As the year comes to an end and 2025 fast approaches, we reflect on Barista Magazine Online’s most viewed stories of 2024.
FROM STAFF REPORTS
And just like that, another year is over! As we set our sights on 2025, it’s time for us to fondly reflect on the incredible coffee events, competitions, and exciting new equipment releases the past 12 months have brought us, along with all of the breathtaking cities we had the chance to explore. To celebrate the new year, we’ve gathered Barista Magazine Online’s 5 most popular stories in 2024—read on to learn what our readers were loving this year.
#5. 4 Cool Cafés to Check Out in Osaka
With its cherry blossom trees, peaceful temples, and world-renowned culinary scene, Osaka, Japan has a little something for everyone. It’s no surprise that the city also hosts a vibrant coffee world, with crowds of customers lining up for well-loved shops like Mel Coffee Roasters, Lilo, and Haiku. In this article, Senior Online Correspondent Tanya Nanetti leads us through the metropolitan area and unveils the many specialty-coffee gems it has to offer.
#4. 5 Cool Cafés to Try in Seoul
Adding to her impressive list of popular city guides, Tanya Nanetti gives us a tour of Seoul, South Korea, highlighting the city’s key cafés and roasteries like Fritz Coffee Company and Namusairo. “It only took a few hours in the city for Seoul to steal our hearts,” Tanya writes. “Gorgeous and vibrant, with its towering skyscrapers mixed with traditional villages and trendy neighborhoods flanking imperial sites, Seoul is a city to explore in its entirety. … It’s a city to experience with all five senses.”
#3. Know Your Ingredients: Star Anise
Created by Online Editor Emily Joy Meneses, our “Know Your Ingredients” series explores the histories behind ingredients commonly found in cafés, like star anise: a spice with roots in Vietnam and China. In this article, we discuss the cultivation of star anise throughout Asia, and how the ingredient made its way to the Western world.
#2. 5 Beautiful Cafés in Ho Chi Minh City Worth a Visit
The dozens of cafés that line the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, serve up local favorites like ca phe trung (egg coffee) and ca phe sua da (dark-roast coffee sweetened with condensed milk). Again, Senior Online Correspondent Tanya Nanetti boldly shows us the way, spotlighting the city’s top five coffee shops.
#1. Know Your Sweeteners: Stevia
You see those familiar green packets everywhere: on café counters, alongside cups of black coffee at the diner, stashed in your grandparents’ cupboard. These days, stevia is as common as plain old sugar—but how did the sugar replacement grow to be part of our daily coffee rituals? In this article, Emily Joy Meneses returns to discuss stevia’s origins and how it became such an integral facet of worldwide coffee culture.
That’s all we have for this year! We can’t wait to see what 2025 has in store for the specialty-coffee world.
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