Finca La Loma in Costa Rica’s Tarrazu growing region. Courtesy of David’s Nose.

At the experimental tip of the specialty coffee world, the excitement never stops. The latest processing twist from Colombian and Central American coffee growers involves putting natural fruit, herbs or spices into the fermentation tank with the coffee during processing. The fermentation tanks are usually sealed, making this fermentation anaerobic as well. Readers of our March 2023 report know that anaerobic fermentation tends to create tangy sweet (sometimes very tangy sweet) profiles with surprising flavor notes. The most extreme anaerobics can be excessively sweet with artificial-tasting, cologne-like flower and candyish notes. But we also learned with that March report that not all coffees processed this way go over the edge into cologne/candy territory. Many are extraordinary profiles that may offend purists, but are balanced and complete, profiles that read as coffee, yet exceptional and original coffee.

In this latest report, we tiptoe on into the next, more controversial processing frontier: anaerobic-fermented coffee that also has had fruit or spice added to the sealed tanks during fermentation. In some cases, the fruit may be familiar to North Americans. Various red fruits, including strawberries, were deployed in Korean roaster Prism Coffee Works’ El Vergel Rojo Fruit Infused, reviewed here at 93. With other samples, the fruit was less familiar, as with the 94-rated Colombia Santa Monica Castillo Honey Lulo from Virginia-based roaster Red Rooster, in which tart little fruits Colombians call lulo were added to the tank.

Names assigned to fruit-added processing methods vary — fruit infused, co-fermented, fruit macerated, additive fermented — possibly a symptom of the controversy that has developed around the practice in the specialty coffee world. That controversy also may have contributed to the relatively few samples we received for this report: 26 samples from 15 roasters (six U.S.), as opposed to the 90 samples from 90 roasters that filled our lab when we sent out a call for the straightforward anaerobic coffees (no additives) for our March 2023 report.

Nothing Like the Old Flavored Coffees

Before getting into the controversy part of the story, however, one important point needs to be made: These coffees do not resemble the old, once-popular artificially flavored coffees. Here, nothing intrudes on the character of the coffee as explicitly as did those artificial flavors with their cloying pop-culture nature and metallic finish. In fact, I found it difficult to identify the specific fruit added to the tank, even if I knew the name and was generally familiar with the taste of the fruit. I would get fruit, yes, but nail the specific identity of that fruit? Close to impossible.

Co-fermenting coffee cherries with raspberries at Finca Campo Hermoso in Colombia. Courtesy of Jared Hales, Hacea Coffee Source.

Recall that the fruit is added as an integral part of fermentation, a complex chemical process the details of which remain relatively unstudied. In other words, these coffees are not the result of a simple additive process. They don’t take already processed coffee and add already processed fruit to it. The fresh fruit and fresh coffee react together to create a unique chemical event. Certainly, this explains the complexity of the fruit sensations that emerged in surprising and unpredictable ways in these coffees.

And the Controversy …

Nevertheless, producers who add fruit to the tank are being accused of cheating on the implicit rules of fine coffee. The Cup of Excellence (COE), for example, which manages a series of highly respected juried green coffee competitions, prohibits addition of fruits, spices or other nontraditional ingredients to coffees entered in their competitions. The World Barista Championships include a regulation with a similar broad intent.

How many roasters share this position? It’s hard to say, but the relatively lukewarm response to this report could suggest that many roasters are not yet all in with this latest processing innovation. On the other hand, they may simply be approaching it with caution and deliberation.

Enthusiasm and Reservations

True, some roasters seem sold. Caleb Walker of Montana’s RamsHead Coffee Roasters, whose Colombia Campo Hermosa Co-Fermented Honey (93) showed a particularly intense, juicy brightness, reports, “Personally, I am really enjoying fruit-infused coffees. The unique process of fruit infusion brings out a brightness that is difficult to find in a standalone natural. The fruit infusions seem to add another dimensional layer of flavor to the cup profile.”

Virginia’s Red Rooster Coffee Roaster submitted Colombia Santa Monica Castillo Honey Lulo, a coffee co-fermented with lulu fruit. Courtesy of Tony Greatorex.

More typical, however, was ambivalence. “More often than not, I am not a fan of these coffees — I find them to taste and smell artificial … and sometimes they are just downright bad. Unique, sure, but also unpleasant,” writes Haden Polseno-Hensley, co-owner and co-founder of Red Rooster Coffee. But Red Rooster definitely makes exceptions for the best of these coffees, including this month’s Colombia Santa Monica Castillo Honey Lulo, a strikingly original coffee comprehensively summed up by co-cupper Kim Westerman as delicately fruity, tartly floral, richly musky and enigmatically savory.

And although Youngjun Cho of Korea’s Prism Coffee Works complains that “many [fruit fermentations] have a strong artificial flavor and do not taste like coffee,” he found a persuasive exception in his 93-rated El Vergel Rojo Fruit Infused, which showed a striking juxtaposition of sweetness and umami in the structure, supporting flowers and berry on the sweet side and salted caramel on the umami. “These are great ‘fun’ coffees for beginners,” he concludes.

