Coffee Blog — 18 Articles

The expertcafe.be blog: tasting analyses, origin explorations, reflections on coffee culture in Belgium and Europe. 18 original articles, trilingual, written for the informed enthusiast. A free editorial space, somewhere between a personal notebook and a long-form investigation.

• Anaerobic Fermentations: A Silent Revolution in Coffee

  Anaerobic fermentations are quietly rewriting how specialty coffee tastes. From sealed tanks to carbonic maceration, a new creative dimension is emerging.

• Arabica vs Robusta: Does the Variety War Still Make Sense in 2026?

  The arabica-good, robusta-bad hierarchy was built by industrial marketing, not science. In 2026, specialty robusta and climate change are rewriting the story.

• Why Belgium Is Europe's Next Great Coffee Scene

  From MOK to Caffènation, Or Noir to Normo, Belgium has been quietly building one of Europe's most coherent specialty coffee ecosystems. Here's what makes it different.

• Have Coffee Competitions Transformed the Market — or Just the Menus?

  A critical look at the WBC/WCE circuit: what coffee championships have genuinely changed — techniques, trends, recipes — and what remains stubbornly fixed: access, price, the closed loop.

• The Coffee Grinder: The Investment Everyone Keeps Postponing

  A good coffee grinder changes your cup more than any machine. Yet it is the one purchase everyone keeps postponing. Here is why that is a mistake — and how to fix it.

• Coffee and Wine: What Two Worlds Can Teach Each Other

  I run wine bars and I'm deep into specialty coffee. These two worlds share a common grammar — and they still have a lot to learn from each other.

• Why Cold Brew Deserves to Be Taken Seriously — Even in Belgium

  A country famous for hot café culture might seem like the wrong place for cold brew. The chemistry says otherwise. Here is the case for taking it seriously.

• What Cupping Taught Me About My Own Way of Tasting

  Cupping is not just a professional evaluation protocol. It is a mirror. What I discovered about my own sensory biases — and blind spots — through years of practice.

• Direct Trade: The Ideal and the Reality — 3 Hard Questions

  Direct trade sounds like the answer to everything wrong with coffee supply chains. But is it really? Three honest questions about transparency, prices paid, and producer power.

• Geisha: The Origin Story of a Global Obsession at €10,000 a Kilo

  From an Ethiopian forest to a Panamanian hillside to auction records near $10,000/kg. The true story of how the Geisha variety rewrote coffee history.

• My Ideal €300 Coffee Setup — And Why I Changed My Mind Twice

  €300 is the budget where coffee trade-offs get real. Grinder or machine first? Filter or espresso? Here's how I navigated it — and why I changed my mind twice.

• Learning to Read the SCA Flavor Wheel — A Curator's Notebook

  The SCA Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel hangs in every specialty shop — but few people know how to actually use it. Here is what I learned from months of trying.

• Is Light Roast a Trend or a Permanent Revolution?

  Light roast has dominated specialty coffee for two decades. Is it a passing aesthetic, or has it permanently changed what coffee can be? An honest assessment.

• Q Grader: What 22 Exams in 4 Days Taught Me About Taste

  First-person account of sitting the Q Grader certification: 22 sensory exams across 4 gruelling days that permanently reshape how you listen to a cup of coffee.

• Specialty vs Commercial: What Your Coffee Label Isn't Telling You

  The word 'specialty' appears on supermarket bags and premium capsules alike. Here is what it actually means — and what your coffee label is quietly leaving out.

• Water: The One Coffee Ingredient Everyone Ignores

  Water makes up 98% of your cup of coffee. Yet most enthusiasts obsess over beans and ignore the liquid they brew with. Here's what the science actually says.

• What Coffee for My Moka Pot? The Most Asked Question, Finally Answered

  Grind size, roast level, dose, heat — a curious deep-dive into everything that makes or breaks a moka pot brew, from someone who has made every mistake.

• Yirgacheffe vs Guji: Two Ethiopian Terroirs, One Myth to Unpack

  Yirgacheffe and Guji share a country and a reputation — but not a flavour profile. A field guide to understanding what separates Ethiopia's two most famous coffee regions.