Craft Coffee

by Jessica Easto

  NATURAL/DRY PROCESS

  The terms natural and dry process are used interchangeably in the coffee world, so you may see either one on a coffee bag. Unlike washed coffees, natural coffees tend to produce very, very distinct fruit notes, often those of blueberry and stone fruit. These are actual fruit notes that almost anyone would be able to discern; they will likely surprise you the first time you taste a natural coffee. In fact, if you aren’t sure whether you can tell two different coffees apart, I encourage you to seek out a naturally processed coffee and compare it with a washed one. In addition to their distinctive fruitiness, natural coffees tend to have fuller bodies and less perceived acidity than washed coffees.

  Natural arabica coffees are most common in Brazil, Ethiopia, and Yemen. Consistently good naturals are often highly prized, although they still tend to spark controversy in the coffee world because some say they are all essentially the same and lack the nuance and variation you see in washed coffees. (I don’t agree.) In any case, natural coffees seem to have a polarizing effect on people: you either love them or you hate them.

  PULPED NATURAL/HONEY

  As you might guess with a process that borrows a little from the washed method and a little from the natural method, the pulped natural process tends to result in a coffee that has a mix of washed and natural characteristics. Beans processed this way tend to keep the acidity of washed coffees and the earthiness of natural coffees. Because the exact processing method can vary from producer to producer, there can be a lot of variation among pulped naturals when it comes to taste.

  This is not the most common processing method, although more producers are starting to experiment with different pulped natural techniques. You are most likely to see a pulped natural coffee from Brazil, where the technique was invented, or in Central America, where they call it honey. More recently, new terms, such as red honey, yellow honey, and black honey, have cropped up—all of them are related to how much fruit is left on the beans before they are set out to dry. Another word you may see on a coffee bag is semiwashed, which also means that, unlike a true pulped natural coffee, not all of the fruit was left on before the beans were dried.

  A Note on Process and Extraction

  Some professionals have found that naturally processed coffees tend to extract more quickly than washed coffees. This means it may be easier to overextract these beans. If you find this is the case, try lowering your water temperature by a few degrees.

  Roast

  I’ve already talked a good deal about roast, but when choosing a bag of coffee, it’s important to keep in mind that there is very little standardization when it comes to naming roasts. Many craft roasters appear to have abandoned the traditional language you might still see on some commodity and specialty coffee bags (City, American, Vienna, French, etc.), likely because those names and their loose definitions are very subjective and not immediately understood. When it comes to craft coffee, it is far more common to see language that references color (light, medium, medium dark, dark), but there still aren’t any scientific parameters you can use to figure out what these terms actually mean. A lot of craft roasters don’t even mention roast on the bag (like the example on page 164)—in fact, many consider the terms light, medium, and dark to be overly simple when it comes to describing roast, as roasters use time and temperature to achieve certain roast profiles, which may not always correlate with the color of the beans. In other words, two beans that look exactly the same shade of brown can produce two wildly different flavors.

  However, that (lack of) information is not all that helpful to you. It’s usually safe to assume that most craft roasters’ beans would be considered light to medium roast by the majority of people who use that scale. As a general rule of thumb, the lighter the roast, the more of the beans’ flavors you’ll get, and the darker the roast, the more of the roast’s flavors you’ll get. Although the color of the beans does not necessarily correlate with their flavor, you can generally expect certain qualities from these descriptors.

  When in doubt, talk to the roaster or a barista in a café of high regard. They will be able to describe the characteristics of the coffee in detail. If you live in an area with a dearth of craft coffee shops, you can find roasters online, and they tend to provide a lot of detail on their websites. Alternatively, you can pay more attention to the flavor notes listed on the coffee bag (see page 164) than to the color of the roast to get an idea of what the coffee might taste like.

  As a final note, it’s important to keep in mind that certain large specialty coffee chains use a different language from the rest of the coffee industry to communicate with the general public. Their blonde roasts may not even be in the same zip code as what others in the industry would call a light roast. This is just one more (extreme) example of how roast color and process are highly subjective.

  ROAST DATE

  I’m going to put my foot down here and say that a bag of high-quality coffee should have a roast date on it. It’s the only way to tell whether the coffee is fresh or already stale from sitting on the shelf too long. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: coffee is incredibly delicate; its flavors just don’t last that long, even in its whole state. Industry wisdom says that coffee shouldn’t necessarily be consumed immediately after roasting because it needs time to off-gas a certain amount of carbon dioxide, which can otherwise make it taste bitter. How much time? Some say at least 24 hours, some say 48 hours, and others say at least one week (and still others say the need to off-gas is a myth). Like most things having to do with coffee, the time needed to off-gas likely depends on the beans. Different beans (and different roasts) vary in their peak freshness. Some say that lighter roasts in particular may need more time to off-gas than other roasts.

