Road leading to coffee farms in the highlands of western Honduras near Santa Barbara National Park.

For decades, the classic washed or wet-processed coffees of Central America and Mexico have constituted one of the world’s great go-to coffee types. Usually clean-tasting, usually sweetly-tart, with a shifting array of fruit notes – always stone fruit, typically some citrus and flowers, always notes ranging from nut and caramel to full-on dark chocolate depending on the coffee and roast. And most likely some aromatic wood, from the sweet-pungent odor of fresh-cut cedar to scorchy pine in darker roasts. The details might differ by farm or origin — Panama was particularly known for clean, soft versions of the type, Costa Rica for equally clean but brighter, more forceful versions, Guatemala for more depth and intrigue, not always so clean, perhaps, but with unexpected sensory surprises arising from less predictable coffee varieties and local variations in processing methods. El Salvador: owing to the widespread cultivation of the classic Bourbon variety and lower growing elevations, lightly stated but slightly more melodic and complex variations on the type than, say, Costa Rica.

Washing channel at a wet mill in Antigua, Guatemala.

These types not only appeared regularly on the menus of specialty coffee roasters as single origins, but contributed to blends as one of the three pillars of standard “all-Arabica” blends of the period — Colombia for body and intensity, Brazil for softening nut and chocolate (and cost savings), and the Central for light-footed vivacity and a lyrical lift.

I expect that among some coffee drinkers, the classic Central profile remains the archetypal taste of coffee. Both the cup similarities among Central America coffee types and their relatively subtle differences arose from the same sources. Similar because of similar processing methods (fruit removal by ferment and washing before drying the beans) and similar tree varieties (all derived ultimately from a few trees brought from Yemen to the rest of the world in the early 18th century). Their differences? Variations in details of processing and differences among those closely related tree varieties: sturdy, straightforward Caturra in Costa Rica, more complex and variable Bourbon in El Salvador, for example. Plus, there was consensus all along the supply chain — from growers to coffee mills to exporters to importers and roasters — about how each of these regional variations on the Central America cup should taste, and all of the actors in the supply chain supported these variations on a theme through their choices.

The Different Overtakes the Classic

Those who have followed the high end of the specialty coffee market over the last decade know roughly what happened to change all that. Above all, a new enthusiasm for the different and striking among specialty roasters and their customers: We want Ethiopias because they are more intensely floral and fruit-toned than those regular old Centrals. We want dried-in-the-fruit or natural processed coffees because they are big, fruity and often alcohol-toned. We want honey-processed coffees because they taste different and “anaerobic” coffees fermented in oxygen-depriving tanks and bags because they taste even more different.

This trend toward cup differentiation has been abetted by accidents of history: by the rediscovery of the extraordinary Geisha variety growing in Panama in 2004, for example. True Panama Geishas made a classic Central America cup produced from trees of the familiar varieties grown in Central America like Typica, Caturra, or even Bourbon taste a little like a coffee version of Budweiser or an art-opening white wine. Then, add all of the new processing wrinkles — naturals, honeys, etc. — to the already strikingly different-tasting Geisha, and you have a range of coffee expressions almost calculated to make the classic Central America washed cup seem, well, forgettable.

Abetted by Rust and Low Prices

All of this change was intensified by a succession of disastrous developments at origin in Central America and Mexico: First, the coffee leaf rust epidemic starting in 2012, which drastically reduced production while outright destroying entire coffee farms and districts. On the back of the rust came a catastrophic decrease in price paid for — yes, that same benchmark clean Central washed coffee type, a type that has added life and animation to premium blends for decades. In 2020, farmers are likely to be paid around $1 to $1.50 per pound for such clean, standard coffees, an outrageous price, given that in 1997 (based on statistics published by the International Coffee Organization) they were paid an average of $1.89 per pound for that same coffee type. If we figure in an inflation rate of 3% per year, they should be paid somewhere around $3.60 per pound for this meticulously prepared coffee type rather than the insulting pittance they are getting for it now.

If You Can’t Beat’Em, Join’Em

For those Central America growers committed to continuing to produce coffee rather than switching to fruit or macadamia nuts, the path forward probably looks clear enough: Depart from the orthodox. Start producing coffees that taste different from the washed Central norm. Experiment with new processing methods and tree varieties. Leave high-end commodity coffee behind and plunge into the new specialty coffee world.

As example, take the results of the latest Cup of Excellence (COE) green coffee competition in Costa Rica, once a bastion of the clean, bright, familiar Central America washed cup. Of 26 prize-winning coffees in the 2020 COE competition, only five were washed-process. The others were honey-processed (10), reduced oxygen fermentation/anaerobic-processed (seven) and natural-processed (four). Of the 26 winners, 10 were from trees of the Geisha variety and eight from trees of SL-28 or other varieties first developed in Kenya. That means that only 10 of 26 were produced from the more familiar coffee varieties long grown in Costa Rica.

Finally, this Month’s Theme

Why go into this history? Partly because we hope readers may find it interesting, even important, but also because it introduces, finally, the theme of this month’s tasting report: What is happening today with the familiar, once- and maybe still-beloved classic washed Central America cup?

What options are there for the coffee lover who may be put off by natural-processed coffees that taste like brandied cherries or Ethiopias that taste like perfume, or anaerobic-processed coffees that taste like almost anything, including strawberry yogurt or sweet mushrooms or fresh perspiration?

Hey, where’s my coffee? My real coffee, that tastes like coffee used to?

62 Shots at the Classic

Well, that classic cup is still around, though you may need to look for it among all the natural-processed, honey-processed, whatever-processed variations.

Women from Mayan Village Coffee in Chiapas, Mexico, producers of Mr. Espresso’s 92-point Mexico Mayan Village Women’s Lot. Photo courtesy of Mr. Espresso.

We cupped 62 coffees for this month’s report, all washed-process from tree varieties not named Geisha, meaning that these samples were as close as we could get through description alone to the familiar classic washed cup of Central America and Mexico. Of the  62 samples we tested, four were from Mexico, six each from El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama and Nicaragua, 10 from Honduras, and an impressive 24 from Guatemala.

Fifteen of the 62 attracted ratings of 92 or higher. One sample, the El Salvador Santa Elena Pacamara, topped the ratings at 94. Six more excellent samples came in at 93 (three Guatemala, two Honduras and one El Salvador), and eight more at 92 (three Guatemala, two Honduras, and one each from El Salvador, Costa Rica and Mexico).

Women sorting coffee cherry in Antigua, Guatemala.

The fact that we received the highest number of classic washed samples from Guatemala and Honduras should be no surprise for industry insiders since, for different historical reasons, these two origins tend to be more traditional than other Central American industries, with a bit less emphasis on experiment and change. Guatemala, in particular, has been inclined to stick with respected old-fashioned tree varieties (Bourbon, Caturra) and traditional washed processing methods, one of the reasons presumably that we received 24 qualifying samples from Guatemala and six of them did particularly well at 92 to 93. Honduras has generally remained loyal to traditional processing methods, but those methods are largely applied to disease-resistant hybrid varieties not known for their distinctive cup character. Nevertheless, we reviewed two outstanding Honduras samples at 93 and two more at 92.

However, Costa Rica and Panama have pretty much gone all-out for experiment and change, largely leaving the traditional washed cup behind. We did receive six qualifying samples from Panama, one of which nosed up toward 92, but the focus of the Panama industry today appears to be alternative processing methods and, above all, Geisha, Geisha and Geisha. In Costa Rica, owing mainly to environmental regulations that make traditional washed processing too expensive for small producers, processing variations are the rule, regardless of variety. Costa Rica, in particular, has led the recent innovations in honey processing (removing the skins from the beans but drying them inside all or most of the fruit flesh). The success of the six El Salvador samples (one each at 94, 93 and 92) is most likely founded on El Salvador producers’ continued loyalty to distinguished tree varieties: Bourbon, Pacamara, and, increasingly, varieties introduced from Kenya.

Half-Full, Half-Empty

For the hypothetical lover of the classic Central America cup, these results suggest a glass either half-full or half-empty.

From the half-empty perspective, those samples we did not review, those that came in in the middle ranges of 88 through 90, say, were satisfactory enough, solid coffees, but lagged mainly because they didn’t have enough aromatic complication, or weren’t juicy and lively enough in acidity and structure. They were poised but too plain. Rather than expressing a transcendent balance that comes from a surprising surfeit of the familiar, they just came across as, well, familiar.

But from the half-full point of view, there were plenty of balanced, bright, vivacious cups among those we reviewed, many with deepening savory underpinnings, all subtly different but reassuring familiar in their broad coffee expression.