Starter Coffees?

The appeal of these coffees for coffee beginners and jaded regulars was a common theme running through roaster comments. Ted Stachura of California-based Equator Coffee, whose Colombia Las Flores Mint Macerated (93) was one of my personal favorites, with its herbs, flowers and deep but tactful sweetness, writes, “I see these co-fermented coffees as an avenue to excite the palates of even the most casual coffee drinkers. While it may be difficult for the average coffee consumer to detect subtle flavor nuances in traditionally processed coffees, there is no mistaking the flavors in the fruit-/spice-infused coffees we have recently been introduced to. My hope is that these creatively fermented coffees can be a gateway for weary coffee drinkers to start thinking about our favorite beverage in new ways.”

The Anaerobic Impact

What struck me most about the sensory character of these infused coffees, however, was how important the impact of anaerobic processing was to their originality, more important perhaps than the added fruit or spice. With the best of these coffees, the fruit infusion encouraged attractive and intriguing aroma/flavor complications, certainly, but the underlying structural originality of most of these profiles seemed ultimately driven by their tangy lactic-acid structure, the result of anaerobic fermentation. The fruit mainly contributed additional aromatic complication and originality.

For example, Gary Liao of Taiwan’s GK Coffee submitted a coffee that was co-fermented with fruit but not anaerobically fermented. Passionfruit was simply combined with the freshly pulped coffee in a conventional open-top fermentation tank during traditional wet processing of the Colombia Finca Monteblanco Purple Caturra Passionfruit Washed (92). The result is a smooth, intriguing coffee, but not as original or striking as most of the other co-fermented coffees. It impresses with a quite satisfying but rather classic profile driven by tart fruit and almond notes.

The Latest Producer-Driven Innovation

This practice of adding fresh fruit or herbs to the fermentation tank is, of course, just the latest in a string of product innovations pioneered at the farming end of the coffee supply chain, rather than at the consuming end. Until around 2004, the innovations in coffee that got consumers involved and excited all originated in the consuming context: selling whole bean coffee out of bins, for example; roasting all coffees dark; the complex innovations of espresso cuisine; and the infamous artificially flavored coffees mentioned earlier. In all of these cases, good, consistent-quality coffee was simply the raw material for changes wrought by city-centered roasters and cafes, most in North America and Europe.

Things started changing around 2004, when producers began selling high-quality natural, or dry-processed coffee rather than the usual clean wet-processed types, kicking off a whole sequence of innovations in processing designed to excite consumers and satisfy our apparent need for novelty: natural processing, honey processing, various versions of anaerobic fermentation, and now fruit infusion. At the same time innovations in variety, led by the revelation of Geisha/Gesha in 2004, similarly shifted the locus of innovation from consuming to producing context.

A Plus for Producers?

The fact that this latest coffee style was pioneered by coffee farmers or producers has been taken as a continued indication of the new importance of producers and producing countries as centers for change and innovation in coffee. This is true, and for those of us who, for various reasons, political and aesthetic, tend to pull for producers and the Global South, a happy development. What may be arguable is whether co-fermentation is, in the big picture, a positive development for a wide range of producers. It certainly highlights producers as artists and innovators and helps focus consumers on their contributions and importance.

But, as more than one submitting roaster pointed out, what exalts the creativity of some well-positioned producers with good connections may not help less-fortunate producers stuck at the end of a bad road. Achieving good results with earlier innovations, like natural and honey processing, requires knowledge and care from the farmer, but not quite the meticulous control demanded by anaerobic processes.

Euphora Coffee’s May Wang points out: “Adding fruit during coffee cherry fermentation can have an impact, but it requires extensive research and experiments to determine how it affects the flavor characteristics of coffee. The fruit fermentation method necessitates careful control of all controllable variables for producers, which may result in increased labor costs. In the world of fermentation, microorganisms and sugar molecules must interact in a very specific way to achieve a thorough transformation of the content. Failure to monitor external variables such as temperature and oxygen levels could lead to the production of poor-tasting coffee beans.”

Polseno-Hensley of Red Rooster adds: “I believe processes like [co-fermentation] are based on producers feeling that they are forced to innovate, largely due to the fact that growing exotic and delicate high-elevation varietals is getting more challenging because of climate change. Small producers are turning to the idea of additives in processing to enhance the fruit and acidity of heartier disease-resistant varieties that would not normally fetch such high prices.”

Also, we in North America often carry around a mental picture of “coffee producer” as a fellow in a white shirt and sombrero from Central or South America, whereas coffee producers range from isolated villagers high in the mountains of Papua New Guinea to all-women co-ops in northern Sumatra to industrialized Brazilian farms. Whether the wider community of coffee producers gradually buys into these new possibilities will determine their long-term impact on the coffee world.

