SEASONALITY
Many craft coffee roasters have become more serious about coffee seasonality in recent years. This is a relatively new concept in the coffee industry (or at least it’s a relatively new concept to be widely adopted among craft coffee people). However, coffee has always been a seasonal product. Coffee cherries are fruit and, like most fruit, they grow only during certain times of the year. Most coffee-producing countries have distinct time frames throughout the year for growing, harvesting, processing, and shipping green coffee. On top of that, there is usually a peak season for the coffee harvest—usually in the middle of the harvest period—when most coffee cherries are at their best. Some countries have climates that allow growing and harvesting year round. Others have two distinct periods each for growing and harvesting, and even so, only one of those harvests tends to produce the highest-quality beans.
The belief among many coffee roasters is that they should be roasting and selling their product during peak season: as soon as possible after harvest. Because it can take months to process coffee—and then several more weeks to ship it to the United States—seasonal coffee is generally considered to be any coffee sold within nine months or less of the harvest date.
Other roasters, however, believe coffee seasonality is a bunch of bull hockey that creates an unnecessary sense of scarcity. They say that coffee, if stored properly, stays pretty fresh in its green state. Some even believe green coffee can stay fresh for a year or more. If that’s true, then we should be able to enjoy any type of coffee all year long.
Both of these views probably contain a bit of truth. Some green coffees with certain characteristics may be able to stay very fresh for a long time. Other types might go stale more quickly. Andreas has seen cases when coffee at the roaster has actually diminished in quality and flavor before the shipment could be fully roasted. At other times, he has trained new employees with seemingly old (older than a year) leftover green coffee, and it still tasted great after roasting. Others argue that perhaps we should enjoy coffee seasonally because with all of the origins that regularly produce high-quality coffee beans, another great cup of coffee is always just around the bend—there’s simply no reason to store coffee at all.
What does all of this mean for you, the home coffee brewer? The biggest takeaway is that it’s unlikely you’ll be able to find your favorite single-origin coffee the entire 12 months out of the year. You’ll also notice that most roasters will release certain origin coffees around the same time each year. For example, Ethiopias generally start hitting shelves in June and July, while a lot of Brazils tend to be seen in the winter months. The chart on the next page outlines the average peak harvest times and the corresponding market availability (when you might see roasted coffee for sale) of the most popular coffee-producing origins. Note that these are just estimates—harvests and shipments can be delayed for any number of reasons, the weather being chief among them.
HARVEST SCHEDULE
DECIPHERING THE COFFEE BAG LABEL
At times, coffee bags from craft roasters can seem to display a bunch of esoteric information, and I have yet to see any that come with a decoder ring. How much of this information is necessary for the home coffee brewer? It depends on what you care about and what you want to know. In general, a lot of this information is just the roaster’s way of showing you they have done their homework and know where their coffee came from and how it was processed. The more information roasters include on their bags, the more likely they will be able to answer questions you may have about how the coffee was produced, which is important because, as you’ll see, official designations on bags only mean so much in the coffee world. The fact that this information is listed in the first place is one way you can distinguish craft coffee from specialty coffee and specialty coffee from commodity coffee when you are staring at rows and rows of bags at the grocery store. Let’s break down the basic pieces of information you’re most likely to see on a typical craft coffee bag.
Whole or Ground Beans
This one is self-explanatory, but I’ll take this opportunity to emphasize that if you want to make better coffee at home, you shouldn’t be buying preground beans (see page 84).
Blend versus Single Origin
One of the first things you should notice about a bag of coffee is whether the beans inside are from different origins or one location. The former is known as a blend, while the latter is known as a single-origin coffee. Some craft roasters are resistant to selling blends—I guess because they are not considered as pure as single-origin coffees or because of rumors that roasters try to get rid of stale scrap beans by adding them to blends. But when done well, blends can be a good go-to option for home brewers.
Ideally, blends mix and match different types of beans to create a balanced, consistent cup. Many of us tend to like consistency (or at least the illusion of it), and a blend is one way to get consistent coffee. As you’ve seen, single-origin coffees can vary widely in flavor. If that’s not your style, a blend—although still seasonal and subject to some variation—will never veer too far from what you liked about it in the first place. It takes a lot of planning and skill on the part of the roaster to offer a consistent flavor profile in a blended product month after month, so for roasters who know what they’re doing, it is certainly not a cop-out.
DECIPHERING THE COFFEE BAG LABEL
Espresso Blends
You’ll often see the word espresso on bags of high-quality coffee. This is not necessarily related to the old-school term espresso roast, which many people tend to think indicates a very darkly roasted coffee. Espresso roast is something of a misnomer, because there is no one roast profile or type of bean that works best for espresso. When you see the word espresso on a bag of craft coffee, it means those beans were optimized to achieve that roaster’s espresso goals. Don’t let that stop you from purchasing it for your manual brewing method, though! Espresso beans usually work just as well with pour-over and immersion methods.