Fredy Morales of Finca Rosma in Guatemala’s Huehuetenango Department. Courtesy of Corvus Coffee.

Glance through the reviews and you will see an expansive range of sensory excitement, from the tropical orchid and tamarind lean of the Corvus Guatemala El Plan Rosma (93) to the savory chocolate and spice of Kaldi’s Guatemala Carlos Rivas (93) to the deep-toned, pineapple-centered fruit of the Atom Guatemala Bella Carmona (93). In structure, there are more commonalities than differences, but pleasing ones. Often a tendency toward the classically bright and juicy is juxtaposed against a savory depth, frequently complicated by spice or aromatic wood (GK El Salvador Santa Elena Pacamara, 94). With other samples, a brightly juicy structure flat-out drives the cup from the get-go (Triple Coffee Olvin Valle Honduras, 93; Bird Rock El Salvador Las Mercedes La Avila, 93).

These are all variations on the great classic cup of Mexico south to Panama, a cup that gives us comforting familiarity with quiet, though limitless variation. May it endure.

The post The Fate of a Classic: Washed Central America Coffees appeared first on Coffee Review.

We track the specialty coffee industry obsessively, day in and day out, documenting its latest trends toward bespoke experiences (both at cafés and at home) and celebrating the farmers and roasters who are pushing the envelope of coffee experimentation and differentiation in unprecedented ways.

But what options are available to coffee-lovers who don’t have the time or inclination to order coffees online from artisanal roasters or stop by a local specialty roaster’s shop? Can they simply stroll the coffee aisle of their local chain supermarket and toss something into the cart with the rest of the week’s shopping that will light up their mornings with a similar excitement?

Starting Point: Single-Origin, Whole-Bean

Most of the coffees to which Coffee Review awards high ratings are produced on a single farm or in a single country; in other words, they are not blends. And almost all are sold as whole beans rather than pre-ground. So we made these our two main criteria for this report: We would buy coffees single-origin, whole-bean coffees available in large supermarket chains, the kinds of coffees Coffee Review readers might find particularly attractive. Our working hypothesis was that, as the specialty coffee market grows and the nationwide demand for more accessibility to locally sourced products on supermarket shelves increases, we would see more local roasters and distinctive coffees represented in supermarkets across the U.S. (As it turned out, there were a lot of locally roasted coffees available in the chains we visited, but most were blends and most of those were pre-ground. More on that later.)

Coffee aisle in a Safeway supermarket, Portland, Oregon. Courtesy of Ron Walters.

Where We Shopped

We cast a fairly wide net, sampling stores in four discrete geographical regions of the U.S.: northern California’s East Bay region; Winston-Salem, North Carolina and the suburb of Clemmons; Madison, Wisconsin; and the greater Chicago metropolitan area.

We tested 38 coffees for this report, all whole-bean single-origin and all purchased from supermarket shelves in the regions noted above. We tried to include as many of the big grocery chains as possible. We sampled coffees from Whole Foods (owned by Amazon) in Berkeley, California and in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Mariano’s (owned by Kroger) and Jewel-Osco (owned by Albertsons) in Chicago; Publix (employee-owned) in Winston-Salem and Harris-Teeter (owned by Kroger) in Clemmons, North Carolina; Safeway (owned by Albertsons) in Oakland, California; Woodman’s (employee-owned) and Metro Market (owned by Kroger) in Madison, Wisconsin; Trader Joe’s (owned by T.A.C.T. Holding, Inc.) in Oakland, California; Costco (privately owned) in Albany, California; and Sprouts Farmers Market (owned by Apollo Global) in Oakland, California.

What We Found

Scores for the 38 tested samples ranged from 78 (well below specialty grade) to 93. Nine rated 90-93, and we review these 90+ samples in conjunction with this report. We also added reviews for five more coffees (four of them bargains) ranging in score from 87 to 89.

Here are the nine samples that topped 90:

Counter Culture Idido, 93 (Whole Foods Market, Berkeley; $14.99/12 ounces)

Equator Coffee Ethiopia FTO, 92 (Whole Foods Market, Berkeley; $17.99/12 ounces)

Larry’s Organic Ethiopia Sidamo, 92 (Whole Foods Market, Winston-Salem; $13.99/12 ounces)

Big Shoulders Colombia, 91 (Mariano’s, Chicago; $10.95/12 ounces)

3-19 Honduras Atanacio Nolasco, 90 (Whole Foods Market, Berkeley; $14.99/12 ounces)

Signature Reserve Sidamo Ethiopian Suke Quto, 90 (Safeway, Oakland; $11.29/12 ounces)

Joe Van Gogh Ethiopia Sidamo Natural, 90 (Whole Foods Market, Winston-Salem; $13.99/12 ounces)

Allegro Coffee Roasters Kenya Zuri, 90 (Whole Foods Market, Berkeley; $14.99/12 ounces)

Café Femenino Guatemala Dark Roast, 90 (Whole Foods Market, Winston-Salem; $13.99/12 ounces)

Here are five runners-up at 87-89. The first four represent impressive ratings-to-dollar values.

HT Traders Colombian Supremo, 89 (Harris-Teeter, Clemmons, North Carolina; $4.99/12 ounces)

Cameron’s Guatemala bulk, 89 (Woodman’s, Madison; $6.99/16 ounces)

8 O’Clock Colombia, 88 (Woodman’s, Madison; $9.29/22 ounces)

Hills Bros 100% Guatemalan, 87 (Woodman’s, Madison; $8.99/32 ounces

Starbucks Sumatra, 87 (Publix, Winston-Salem; $10.49/12 ounces)

Some Takeaways

An Edge for Whole Foods Markets. If you are shopping large food stores for single-origin, whole-bean coffees of high quality and distinctive character, you are most likely to find them at a Whole Foods Market. True, Whole Foods’ focus on specialty products may make them appear atypical as supermarkets, but their size, comprehensive range of offerings and wide national reach (around 500 stores nationally) clearly qualify them for the category. And they definitely support local coffee roasters. The Berkeley Whole Foods we shopped at had close to 20 local roasters on its shelves; the Winston-Salem store had roughly 10.

People shopping at the Whole Foods supermarket in Santa Clara, California.

What’s interesting about Whole Foods leading the local charge is that the brand has its own roasting operation under the labels Allegro and Allegro Coffee Roasters. The former is an imprint from the Thornton, Colorado headquarters, while the latter is a small-batch “craft” roastery with four locations: Berkeley, Chicago, Denver and New York. A spokesperson for Allegro said, “Whole Foods is committed to offering local coffees across our markets in addition to our own brand. Consumers should have a full range of choices available.”

The Ethiopia Edge. Five of this month’s nine highest-rated coffees were Ethiopias. Good news for supermarket specialty coffee shoppers, as Ethiopia produces some of the most exciting coffees in the world at affordable prices. Mixed news for Ethiopian coffee producers, who probably should be paid a bit more for their consistently exceptional coffees.

Women at drying table in Ethiopia. Courtesy of Kenneth Davids.

Pay More, Get Better Coffee. No surprise here, but our sampling generally confirmed that better coffees cost more. All of the 90+ coffees we review here sold roughly in the rating-to-price range that defines what we call “good value” coffees at Coffee Review, but none represented the flat-out bargains that many consumers associate with supermarkets. On the other hand, paying more did not necessarily assure a better coffee. There were some 83-point and 84-point disappointments among the locally roasted Whole Foods Market coffees, for example.

The Bargains. For the really good-deal coffees, we need to drop just a bit lower in the ratings. The 89-rated Cameron’s Guatemala is priced at a low $6.99/16 ounces bulk. We found it at one of the 18 locations of the independent, employee-owned, Wisconsin-based Woodman’s supermarket chain. The HT Trader’s Colombia (89) is also a bargain at $4.99/12 ounces; it is a store brand we purchased at one of the 260 Harris-Teeter Supermarkets located throughout the South Atlantic states. The 8 O’Clock Coffee brand has appeared on grocery store shelves continuously since 1859, when it originated with a company that eventually became the A&P chain of supermarkets. It is now an independent coffee brand still sold at a range of supermarkets, most of them in the eastern half of the country. At 88 points and $9.29 for 22 ounces, the 8 O’Clock Colombia we tested qualifies as another full-on value. Unlike many other long-established supermarket brands, 8 O’Clock has always offered the option of buying its coffees whole bean rather than pre-ground. The Hills Bros Guatemala, a point lower at 87, is another solid value at $8.99 for two pounds.

One Problem with Bargains. The potential shadow hovering over all of these solid but inexpensive coffees is the economic challenge faced by the farmers who produce them. Global coffee prices for consistent, good-quality green coffee are still close to all-time historical lows, suggesting that, at the far end of the supply chain, farmers and farm workers are involuntarily subsidizing some of the low retail prices cited here. Read more about the ongoing coffee price crisis here.