A Last Note

Those outside the specialty coffee tradition probably don’t grasp how ambivalent many of us feel with respect to co-fermented coffees. We support creativity and excitement, but for many of us, the notion of altering the basic taste profile of coffee, sometimes rather radically, by combining coffee with other non-coffee stuff is disturbing, even when accomplished with the subtlety displayed by this month’s coffees. The stubbornness with which the rules committees of the two leading coffee competitions (COE and WBC) resist allowing co-fermented coffees to compete in their events suggests, I think, the persistence of this fundamental unease. Are we considering the excellence of coffee production from tree to bean as a coherent act of tradition and passion, or are we are we simply celebrating cute tricks at the end of that process?

Difficult to say, of course. Probably best to enjoy the rich vein of ambivalence running through roaster comments this month and, above all, experience the answers proposed by the nine excellent co-fermented coffees we review here.

Thanks to the roasters who greatly enriched this report by sharing their ideas and experience regarding anaerobic coffees: Youngjun Cho, prism coffee works, Korea; David of David’s Nose Coffee, Taiwan;Tony Greatorex, Red Rooster Coffee, USA; Gary Liao, GK Coffee, Taiwan; Haden Polseno-Hensley, Red Rooster Coffee, USA; Ted Stachura, Equator Coffee, USA; Caleb Walker, RamsHead Coffee, USA; May Wang, Euphora Coffee, Taiwan; Van Wang, Riika Café, Taiwan.

The post Fruit- and Spice-Fermented Coffees: The Cup and the Controversy appeared first on Coffee Review.

Dark-roasted coffee beans cooling in the roaster.

Ten or 15 years ago in North America, there was little doubt about what a dark roast was, or how it was expected to taste. The beans were very dark brown in color, edging toward black, shiny with oil, and the dominating sensory feature was a richly pungent, charred cedar character usually softened by chocolate and a raisiny fruit. If you were lucky and attentive, you might also pick up some hints of other fruit or even flowers. On our Agtron roast-color reader, such coffees usually registered around 33 to 40 on the M-Basic Whole-Bean scale. For comparison, medium roasts come in around 55 and up, light roasts about 60 and up. (Also note that with Agtron and other roast-color scales, the lower the number, the darker the bean color.) Such explicit dark roasts were the signature roasting style of the dominant behemoths of the specialty coffee world at the time — Starbucks, Peet’s, Caribou Coffee — as well as many smaller roasting companies.

But around that time, say 2010 or so, a polarization set in between proponents of the newly developed light-roasting camp, who were focused on foregrounding the innate character of the green bean through sensitive light-to-medium roasting, and those many coffee drinkers who still wanted their rich, scorchy, hopefully chocolaty dark roasts. Those in the light-roasting camp often pursued their newly defined mission with passionate ideological absolutism. Even a hint of roast taste was unacceptable in their coffees. As for their customers, the implied message was: Don’t think about putting milk in that coffee, and if you can’t handle a bright, acidy coffee drunk black, go home and tell your mama.

And those in the dark roast camp? Either they hardly noticed a change and went on buying their Peet’s or Starbucks’ dark-roasted Sumatra, or they stumbled into the wrong café after Covid let up, tried a cup of a light-roasted Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, grimaced, glared at the nearest millennial, and walked on down the street to the nearest Peet’s or Starbucks.

Revisiting the Light/Dark Polarization

Today, does the light/dark polarization still hold? Or are the boundaries blurring? Is there any interesting space developing between the two camps?

Coffee beans showing various stages of roast development.

Last month, we cupped (and took Agtron roast color readings for) 114 coffees labeled “dark” by their roasters. Of the 114, 60 were produced by North American roasters, 42 by roasters on the coffee-passionate island of Taiwan, and two by a Korean roaster. In addition, we purchased six samples of Starbucks and Peet’s dark-roasted coffees as part of our benchmarking comparisons between the coffees submitted by roasters and nationally available coffees of the same style or origin.

Based on those 114 samples, here are some observations about the state of dark roasting in North America and Taiwan in 2023.

Less Rigidity, More Complication

The polarization in North America between dark-roasting and lighter-roasting camps is indeed blurring. Starbucks, for example, the titan of dark-roasted coffees, now offers “blonde” roasts next to its bread-and-butter dark roasts. Peet’s, the originator of the contemporary dark-roasting style, offers “light” roasts next to its darks. While at the same time, it appears that many committed light-roasting companies are at least dipping a toe in the dark-roasting waters.

Matt Bollinder founded Speckled Ax Wood Roasted Coffee in 2007 on an aggressively lighter roasting, microlot-focused program. But he admits, “We’re much less dogmatic these days, in part because the specialty coffee landscape has changed quite a bit (lighter roasted microlots are the expectation, rather than the exception, so there’s less [re]education necessary), but also because of an emphasis on customer service. The goal is not to force light roast Yirgacheffe down a customer’s throat, but to make them happy.”

The Speckled Ax Map 40 Mokha Java blend (92) could perhaps be seen as a graceful compromise between loyalty to vision and keeping the customer happy. Rather than forcing a light-roast Ethiopia down a dark-roast-craving customer’s throat, it appears to seduce the customer with a complex blend that cushions 60 percent washed Ethiopia coffees with other softer, less bright coffees, all subjected to complex roasting strategies that net a cup with an intrigue of berry, flowers, cocoa and slightly scorchy herb.

