About Coffee as Culture

Coffee as Culture is a weekly journal about how coffee moves through the world—not just as a drink, but as a force shaping history, design, and daily life.

Behind every cup is a chain of people: farmers experimenting with fermentation, scientists refining process, importers curating taste, baristas performing service. This newsletter explores how their work adds up to more than caffeine—how coffee becomes culture.

I’m Imran Ali Malik, a former journalist and student of Islamic philosophy turned specialty coffee roaster. I started Coffee as Culture to make sense of this blur: to understand not only how coffee is produced, but how it produces meaning.

Inside, you’ll find:

• Essays on the cultural and spiritual history of coffee

• Dispatches from farms, roasteries, and cafés reshaping the industry

• Reflections on design, hospitality, and attention

• Profiles of thinkers and practitioners pushing coffee forward

• Occasional glimpses behind the scenes at Seekers Coffee, the roastery I founded

This is not a brand blog. It’s a field notebook for a global conversation—half-brewed essays, cultural criticism, and dispatches from the edges of an industry in transition.

Subscribe if you want to see coffee differently: as a mirror of value, belonging, and beauty.