This holiday season may mark the definitive return of the blend to the high-end specialty coffee scene after years of almost exclusive dedication to ever-more-refined single-origin offerings. The excitement and ingenuity of many of the holiday-themed blends we sampled this past month certainly suggest such a revival. The holiday blend, a long-standing staple of the specialty coffee business in the
Geshas and the Rest: Single-Variety, Single-Lot Coffees
The variety play – marketing coffee by the botanical variety of the tree that produced the coffee – is one of the latest trends in the high-end specialty world. True, some roasters who submitted samples for this month’s article still confused tree variety (botany) with origin (geography), and sent us coffees from a single growing region (Sumatra, say) rather than coffees that reasonably can be
Roast, Variety, Sustainability: HarVee Awards Coffees 2014
Some of the more interesting trends and issues that surfaced among the thirteen prize-winning coffees reviewed this month from the recent Let’s Talk Coffee/Sustainable Harvest HarVee award competition in Panama range from how (the coffees were roasted), to what (tree varieties produced the coffee) to who (produced the coffee). As far as roast goes, we cupped coffees roasted from the far honeyish
October Article: HarVee Award Winners
For our October article we will report on the results of a competition among roasters at the interesting Let’s Talk Coffee event coming up in Panama October 9-12. As a result, our October tasting article will be published on Monday, October 20. Let’s Talk Coffee is a long-running annual event sponsored by coffee exporter/importer Sustainable Harvest. It attracts several hundred coffee
HarVee Roaster Awards, Let’s Talk Coffee, Panama
I’ve been at the Let’s Talk Coffee annual event in Panama over the last few days, and this last Thursday night presented awards to roasters for best retail-roasted presentation of coffees sold (as green coffee) by Sustainable Harvest, a long-established specialty green coffee importer whose business model is built around building sustainability throughout the coffee supply chain. Coffee Review was
Honey and Natural Process Coffees, Central America 2014
Nine years ago I organized a panel for the Specialty Coffee Association of America called “Using Alternative Processing Methods to Create Product Differentiation: Perspectives and Opportunities.” Presented in Spanish and English, it attracted around five hundred coffee producers and roasters. The overall premise of the panel was simple: coffee is no longer a commodity beverage but a specialty
Cupping Calendar Changes
The article “Coffees of a Single Variety, from a Single Lot,” originally scheduled for publication in October, has been postponed to November, with cupping occurring in October. Submissions for this article (“Coffees of a Single Variety, from a Single Lot”) should reach Coffee Review between October 14 and October 23. Roasters may not submit more than two samples for this cupping. Samples for
Hawaii 2014: The Classics Rule
When writing about Hawaii coffees – more specifically, Kona coffees – I invariably feel conflicting impulses about whom to take on. Should I attack the many cynical Kona-bashers among the mainland high-end coffee-roasting community who sneer that Hawaii coffees (Kona in particular) are at best ordinary and always overpriced? On the other hand, should I rattle the bars of the sun-and-sand besotted
Bottled Iced Coffees
North American cafés for some years now have been brewing coffee in advance to refrigerate and serve over ice on warm summer days. The brewed, refrigerated coffee is usually prepared by the cold-brew method: ground coffee is steeped in cool or room temperature water for around ten to twenty-four hours, and after this prolonged extraction, filtered and stored in the refrigerator until it is served
Home Roaster Competition 2014: A Long Way from Iron Skillets
Recently Henry Chang, a passionate home coffee roaster (when he’s not pursuing his successful career as an obstetrician/gynecologist), sponsored a contest for his home roaster Internet correspondents. He asked Coffee Review to act as judge. As busy as we were, we agreed, since both my co-cupper Jason Sarley and I are strong supporters of the home roasting community even though our reviewing work
Subtle Exoticism: Sulawesi and Papua New Guinea
This month’s reviews include coffees from two Indo-Pacific growing regions, the Indonesian island of Sulawesi (formerly Celebes) and Papua New Guinea. We had planned to include coffees from several other Indo-Pacific islands – Java, Bali, East Timor – but we were not able to source enough samples to justify including them. Never mind; we turned up some superb and original coffees from these two
U.K. Coffee Reviews
In 2013, we reviewed coffees from 12 countries, namely the United States, Canada, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, China, Netherlands, Guatemala, Italy, Slovak Republic, Switzerland, and Sweden. The United Kingdom was noticeably absent from the list. London (and the U.K. in general) has a thriving specialty coffee scene that rivals that of other well known U.S. coffee-crazy cities like Seattle
Rwanda and Central Africa: Sweet and a Hint of Savory
Perhaps a more accurate geographical descriptor for the coffee origins we focus on this month may be African Great Lakes coffees rather than Central Africa coffees. The growing regions that produced almost all of the thirty coffees we cupped this month are clustered around or near the gigantic lakes that dominate the geography of the mountainous central-east region of Africa, at or near the
Colombia on the Rebound
When we last tested Colombias two years ago we turned up several fine coffees, but generally were disappointed by the many samples that arrived bearing fancy names but displaying little distinction in the cup. Back then the trend toward select, precisely identified lots of green coffee (aka “direct trade,”“microlots”) seemed to have been honored more in name and hype than in distinction and
Subtle but Not Tame: Brazils 2014
The various cup profiles associated with the world’s coffee regions are the result of a complex interplay between nature and nurture, between the givens of nature – growing altitude, soil and rainfall patterns – and local traditions that for decades determined the varieties of coffee tree typically grown in a region and how the fruit was typically harvested and processed. The sum total of this
A Tribute to the Life of Wicha Promyong, Doi Chaang Coffee
In 2011 I spent several days at the Doi Chaang coffee cooperative in northern Thailand. There I encountered the extraordinary Wicha Promyong, the inspirational leader of the Doi Chaang coffee cooperative and its sister company, Doi Chaang Coffee. Shockingly and unexpectedly, Khun Wicha succumbed to a heart attack on Thursday, January 23, 2057 (2014) near Doi Chaang Village in Chiang Rai Province,
State of the Blend 2014
To say that blends are out of style (at least for drip and French press brewing) in the contemporary high-end world of specialty coffee would be an understatement. Today one seldom sees blends intended for drip brewing featured by cafes and roasting companies with serious upscale coffee aspirations. And any drip blend that does show up is lost among the exotic crowds of direct-trade, micro-lot,
Where Coffee is Hot: By Country
We're wrapping up our "Where Coffee is Hot" series by looking at Coffee Review readership by country. In 2013, we hosted readers from 233 countries and territories, which must be just about all of them. We'll look at our readership three ways: total readers in 2013, per capita readers in 2013, and percentage growth from 2012 to 2013. Total readers in 2013 is somewhat predictable. Countries
Where Coffee is Hot: By International City
In 2013, Coffee Review hosted visitors from 223 countries and territories, including countless cities and town around the world. Our readers hail from famous world capitals such as Rome, Italy and Nairobi, Kenya to lesser-known Nuuk, Greenland and Apia, Somoa. However, some cities have more visitors than others and none of the above cities ranked near the top for Coffee Review readership or per
Where Coffee is Hot: By U.S. State
Last summer, we looked at Coffee Review readership by state for the second quarter of 2013. We calculated per capita readership, that is, readers normalized for each state's population, to get an idea where people are most interested in coffee (at least as measured by Coffee Review readership.) We've just re-crunched the data for the full year of 2013. Here are the top ten states for