Vermont Artisan’s dark-roasted Sumatra, reviewed here. Courtesy of Vermont Artisan Coffee.

Three other samples among the five reviewed from American roasters were roasted even lighter, just to the point when medium can be said to stop and darker start — when the oils just begin to migrate from the cells of the bean to the surface, creating the crinkling sound roasters call the second crack. This is the moment when the woody matrix of the bean starts to lightly char, creating the first hint of the scorchy, pungent taste we associate with darker roasts. But it is also a moment when the chemical changes associated with greater sweetness in the coffee continue to develop and flavor notes continue to deepen and shed the brightness associated with lighter roasts. It appears that many of the U.S. roasters were aiming at this point in the roast cycle, attempting to exploit the depth of sensation and rounding of acidity possible in darker roasts while minimizing the explicit taste of the roast.

Based purely on instrument reading of color, for example, Bassline Coffee’s Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Dark Roast (93) is literally medium-roasted (it’s only three points darker than the reading we recently obtained for the a “light-roasted” Peet’s Coffee Costa Rica Aurora), yet it displays a subtly roast-deepened character — the chocolate crispy and cocoa-ish, the flowers sweet and lush.

Revel Coffee seems to allude to this newer, more slippery definition of dark roast when it describes its excellent Sumatra Karo Mandheling (91) as “‘lil darker.” Like the Bassline Yirgacheffe, the Revel makes only a nod to roast taste, a smoky hint perhaps, with the roast mainly contributing sweetness and depth to a classic Sumatra grapefruit and pipe tobacco profile.

Two 94s at the Medium/Dark Cusp

This month’s champions among these successes of light/dark balance are two 94-rated coffees: from the U.S., the Hula Daddy SL34 Dark Roast, and from Taiwan, GK Coffee’s Ethiopia Bench Maji Geisha Lucy Station Dark Roast. Both were brought, it would appear, just into the second crack, and both impressively showcase the way a tactfully medium-dark roast can soften and deepen complex sensations without dulling them or overlaying them with roasty distraction.

Brewing up a cup of GK Coffee’s Ethiopia Bench Maji Geisha Lucy Station dark roast. Courtesy of GK Coffee.

The SL34 is a famous coffee variety originally selected and long grown in Kenya. On Hula Daddy’s higher-elevation farm, it has proven to be a source of consistently exceptional coffees. This particular lot was further distinguished by processing with an anaerobic ferment step with commercial yeast, contributing to a deep, tangy sweetness and a general aromatic originality.

The GK sample also is from a very distinguished tree variety, the famous Geisha (also Gesha), in this case grown in its original homeland, Ethiopia. Again, here the darker roast is more backgrounded than explicit, contributing resonance and sweetness and heightening the chocolate.

Interestingly, I just discovered as I was putting the final touches on this report that last month we tested the same coffee, the Ethiopia Bench Maji Geisha Lucy Station, from the same roaster, GK Coffee, for a standalone review. However, the May version was brought to an unambiguous light roast (Agtron whole-bean 64), while this month’s version was moderately dark roasted (Agtron whole-bean 45). Interestingly, the difference in roast development did not seem to impact the overall rating. We assigned the same score to both: 94. The sensory descriptors we associated with the two samples overlapped despite their differences. Both descriptions emphasized bright citrus, for example, but for the lighter-roasted coffee, our descriptor associated the citrus with “makrut lime,” an extremely tart citrus, whereas for the darker version we cited “Meyer lemon,” still tart but usually spicier and a little softer and richer. Our review for the lighter-roast version cited honey; for the darker, chocolate. The flowers associated with each were similarly heady and sweet, although the honeysuckle associated with the darker roast is often described as a bit more deep and vanilla-like than the star jasmine we cited for the lighter roast.

Perhaps distracted by the sheer number of coffees we tested for this report, we discovered that we had generated two reviews for the same green coffee only after we had cupped, rated and written descriptions for both. The discovery was reassuring, however, not only because we had assigned the same rating for both, but because our descriptors overlapped in more or less coherent ways. The identical ratings also suggest that we at Coffee Review are not prejudiced against dark roasts, as we sometimes fear we are.

Real Dark Roasts?

Of course, for many coffee drinkers, a coffee roasted to a moderately dark Agtron whole-bean 45 is not a real dark roast. It’s possible that the edge-of-dark tightrope walking performed by the five coffees just discussed do not satisfy coffee lovers who value the straightforward, scorchy, chocolaty intensity of a full-on dark roast. And when we look at the top-rated samples that display such clear and explicit roast influence — those with whole-bean Agtrons around the mid- to high-30s — Taiwan roasters have the edge.

