Journaling & Field Notes
How to Keep a Coffee Journal for Your Marikina Café Adventures
A simple coffee journal method for café hopping in Marikina: what to write on each page, prompts to copy, and how the Marikina Field Notes fits in.
A coffee journal is a notebook where every café visit gets its own page. It turns "we should try that place sometime" into a small collection you can flip through, and it makes you taste what you are drinking instead of finishing it on autopilot.
Marikina is a good city to start one in. The Marikina coffee shop directory lists dozens of independent, locally born cafés grouped by barangay, which is more than enough to fill a notebook.
What to write on each page
Keep the same seven lines for every café so the pages are easy to compare later.
- Where and when. Café name, barangay, date, time of day.
- What you ordered. The exact drink, hot or iced, and anything you ate.
- What you paid. Prices change, and it is fun to look back.
- First sip. Three words. Sweet, nutty, thin, bright, smoky, whatever comes first.
- The seat. Where you sat and what you could see from it.
- One overheard or noticed thing. A song, a dog, a conversation, the weather.
- Would you return? Yes, no, or "only for the cake."
Prompts for when the page feels empty
- What did the barista do that you would not have thought of?
- If this drink were a street in Marikina, which one would it be?
- Who would you bring here, and why them?
- What is the worst thing about this visit? Write that down too. Bad coffee makes a better story than good coffee.
Add something that is not writing
Tape in the receipt. Trace the bottom of the cup. Press the paper sleeve flat and glue it down. Draw the pastry before you eat it, even badly. These are the pages you will look at most in a year.
Plan a route
Pick one barangay per weekend, or follow a ready-made café hopping itinerary for Marikina. If you want a quiet table for writing, start with the list of study-friendly cafés in Marikina, since the same things that suit studying (space, outlets, no rush) suit journaling.
The notebook we make for this
The Marikina Field Notes is a ₱100 handmade notebook from our studio, made for documenting days around the city. Its welcome letter even warns you that some visits will be memorable for bad coffee and strange desserts. There is a café edition too. See what people are making with it at @marikinafieldnotes on Instagram.
Quick answers
What is a coffee journal?
A notebook where you record each café visit or cup of coffee: what you ordered, how it tasted, what it cost and what the moment was like.
What should I write in a coffee journal?
Start with the café name, date, your order, the price, three taste words, where you sat, and whether you would come back. Add receipts or small sketches if you like.
Do I need a special notebook?
No, any notebook works. We make the Marikina Field Notes for exactly this, but the habit matters more than the paper.