  ROAST DEFINITIONS

  Andreas and I tend to think that peak freshness of whole roasted beans is somewhere between 7 and 10 days after roasting, although you can likely get great results in your kitchen up to 21 days after roasting. After that, the flavor quality diminishes. This doesn’t mean the coffee goes bad or will poison you after 21 days; it will just seem duller, like a carbonated beverage gone flat. One way to determine how fresh your coffee is to pay attention to the bloom while you brew it (see page 42)—this is the coffee off-gassing carbon dioxide, so if it doesn’t bubble much or at all when you pour water over it, then you know it’s probably stale.

  A good rule of thumb is to buy only as much coffee as you are going to consume in a week. If you’re giving coffee as a gift and it won’t be consumed right away, consider buying a bag with a very recent roast date (or buy a gift card). If you are buying directly from a roaster, you should, of course, follow their advice, as they know their beans best. Some roasters put a best-by date on their coffee, especially if it’s going to be sold in a grocery store. I don’t really like this practice, because the best-by date doesn’t indicate when the coffee was roasted, and there’s no way to know what metrics the roaster used to come up with that date. Your safest bet is to stick with coffee that lists the roast date on the bag and to choose bags with recent roast dates.

  Flavor Notes

  Flavor notes are little descriptors of things you might taste in the coffee, such as caramel or pear. They can seem like a bunch of baloney, especially when you brew a cup and taste none of those flavors. An experience like this can make home coffee brewers feel like outsiders, leading them to think that they made a mistake while brewing or that they apparently don’t speak the same language as the coffee professionals.

  But here’s the thing: you might taste a flavor note—especially if it’s very exaggerated—but you might not, and that’s not necessarily because you did anything wrong. The flavor notes are what the roasters experienced when they tasted the coffee. It’s based on a roaster’s palate, not on a universal ideal. As we’ve seen, coffee can be influenced by many outside factors, including water composition. While these outside factors may not make your coffee taste bad, they may prevent you from tasting the fla
vor notes when you make the coffee at home.

  Additionally, taste is necessarily subjective and so is the way taste is described. One person’s “almond” might be another person’s “cashew.” If both parties have not agreed on what an almond note tastes like, then there’s a bit of a language barrier: the flavor cannot be understood beyond the broad stroke of “nutty,” perhaps. This is compounded by the fact that people can only recognize flavors that they’re familiar with: if you’ve never tasted an almond, you’re certainly not going to taste one in your coffee. Roasters and baristas have highly trained palates that they exercise every day. Unless you, too, taste things for a living, you likely won’t be able to taste on the same level as a coffee professional—unless you practice, of course (see chapter 5).

  It’s also worth mentioning that even if you can taste all of the flavor notes listed on a bag, the coffee still won’t taste exactly like those things because coffee flavors are subtle—except for that one time my Ethiopia tasted like a blueberry muffin in liquid form. But usually, coffee flavors are subtler than that, especially because coffee is always going to involve bitterness.

  In other words, you should not strive to create the flavor notes listed on the bag in your brew at home. Instead, you should use flavor notes as guideposts that direct you toward the broader flavor category the coffee falls into, like earthy, fruity, floral, or sweet. If you know you don’t really like fruity coffees, then you’ll want to stay away from a bag that lists stone fruit as one of its flavor notes. If you want something sweet, you might look out for notes like “milk chocolate” or “nougat.”

  I want to emphasize that flavor notes are not completely useless; they can often give you a better idea of what a coffee might taste like than the roast can, so I don’t recommend dismissing them entirely. However, from a consumer’s perspective, it’s important to acknowledge that most roasters don’t always do the best job communicating with us, especially when it comes to flavor. In general, coffee bags tend to be more industry facing, which makes sense, because many roasters sell their beans to other coffee professionals through wholesale accounts like coffee shops. But as more of us become interested in buying beans ourselves and making coffee at home, I think the language used on bags needs to change to be more accessible, and when it comes to flavor notes, that means the language needs to become more general.

  Some roasters have already reexamined how they communicate to consumers through their packaging. Blueprint Coffee in St. Louis uses an easy-to-read graphic that shows what consumers can expect from the coffee’s body, sweetness, and brightness (acidity).

  Certifications

  Coffee, like many products, often comes with certifications on its packaging. These may or may not mean anything. I’ll say up front that I don’t think you should be discouraged from buying a bag of coffee just because it doesn’t have any certifications on it nor should you be encouraged to buy one just because it does. The best way to find out more about your coffee is by talking to the roaster or a barista familiar with the beans. I encourage you to look into these certifications on your own, but here are the basics:

  •USDA Organic. This means that the coffee was produced in compliance with the guidelines established by the US Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program. It also means the producer is able to afford the fees associated with the certification. It does not necessarily mean that no synthetic substances were used, as the USDA’s National Organic Program has a list of allowable synthetic substances. It also doesn’t mean that any coffee without the USDA Organic label is not organic. Many coffee producers already farm organically out of tradition or necessity (synthetic chemicals are expensive), but they might not have the extra funds required to put the certification on the bag. The roaster should be able to provide you with the best information about where the coffee came from and how it was grown.