Of the five samples we rated 94 or higher this month, four were produced by Taiwan roasters, and three of those were brought to a clear, unapologetic dark roast. Furthermore, if we look at all of the definitive dark roast samples we rated 91 or higher, most were produced by Taiwan roasters. In fact, the disproportionate success of Taiwan dark roasts this month accounts for the unusual approach we took when selecting coffees for review. We decided to review the top five Taiwan dark roasts, ranging from 95 to 93, and the top five U.S. dark roasts, ranging from 94 to 91. This means that four Taiwan coffees earned a score of 92 but are not reported on here: Henry’s Café Kenya Nyeri AA TOP, Euphora Coffee’s The World Blend, Kakalove Cafe’s Black-Meow Blend, and Min Enjoy Café Roaster’s Ethiopia.

Taking Dark Seriously

Why the particular success of Taiwan roasters with explicitly stated dark roasts? Possibly because some elite small-batch Taiwanese roasters may be lavishing the same attention on dark roasts as they do on lighter roasts. One of our cupping team members, Jason Sarley, observed that “it seemed that on an average the Asian roasters used more distinctive, high-quality green coffees for their dark roasts, and used the same careful roasting techniques that in the U.S. are traditionally saved for medium- and lighter-roasted coffees.” It’s possible that U.S. roasters are tempted to take dark roasts for granted, particularly explicit dark roasts in the classic style, and put their creative focus more on light roasting small lots of exceptional coffees that are likely to win competitions and awards. Several of the Taiwan roasters we corresponded with appear to be putting a conscious effort into developing quality around dark roasts and building a taste for them among their clientele.

Simon Hsieh brewing. His dark-roasted Kenya AB is reviewed in this month’s report. Courtesy of Simon Hsieh.

Simon Hsieh, who sent us the 94-rated Kenya AB Athena Plus, and whose darker-roast espressos regularly attract high ratings on Coffee Review, roasts everything he sells medium-dark to dark, and has for years. He reports that his clientele, in general, love his coffees’ rounded acidity, sweetness and floral character. His Kenya AB Athena Plus certainly does preserve sweetness and spicy flowers but is also a powerfully stated cup with the dark roast reinforcing the characteristic savory-sweet Kenya depth and complex herby fruit.

Mark Shi of MK Coffee, whose Kenya topped this month’s ratings at 95, reports: “Chain coffee shops and convenience stores in Taiwan can easily obtain dark-roasted coffee (including American dark-roasted coffee). [But] when communicating with customers about dark-roasted coffee, I learned that most people feel [it] has a smoky and burnt bitter taste. So I want to make my dark roast different. I want to add some lively feeling into it.”

That “lively feeling” is what we found we most valued in the MK Kenya, as well as in all of the three most successful explicitly dark-roasted samples. All are different, but in all three, the scorchy, smoky roast character works in and around a complex aromatic and structural character. The roasty assertion may be backgrounded, as it is in the MK Kenya, where the sweetness promoted by dark roasting most stood out, or more pungent and bracing, as in the Simon Hsieh Kenya. Or it may contribute brisk supporting richness to complex flowers, chocolate and berries, as with the Fumi Coffee Kenya Muranga (94).

The Importance of Origin: Kenya and Sumatra

Of course, an observant reader will note that all of the high-rated explicitly dark-roast coffees just cited were single-origin Kenyas. Kenyas from the classic central regions are very high-grown in dryish conditions, making for a dense, tough bean. Furthermore, it’s a bean with typically persistent, strongly stated aromatic character owing to Kenya’s distinctive tree varieties. It may be that very distinctive but somewhat more delicate coffees like Ethiopias preserve character better at the slightly lighter, cusp-of-the-second-crack roast style introduced earlier in this report.

Two of this month’s reviewed coffees, the Revel Coffee Sumatra Karo Mandheling – ‘lil darker (91) and the Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Sumatra Dark (91) draw on what amounts to a long-established retail coffee type that is as old as contemporary American dark roasting itself. Dark-roasted Sumatras were introduced to the U.S. coffee scene by Alfred Peet at the same seminal moment he opened his first store and roastery in Berkeley, California, in 1966. Peet’s and Starbucks have continued to offer dark-roasted Sumatras, helping turn the origin and type into a kind of shared, informal brand

Traditional Sumatras from the Mandheling and Aceh growing regions are not high-grown like Kenyas, nor are they produced from clearly defined and distinctive tree varieties. But apparently, the characteristic regional wet-hulling procedures and associated slow, staged drying give traditional Sumatras a toughness and character that stands up well to dark roasting. True, the Revel Karo Mandheling was treated with tact and gentleness at Agtron whole-bean 52, but the Vermont Artisan Sumatra Dark was brought to a full-on Agtron whole-bean 36 dark roast, and effectively fulfills the legacy of the traditional dark-roasted Sumatra profile: scorchy oak, pipe tobacco, some cocoa and a lift of vanilla-like flowers.

Dark Roasting and Blends

Blends present a more complex picture than single-origins. Certainly, many of the blends that we rated in the mid-80s this month were probably composed of coffees lacking sufficient density and character to stand up to dark roasting without losing themselves in the bland, smoky emptiness that is the danger of the type.

Balmy Day Coffee Office participates in a roasting competition in Taiwan. Courtesy of Arthur Chen.

