Black Coffee, Please — coffee news for people who consider “good morning” an unverified claim.

On the menu: solar heat inside a roasting drum, a research fellowship with serious funding, and cold brew getting an electrical intervention. Also: an importer changes hands without leaving the staff behind, a theater becomes a café, and Warsaw supplies somewhere to sit down and chase digital ghosts.

All six articles below were published September 21–24, 2026.

Featured Post

The sun has applied for a job at the roastery

Sandia National Laboratories and Albuquerque’s Michael Thomas Coffee have tested a system that turns solar electricity into heat, stores it in a bed of rocks, and delivers that heat to a coffee roasting drum. Somewhere, a rock has a more productive morning routine than the rest of us.

The experiment produced light, medium, and dark roasts. Its practical ambition is a retrofit for existing gas-fired roasters, letting operators retain equipment they already know. Stored heat could also extend roasting beyond sunny hours. This remains a proof of concept; the report does not establish commercial costs or independent taste-test results.

The Big Perk: Giving familiar machinery a different heat source could make adoption easier for small roasting businesses. That possibility deserves attention alongside the more photogenic parade of brand-new machines.

Your Next Move: Ask your local roaster what heats its drum and which parts of the process are hardest to control. There is a better conversation here than “Is dark roast burnt?”

Read: New Mexico Experiment Brings Solar Heat to the Roasting Drum — Daily Coffee News, September 21.

Big News

Coffee research gets a million dollars and some staying power

The Specialty Coffee Association is giving $1 million to UC Davis to establish an endowed graduate fellowship in coffee science. The money will be invested, with approximately 4%—about $40,000 annually at the initial funding level—distributed to support a fellow’s research. Application details and the first selection date had not been announced when the article was published.

The Coffee Center’s work spans brewing, roasting, sensory science, chemistry, agriculture, and processing. This is funding for people to investigate coffee carefully, which is encouraging in a field where an exceptionally confident comment can occasionally pass for a research paper.

Why this matters: An endowment creates continuing support. It does not deliver a new brewing rule this week, but it helps make future evidence possible.

The Big Perk: Someone gets paid to ask coffee questions properly. Your kitchen notebook remains eligible for informal bragging rights.

Read: SCA Gives UC Davis Coffee Center $1 Million for Research Fellowship — Daily Coffee News, September 22.

Spicy Take

Electrified cold brew still has to taste good

Atomic Coffee Roasters and startup Overpotential are preparing to launch Potential, a cold brew treated with low-voltage electrical currents after brewing. The companies say the process modifies flavor compounds without adding ingredients. The first release uses a natural-process coffee from Ethiopia’s Gera Estate; public sales are scheduled for October 5.

The pitch is that treatment can help preserve the interesting flavors that conventional cold brew struggles to express. That is a company claim, not an independent tasting verdict.

Our take: Coffee enthusiasts routinely celebrate controlled fermentation and carefully adjusted roast profiles. An unfamiliar processing step deserves curiosity and clear disclosure. It also deserves the same brutally ordinary question as every other drink: would you want another cup?

The Secret Council of Brown Liquids can postpone its emergency meeting until somebody conducts a useful comparison. Ideally, that means tasting treated and untreated versions of the same brew without knowing which is which.

The Bitter Truth: A compelling explanation can sell the first can. Flavor has to sell the second.

Read: Atomic Coffee and Overpotential Combine for Electrified Cold Brew — Daily Coffee News, September 23.

Quick Hits

The people moving the beans now have an ownership stake

Cafe Imports announced that it is 100% employee-owned through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. The ownership sits in a trust for participating employees; the company has not disclosed eligibility, vesting, or financing details. Founder Andrew Miller says the decision supports independence and continuity. A meaningful change behind the bags your roaster buys, with details still worth watching.

Read: Cafe Imports Now 100% Employee-Owned Through a Stock Plan — Daily Coffee News, September 21.

Now showing: espresso and actual staff training

Stumptown’s new Los Angeles flagship occupies the surviving front portion of the former Starland Theatre in Lincoln Heights. It opened August 29; this week’s profile tours the preserved entrance, original tile, and separate training lab for staff and wholesale partners. Rotating single-origin espresso shares the bar with Hair Bender and Trapper Creek decaf. The building gets another act; the baristas get room to rehearse.

Read: Stumptown’s New LA Flagship Gives The Starland Theatre an Encore — Daily Coffee News, September 24.

A former power station now supplies a different morning service

A fresh design profile visits Warsaw’s DOT. Coffee & Matcha, completed in 2025. Its 67-square-meter space combines tiered seating, a reclaimed-timber bar, and ceiling treatments intended to reduce reverberation. Customers can play Pac-Man while waiting. Our favorite detail is the attention to sound: conversation should not require projecting over a grinder like you are announcing a platform change.

Read: Design Details: Urban-Inspired Joy at DOT. Coffee & Matcha in Warsaw — Daily Coffee News, September 24.

Keep Learning

Try a three-cup test of brew strength. This week’s electrical experiment raises a useful question: can you detect a change before someone tells you how impressive it is? You can practice that at home with one batch of coffee and a little water.

1. Brew your usual coffee. Set out three identical cups and let the coffee reach a comfortable drinking temperature.

2. Recruit a helper. Have them pour 50 grams of coffee into two cups, then 45 grams of the same coffee plus 5 grams of similar-temperature water into the third. They should record which cup is diluted and shuffle the positions out of your sight.

3. Find the odd cup. Taste all three. Pick the one you think differs and write why: lighter body, less bitterness, weaker aroma, or simply “different.” No elaborate fruit vocabulary required.

4. Choose your favorite before the reveal. Detecting a difference and preferring it are separate questions. Record both answers.

5. Use the result modestly. If you prefer the diluted cup, try a small measured splash of water in tomorrow’s brew. If you cannot identify it, repeat another day; one correct guess proves very little.

This changes the strength of an already-brewed coffee, so it does not test what a different brewing recipe would extract. It does give you a cheap way to practice comparison—and permission to enjoy the cup you actually prefer. The laboratory coat is optional. The washing-up, regrettably, is real.