But Plenty of Sustainability-Oriented Certifications. Although at Coffee Review we find less and less emphasis on certifications like organic, fair trade and Rainforest Alliance among the coffees we report on (our 2017 report on organic-certified coffees from Africa hypothesizes about the reasons for this), roughly a third of the 38 coffees we cupped for this report displayed one or more certifications. Perhaps certifications are a more powerful market differentiator in a supermarket context, where coffees present themselves as relatively anonymous choices, whereas for a coffee-lover already considering paying top dollar for a micro-lot differentiated by tree variety and processing method, certification may come across as a minor selling point. And in the supermarket context, it’s likely that certifications are attractive to the same shoppers who routinely give preference to organic, fair trade produce. Supermarket News reported in May 2019 that organic sales rose 6.3% to $52.5 billion last year, breaking the $50 billion mark for the first time. Four of the nine 90+ coffees we review here carry either USDA Organic certification, fair trade certification, or both.

The Blends that Swallowed the Single-Origins. One of the striking findings of our survey was how the selection of single-origin coffees available in the supermarket appears to have shrunk to be replaced by blends. This makes sense, of course, given the importance of price in supermarket sales. It’s easier to trim cost while maintaining consistency if you can juggle coffees from various origins in a blend, rather than being limited to sourcing from one origin only. On the other hand, certain single-origin names have always constituted free brands that have accumulated great consumer loyalty over the years. So what do you do if you want to take advantage of that loyalty to certain famous origin names if you can’t buy enough good, characteristic coffee from those origins at prices that will help turn you a profit in the supermarket?

Starbucks Sumatra at a Safeway in Portland, Oregon. Courtesy of Ron Walters.

We found two coffees offered by Starbucks that are identified in large print on the front of the bag as representing certain well-known and admired single-origins: Kenya and Costa Rica. But a reading of the fine print on both bags reveals that they are actually blends that combine coffees from the headlined origins with similar coffees from neighboring origins, which are not named. We tested the Kenya blend and it was a pleasant enough coffee that we rated 89, but it did not read like a big, full-throated Kenya. We do review here, at 87, a true single-origin Starbucks coffee, a Sumatra, that appeared to have national distribution (we found it at Safeway in northern California and Portland, Oregon, and, as reviewed here, in a Publix supermarket in Winston-Salem, North Carolina).

The Freshness Conundrum. Finally, there’s the issue of freshness in supermarket coffees. One way to measure potential for freshness in a sealed coffee bag is to measure how much residual oxygen remains in the bag with the coffee before the consumer opens it. The more staling oxygen left in the bag, the more likely the aromatics may have faded. Coffees packaged with expensive, state-of-the-art equipment may show 0% oxygen at the point they are opened (true here of all of the Starbucks samples, the HT Traders Colombia, and the 8 O’Clock Colombia). Coffees not protected at all will show about the same amount of oxygen as in the atmosphere (around 21%). Most of the coffees we review here, those that did not display 0% oxygen, showed between 7% and 19%.

What appeared to be true for this month’s samples, however, is that the quality of the coffee inside the bags (plus perhaps the persistence of stores and suppliers in maintaining fresh inventory) seemed to be more important to netting a high-rated cup than the integrity of the packaging as reflected in % residual oxygen. All of the 90+-rated coffees showed 7% or more oxygen in the bag, one as high as 19%. On the other hand, none of the coffees that showed 0% residual oxygen made it to 90 points, and two (not listed here) showing 0% came in quite low at 84 and 85. It is true that the five top-rated samples for this month averaged 11.6% oxygen, whereas the four somewhat lower-rated of the nine averaged 17.25%. Significant? Perhaps. (See Kenneth Davids’ 2016 supermarket report for more about the influence of oxygen on freshness.)

Summing Up

It would appear, based on our limited survey of three regional markets, that unless you shop at a Whole Foods Market, you are not likely to find supermarket equivalents of the fine and varied single-origin coffees we celebrate at Coffee Review. But, if you do shop elsewhere and are satisfied with a solid, classic cup, you may find it in the form of certain single-origin Colombias, such as the 91-point Big Shoulders Colombia (Mariano’s, Chicago), the HT Traders 89-point Colombia (Harris-Teeter, in the South-Atlantic states) and the 8 O’Clock 88-point Colombia.

True, the selection of blends was much richer in the chains we shopped for this report than the selection of single-origins. But our assessment of those blends will have to wait until another year and another supermarket shopping spree.

(Thanks to Leslie Lowdermilk, Tim Coonan and Michael Johnson for help in purchasing coffees for this report.)

The post Single-Origin Coffees in Supermarkets appeared first on Coffee Review.

Perhaps you could say that some of the coffees we review this month invite a similar approach to evaluation. If we look at them only using criteria we applied to coffees 10 years ago, we might find many of them rather flawed. Good body and mouthfeel, yes. Usually sweet, but often sour too: think plain yogurt or sour beer. And the aroma and flavor they display is often familiar in detail yet still wildly original in totality — tropical fruits, sweet herbs and spices, and on one occasion a very distinct, dominating collection of notes suggesting the fusion of cocoa, cinnamon and sugar that gives Mexican hot chocolate its distinction. We also had a sample that tasted a lot like gingerbread, and another remarkably like pumpkin pudding (neither is reviewed here).

The New World of Anything-Goes Processing

Rodrigo Sanchez, producer of the Old Soul Co. Colombia Monteblanco Gesha Cold Fermentation. Courtesy of Old Soul Coffee Co.

Fermentation is a tricky term with lots of technical caveats, but in the beverage world, it is usually broadly defined as the chemical breakdown of a substance by bacteria, yeasts or other microorganisms. In traditional processing of coffee by the wet or washed method, the freshly skinned or pulped fruit is put into tanks to ferment, powered by whatever yeasts and bacteria are present in the immediate environment. The goal in such traditional ferment is simply to break down and soften the sweet, sticky fruit flesh so it later can be easily washed off the beans before they are dried. Any influence on the taste of the final coffee by the ferment step was disregarded, to the point that many leading technical experts in coffee argued that the fermentation step in wet-processing is a labor-intensive tradition with no discernible impact on taste and that it should be replaced by scrubbing the sticky flesh off the beans by machines called mechanical demucilagers (as is now the practice in many places in the world).

Colläge Coffee’s Joe Funte at his Pennsylvania roastery.

The Beauty of Alcohol Ferment: The New Naturals

Meanwhile, the specialty side of the coffee world was busy heading in the other direction: It discovered the potential beauty of coffees that add a little sweet, alcohol-tending ferment to the cup through the bean being dried in the entire fruit, with the sweet fruit flesh sealed around the bean by the skin. These are the “new naturals,” carefully refined small-batch variations on the ancient practice of drying coffee in the whole fruit. These juicy, fruit-bomb coffees have erupted in popularity at the top end of the specialty market over the past few years. (See our 2010 report, Brandy and Surprises: The New Naturals.) In this case, fermentation, particularly of sugars or carbohydrates by yeasts that occurs while the fruit is drying, produces a lush sweetness, often with a hint of alcohol created by the work of the yeasts, resulting in wine-like, or brandy-like, or any number of other alcohol-associated notes. If, however, through any number of careless practices, the wrong microorganisms become involved in these processes and the fruit molds or rots, we encounter instead the unpleasant-to-repulsive notes common with cheap natural-processed coffees the world over.

The Key Wrinkle: Reduced Oxygen Fermentation

Which gets us back to this month’s experimental coffees. The details of these new experiments vary, but two constants run through them all: First, they are all complex and labor-intensive, and second, at some point the coffee is subject to fermentation with reduced oxygen (loosely called anaerobic fermentation), which encourages the formation of lactic acids (dominant in fermented foods like yogurt, kimchee, sauerkraut, sourdough bread) rather than alcohol (created by oxygen-loving yeasts and dominant in alcoholic beverages). The effort is to partly suppress the action of yeasts in the ferment, which tend to create fruity, alcohol notes, while encouraging, through reducing the availability of oxygen, the action of bacteria that create sweet-tart lactic acids.

How and Why?

Why? Apparently to create new taste profiles in coffee, to explore coffee as an art, and to create a differentiated coffee that will attract more attention and higher prices from specialty roasters. See below for our take on the success of these efforts.

How? Usually by sealing the coffee (sometimes in the whole fruit) inside tanks in which the air and its oxygen is gradually replaced by carbon dioxide, or simply by sealing it in impermeable sacks or bags. Most of the successful experiments we review here involved sealing in tanks.