However, we cupped notable successes among the darker-roasted blends. The Balmy Day Coffee Office Black Peach Q Blend (93) is a complex composition combining four coffees processed by three different methods, at least one of which gave clear sensory signs of anaerobic fermentation. This blend maintained a powerful presence at a definitively dark Agtron whole-bean 40, with guava-toned brightness soaring out of a roast-toned heart.

Another Free Brand: Mocha-Java

Mocha Java (or Mokha Java, or Moka Java) blends are a special case. Famously created by combining the world’s first two commercially traded coffees — Yemen shipped through the port of Mokha and Java from the Dutch colony — this blend has, over time, become more pretext than recipe. The basic starting point involves combining a natural-processed coffee (inspired by the original Yemen) with a wet-processed coffee (inspired by the original Java). But however interpreted, Mocha-Java has become, like Sumatra, something of a staple in the North American specialty tradition. The 92-rated version from Speckled Ax cited earlier meanders creatively across the coffee world, interpreting the concept with four different blend components: three Ethiopias, two conventionally washed and one natural, and one gamey washed coffee from Papua New Guinea. Our benchmark big-roaster comparison for this month, the Peet’s Arabian Mocha-Java Dark Roast (89), discloses little in regard to blend origins. “Arabian” in the coffee name suggests that one component is a Yemen, but Peet’s offers no confirmation, and given Yemen’s small, precious output, I doubt it. I suspect an Ethiopia, and I would guess from the cup profile that there is also a wet-hulled Indonesian coffee involved, perhaps a Sumatra.

For the Record 

Here are our ratings for the benchmark dark roasts from Starbucks and Peet’s for comparison to the ratings for the smaller-roaster coffees reviewed this month:

Evidence that, from our point of view, the high-rated darker roasts reviewed here are well worth seeking out. Medium-roast drinkers may want to take a break from their coffee-correct routine to try a darker roast or two, and dark-roast drinkers can test their usual against some of Taiwan’s and North America’s finest.

Deepest thanks to all those who generously enriched this report by sharing their practices and ideas around darker roasting: Mané Alves, Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea; Matt Bollinder, Speckled Ax ; Arthur Chen, Balmy Day Coffee Office; Yu Chih Hao, Fumi Coffee Company; Tim Hester, Bassline Coffee; Simon Hsieh, Simon Hsieh Aroma Roast Coffees; Gary Liao, GK Coffee; Lee Paterson, Hula Daddy Coffee; Mark Shi, MK Coffee Roasters; and Gary Theisen, Revel Coffee.

The post Dark Roast Coffee 2023: The Good, the Bad, the Subtle appeared first on Coffee Review.

Coffee typically grows on steep terraced slopes in Yemen. Courtesy of Port of Mokha.

As most readers know, Yemen is the oldest continuously cultivated coffee in the world. The Coffea arabica tree originated in Ethiopia but was first systematically cultivated and commercialized in Yemen starting in about 1500. Until European colonists got into the game about 200 years later, Yemen produced virtually all of the coffee drunk in the world.

And, surprisingly, however, much coffee production practices changed as coffee spread from Yemen to the rest of the world, Yemen has stayed with its original, ancient methods. Most Yemen coffees today are still produced almost exactly as they have been for hundreds of years: The coffee fruit is picked and laid out to dry on rooftops, the dried fruit husks are split open with millstones, and the beans are winnowed and cleaned by hand. Until recently, the only changes in this ancient production method consisted of putting tarpaulins under the coffee fruit while it was drying and hitching the millstones to gasoline engines rather than draft animals.

Importer Mokhtar Alkhanshali and farmers demonstrate how unripe coffee fruit is removed from ripe before drying. Courtesy of Port of Mokha.

Meanwhile, the rest of the coffee world headed in a different direction with its production methods. The goal became clean, predictable-tasting coffees. The washed method, which involves removing the fruit from the freshly picked beans before they are dried to minimize the unpredictable impact of the fruit on the cup, became the norm for fine coffee in most of the world. Yemen’s handmade and consequently expensive and irregular-tasting coffees lost their way in a specialty world dominated by clean, dependable washed coffees.

There were enthusiasts who loved those unpredictable Yemen coffees, of course, and forward-thinking Yemeni coffee producers who continued to do their best to promote them. But by the early 2000s, it appeared that Yemen, stressed by regional power games, imported terrorism, homegrown civil conflict and proxy wars, might virtually stop exporting coffee altogether and end simply as a nostalgic chapter in coffee history.

A Turn Toward the Unique

But at around that same historical moment, high-end specialty coffee began to change, driven by a new market that rewarded uniqueness in coffee rather than simple consistency and predictability. Green coffee competitions and auctions began identifying highly differentiated coffees and rewarding them with higher and higher, sometimes outrageous, prices. A top lot of Geisha (also spelled Gesha), the famous Ethiopia-via-Panama coffee variety celebrated for its vivid, surprising cup character, recently sold at auction for a record-breaking price of $2,568 per pound, green and unroasted.

