About
I’m Reza Kosar, a coffee educator, consultant, writer, and international judge based in Muscat, Oman. My work sits at the intersection of coffee quality, sensory evaluation, perception, language, and the science of how we experience flavor.
I have worked in specialty coffee for more than a decade across education, roasting, quality control, consulting, and competition. I am a Legacy Q Grader and instructor, a Cup of Excellence international jury member, and a certified World Coffee Championships judge. Over the years, I have taught coffee professionals, advised businesses, coached competitors, and judged national and international competitions across different countries. I was also named to the Sprudge Twenty Class of 2025.
I am also the co-founder and managing partner of Slick Coffee Co., a specialty coffee roastery in Oman. My work at Slick spans green coffee selection and buying, roast development, quality systems, education, and helping hospitality businesses build more consistent and meaningful coffee programs.
Alongside my work at Slick, I provide independent consulting to coffee businesses and professionals. My consulting work includes green coffee sourcing and buying, green and roasted coffee evaluation, roasting and profile development, sensory evaluation, quality systems, customized education, and competition preparation.
My academic background is in linguistics, with a focus on psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and the relationship between language, cognition, and perception. This continues to shape how I approach coffee. I am particularly interested in how people perceive flavor, how sensory experiences become concepts, and how language shapes the way those experiences are interpreted and communicated.
Across these areas, my aim is to connect research with practice and bring greater clarity, and shared understanding to how coffee is evaluated, communicated, and experienced.
Areas of work
My current work includes:
- Coffee education and professional workshops
- Green coffee sourcing, buying, and selection
- Green and roasted coffee sample evaluation
- Sensory evaluation and quality-system development
- Roasting and profile development
- Consulting for coffee businesses and hospitality groups
- Competition coaching and technical advisory
- Judging and industry collaborations
- Writing and research
- Coffee Language, an ongoing exploration of sensory linguistics, perception, and communication in coffee
About this site
This website brings together my writing, research, professional work, and ongoing projects.
Here, I explore coffee quality, sensory science, perception, language, roasting, processing, competition, and the wider ideas shaping how coffee is evaluated and understood. Some articles are grounded in academic research, while others draw from professional practice, teaching, judging, and more than a decade of working in the coffee industry.
The site also provides information about courses, workshops, consulting services, collaborations, and other professional projects.
Selected Media
What Is Quality in the Coffee Industry?
Map It Forward · Five-part podcast series · 2025
A conversation exploring how quality is defined, measured, communicated, and contested across the coffee industry—from sensory evaluation and technology to competitions, CVA, and power dynamics.
Episodes:
Defining Quality · Tools and Measurement · CVA · Competitions · Technology
Introducing Specialty Coffee to New Regions
It’s Just Coffee · Podcast · 2026
A conversation about developing specialty coffee in emerging markets, covering sourcing, roasting, branding, and the challenges and opportunities shaping the industry in the Middle East.
Inside the Neuroscience of Coffee
Hospitality News Middle East · Article · 2026
An exploration of how the brain constructs flavor and how perception, memory, and expectation influence the experience of coffee.
Stay connected
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