Specialty coffee changes the story for the indigenous people of Guatemala. Coffee as a tool of oppression finally offers hope....and then something a bit more complicated.

This episode explores the tension between the values of the Mayan communities who grow coffee, and the values that drive the specialty coffee movement.

Many of the signals we typically look for in our coffees - super-specialty flavours, Fairtrade certification, “5th generation family farm” - might actually exclude coffee grown by indigenous Guatemalans.

This episode might change what kind of Guatemalan coffee you buy.

Please spread the word about A History of Coffee!

Follow us on Instagram - James (@filterstoriespodcast) and Jonathan (@coffeehistoryjm) - and tag us in an Instagram story.

Write a review on Apple Podcasts

Leave a 5 star rating on Spotify

This free educational content for the coffee community was made possible by Mahlkönig, manufacturers of world-leading coffee grinders for 100 years for your home and cafe.

Read Jonathan’s book, Coffee: A Global History

Support James’ work directly by buying him a coffee at Ko-fi.com/FilterStories

Read James’ article on Dieseldorf, the famous German plantation owner, in Standart

Pick up a copy of Prof. Ted Fischer’s excellent book Making Better Coffee: How Maya Farmers and Third Wave Taste Makers Create Value

Follow Juan Jose on LinkedIn to keep up with his PhD on coffee farming in Jacaltenango exploring how ecology, generational memory and ritual all shape how Jacalteco farmers tend the land.

When you buy a bag of coffee labelled fifth-generation family farm, it feels like a good choice.

But in Guatemala, that label might actually be a signal for a more uncomfortable truth.

This episode explores how land has been understood, used, and eventually fought over in Guatemala for centuries between indigenous people, Europeans and those in-between.

It’s a story of what happened immediately after Guatemala won independence from Spain. This pivotal period of history gets less attention in the history books, but the suffering of the indigenous people of Guatemala gets arguably even worse.

Fair warning: it's a dark story, and it will make you think twice about what you're really choosing when you pick up a bag of coffee from Central America.

Please spread the word about A History of Coffee!

Follow us on Instagram - James (@filterstoriespodcast) and Jonathan (@coffeehistoryjm) - and tag us in an Instagram story.

Write a review on Apple Podcasts

Leave a 5 star rating on Spotify

This free educational content for the coffee community was made possible by Mahlkönig, manufacturers of world-leading coffee grinders for 100 years for your home and cafe.

Read Jonathan’s book, Coffee: A Global History

Support James’ work directly by buying him a coffee at Ko-fi.com/FilterStories

Read James’ article on Dieseldorf, the famous German plantation owner, in Standart

Pick up a copy of Prof. Ted Fischer’s excellent book Making Better Coffee: How Maya Farmers and Third Wave Taste Makers Create Value

Follow Juan Jose on LinkedIn to keep up with his PhD on coffee farming in Jacaltenango exploring how ecology, generational memory and ritual all shape how Jacalteco farmers tend the land.

What happens when coffee disappears?

This is not a thought experiment! It’s happened many times in history: War, blockades, tariffs, ideology, health panics, sanctions, supply shocks.

When coffee is not around, people still need something warm, comforting, and familiar. And throughout history, people have reached for coffee surrogates: roasted plants and grains engineered to look like coffee…but do they actually taste like coffee?

In this episode, Jonathan and James time-travel by taste testing a truly alarming number of coffee substitutes.

Spoiler: you will hear a lot of spitting!

Which leads to the bigger question: can anything actually replace coffee—or will we always come crawling back?

Please spread the word about A History of Coffee!

Follow us on Instagram - James (@filterstoriespodcast) and Jonathan (@coffeehistoryjm) - and tag us in an Instagram story.

Write a review on Apple Podcasts

Leave a 5 star rating on Spotify

This free educational content for the coffee community was made possible by Mahlkönig, manufacturers of world-leading coffee grinders for 100 years for your home and cafe.

Read Jonathan’s book, ‘Coffee: A Global History’

Support James’ work directly by buying him a coffee at Ko-fi.com/FilterStories

Read James’ article on the history of decaf technology in Standart

See Colin Smith’s amazing coffee museum at Smith’s Coffee in Hemel Hempstead, UK

Get nerdy about the intersection of AI and the occult on Karin’s Subtack, Mercurial Minutes

Do your own surrogate taste test!

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Atomo

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Dandelion root

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Chicory Root

Camp Coffee