Blends also give roasters a way to use up perfectly good leftover beans and less expensive beans while still offering a high-quality product. Blends can make good use of inexpensive beans—beans that might be considered boring on their own but that may offer pleasant qualities when used as one of several beans in a blend. Because of this, blends tend to be less expensive than single-origin coffees, which can be appealing.
At the very least, bags of blends usually list the countries of origin of the beans and may even delve into regions. While blends are often named something cute, sometimes the origin is right there in the name—Mocha-Java is a classic example (although some blends labeled as Mocha-Java might come from neither Yemen nor Indonesia; Mocha-Java is often used as a generic marketing term, and some claim such blends are intended to replicate classic Mocha-Java flavors). I tend to feel that roasters that list the origins have more accountability—and generally a higher-quality product. I would be slightly suspicious of a craft roaster that did not disclose at least the countries of origin behind a blend and highly suspicious of a craft roaster that protected all of the details surrounding a “secret” blend.
Single-origin coffee is usually named after at least the country of origin and usually a growing region or washing station within that country, although many roasters include the most specific information available about where the coffee was grown (more on that later). Craft roasters often strive to highlight the unique qualities of their beans, and one way to do that is by grouping them by origin. Origin certainly affects how a coffee tastes because everything related to the plant’s terroir (soil, climate, sunlight, weather, elevation) contributes to the coffee’s flavor development. Because these factors can vary significantly from year to year—or even from one corner of a farm to another—single origins from the same country can taste surprisingly different from each other. It’s hard to say that all Ethiopias are this way or all Panamas are that way.
Buying Tip
Commodity coffee is almost always a blend, and it w
ould be unusual to find many details about its origin on the bag. However, you may see a bag of commodity coffee labeled “Colombia,” because that country has been marketing its coffee that way since the early days of the coffee trade. Despite the outlier of Colombia, single-origin coffee is a very craft concept. Big specialty coffee brands sell mostly blends as well, although they are more likely to include information about origin on their bags. Recently, big specialty coffee companies have also been more visibly pushing a couple of their own single-origin coffees—usually marketed as “premium” or “limited edition”—but you are more likely to find those bags at a coffee shop than a grocery store.
Farm/Finca, Producer, and Processing Station
More and more, craft roasters are including the small farm or estate (or finca, in Spanish) on their packaging. In some cases, such as the prized Panamanian gesha from Hacienda La Esmeralda, the estate may have more cachet than the region itself. Some bags even include the name of the individual producer and/or the cooperative (a group of producers that pool resources) that grew and processed the coffee. As opposed to simply listing the information, the coffee is often named for the washing station, producer, or estate itself. For example, Halfwit Coffee Roasters’ Rwanda Kanzu is named after the country of origin and the Kanzu cooperative that produced it, and Blue Bottle’s Burundi Kayanza Heza is named after the country, region, and washing station, respectively. In the example on page 164, the single-origin coffee is named for the country (Colombia) and the producer (Edelmira Camayo).
Companies use different naming methods, but these general conventions are partly for traceability, which is the cornerstone of the craft coffee ethos, and partly out of respect for the coffee producers and their product. In general, the more traceable a coffee is, the higher quality it is—and the more likely that the coffee producer was paid a higher price. That’s because if you can trace coffee back to a specific place, you can learn exactly how it was grown, harvested, processed, and sorted, as well as how it was traded and sold. Typically, the more care that is taken in each of these areas, the higher the quality and price of the coffee.
However, different countries and regions have varying levels of traceability because not all parts of the world are equipped with the infrastructure necessary to keep coffee traceable. Areas with limited access to washing stations, for example, will process all of the coffee from the surrounding farms together. Some coffee may even need to be shipped to a processing facility. This doesn’t mean that coffee that cannot be traced back to a farm or producer is automatically of lower quality—some great coffees are not easily sourced.
Varietals
Craft coffee roasters often list varietals on their bags of coffee, especially on bags of single-origin coffee. If varietals are listed, you’re likely to see more than one, because producers often grow more than one plant in the same field. Additionally, in some countries, it’s common for producers to process their beans together, which can mean that multiple varietals end up in one bag. However, it’s not uncommon to see a bag of only one varietal, especially if the beans were carefully sorted. Coffee that comes from rare or specially sorted lots may even be named after the varietal. For example, Intelligentsia’s Santuario Colombia Red Bourbon includes the varietal in the name, along with the farm and country of origin.