Yemen also fulfills another element in the new coffee paradigm: doing good by selling fine coffee. Yemen’s distinctive and storied coffee offers a modest yet clear opportunity to help some of Yemen’s people achieve more secure and stable lives by selling more of their coffee at higher prices. Six years into an armed civil conflict that has killed and injured over 18,000 civilians, Yemen remains the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. Over 20.1 million people—nearly two-thirds of the population—required food assistance at the beginning of 2020. So it is an understatement to point out that Yemen is a prime candidate for producing coffee that both tastes good and does good.

Add to this the fact that women don’t have basic human rights in Yemen, a fundamental problem that goes deeper than the current conflict. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to source roasted coffees from members of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA), but there is a Yemen chapter. One longtime member, Sameeha Mohammed, regularly imports her fine Yemens to North America, which you can buy online at Sedna Coffee.

Yemen coffee producer Sameeha Mohamed and an associate at drying tables. Courtesy of Mery Santos, Sedna Coffee.

Importer/roaster Qima Coffee, whose Qima Foundation is the only non-profit organization in Yemen that works closely with smallholder coffee farmers, works with women from rural communities in the regions of Dhamar, Ibb and Mahwit to help establish and support women-farmer groups. Qima then pays premiums for this coffee to encourage more women-led participation in the supply chain and to ensure that women are fairly compensated for their work. 

It would seem, then, that Yemen, with its varied cup, ancient tree varieties, high, dry terroirs, traditional processing methods, and dignified though struggling small-holding producers, is ready for its second star moment on the world coffee stage.

Good Press, Limited Volume

And, to some degree, it is beginning to claim that moment. The Monk of Mokha, an account by celebrated writer Dave Eggers of Yemeni-American Mokhtar Alkhanshali’s dramatic adventures in Yemen while setting up his successful coffee export-import business, was a New York Times best-seller in 2018. (We review four coffees imported by Alkhanshali’s company, Port of Mokha.) Green coffee auctions of Yemen coffees organized both by private exporters like Port of Mokha and by the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) have attracted impressive prices for elite lots of Yemen coffees.

Nevertheless, when we started contacting roasters and combing through websites looking for Yemen coffees to review that might be available now for consumers to buy and enjoy, we came up with a grand total of … 22! By way of comparison, when we went looking for coffees from Guatemala to cup for our September 2021 report, we easily ended with over 50 and probably could have sourced twice that number had we tried. Apparently, only a handful of exporter/importers appear able to master the challenges of sourcing and shipping top lots of Yemen coffee to markets outside the Middle East.

However, the 22 Yemen samples we received compensated for their limited number with high overall ratings: an average of around 90, with a high of 96 and a low of 85. Most displayed an impressive traditional range of Yemen coffee character, as well as some striking innovation. We review the nine highest-rated here.

What sensory pleasures and coffee insights can an enthusiast expect from these nine top-rated Yemens?

Taste Variations on the World’s Oldest Cup Profile, Intact yet Refined

Seven of these top-rated Yemens were processed using the ancient Yemen dried-in-the-fruit method, but with crucial refinements. They were produced from ripe fruit only, for example, rather than a mix of ripe and unripe, and were subject to controlled drying to prevent them from drying too quickly and turning flat or woody, a problem with some of the lower-rated among this month’s samples.

A bag of green coffee imported by Port of Mokha. Courtesy of Port of Mokha.

The best of these new/ancient Yemens were astonishing revelations of intricacy in aroma and flavor. All had flowers, all had fruit, often dark berries, all had variants on chocolate, all had aromatic wood notes almost incense-like in their complexity. Yet a single category of that array seldom dominated; most of the best natural-processed samples pretty much had most of it going on. Credit, perhaps, high growing elevations and semi-arid growing conditions, which encourage stressed trees with low yields of very dense beans. Or the ancient tree varieties. Or the careful conduct of the natural, in-the-fruit drying.

The most impressive in its aromatic intricacy is the 96-rated Port of Mokha Yemen Lot 106 from the very high-elevation Bait Alal community; reviewer Kim Westerman cites its “deep yet soaring, vertical complexity.” Two of these seven natural-processed samples displayed a surprising Kenya-like juxtaposition of savory depth and juicy liveliness: the Euphora Coffee Wadi Al Mahjr (95) and the Chromatic Port of Mokha Al Jabal (94). The Collage Yemen Mokha Matari (93) was a bit more idiosyncratic, with an earthy lean to the bittersweet structure and a sarsaparilla-like throughline; the Equator Coffees Yemen Sana’a (93) tilted toward earth and tobacco as well but juxtaposed with stone fruit and honeyish flowers. Finally, the Dragonfly Yemen Mocha Haimi (93) showed a gentle, round yet aromatically comprehensive side to the Yemen new natural cup.

Taste One of the World’s Newest Cup Profiles

If the seven coffees praised above represent successful refinements of the world’s most ancient processing method, we review two samples that represent the coffee world’s latest efforts to differentiate cup profile through increasingly elaborate variations in processing method. Like traditional Yemens, these two samples are natural coffees, dried in the whole fruit. But between picking and drying, they were subject to fermentation procedures designed to complicate or intensify the usually fruit-toned natural cup profile.