Manzanita Roasting Company’s Costa Rica Anaerobic wearing the bronze medal it won at the 2019 Golden Bean North America competition. Courtesy of Manzanita Roasting.

More Detail on the How

For example, the Costa Rica Anaerobic process roasted by Colläge Coffee (93), Manzanita Coffee (93) and Black & White Coffee Roasters (93) were all produced by the same farmer from particularly ripe fruit with high sugar content. The skins were removed and the beans, still enveloped in their sugary flesh or mucilage, were sealed inside tanks, where they fermented with limited oxygen, promoting lowered yeast activity but intensified activity of lactic acid-promoting bacteria. The result, in the case of two of the samples, was complex and engaging notes we associated with chocolate, perhaps raw chocolate, plus cinnamon and an exciting array of other spices. In the Colläge sample, this flavor complex struck us as a dead ringer for the cakes used to produce Mexican chocolate that combine chocolate, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon. With the Manzanita sample, a similar engaging range of chocolate and sweet spice notes displayed. The Black & White sample showed a complex we read as a combination of dried apricot and honey, but it, like the other two samples, displayed the same pleasing complexity and sweet-savory depth. (By the way, we did not compare notes while, or even after, we tested these three coffees. We tested the samples separately on different days and generated the reviews separately. Reassuringly, the ratings came out the same and the descriptors overlapped closely in two cases.)

Jason Yu of Dory Coffee at his roaster. Courtesy of Dory Coffee.

With two other samples using lactic acid-promoting ferment, the Dory Coffee Ethiopia Anaerobic (93) and the Lucky Café Colombia Finca El Paraiso Double Anaerobic Geisha (92), the fermentation was carried out in two phases: First, the entire fruit was subjected to fermentation in a sealed container for approximately two days, then it was removed and the skins removed from beans, after which they were placed back in the sealed tanks inside their fruit flesh or mucilage for about another three days before drying. The Dory coffee showed the distinct sweet-spice tendency of the other anaerobic/lactic acid experiments but with a bit less intensity and more balance. The Lucky Café Colombia started with a green coffee from the always aromatically exciting Geisha variety of Arabica, and perhaps owing to the impact of this dynamic variety, or perhaps more to the details of the processing, it displayed a particularly wild and wide range of tastes and aromas, including musk and yogurt, notes that made sporadic appearances in other of this month’s coffees, though less prominently than here.

Apparently, the Small Eyes Café Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Adorsi (92) was sealed inside limited oxygen tanks in whole bean rather than after skin removal, making it an “anaerobic natural,” to use current nomenclature. The lactic acid influence here can be felt in the sweet yet bracingly brisk structure, as well as perfumy, musky aromatics complicated by a sort of strawberry yogurt suggestion.

The Champion of Shock and Surprise

Certainly the most startling and extreme profile among the seven experimental process coffees reviewed for this report is the top-rated Willoughby’s Panama Perci Geisha (96) generated by the relentlessly innovating Panama producer Ninety Plus Gesha Estates. Ninety Plus is quite reticent (okay, secretive) about the details of its processing experiments, but this sample projects with a particular, even disturbing intensity certain of the tendencies cited for the other experimental samples described here. Along with an explosion of pleasingly familiar aromatics (tropical fruit, dark chocolate) come a whole shelf of herb and spice, a yogurt-like lactic-acid twist to the structure, and deep, musky suggestions.

The Tricky Question of Terminology

The innovating edge of the coffee industry appears to have settled on the term “anaerobic fermentation” for the processes I’ve been describing. An alternative name proposed by others is “lactic acid fermentation,” referring to the goal of intensifying fermentation by bacteria that produce lactic acids associated with yogurts and fermented vegetable foods. Those of a technical turn of mind have objected to the term anaerobic because the tanks and bags involved do not eliminate oxygen from the process, only reduce it. In fact, they raise issues about the accuracy of the term “fermentation” to start with as it applies to coffee processing.

Tom Chuang of Small Eyes Cafe at his Taiwan-built Yang-Chia Bella Mini 500 roasting machine. Courtesy of Small Eyes Cafe.

But the language used to describe processing methods in coffee has never been distinguished by its technical rigor. “Natural,” the most widely used term for coffees dried in the whole fruit, is a case in point. For years, I tried to refer to these coffees by the explicit language “dried in the fruit,” but no one took me up on it. After all, “natural” is one word, and it’s a cool word with positive associations; furthermore, it’s an infinitely superior word to “unwashed,” the old industry term for coffees dried in the whole fruit. So if it turns out that the coffee world goes for “anaerobic,” so be it.

Out-of-Competition Standouts

Finally, we celebrate three additional fine coffees supplementing the anaerobic/lactic-acid-processed coffees focused on so far. All three of these coffees benefited from creative variations in the fermentation step, with original and engaging results, though none pushed the envelope quite as forcefully as the seven we review as part of this report.

The Old Soul Colombia Monteblanco Gesha Cold Fermentation (93)  embodied a particularly interesting processing variation. Here the fruit, picked at its peak sweetness, was initially fermented in the whole fruit for three days in refrigerated tanks, aiming to complicate and deepen the sensory character of the coffee by slowing down the chemical changes associated with the early stages of processing. In this case, the result seemed to emphasize the deeply sweet yet brisk, complexly savory side of the Gesha profile.

The fine Coffeebar Sidama Naia Bombe Dry Ferment (93) added no water to the fermentation tank and applied other refinements to the drying stage to encourage a particularly spicy floral character and a tart yet juicy structure. Finally, the 94 Fresh Coffee Costa Rica Brunca Finca Vista Passion Honey (93) employed refinements to the drying stage of the honey process (beans are dried with the skins removed but the fruit flesh still enveloping them) to promote a very delicate, chocolaty alcohol ferment balanced by zesty lime.

More on the Way

Clearly, we will be seeing more producers pushing the envelope in regard to processing methods, particularly through the creative use of fermentation during the interval between picking and drying. The results of the more radical of these experiments will likely continue to impress lovers of change and excitement while helping us all better understand our favorite beverage and its expressive potential.

The post Anaerobic Fermentation and Other Palate-Bending Processing Experiments appeared first on Coffee Review.

As we have done for the past six years, our editors will rank the most exciting coffees from the thousands we cupped over the course of the past year.  We will select and rank these 30 exciting coffees and espressos based on quality (represented by overall rating); value (reflected by most affordable price per pound); and other factors that include distinctiveness of style, uniqueness of origin, tree variety, processing method, certification, and general rarity.

As in past years, we will supplement our Top 30 by recognizing fine coffees from other parts of the world and/or produced from less celebrated botanical varieties that don’t necessarily earn the highest scores.

View the Top 30 Coffees from past years:

Top 30 of 2018

Top 30 of 2017

Top 30 of 2016

Top 30 of 2015

Top 30 of 2014

Top 30 of 2013

The post Top 30 Kicks Off Monday, November 25 appeared first on Coffee Review.

The problem with reporting scores above 95 is the question of relativity of taste. At Coffee Review, we aim to reflect and interpret the broad gustatory values of the leading edge of the global coffee community. You can find an essay on how we attempt to do that and why at The 100-Point Rating Paradox. And I feel pretty confident about the Coffee Review team’s consistency and judgment in respect to scores up through 94 or 95. However, I regret to say that we seldom have complete consensus when we start pushing past 95. When the three of us emerge from our slurp-ridden silence around the cupping table and share our ratings, and if two of us have pushed up past 95 or 96, there is almost always one holding out for a lower score (and perhaps another holding out for an even higher score). I am usually in the middle somewhere, listening carefully to my younger colleagues who have fresher noses than me but less experience, then carrying their testimony back to the cup and testing it against what I genuinely experience there. If the three of us remain stuck, I usually make the final call, often in the face of barely concealed resentment from the odd cupper out.

A Possible Socio-Economic Embarrassment

Awarding our first 98 to this particular coffee raised another uncomfortable issue. This is a coffee that just broke all price records for a publicly auctioned green coffee at US$1,029 per pound green, coming at a moment in history when most coffee producers are being paid an all-time low price of around US$1 per pound for good-quality green coffee that has not been recognized in a competition. As my colleague Kim Westerman wrote in our September 2019 tasting report, does this mean that the coffee industry is “hollowing out in the middle, increasingly divided between a tiny prestige-chasing elite and a vast, anonymous commodity machine?”

So when it came to evaluating this coffee, I might have preferred Coffee Review to have been the cupper in the crowd who pointed out that the emperor had left his new clothes at home.