Certain varietals, such as bourbon, gesha, and SL34, are associated with high quality, but I don’t think consumers can assume a certain level of quality based solely on the varietal (although if a coffee is named after the varietal, the roaster likely considers that coffee to be special in some way). As discussed in chapter 3, varietals can be associated with certain characteristics, but because the terroir and the roast can affect coffee’s taste so drastically, you can’t glean many details about flavor from the name of the varietal alone.
At the very least, the presence of varietals on a coffee bag is a marker of care and traceability. However, a lack of varietals on the bag does not necessarily mean the coffee is of poor quality.
Elevation
Many coffee packages will tell you how many meters above sea level (masl) or feet above sea level (fasl) the coffee was grown. Generally speaking, higher-quality beans are grown at higher elevations. According to the Coffee Research Institute, in subtropical climates, the best elevation for growing coffee is about 550 to 1,100 masl, and in places close to the equator, the sweet spot is generally between 1,000 and 2,000 masl—although it’s important that the plants don’t suffer frost, no matter where they are.
It’s much cooler at these high elevations; according to a 2005 article in Roast magazine, experts have found that for every 100-meter increase in elevation, expect a 33.8°F (0.6°C) drop in temperature. Cooler temperatures and lower levels of oxygen cause coffee beans to mature more slowly because they are essentially under stress. In this state, most of the coffee plant’s energy goes toward making seeds (as opposed to developing leaves and branches), which makes the coffee beans hard and dense. The beans also have more time to develop and store nutrients, mostly in the form of sugars. In fact, experts say that every 300-meter jump in elevation is associated with a 10 percent increase in sucrose (sugar) production in coffee beans. These sugars play a big role in the development of flavor—specifically acidity, which is why higher-elevation coffee also tends to have a high perceived acidity, a trait many coffee connoisseurs value. Other experts point out that the soil is of better quality up in the mountains, and certain coffee-plant pests cannot live at such high climes. All of these factors combine to make higher-elevation coffee more desirable. The chart below shows a very generalized way to think about how elevation affects flavor:
If the roaster lists elevation on the bag, the upshot is twofold: (1) it shows that the roaster knows where the coffee came from, and (2) a higher elevation might indicate a higher-quality coffee. Of course, there are exceptions. Hawaiian Kona coffee, often considered one of the best coffees in the world, is grown at relatively low elevations. And a certain elevation does not guarantee a high-quality bean. Plenty of gross coffee is grown at 1,500 meters. Elevation cannot make up for poor soil, wonky weather, or poor farming practices.
Elevation versus Altitude
There is a scientific distinction between the words elevation and altitude. Elevation measures the vertical distance between an object and global sea level. Altitude measures the vertical distance between an object and the Earth’s surface. Because the Earth’s surface can vary significantly in its position from sea level, altitude is not a very good way to compare places where coffee plants grow. An altitude of 500 meters in one mountain range can actually be much higher than 500 meters in another mountain range, depending on the elevation of the mountain range. Unfortunately, in common parlance, people often use the terms elevation and altitude interchangeably. It is not uncommon to see the word altitude on a bag of craft coffee. In these cases, I am almost certain the roaster means elevation, as a measure of altitude is essentially useless. Further, if the unit of measurement given is masl, then you know for sure the roaster means elevation, as that unit literally means “meters above sea level.” This particular example of imprecision is rampant in the craft coffee community, but I think the distinction between elevation and altitude is a valid and important one.
Process
The way a bag of coffee beans was processed can tell you a lot about how that coffee will taste—in fact, this is one factor (unlike origin) that has a fairly predictable outcome when it comes to coffee characteristics. Many roasters will include information about how the coffee was processed on the bag. Since we already discussed what these processes are on page 142, here we will focus on flavor and the terms you might see on the bag.
A Note on Elevation and Brewing
Because high-elevation beans are denser and harder, you may notice that water takes noticeably longer to drain through them. For an extremely high-elevation bean, this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to change anything. Dense, hard beans take longer to extract, so th
e slower drawdown might be just what they need. As always, let the taste of the cup guide you. On the flip side, lower-elevation beans tend to extract more quickly. If you have tried everything and your cup is still overextracted, try reducing your water temperature.
WASHED/WET PROCESS
On a bag of coffee, “washed” and “wet process” refer to the same thing. Because this method is the one most commonly used on arabica coffee throughout the Bean Belt, it is the processing term you’ll see most frequently on coffee packaging. Washed processing tends to produce “clean” coffee in which multiple flavors and attributes can be detected. This is one reason why craft roasters tend to like this process—it allows the origin character, as well as a good deal of acidity, to shine through. The list of potential flavor notes is essentially endless when it comes to washed coffee, as flavor notes are so influenced by terroir. Remember that washed coffee needs to be dried, too, before it can be sold, so it’s not uncommon for roasters to explain what drying method they used. On your bag, you may see phrases that describe this stage, such as “dried on patios” or “dried on raised beds.”
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