The Qima Coffee Bait Alal Community (93), despite being grown on centuries-old terraces surrounding a famous coffee village, was subject to a particularly elaborate processing sequence. Qima calls the approach its “alchemy method.” The whole coffee fruit proceeds through three kinds of ferment: first a conventional aerobic (with access to oxygen) stage, then a pressurized anaerobic stage (during which the fermenting fruit has no access to oxygen), and finally a fermentation stage in a darkened room, before the usual final slow drying.

Farmers and children in the Bait Alal community. Courtesy of Qima Coffee.

The result in the Bait Alal sample is a coffee with a distinctive, unconventional profile that seems to particularly reflect the impact of the anaerobic ferment stage, with a juicy yet tangy-tart lactic-acid character enveloped in tropical fruit sweetness. It is perhaps a polarizing profile that many coffee drinkers will prize for its originality and bright, perfumy intensity (these coffee lovers might argue for a rating higher than our 93) while others may find it intriguing but perhaps a bit cloying in its fruit-toned sweetness and yogurty lactic hints, and feel that our 93 is too generous.

One other coffee we review this month also went through an anaerobic or limited-oxygen fermentation stage, the Port of Mokha Al Wadi (94). The method here was much simpler, involving a single anaerobic ferment of the whole coffee fruit in a sealed vessel before slow drying. In this case, the lactic-acid influence of the anaerobic processing shows more as a backgrounded complication to a big, resonant profile: floral, date-toned and pungently chocolaty.

Taste Coffee Varieties Grown Nowhere Else in the World

Most Yemen coffee is produced from coffee varieties grown in the region for a very long time, perhaps centuries. Until now, these varieties have been known only by the set of traditional, rather folkloric names assigned to them by local coffee tradition. However, earlier this year a study was published describing the results of genetic fingerprinting of 137 samples of Yemen coffee drawn from an area of over 25,000 square kilometers. Along with a surprising number of the world’s other cultivated Arabica varieties, including indigenous Ethiopia varieties, the researchers turned up “an entirely new set of genetics” unique to Yemen. In other words, they found coffee trees growing in Yemen with genetics that do not match the genetic footprints of coffee plants growing anywhere else in the world, including Ethiopia, the presumed home of Arabica.

The researchers referred to the newly identified Yemen-only material as the “new-Yemen cluster,” but importer/roaster Qima Coffee, in the context of an Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) auction, has publicized and promoted this genetic cluster under the name “Yemenia”. According to Faris Sheibani, Founder and CEO of Qima, the name Yemenia was proposed “so that farmers can identify the genetic uniqueness of their coffees and capture the value that is associated with that uniqueness.” He adds that the name Yemenia “is free for use by any Yemeni trader, exporter, cooperative and farmer and exists for the benefit of the industry.”

Nevertheless, many farmers and their more conventional exporter partners may stick with traditional names for their tree varieties for now. In either case, however, exceptional Yemen coffees like those we review in this report are likely to have been produced from tree varieties unique in the world of coffee.

Test the Chocolate Myth

In traditional coffee lore, Yemens are reputed to taste chocolaty. It is said that that this tendency is what caused some imaginative beverage-namer to start calling drinks composed of coffee and chocolate “Mocha,” using the common name applied to Yemen coffees up through the mid-20^th century. Many Yemens in this month’s small sampling do display chocolate notes, although complexly and variously: dry baking chocolate, rich dark chocolate, sweet-toned cocoa, nut-like cocoa nib. Many samples also showed a tendency to display rich wood tones – cedar, in particular. We hardly cupped enough samples to speculate on the reasons for this twin tendency. Chocolate, in general, appears to be associated with the impact of roasting on fruit notes, and Yemens, always dried in the whole fruit, usually provide the needed fruit. Wood notes were a common thread through virtually all of the samples, but in the best, the wood tended to be complex and rich, often cedary, rather than simple and flat.

Ancient Origin, Barely Tapped Potential

After sampling this handful of often brilliant coffees, it is hard not to conclude that Yemen’s potential as a source of fine coffees in the distinctive contemporary mode has barely been tapped. Virtually all of this month’s top-rated coffees came from traditional coffee-growing regions situated in the high mountain growing regions west of the capital, Sana’a. Four are from the same famous coffee community, Bait Alal. But considerable coffee is grown elsewhere in Yemen. Among exporters to the U.S., Europe and Asia, perhaps only Qima Coffee may be well-connected and well-funded enough to cast a wide geographical net for fine Yemen coffee. However, Qima’s main focus, for now, appears to be raising awareness of Yemen coffee through competitions and auctions rather than supplying coffee lovers with a range of fine roasted Yemens.

Hopefully, as the devastating civil and proxy conflicts in Yemen diminish and the word gets out to coffee enthusiasts, this singular coffee origin will fully emerge into the spotlight of its second starring appearance on the world coffee stage.

The post Yemen Coffees: Variations on the World’s Oldest Cup Profile appeared first on Coffee Review.