EP 1112 Part 2 of 5 | How to Educate Coffee Consumers About Quality (George Howell) | Map It Forward
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Episode Description
This is part 2 of a new 5-part series on The Daily Coffee Pro Podcast by Map It Forward, hosted by Lee Safar. Our guest on the podcast for this series is George Howell, founder of George Howell Coffee, returning for the 2026 edition of our annual series, “The Coffee Industry According to George Howell.”
In this episode, we ask George a deceptively difficult question: What is good-quality coffee?
For George, quality begins at the farm.
He explains how location, coffee variety, processing, harvesting decisions, ripeness, drying, labour, climate, and the level of care invested by the farmer all contribute to the quality ultimately found in the cup.
But understanding quality intellectually is only part of the process.
George describes the immersive consumer education events he has been running for decades, where customers move between presentations and carefully structured coffee tastings designed to demonstrate what quality actually tastes like.
Participants compare freshly preserved coffee with stale and aged coffee. They taste ripe coffee against coffee harvested unripe. They compare washed, natural, and anaerobic processing. Finally, they taste coffees from different origins in an intentionally structured sequence that makes the differences easier to recognise.
The goal is not simply to tell consumers what quality is.
It is to give them a sensory reference point.
George describes this as “calibrating” the customer. Once consumers understand what quality tastes like, they can take that knowledge into cafés, choose coffees more intentionally, and improve the coffee they brew at home.
We also discuss why George Howell Coffee freezes its green coffee, how coffee changes as it cools, why consumers often underestimate the cost and risk involved in producing high-quality coffee, and what coffee businesses can learn from creating more immersive and meaningful education experiences.
Connect with George Howell Coffee:
https://georgehowellcoffee.com/