COFFEE CONVOS
learning sessions featuring
leading Bay Area coffee legends
SATURDAY
Saturday: Session 1
〰️
Saturday: Session 1 〰️
Can You Taste the Defect? Rethinking Green Coffee Quality with Sensory Science and AI
10:15 - 11:00 AM
When green coffee is graded, the presence of a single full-black defect is enough to disqualify an entire lot from specialty grade. However, it is unknown if that standard actually reflects what people can taste. In this study, we tested 79 coffee drinkers' thresholds for detecting full-black defects to determine the point at which a defect becomes perceptible in the cup, and whether that threshold is consistent across individuals.
11:15 - 11:45 AM
Presented by Jen apodaca
Consistently a crowd favorite: Presented by 🏆 2019 US Cup Taster Champion, 🥈 2022 US Roaster Champion, and Owner of one of our favorites, Mother Tongue Coffee. Come learn the difference between coffee taste and smell, the coffee flavor wheel, how to read flavor descriptions on retail bags, and more!
12:00 - 12:30 PM
Funk, fizz, and fermentation - coffee's wildest flavor frontier. A little bit of magic and a whole lotta mystery. Join Chris Kornman of Royal Coffee for a live, taste-as-you-go journey across the fermentation continuum: a kombucha vertical caught at different stages of its bubbly evolution, poured side by side with coffee and a few fermented friends from around the Bay. Come find out why the best things to land in your mouth taste better after they've spent a little time getting weird.
Saturday: Session 2
〰️
Saturday: Session 2 〰️
1:45 - 2:15 PM
Sir Isaac Newton once said: “If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants”. Come join us and glean pearls of wisdom from some of our local titans of the industry as we hear their stories, and learn their perspectives on where we are today.
2:30 - 3:15 PM
Ritual Coffee recently hit the big 2-0. Founder Eileen Rinaldi sits down for a candid fireside chat on what it really takes to survive (and thrive) two decades in the coffee game – from the early days of third-wave San Francisco to surviving a pandemic, navigating a city that reinvents itself every five years, and opening a brand-new cafe in 2026. What’s changed, what’s stayed true, and what the next 20 years might hold for one of San Francisco’s most iconic roasters.
3:30 - 4:00 PM
Everyone wants to start a matcha or chai brand. Your feed is full of them. Customers are ordering it. Baristas are pouring it. The margins look great on paper and the trend line only goes up. So why not just do it? Because it’s harder than it looks. This panel brings together top brands that did it anyway. They’ll talk about what’s really hard, what’s actually worth it, and what they wish they’d known on day one.
SunDAY
Sunday: Session 1
〰️
Sunday: Session 1 〰️
SUNDAY
10:15 - 11:00 AM
The UC Davis Coffee Center is the first multidisciplinary university research center to address the challenges and needs of the coffee industry through a holistic approach to coffee science and education. Learn how the Coffee Center leverages the university’s global reputation for excellence, aligning expertise across campus, in innovation, sustainability, and research.
11:15 - 11:45 AM
How do we say coffee? How do we try to find words that embody in some ultimately satisfactory way what we are smelling and tasting in a cup? Kenneth Davids, longtime editor of Coffee Review and author of four books on coffee, takes us quickly through the way contemporary sensory science says we experience and find words for what we taste, and then very broadly introduces systems the coffee profession has generated that try to help us find language that satisfies our need to express both to ourselves and others what we experience in a cup of coffee.
More Coming SoonSunday: Session 2
〰️
Sunday: Session 2 〰️
1:45 - 2:15 PM
A new wave of exceptional coffees from Asia are coming for the cupping table. Fine Robusta with something to prove, Liberica and Excelsa crashing the party, China leveling up, and processing experiments flipping the flavor script. These coffee champs ask the big question: is specialty coffee entering a post-Geisha era where greatness can come from any species, variety, or origin bold enough to chase it? Producers, roasters, competitors, café owners, and the just-plain-curious — pull up a seat. The future of your cup may be farther east than you think.
2:30 - 3:15 PM
“Arabica Cadabra!”
Join Mr Black Brand Ambassador Erin Schaeferle and a surprise guest from one of SF’s best cocktail bars as we explore how the complex flavors found in modern specialty coffee can drive a wide range of delicious cocktail applications.
PRESENTED by
More Coming Soon*Speakers, schedule, and topics subject to change, depending on availability.