But we have always tried to report honorably and honestly on what we actually taste, not what we’re told we should be tasting, even when those scores may be higher (or lower) than others expect. I recall we gave high ratings to many fair trade coffees back when major components of the industry were busy bashing them across the board for their purported poor quality. And we gave high ratings to lovely fruity but clean naturals when most coffee professionals were still busy dismissing them as tainted.

So, when I looked at my score sheet and found that my attribute scores totaled not just a 98, but a rather high 98, and when I learned that another colleague had the same score, I decided to roll over and go high. We had cupped this same celebrated green coffee from other distinguished roasters and scored it 96 and 97. Clearly this was an extraordinary coffee, with this particular version optimally roasted (at least by our taste) by Tamas Christman of Dragonfly Coffee Roasters in Boulder, Colorado.

Everyday Pleasure and Art

Of course, almost nobody in the world will be able to share our pleasure in this coffee, even if they could afford to buy it. The quantities available are so small that it has been largely pre-sold. This is ironic, given that an element of Coffee Review’s mission is to help consumers find and enjoy the best coffees available. And here we are giving a very high rating to a coffee that is essentially not available at any price.

Furthermore, there are coffees available at this moment selling at quite reasonable prices that will doubtless deliver as much, or almost as much, pleasure to your morning as this 98-rated sample might — and at a fraction of the cost. I am drinking such a coffee right now, a lovely, clean, lyrical Ethiopia natural that retails for around US$25 per pound. (It ought to retail for more, particularly if the increase could be gotten back into the hands of the hardworking farmers and mill workers who produced the coffee. They don’t need to be paid a thousand dollars a pound, but they would be very, very happy to get US$10 a pound rather than the US$3 or $4 I expect they probably got.)

But another part of Coffee Review’s mission is approaching coffee as an art as well as an everyday pleasure. We want to celebrate the efforts of those who devote their lives to extending the possibilities of coffee as an aesthetic achievement, including those who crafted this coffee. And art, as anyone knows who reads the results of art auctions in New York or London, is not rationally priced.

You can find the review of this record-breaking Elida Estate Panama Geisha roasted by Dragonfly Coffee Roasters here.

The post At Long Last, a 98-Point Coffee appeared first on Coffee Review.

In its 2019 beverage trends report, the National Coffee Association (NCA) reports that, while the overall rate of coffee consumption remains flat since last year — 63% of Americans drink coffee every day — what we want in our cup has shifted significantly over the years. For the first time in the NCA’s history of reporting on consumer trends, 2019 marks the year that a whopping 60% of coffee drinkers buy “gourmet” coffee, defined (with breathtaking inclusivity) as “brewed from premium varieties,” while 40% of coffee drinkers aren’t as picky and choose “non-gourmet” coffees that are lower-priced and readily available at supermarkets.

This trend, however vaguely defined by the NCA, might explain the continued roastery boom. This month, we put out a call for coffees from roasters in North America who’ve been open for fewer than two years, and we received 40 samples (36 from U.S. roasters and four from Canadian). We received coffees from roasters completely new to us, as well as coffees from individual roasters we’ve known over the years who left successful brands to start their own roasting businesses. Despite the “newness” of the eight roasteries whose coffees we feature in this report, ranging in score from 91-94, there’s a significant amount of collective expertise among the folks behind these new ventures.

Carving a New Path

Our top-scoring coffee is Toronto-based Stereo Coffee Roasters‘ Kenya Gakundu (94), a classic Kenya with its savory-leaning but nonetheless juicy-bright cup. And we were pleased to find, after blind-cupping all the coffees we received, that this one was roasted by Geoff Polci, formerly of Propeller Coffee, a brand whose coffees have earned high ratings over the years. Polci was instrumental in Propeller being named 2016 Micro-Roaster of the Year by Roast magazine, but he was hankering to open his own shop. Stereo is the fulfillment of that desire and the location of his mission to develop each coffee’s fullest potential, a lofty aim that Polci says has been aided by his consultations with roasting and brewing expert Scott Rao. Kenya is Polci’s favorite coffee origin and, for him, the Gakundu has a “sparkling acidity that just dances on the tongue.”

Geoff Polci, Stereo Coffee’s founder and roaster. Courtesy of Stereo Coffee.

Polci sees the disconnect between the crisis at the farm level and the enjoyment of coffee at the consumer end. He says, “The average coffee consumer has no idea what’s happening at origin — these stories don’t get a lot of coverage.  Roasters need to do a better job educating consumers so they understand why good coffee costs more and why it’s worthwhile to pay more for these products.”

Jake Deome, roaster and founder of Looking Homeward Coffee. Courtesy of Looking Homeward Coffee.

Jake Deome, founder of the new Looking Homeward Coffee, was also a familiar name to us, having roasted for Temple Coffee in Sacramento before taking off for Seattle to launch his own company. In his 12 years in the coffee industry, Deome has been a cashier, barista, lead barista, apprentice coffee roaster, production roaster, head roaster, quality control manager, and green buyer — so it’s fair to say that he knows the ropes. His Ecuador Hernan Zuniga (93) is sweet and rich-toned, with notes of warming spices and honey. Deome’s concept for Looking Homeward is that coffee can be a grounding force in finding where we belong, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. His philosophy of business is that “Paying your workers a living wage isn’t going to bankrupt your company,” and he wants his roastery to be a case in point. He “resists pressures to de-value” his coffee, and he works to educate customers on what it costs to bring a high-quality product to their table.

Tim Taylor, Pedestrian Coffee’s owner and roaster. Courtesy of Pedestrian Coffee.

Pedestrian Coffee, in the Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, Illinois, was founded by another coffee veteran, Tim Taylor, a home roaster who learned the craft by trial and error before opening Ipsento, a brand invested in top-notch sourcing and transparency. His new venture, Pedestrian Coffee, is about taking the pretension out of what should be an accessible experience for all. His shop is located in the corporate headquarters of Grainger, a large tool-supply company whose employees are mostly blue-collar workers who haven’t traditionally been inclined to explore the high-end coffee market. His Ethiopia Guji Uraga we review here at 93 is a classic type, and meets his standards of accessibility, both in terms of flavor profile and price point.

Coffeebar’s Ethiopia Sidama Naia Bomb Natural Vertical Reserve. Courtesy of Coffee bar.

Coffeebar, the largest of the brands whose coffees we review here — we rated its Ethiopia Sidama Naia Bomb Natural Vertical Reserve at 93 —  has been in business for nine years but just began roasting in-house in 2018, a dramatic departure from its old business model that has allowed for much more control over every step of the process. David Wilson, director of coffee, along with owner Greg Buchheister, decided to deepen their relationship with producers at origin by taking on roasting at their end. Wilson, who joined Coffeebar after a stint in importing, says, “Having come back to roasting from importing allowed me to see the crucial role that importers play in the supply chain, a role that is quite often glossed over by roasters. Since the beginning, we’ve tried to focus on building relationships with importers who are more region-specific, and through them work to provide specialty-market access to producers who may not otherwise have it.”

Starting From the Ground Up

For Ryan Choi, roasting coffee is a family affair. He and four family members used to roast on popcorn poppers in the back yard until they took the plunge and launched Foggy Hills Coffee Company in 2018. Choi does his roasting at Bay Area CoRoasters (CoRo) in Berkeley, California, a co-roasting facility that provides access to equipment and technology to roasters at a low-cost entry point. In addition to pursuing careful sourcing and roast-profiling, Choi started a non-profit initiative, “Roasting for Research,” that raises money and awareness for ALS disease. We rated the Foggy Hills Guatemala San Cristobal at 91 for its sweet herbaceousness and bright, citrusy acidity.

Ryan Choi, Foggy Hills Coffee co-founder and roaster. Courtesy of Foggy Hills Coffee.

Souvenir Coffee is a small shop we found in Coffee Review’s own Berkeley, California neighborhood. It turns out that Souvenir, like Foggy Hills, also roasts at Berkeley’s Bay Area CoRoasters. We stopped by the shop and picked up a bag of Souvenir’s Ethiopia Guji Gerbicho Natural, which impressed us at 92 with its cleanly sweet berry notes and delicate, honeysuckle-like florals. We weren’t able to talk with the roaster directly, though the brand’s engaging though rather enigmatic motto is, “People first, then coffee.”

SkyTop Coffee’s stand at the local farmers’ market. Courtesy of SkyTop Coffee.

SkyTop Coffee Company was founded in 2018 by Serena and Aaron Lerner in Cazenovia, New York. Aaron has worked in the specialty coffee industry for 15 years, but in sales, while Serena is a marketing professional whose wheelhouse is in marketing and design. Their shared interest in sustainability led them to the decision to source certified organic and/or fair trade-coffees as much as possible. The Peru Paltachayoc we review here at 91 is both, and it’s also richly chocolaty with gentle, rounded acidity. SkyTop’s mission is three-fold: to highlight the positive impact of organic farming practices; to limit stress on the environment by utilizing compostable product packaging; and to bring awareness to the coffee-pricing crisis affecting farmers at origin.

