The Standart Magazine

Rating: ★★★★★

I’ve rarely bought magazines in my life, let alone subscribe to them. Recently, however, I learned about the Standart magazine, a print magazine that focus on the world of coffee culture. I felt compelled to try it out, and, luckily, they have a trial subscription.

Standart Issue 37
Standart Issue 37

The trial subscription is “free”. I say free with quotes because you need to pay for the shipping, which was also not that high. In this trial subscription, you don’t get the current issue, but Issue 37. Issue 37 was released last winter and they consider it to be one of their best issues ever.

Inside the package, there was more than just the magazine: there was also specialty coffee beans, as well as a magnet of Morgan Eckroth and some special fast filters. I consider the goodies and the coffee a plus when it comes to considering subscribing.

This Standart issue contains very nice stories, and it dives into quite a few topics. One of the most interesting for me was about a lower caffeine coffee species planted in Brazil. In the meanwhile, I have ordered a bag of this coffee. If there is a delicious way to drink coffee with less caffeine and that does not undergo the chemical processes that decaf coffee needs to go through, I’m up for it. I’m very curious to taste it once it arrives.

Another interesting story regarded the future of cafés and automatism. It was an enjoyable read, and you can learn about different perspectives and also about what already exists. They mentioned the Pour Steady station, which is an automated pour-over machine. I’ve seen one of these in Japan. I was quite fascinated.

In general, the magazine feels very well constructed, the interviews are interesting - for me -, and touch feel is also quite pleasant. The subscription schedule is also quite simple: there are four issues per year, one per season, and it costs 109$ yearly.

At first glance, the price seems to be quite high, but after converting it to euros, and considering the small scale of the magazine, and how niche it is, I decided to commit for a year. I’m now awaiting for the arrival of Issue 39, which is this summer’s issue ☕️.