There is no shortage of high-quality coffee podcasts out there vying for your listening ears. We are partial to our own Coffee Sprudgecast, but it is certainly not the only one in the medium worth your attention. You needn’t look much further than the Best Coffee Podcast category of the Sprudgie Awards over the years to already have an overfull plate.
But should your day somehow constitute more than 24 hours and you find yourself needing something to fill it, there is a new podcast so audacious and grand in scope that it will surely keep you entertained the rest of time. All About Coffee, a Page by Page Podcast is a new podcast by Covoya’s Mike Ferguson who takes the long road in reading William Harrison Ukers’s classic coffee book, one page at a time.
Published over 100 years ago, All About Coffee is an 800-page compendium a seminal text in the coffee world covering a broad range of coffee topics. From history and lineage to economics and chemistry and even etiquette, All About Coffee showcases Ukers’ exhaustive love of coffee from both his academic and enthusiast sides.
And there is perhaps no better person in the industry to tackle the challenge of podcasting their way through such an intimidating tome than Ferguson. A gifted yarn weaver and historian of the century-old book, Ferguson won’t be rushing his way through the expansive project. Part book on tape, part podcast, and part director’s commentary, All About Coffee, a Page by Page Podcast is taking it “one page, one paragraph, one sentence, one rabbit hole at a time,” with Covoya’s Chief Storyteller looking to expand on the book, providing additional context and musings to bridge the gap between 1922 and today. “Whatever it takes to work our way through over 800 pages of what was arguably the most important coffee book of the 20th century,” Ferguson says of the podcast.
Part of The Exchange, Covoya’s Coffee Podcasting Network that includes industry-oriented titles like Ristretto and Another Cup, All About Coffee, a Page by Page Podcast has released their first episode, and in true slow burn fashion, they haven’t even made it to page one. The podcast’s maiden voyage is all about “biography, background, and frontmatter,” the stuff in a book before chapter one gets going.
In the age of short-form content, where the length of a piece of media continues to contract to stay within the confines of our ever-decreasing attention span, it’s nice to see someone moving in the opposite direction, aggressively so. Will Ferguson make it all the way through All About Coffee? Only time (lots of it) will tell. But it’s a podcast that’s clearly more concerned about the journey than the destination. May as well enjoy the ride.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