Serena and Aaron Lerner of SkyTop Coffee. Courtesy of SkyTop Coffee.

Transplanting Talent

Business and life partners Luis Hellmund and Cristina Coll, both from Venezuela, met because of their shared love of coffee. After travels to Miami, Brazil and Boston, where they were exposed to different roasting styles, they began buying small amounts of green coffee from various origins and roasting it at home. They eventually settled in the mountain town of Asheville, North Carolina, which reminded them both of Caracas, and launched South Slope Coffee, a roastery with a decidedly anti-marketing-gimmick bent and a down-to-earth approach to specialty coffee. They chose the Nicaragua Finca Idealista we review here at 92 not only for its lively brightness but also for farmer Ben Weiner’s practice of paying workers double the local wage and buying a rainforest adjacent to his farm so that it wouldn’t be developed.

Third Wave Roasting But a Decided Absence of Snobbery

One common denominator among the eight roasters whose coffees we review here is a stated desire to make high-quality coffee accessible to all, a tricky proposition in the industry right now. Roasters must balance the ethical imperative to pay farmers fairly for their work at origin while educating consumers about what “value” actually means in the complex world of coffee in the 21st century.

All of the coffees we review for this report are medium-light to medium-roasted, indicating each roaster’s desire to highlight the best characteristics of the individual coffee, taking care not to obscure aromas and flavors with too heavy a roast. This approach to roast style puts them squarely in line with the dominant third-wave trends of the last decade of specialty coffee, yet their concern with making quality coffee more accessible to a wider range of consumers might be a recalibration of specialty coffee ideals in response to the new realities of the broader coffee industry.

The post Idealism and Achievement: 8 New North American Roasting Companies appeared first on Coffee Review.

But when one considers that the average price per pound of a high-grown, high-grade Arabica coffee sold through the commodity system is currently barely over one dollar per pound ($1.0035 at this moment, to be exact), what does this huge discrepancy say about the state of coffee as an industry? Is it hollowed out in the middle, increasingly divided between a tiny prestige-chasing elite and a vast, anonymous commodity machine?

Of course, from a pleasure-driven sensory perspective, even decent commodity-grade coffees like the 100% Colombias one finds on supermarket shelves (which probably fall roughly into the buck-a-pound-green price category) bear little resemblance in the cup to a fine Panama Geisha. But neither do such straightforward commodity coffees have much in common with the many fine non-Geisha specialty coffees we often rate at scores of 93 to 95, and which probably cost roasters somewhere around $4 a pound. In this context, these record-breaking auction prices for Geishas seem absurd.

Farmer Rigoberta Herrera, of Granja La Esperanza in Colombia, checking Geisha fruit as it dries. Courtesy of Bird Rock Coffee.

Barry Levine, of Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea in Connecticut, secured eight pounds of the Elida Geisha. Levine is a pioneer in the specialty coffee industry and the longest-standing juror at the Best of Panama competition. While he acknowledges the disturbing dichotomy represented by these extremes at either end of the price scale, he has also witnessed, firsthand, the evolution in quality of Panama Geisha, and he compares these small, highly allocated auction lots to what we routinely see in the wine industry. Cult Cabernet Sauvignons from Napa and first-growth Bordeaux wines — which, unlike coffee, are designed to get better with age — often sell for thousands of dollars a bottle. (In 2018, a single bottle of 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti sold for $558,000.)

And, apart from the excesses of certain auction coffees, even the finest specialty coffee remains very much underpriced, particularly from a producer perspective. See editor Kenneth Davids’ article, “Coffee’s Economic Paradox: $40 Charged in Paris, $3 Paid in Kenya” for some reflections on today’s specialty coffee prices and their relationship to producers.

Why Is Geisha the Darling of the Specialty Coffee Industry?

Why Geisha? What is the particular appeal of this relatively rare variety of Arabica? Geisha was discovered in the Gori Gesha forest of western Ethiopia in the 1930s by British Consul Richard Whalley (in the general vicinity of where the Coffea arabica species itself is thought to have originated). From there, it was carried, relatively anonymously, to East Africa, then Costa Rica, then finally to the Peterson farm in Panama. The Petersons introduced it to the Best of Panama auction in 2004, where it blew the jurors away with its extraordinary aromatics and flawless structure. Essentially, it was unlike any other coffee on the table.

We at Coffee Review have cupped hundreds of Geisha coffees over the years and can confirm its distinctive character. While not all Geishas rise to the level of an Elida or a Hacienda La Esmeralda, the best are abundantly floral, uniquely fruit-toned, and richly cocoa-laden. They really are categorically different from the rest of the world’s coffees. True, the finest coffees produced from indigenous “landrace” Ethiopia varieties often come close to Geisha’s aromatic fireworks, but they are never quite as vast and intricate in their aromatics, nor as authoritative in their structure. And the success of Panama Geishas at auction, along with their demand in the specialty coffee market, has caused farmers in just about every coffee-producing region in the world to try their hand at producing them.

This month’s report features the top-scoring Geishas we cupped from Panama, Ethiopia, and Colombia, ranging in score from 94-97.

A Rose By Any Other Name

Before we get into the details of these nine extraordinary coffees, a brief note about the spelling of Geisha/Gesha. In short, the spelling of this word is quite controversial! Last year’s article in Sprudge, “Stop Calling It Geisha, Already,” by Jenn Chen, argues that “Gesha” is the correct spelling because the coffee was first identified in the Gesha Gori forest, and that the British expedition that found the coffee mislabeled it as “Geisha.” But the Peterson family remains steadfast in its embrace of “Geisha” as the proper name, given that all the official documents related to this coffee’s arrival in Panama spell it that way. Our solution? We go with what the producer prefers. Most Ethiopia producers spell it as “Gesha,” and understandably so, while, most producers in Central and South America spell it as “Geisha,” with the exception of Ninety Plus Coffee, which grows in both Panama and Ethiopia; founder Joseph Brodsky goes with “Gesha.” (Just this week, one of Brodsky’s experimental coffees sold for a reported $10,000 a kilo in Dubai.)

The Nine Top-Scoring Geishas

Of the more than 40 samples submitted from five coffee-producing origins (Panama, Colombia, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala), we rated one from Panama, the Elida Green-Tip Geisha Natural roasted by Willoughby’s Coffee & Tea, at 97; we rated three additional Panamas at 96, 95, and 94; two Colombias at 96, and three Ethiopias at 94.

Mind-Blowing Aromatics at the Top

The Willoughby’s Geisha was truly ethereal, a nuanced, exceptionally lush cup with notes of aprium, star jasmine, pistachio butter, cocoa, pink peppercorn and almond brittle. Levine says it was particularly nerve-wracking for his roaster, Jeff Cannon, to nail the roast profile with only 80 grams of coffee to work with. Because Willoughby’s had only eight pounds total, it was imperative that they waste as little as possible. They sent 50 grams for us to cup and cupped the remaining 30 grams themselves. The plan is to sell it as an experience, in a boxed set that includes 1/4 pound of the coffee along with commemorative items still being considered. Levine may also hold a tasting event for $100 a cup.

The Best of Panama certification for Kakalove Cafe’s lot of the Finca Kalithea Panama Geisha. Courtesy of Kakalove Cafe.

At 96, the Panama Finca Kalithea Natural Geisha roasted by Kakalove Café in Taiwan is a high-toned, delicately fruit-centered cup with notes of mulberry, coconut, sandalwood, dark chocolate and lilac. And at just 750 Taiwan dollars (approximately $24 USD) for four ounces, it’s worth ordering a bag to do a side-by-side. They’re very different coffees, and both very worthy.

Relative Bargains from Colombia

We also rated two Colombia Geishas at 96, a Valle de Cauca natural-process roasted by Bird Rock Coffee in San Diego and a Finca La Maria Geisha Natural roasted by Klatch Coffee in Los Angeles. The former is a savory-sweet cup with notes of chocolate fudge, ripe wild strawberry, honey, macadamia nut and fine Roquefort cheese, while the latter is a cleanly fruit-toned natural with notes of dried raspberry, halvah, plumeria, pink peppercorn and lemon verbena. Both are a relative bargain at $60 and $54.95 for eight ounces, respectively.

