What's new in coffee

This week's biggest coffee story is business, not science: Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Investment Company is joining Luckin Coffee's controlling shareholder in a roughly $1 billion minority stake, giving Gulf sovereign capital a board seat in the chain that has grown past 36,000 stores. Uganda's Besmark Coffee signed an exclusive robusta supply deal with South Korea's GVCC as Uganda cements its position as Africa's top coffee exporter, while arabica futures slid to a 10-week low on Brazil's record 75.9-million-bag harvest. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pact Coffee paid a record $55.50/kg for Izuba, the country's first anaerobically fermented lot, at the Best of Congo Cooperatives auction. Appliance maker Rowan entered the espresso category with the Nova Reverie, an all-in-one grind-tamp-brew machine, and Starbucks kicked off $1 billion in North American cafe renovations. It was a quiet week for peer-reviewed coffee science — nothing cleared the bar for inclusion.

Arabica futures slipped below $3/lb intraday for the first time since early August as Brazil's record harvest wrapped up and Rabobank forecast an 8.9-million-bag surplus, even while ICE-certified stocks fell to their lowest since 1999 and Colombia's post-earthquake export bottleneck kept washed lots tight. In the lab, a Warsaw group showed that pushing an espresso puck past roughly 5 bar stops increasing flow, and a Yunnan team mapped why anaerobic naturals taste busier than washed lots from the same cherries. Best of Panama's 40 winning lots go to auction on 23 September, and Sey, Presta and Intelligentsia landed notable Colombia, Yemen and Rwanda lots. On the gear side, Mahlkönig's first home espresso machine started shipping in Germany, Bosch entered semi-automatic espresso at IFA, and April put a Timemore-built hand grinder on Kickstarter.