  •Fair Trade. This is probably one of the most common certifications for coffee, and it’s one that helps many consumers make purchasing decisions. In the beginning, fair-trade certification was intended to help smaller coffee producers survive in a competitive marketplace. A fair-trade label on a bag of coffee is supposed to mean that the coffee was purchased from the producer at a fair market value. In exchange for the fair price, the coffee producer is expected to adhere to certain environmental, ethical, and social standards (although their coffee does not need to be organic). In the United States, fair-trade certification is governed by Fair Trade USA, which broke off from Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International in 2012. In recent years, Fair Trade USA has come under fire for a variety of reasons. For one thing, Fair Trade USA started allowing big corporations to become fair-trade certified, which made it seem like the fair-trade mission had moved away from trying to help smaller producers. For another, Fair Trade USA’s minimum price of fair-trade coffee isn’t that much higher than the price of regular commodity coffee, and it hasn’t increased very much in the past 20-something years, leading some to wonder how fair these fair-trade prices actually are. Additionally, critics wonder whether the extra money is really making it to the producers and not being siphoned off by some corrupt body along the way, as there is not much oversight of each transaction. As previously mentioned, transparency is a big part of the craft coffee movement, so many craft roasters skip the drama of fair trade altogether by directly trading with producers. This allows them to pay fair prices while establishing a relationship with their producers; however, their coffee won’t have any fair-trade labels on it. Don’t let the lack of a fair-trade label stop you from buying a bag of coffee—talk to the roaster!

  •Bird Friendly. This certification, developed by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, relates to shade-grown coffee. To receive this certification, coffee producers must meet requirements related to the percentage of shade coverage on their farms, the height of their trees, and the diversity of the tree species they grow—plus their coffee must be certified organic. What do birds have to do with coffee? It’s not uncommon for forests to be cleared to make way for coffee plantations. This reduces the habitat for migratory birds, which are essential to the ecosystems they inhabit. Maintaining native shade trees on coffee plots helps restore a safe haven for these birds. It also helps reduce water waste, maintain healthy soil, and produce more delicious coffee. That’s right: birds aside, shade-grown coffee is often prized for its quality. It develops more slowly, similar to coffee at high elevations, which increases the nutrients (like sugar) in the bean. While this is certainly an admirable certification (especially because the fees go toward migratory bird research), some coffee farms produce organic, shade-grown coffee without the label.

  •Rainforest Alliance. This certification comes from the Rainforest Alliance and requires adherence to a number of standards related to the environment, ecology, and labor. No organic or shade-grown requirement is needed to receive this certification. Unlike other certifications, the Rainforest Alliance requires that only 30 percent of a producer’s coffee beans meet its conditions in order for its seal to be used on the packaging. The seal discloses this percentage.

  It’s worth noting that coffee producers can often negotiate better prices for certified coffee, and the value of this negotiating power should not be underestimated. It ensures that coffee producers, who often live in impoverished countries, receive better prices that help them to maintain their livelihood. The ethics of coffee growing—which has largely been ignored throughout coffee’s entire history—is certainly something to be concerned about. The main idea here is that it is difficult to determine from a bag alone whether the coffee inside was produced and purchased ethically.

  If you care about the way your coffee is grown and sold, a better course of action than purchasing based on certifications alone is to look for direct-trade coffee or to ask a roaster how they source their coffee. Direct trade is a term used by roasters that have built relationships with producers, purchased coffee directly from them, and likely paid a premium for it. In the ca
se of direct trade, the roaster can tell you exactly where the coffee came from and how it was grown. However, direct trade isn’t practical for all roasters because it takes time and skills related to shipping logistics. Many roasters instead rely on like-minded importers to help them source their coffee. In fact, many small roasters would not survive without the help of these importers, which invest a lot of time and resources building long-term relationships with producers and, in some cases, help them improve their quality and, of course, reach customers. The takeaway? Direct-trade coffee is usually a good thing, but that’s not to say that importers are money-grabbing middlemen. They are a vital part of the industry, and ethics-conscious home brewers would be wise to get to know their roaster’s importers, too!

  STORAGE

  To get the most out of your new bag of coffee beans, proper storage is essential. It’s best to think of coffee as a spice: buy it both fresh and whole. It’s not uncommon for folks to dry-toast spices before using them, but it’s not recommended to store them that way long term, as toasting speeds up the staling process. Coffee is essentially a toasted spice, and it loses flavor even more quickly than most spices (that’s why I recommend you only purchase what you think you will consume in a week).

  Most coffee people recommend that you store your coffee, again like spices, in an airtight container in a cool, dark, dry place. Air, heat, light, and moisture will expedite the staling process. At our house, Andreas and I find that keeping coffee in its original bag is fine as long as we are careful to squeeze out as much air as possible between uses. Many people transfer their beans to a jar, but I still prefer the bag—you can’t squeeze extra air out of a jar. Bags are also opaque; therefore, the beans have very limited exposure to light. Most bags also have a one-way valve, the nifty little invention that greatly improves the longevity of roasted coffee.