Morgan Eckroth doesn’t come from a family that drinks coffee. There was no nostalgia for the smell of Folgers brewing in the morning or sneaking sips from a parent’s mug on the way to school. That’s why their outsized place in coffee culture is even more impressive.

“I started working as a barista when I was 18, just starting college, and from there, it was history,” they laughed. “I loved it from day one.”

In less than a decade, they went from getting their first barista job to winning the U.S. Barista Championship. Now, they’ve released their first book, “Coffee, for Here: The Ultimate Handbook for At-Home Coffee Enthusiasts.”

Eckroth started making social video content under the handle @morgandrinkscoffee in 2019. At the time, they were studying marketing at Oregon State University and working as a barista. They were hopeful to find a job post-college that could meld the two.

“COVID really threw a wrench into that,” they said. “I lost my cafe job [and] we shut down for a long period of time, so I started taking @morgandrinkscoffee super seriously, essentially trying to take everything I did previously in-person and translate it online.”

Now, they’ve amassed more than eight million followers across their social media platforms.

Eckroth films in a self-made studio tucked down a side street in Northwest Portland, around the corner from a bustling cafe. The large windows flood the space with light, a shiny silver espresso machine sits near the entrance, and shelves stuffed with glassware, spices and a cotton candy machine take up almost the entire length of one wall.

That’s where OPB’s “All Things Considered” host Crystal Ligori caught up with them and learned about their path to becoming a coffee influencer and the decision to write a book.

Crystal Ligori: What was it about coffee that captured your attention, cause I understand you didn’t grow up with it?

Morgan Eckroth: I had my first coffee when I was about 16. I’d just gotten my driver’s license, and I went to a coffee shop for the very first time. What really drew me to coffee was the hospitality side of it. I didn’t know anything about coffee, didn’t know how to order, and that was the first time I interacted with baristas who were just so kind and welcoming and ready to meet me where I was. As a young teenager, that was incredibly transformative.

I went back to that coffee shop so many times, and eventually started to really appreciate the beverage side of it as well and had this realization that I really wanted to become a barista in hopes of sharing that experience.

Ligori: What spurred your move into social media?

Eckroth: I started out of this desire to learn how to make videos. I was studying marketing at the time, working as a barista and really wanted to go into some sort of coffee marketing position post college. I kind of realized video was the way everything seemed to be trending.

When I first started online, it was barista sketches, just capturing little moments of daily hospitality. But throughout my coffee career, I’ve also had the competition [and] have been doing a lot of recipe development that just never was shared online. I got to the point where I was like, “There are so many other aspects of coffee that I love just as deeply as I love the hospitality and barista side that I wanted to start sharing those.”

It’s been a really fun journey to kind of transform my content into something that hopefully still has the essence and the soul of those barista sketches, but can be a little bit broader and also a little bit more educational and informative.

Ligori: You’ve had what I consider a meteoric rise in coffee over the last few years. What was the spark for you to write a book?

Eckroth: I have always been a writer. When I was probably 11, I remember writing “Lord of the Rings” fan fiction. I’ve always had creative writing projects going on. I think I’ve always known that I’ve wanted to write a book. In the wake of winning the 2022 U.S. Barista Championship and really diving deeper into my version of signature coffee beverages, it became a lot more present in my mind of like “I would love to compile these in a way that I can share them with people. I’d love to put everything that I wish I had when I was starting out as a barista into something to hand off to others.” That was the starting point for the book. It’s been a long and incredible process to write a book, very different than making online content. But it’s something that I am super, super proud of.

Ligori: In addition to the more than 40 recipes in this book, it’s also part history, part agricultural information and part step-by-step brew guide and cookbook. What did the research for this look like?

Eckroth: This book took a lot of research. The first chapter is the history of coffee, really answering the question, “What is coffee with a capital C?” That chapter is a very small section compared to all the hands-on brewing [methods] and the drinks, but those 10 or 15 pages took me just as long as the entire rest of the book did. It was deep diving into all the coffee literature that currently exists, ancient articles and trying to find primary sources and trying to be as accurate as possible to the history of coffee. It was also figuring out how to prioritize what to put in the book.

That was a really fun and long-winded process. The part that I didn’t expect to be as transformative as it was, was the research and development for the recipes. This was the first time I’ve ever formally worked with recipe testers alongside my own recipe building. Every single drink that’s in the book had to be sent off, sometimes multiple times, to home testers to be like, “Does this work? Is it missing anything? What are you experiencing out of that?” That was a really cool process to go through because it changed a lot about how I approach drink making.

Ligori: Speaking of the recipes, they range from simple to complex. Were there any drinks that were just a total failure or that you wanted to include, but for some reason couldn’t?

Eckroth: I really wanted to present this book with a wide range of drinks. For me it was really important that there are some everyday drinks, [with] two ingredients that don’t require any preparation, just toss it together and have something tasty. But a lot of what I really get inspired by are these more complex, once-in-a-while drinks. I don’t expect people to make these every day, but they are a fun process to go through in order to appreciate coffee in a different way, in order to taste it in a different way.

We knew there were gonna be nine to 10 brewing methods in the book and I really wanted every single brewing method to also have a signature beverage. So no matter what brewer you have at home there will be something in there for you. Additionally, the very last chapter is entirely drinks from my time in the U.S. Barista Championship. Those are high complexity drinks [and] I applaud anyone who goes through all the work to make them. They are absolutely delicious. I wanted to have those in so whether you make them or not, they can hopefully be something that sparks curiosity. They can be aspirational. They can really just allow you to [understand] what coffee can be if you put in a little extra effort.

Ligori: What do you hope that people take away from this book?

Eckroth: My hope is people have a little bit more curiosity in coffee. The goal of writing this book — even though there is a large chunk of educational, how-to recipes — was that you could read it front to back. Even if you never made anything, [you could] still have a really good time with it.

There’s a lot of personal essays and short stories interjected in there to hopefully bring some kind of humanity back into the very technical aspects of brewing. I hope even if you never make any of the drinks you leave wondering a little bit more about coffee because it’s this incredible beverage that I think is very easy to take for granted. [We] kind of assume we’ll always have access to it, which isn’t necessarily true. I think the more people who are curious about what coffee can be, the better that will be for the entire industry.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/10/28/from-barista-to-influencer-to-author-meet-portland-morgan-eckroth/