A Uniquely Composed Washed-Process Panama

Boulder, Colorado’s Dragonfly Coffee submitted a Panama Hacienda La Esmeralda Super Mario 6 Geisha, the most unusual of the top-scorers in that it forgoes the more common delicately fruit-toned profile for an overtly umami-centered approach, with a throughline of white peppercorn ensconced in lush florals, deep chocolate, and crisp pear notes. It’s a coffee with a distinct personality that invites you to get on its wavelength and is perhaps the most polarizing of the Geishas reviewed this month. We love it, as it defies expectations in the best possible way. It’s available for $60 for eight ounces on the Dragonfly website.

A Panama, a Colombia, and Two Ethiopias at 94

Caffe Luxxe’s Panama Alto Jaramillo is one of two Panama Geishas reviewed here that is a washed-process coffee (and one of only three washed Geishas on this list of nine). It’s austere only in comparison to the unabashedly fruit-forward naturals; in and of itself, it’s exquisitely balanced, crisply and sweetly bright, with notes of tangerine zest, lavender, cocoa, cedar, and fresh apricot ($40 for four ounces).

Based on the two exceptional Ethiopia Geshas (one natural-processed and one washed) we review here, there is potential for a broad range of sensory pleasures from Geshas emerging from their original home. Both were produced by Adam and Rachel Overton at Gesha Village Estate in the Bench-Maji Zone of southern Ethiopia. The washed coffee, roasted by Mudhouse Roasters in Charlottesville, Virginia ($50 for eight ounces) is richly sweet-savory and deeply floral-toned, with notes of honeysuckle, bergamot, toffee, myrrh and a surprising (but pleasing) hint of fresh coriander. The natural Gesha was roasted by Taiwan-based GK Coffee (1200 Taiwan dollars, about $38.75 USD, for 100 grams), a balanced, sweetly tart cup with notes of honey, lilac, guava, frankincense and cacao nib.

Gary of GK Coffee in Taiwan, serving coffee in his shop. Courtesy of GK Coffee.

The remaining 94 is the Laderas Del Tapias Estate Natural Colombia, roasted by Cafetaster in Taiwan (1350 Taiwan dollars, $43.50 USD for 230 grams), thoroughly berry-toned with notes of baking spices and cocoa throughout and a subtle hint of sweet fruit ferment.

More Questions In Lieu of Conclusions

It’s not really possible to answer all the questions raised by the Geisha/Gesha variety’s startling success across the world. What’s clear is that we’re going to be seeing much more of it in the coming years, and from origins beyond its original home, Ethiopia, its pioneering adopted home, Panama, and rising star Colombia. Coffees we don’t have space to report on here that performed very well include a Geisha from Costa Rica at 93 and one from Guatemala at 92. One might argue that the proliferation of this variety across many origins, if quality continues to improve, will benefit farmers by commanding higher prices and elevating the perceived status of coffee production, generally. Or it may just drive a wedge between coffee for the one percent and coffee for the rest of us. It’s hard to predict, but the emphasis on quality that Geisha has brought with it — because of its relative rarity and the precise conditions it needs to be grown successfully — can only be viewed as a positive.

The post Geisha Coffees Continue to Shatter Sales Records — Are They Worth The Hype? appeared first on Coffee Review.

They did not. Instead they got less for their coffee than they did 20 years ago, considerably less. The benchmark C-contract price at the moment I write is a fraction over one dollar per pound. And that is for a clean, wet-processed, high-grown Arabica coffee. That is a grotesque price. It does not even come close to covering a farmer’s cost of production.

Green coffee on offer at the Kariru factory in Kenya. Courtesy of Corvus Coffee Roasters.

And remember that coffee is not an industrialized commodity crop that can leverage productivity gains through technology to offset reduced or stagnated prices. Coffee remains a hands-on artisan crop produced mostly on medium-sized to tiny family-owned farms, with the only significant exception some large industrialized farms in Brazil.

Perhaps such figures would not be shocking were coffee some forgotten niche product. But as we know, coffee in consuming countries has never been so celebrated, so glamorous. Small new roasting companies pop up everywhere in the U.S.; many of them prosper; Starbucks grows; regular consumers switch from canned coffees to expensive Keurig or Nespresso pods. So just at the historical moment that coffee farmers in inflation-adjusted terms get paid much, much less for their coffees, the retail side of specialty coffee explodes with higher prices for more and more differentiated products. Overall, the value added goes largely to roasters and retailers in consuming countries.

A Cooperative in Kenya

This discrepancy applies even to some of the finest specialty coffees. I recall touring a coffee cooperative in central Kenya some years ago with a small group of coffee roasters and importers. We visited a meeting of the cooperative members, about 100 or so small-holding farmers, and at one point we were asked whether any of us had anything we wanted to say to the co-op members. One visitor, the owner of a small, high-end boutique coffee roasting company in Paris, announced that he did have something to say. He eagerly and proudly announced that he was selling coffee produced by this very cooperative (it is one of many Kenya cooperatives particularly admired for the quality and distinction of its coffees) in his shop in Paris at an extremely high price, and that, despite this very high price, upscale shoppers in his neighborhood were snapping it up.

I don’t recall the exact price he quoted, but let’s say it was about the equivalent of US$40 per pound. It definitely was an outrageous price at the time. This roaster’s intent, of course, was to impress the cooperative members with news of how well their coffee was received in his country, even to the point of commanding astonishingly high prices. He wanted to congratulate them and offer them proof of their success.

African beds used for drying coffee in Kenya. Courtesy of Kenneth Davids.

However, this news was greeted with a long silence from the co-op members. Finally, one raised his hand, stood up, and asked: Well, if my coffee gets US$40 per pound in Paris, then why do I only get US$3 per pound when I sell it here

The figures I quote may be fuzzily remembered, but the gist of the exchange is very clearly remembered. And even though the best Kenya green coffee commands quite high prices by coffee world standards, the idea that one of the world’s greatest coffees, a coffee equivalent in distinction to wines that sell for as much as several hundred dollars a bottle, should earn the producers US$3 or so per pound is shocking and depressing to any of us who love fine coffee and respect hard work and dedicated artisanry.

And farmers who sell very good though not exceptional coffees fare even worse.

Exceptions to the Paradox

One solution, as Daviron and Ponte propose in The Coffee Paradox, is getting some of the value added for coffee into the hands of producers rather than almost entirely in the hands of roasters and retailers.

In part, the world of fine coffee as we survey it at Coffee Review, with its small lots of exceptional coffees branded at origin by farm, mill or cooperative and sold at a significant premium to aficionado consumers by roasters who function more as commercial partners than commodity exploiters, is one way of transferring some of the value added to those who actually produce these exceptional coffees. The fashionable term for this practice as I write is direct trade, and there are caveats and quibbles aplenty about how direct trade is — and should be — conducted, but nevertheless, it clearly has resulted in significantly more recognition and higher prices for producers able to take advantage of it.

On the other hand, efforts by coffee producers to roast their coffees themselves and retail directly to consumers, cutting the roaster out of the supply chain, have seen mixed success in consuming countries. Large farms or cooperatives that start by roasting and selling only their own coffees to consumers find that, to compete, they need to offer a range of coffees from a variety of origins other than their own, and eventually become another coffee roaster with no real edge over coffee roasters that don’t own farms.

The greatest success had by producers selling directly to consumers appears to be in countries that are becoming significant consumers of their own coffees. Gigantic Brazil, the world’s largest producer of coffee and second-largest consumer of coffee, is one example, but I have seen the same phenomenon — producers successfully controlling the entire production chain — happening on a smaller scale in smaller producing countries, from Guatemala to Thailand.

But there still is no doubt that when you buy a fine coffee branded by farm or cooperative from a reputable roaster at a decent price you are making at least a small contribution to resolving the coffee paradox by honoring and financially rewarding the often passionately engaged work of the producer.

This article is excerpted from Kenneth Davids’ new book 21^st-Century Coffee: A Guide, scheduled to appear in early 2020.

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To great degree, we succeeded. We managed to source recently arrived samples from many of El Salvador’s finest, most celebrated farms and suppliers. Not all of them, but a good cross-section. Nevertheless, we still were a bit disappointed, even by the new crop samples.

Still in Crisis

El Salvador suffered terribly from the devastating epidemic of coffee leaf rust disease that struck much of Latin America starting in 2012. Overall coffee production in El Salvador fell by an extraordinary 60 percent from 2012 to 2014. The destructive impact on coffee, and on the people who grow it, was incalculable. El Salvador especially suffered because it was, for many years, one of the darlings of high-end coffee, with large plantings of the distinctive varieties Bourbon and Pacamara, both celebrated for their exceptional cup profiles — but both, unfortunately, also susceptible to leaf rust disease and, consequently, very hard hit by the 2012 epidemic. By contrast, in neighboring Honduras, most fields had been planted with disease-resistant interspecific hybrids chosen more for their resistance to disease than for their distinctive cup character. During the two years that El Salvador’s vulnerable production plummeted, coffee production in Honduras increased (although that increase has recently leveled off).

