, patrons at her cafe will remember her earlier avatar: she’s also been an actress. She performed in major films and then ran a theater company in the coastal Brazilian town of Porto Alegre. But an injury made her change her life’s script. She’s now found her calling — and she’s so skilled that in 2019 she landed at the top of Brazil’s feted ranking of best baristas.

After meatless meat, get ready for coffee without actual beans. Seattle food-tech startup Atomo Coffee has developed a technique to chemically treat sunflower seed husks and watermelon seeds to create molecules that taste like real coffee, contain caffeine and can be brewed the same way. At a time climate change is disrupting coffee production globally, could the answer lie in a lab?

Almost all of Ethiopia’s famed coffee is produced on small farms, susceptible to middlemen who can rob farmers of what they could earn while denying global consumers transparency on the source of their beans. Now the Ethiopian government is working with Hong Kong–based blockchain firm IOHK to use the technology to track every step of the coffee supply chain in a bid to end industry corruption.

The weather changes every day – and so does our mood. Why should our coffee stay the same? A Hong Kong-based coffee firm is using artificial intelligence to brew beans with flavor that varies depending on the temperature, time of day, how you’re feeling and even what’s in the news. For instance, it gently reduces the caffeine level as it gets later in the evening, so your sleep isn’t impacted.

on The Carlos Watson Show!!

Made from the dried leaves and twigs of the Ilex paraguariensis plant, this caffeine-rich South American super-beverage tastes like tea and will give you the rush of coffee. The Paraguayan Guaraní people have consumed it for centuries, and it’s now popular across the world.

Ditch coffee’s side effects, from the jitters to caffeine crashes, and check out brewed cacao as a healthier alternative. From the Olmecs to the Aztecs – whose soldiers consumed the drink for an energy boost before battle – the brew’s benefits have withstood the test of time.

These Brazilian seeds look like eyeballs, but you’re the one who should watch out: each one contains four times the amount of caffeine as a coffee bean. While harvested by the Indigenous Sataré-Mawé people for a millennium, the stimulant is now part of an industry that rakes in millions for Brazil’s economy, as it’s an ingredient in some of the most popular energy drinks.

What is your favorite caffeinated beverage? Share your thoughts with us at [email protected].