Coffee leaf rust in El Salvador. Courtesy of Jason Sarley.

But total production in El Salvador has been recovering, and we felt that 2019 would be a good year to check in again on El Salvador coffees and hopefully celebrate signs of recovery of this exceptional origin. But perhaps our timing was premature here, too. We did receive nearly 25 samples of the sweet-savory, big-beaned Pacamara variety, one of El Salvador’s coffee treasures, and nearly 10 samples from trees of the great heirloom Bourbon variety that once produced up to 80% of El Salvador’s coffee. But, in general, most of the samples even from these exceptional varieties rated in the 87 to 89 range: solid, pleasing coffees but either a bit short in energy and excitement on one hand, or persuasive balance and elegance on the other.

Fruit of the Pacamara variety of Arabica, Finca Las Mercedes, El Salvador. Courtesy of Jason Sarley.

We have only sketchy reports of bad weather disrupting the flowering and fruiting cycle this crop year. But the record is clear for previous years: first the rust epidemic, then erratic weather patterns almost certainly related to global warming. Rains sometimes come early, which makes the trees flower, but then the rains stop and things dry up. Between climate change and the ongoing threat of the rust disease, yields have plummeted even on the best-managed farms. The latest blow is all-time-low benchmark prices for standard-quality Arabica coffee. According to a 2018 USDA report on the El Salvador coffee sector, the country has lost an estimated 40,000 coffee jobs since the onset of the rust epidemic, contributing to crime, social unrest, and the wave of migration north. The Migration Policy Institute reports that nearly 20% of El Salvador’s population now lives in the United States.

Coffee growing on the hillside at Finca Himalaya in El Salvador. Courtesy of Jason Sarley.

A friend of mine, who operates a small El Salvador farm, summarizes the situation: “The challenges that [El Salvador] growers face are related to change in climate and to drops in market prices that offer negative revenue stream to many growers. Climate change means that the level of quality once associated with a particular elevation may change. Hence more fertilizer and silicon needed to maintain quality. Climate change also means that fungus, plants, and animals malevolent to agricultural crops have increasingly better purchase at elevations once at least somewhat daunting to them. Negative revenue streams mean abandoned farms. Abandoned farms create unmitigated breeding grounds for these adversaries, often adjacent to or surrounding active cafetals. To make matters worse, as more and more agricultural workers are displaced, rural crime levels rise noticeably, in both frequency and in the level of violence.”

The Distinctive Exceptions

Despite all of these daunting challenges, some exceptional coffees came our way, distinguished both by their quality as well as their originality. Seven of those coffees, rated from 91 to 94, are reviewed here.

The Plat Coffee El Salvador, top-rated at 94, is a poised and complete example of wet-processed Bourbon character, sweetly lavish in fruit and floral aromatics, yet crisp with nut and dry chocolate — a throwback, perhaps, to great wet-processed El Salvador Bourbons of years past. The 93-rated PT’s Coffee La Avila SL28 El Salvador is also a wet-processed coffee, but from trees of the Bourbon-related SL28 variety famous for its contribution to the great coffee tradition of Kenya. Here the nut-toned, sweet-savory character leads into the cup, but just behind and around it a deep, layered complexity emerges, gently zesty and vivid.

The Bourbon variety of Arabica. Courtesy of Jason Sarley.

The pattern of a savory-leaning, nut-toned character balanced and lifted by fruit or floral sweetness was characteristic also of the remaining five coffees reviewed here. In the case of the wet-processed JBC Talquezar El Salvador (92), the contrast was both deeply resonant and delicate. With the natural- or dry-processed samples like the Willoughby’s Finca Kilimanjaro (92) and the Duluth José Flores Pacamara Natural (91), the nut-toned tendency was a bit more bitter than in the wet-processed samples, but the balancing fruit was also sweeter and more explicit. The Deeper Roots Mario Aguilar El Salvador (a wet-processed Pacamara, 91) displayed a nicely balanced bittersweet nut (we called it candied walnut) with a pronounced dark chocolate helped along by a slight touch of roast influence. Finally, the Dinwei Café Finca San Antonio El Salvador (92) is a honey-processed coffee produced from trees of the celebrated Geisha variety, newly introduced to El Salvador. It displayed a mild but gently original version of the cocoa-and-flowers Geisha genius.

The Uncertain March of the Naturals

Of the 54 coffees we tested, almost half were natural-processed (dried in the whole fruit), and another 25% were honey-processed (skin removed, but dried in all or part of the fruit flesh or pulp). This is a complete turnaround in processing method for El Salvador. Until just a few years ago, the standard processing method for fine coffee in El Salvador, as well as in most parts of the world, was the washed or wet method, in which the skin and sweet fruit pulp is immediately stripped from the seeds or beans before they are dried, preventing the fruit pulp from fermenting or going musty during drying, potentially tainting the cup. If everything is done right during wet processing, the result is usually a relatively bright, vivacious cup, with clean fruit notes and distinct florals.

Honey-processed drying at Finca Las Mercedes, El Salvador. Courtesy of Jason Sarley.

Starting with the success of Starbucks’ Sherkina Sundried Sidamo in 2005, the specialty community began to discover the possibilities and pleasures offered by drying the coffee in the entire fruit: the natural or dry method. When it works, the natural process adds a fruity, juicy, often alcohol-tinged sweetness to the cup that has seduced a generation of roasters and coffee drinkers, including me. When it doesn’t work, however, which can happen because of the long period of drying inside the fruit in often less than ideal conditions, the fruit either over-ferments, producing a range of notes from vaguely rotten to mulchy, or stays relatively clean-tasting but dries out and encourages a nut- or wood-dominated cup.

A Lot of Naturals, Not a Whole Lot of Fruit

Twenty-four of the fifty-four coffees we tested for this report were natural-processed, and of those 24, none quite fit the cleanly lush yet balanced, opulently fruit-forward style of natural many consumers look for, and that we tend to give high ratings to on Coffee Review. True, two naturals we review here, the Willoughby’s Finca Kilimanjaro and the Duluth José Flores Natural, did show some quietly vibrant natural fruit. Some of the other naturals we tested were fruit-forward yet disturbingly uneven. But the main issue with most of the naturals we tested was a nut-toned, woody simplicity.

Aida Battle and Gabriela Flores of Finca Kilimanjaro. Courtesy of Jason Sarley.

Perhaps the weather did not cooperate during drying, or the best naturals didn’t make it to roasters in time for our report. Some of the better-known El Salvador farms are established masters of the natural method, but possibly the great majority of El Salvador producers are just learning about the challenges of the newly fashionable natural method. Certainly there are profound advantages to the producer with the natural method: no need to clean fermentation and wash water fouled during processing, less fussy equipment to maintain, and the implicit promise to the buyer that the coffee is different or exciting — not the same-old Central America washed cup. If producers find that they are not getting enough money to cover cost of production for standard wet-processed coffees, why not roll the dice and go for specialty prices by offering something different?

Washed Coffees Dominate at the Top

Nevertheless, the traditional washed samples we tested impressed us more overall than the natural or honey samples. Of the samples we rated 90 or higher, 60% were wet-processed, 30% were natural-processed and 10% were honey-processed. Whereas for the cupping as a whole, 35% of the tested samples were wet-processed, 44% were natural and 26% honey.

Refining Naturals

What has to happen now, it seems to me, is that industry professionals need to begin to more mindfully distinguish between successful naturals and less successful naturals, more successful experiments and less successful experiments, and develop criteria that can be translated into practical protocols for achieving sensory success when preparing such alternative-method coffees at the farm or mill. These protocols appear to exist already at the individual farm level in Central America, but perhaps the word needs to be gotten out more widely. Certainly, coffees like many of the naturals we tested these past few weeks, dominated by bittersweetness with minimal compensating fruit or chocolate, will not charm consumers for very long.

But the best of this year’s El Salvadors were quite good, and much of the 2019 crop is just arriving at roasters. Most likely, more soaring wet-processed Bourbons and rich, resonant, fruit-nuanced natural Pacamaras will surface at specialty roasters this summer and fall. Look for them.

And stick with El Salvador generally, just as U.S. coffee roasters appear to be doing. Support those legislators who want us to deal forcefully with global warming, and who might be willing to back efforts to invest more in agriculture and development in Central America to keep people at home rather than to spend enormous sums to build a wall at the border to keep them out once they are displaced and suffering.

The post El Salvador Coffees 2019: Pacamaras, Bourbons and Change appeared first on Coffee Review.

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