Just the same, there’s learning to be done here. If the roasts weren’t everything I hoped they might be, at least I might try to figure out why. And — to keep things interesting and to keep myself honest — I included a control: the latest batch of beans from Tony Konecny’s spiffy flash-sale like bean business at Tonx.org.

Cup 1: Panama Las Flores de Boquete, from Sweet Maria’s. Roasted Full City+ (+?) I get nutmeg aromas, loads of bittersweet, dry chocolate and a short, nutty finish. I believe I’ve obliviated anything that resembled acidity in the cup, but on the other hand there’s ample body. I’m quite certain this coffee deserves better.

Cup 2: Ethiopia Wet-Process Jimma -Duromina Coop, also from Sweet Maria’s. Roasted City+, offers promises of peach and apricot fragrances that are sweetly fulfilled. Brown sugar sweetness and a bit of spice makes the flavor profile evocative of gramma’s apricot preserves — if gramma were a southern gal, anyway. (Not mine… she was an Iowa girl.) Point is, this cup is all about jammy stone fruit. And if I’d been a little quicker at the roaster I’d likely have some vibrancy and a long sweet finish to go with it, but I don’t… there’s a tang of almond at the end of the cup that leaves a touch of bitterness I’d prefer to not be there.

Cup 3: El Salvador Finca Matalapa, from Tonx coffee. Roasted somewhere in the neighborhood of City+, has lovely, sweet and promising fragrance of honey and jasmine. It’s a bright cup, with orange-peel acidity and high-toned grape flavors with malty undertones. Great body, superb balance. Really this is a brilliant, lively and dynamic cup… and the product of a really sure hand at the roaster. Good on ya, Tony.

When’s the last time you had a blonde coffee? What’s that, you say? Never? Well it’s about time that changes…

Okay, so maybe it’s not really a blonde roast… that stuff’s most often halted before first crack (and the ginger-colored grounds brewed with sugar and cardamom; it tastes like chai.) No matter what you call this extraordinary light-roasted, natural process Sidamo — cinnamon roast, New England roast, maybe — it’s spectacular.

Special Prep = Joy

Fresh from the grinder this coffee will fill your kitchen with the aromas of fresh strawberries and blueberries. Its flavors are a tremendous expression of fruit — sweet strawberry, blueberry and tart cherry — with an undercurrent of Cavendish tobacco. It’s body is mild (a fair trade-off what with that roast and all) and its finish is long, graciously tart and a teensy bit dry.

All in all it’s one remarkable coffee, and, I think, a testament to the  skills on display at the roaster. A coffee this light could be a disaster! But this one’s a dream.

Highly recommended and a steal at under $17.00 a pound. So go get some while the gettin’s good.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

No, the story that’s beginning to get some legs today is between the farmers in the Gayo Mountain region of Sumatra and the Holland Coffee Group, an international coffee importer/exporter with offices in Amsterdam, New York and San Francisco. Where Starbucks merely blockaded Ethiopia’s attempts to acquire its own trade names, Holland Coffee Group has upped the ante to something on the order of full-blown trademark piracy, actually registering marks for Gayo Mountain Coffee in the U.S. and Europe, and then demanding that Gayo Mountain coffee farmers refrain from using that name under threat of legal action. That name — Gayo — which is not only where they live… but is also their tribal name.

I really don’t know a heck of a lot about Holland Coffee Group. They could be really super people. I’m sure they have a lot invested in the success of Gayo Mountain — both in the region itself, and the coffee-growing communities there. Surely they entered into this effort with the intent to protect the investments that they’ve made. I can’t imagine what’s led to such blatant and foolish corporate strong-arm tactics. (Actually, I can… but greed doesn’t require a lot of imagination.) Meanwhile I can only worry that it’s likely to end very badly for everyone involved… and honestly, the Aceh region of Sumatra has seen hardship enough over the years.

Maybe Holland Coffee should read their Aesop.

A man and his wife had the good fortune to possess a goose which laid a golden egg every day. Lucky though they were, they soon began to think they were not getting rich fast enough, and, imagining the bird must be made of gold inside, they decided to kill it in order to secure the whole store of precious metal at once. But when they cut it open they found it was just like any other goose. Thus, they neither got rich all at once, as they had hoped, nor enjoyed any longer the daily addition to their wealth.
– Aesop’s Fables

Meanwhile, until there’s some serious progress made on international protection for appellations, it’s very likely that the corporate thuggery will continue.

I haven’t ordered any new green coffee of late (see the bit about it being cold) and so what I have left is really remnants of seasons past… in some cases, several seasons past. Some Ethiopian coffees from the last eCafe competition, Guatemalan greens from the spring before, and some Sumatra from — gosh, I really can’t be sure — maybe two years ago?

And so I roasted some of just about everything.

The Ethiopian coffee is quite decent, really. For a day or two, anyway; and then the cup just sort of… winds down. Aromatics are fleeting, flavors fading. It’s not a tragic thing, really. It’s just tired.

The Guatemalan beans have a similar tale to tell. Notably, they roast dry and hot — they’ve apparently lost a lot of moisture — and the cup quality is not only faded, but also bitter. Very much so.

The Sumatran beans — the oldest of the lot — well they’re something of a different story. They roast well within parameters I might expect of new crop beans. Fresh from the roaster the cup is quite nice (if a bit sharp.) In a day or two, they’re still quite good; caramel and cocoa aromas, turf and bittersweet chocolate flavors, long and mellow finish. And enough so that I suspect they could keep this up a week more (though I don’t know that they’ll last that long… herselfis a big fan of the coffees of Sumatra.)

Is it something about how Sumatran coffees are processed at the mill that lends them more staying power? Not necessarily… the eCafe Ethopian I sampled was a dry-process (or natural) too.

Was there perhaps more moisture in these beans to begin with, so that they’ve retained more over time? I don’t know… but if there was *that* much moisture I’d wonder that there hadn’t been something icky growing in the bag with them. And besides — they’re more than twice as old as the other beans I’d roasted of late.

Is it something about Sumatra? After all, there’s lots of beans that are marketed as Aged Sumatra… how many other origins actively market aged beans? On purpose? Um… I’m thinking. And coming up empty.

Maybe it’s really about the characteristics the coffee started with. The Ethiopian and Guatemalan beans were both bright, acidy, fruit-forward cups; the Sumatran earthy and dark-toned even when it was young. Perhaps fruit and floral esters are more delicate, more prone to age, while dusky chocolate just gets… mellow.

“Coffee research centres are in the process of planting seedlings of natural coffee with low caffeine varieties, to enable Ethiopia to supply the world market within the shortest possible time,” said Abera Deressa, State Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Don’t step out line for the processed stuff just yet, decaf fans. It’ll still be four years before this planting is mature enough to offer any potential for commercial sale… and even then, there’s still the matter of whether it will taste good.

Speaking of which, Agriculture Minister Deressa further used the occasion to urge researchers to develop coffees with higher yields:

“Although Ethiopia is home to arabica coffee with high generic diversity, the national average yield has not exceeded five to six quintals per hectare, which is lower than in other coffee producing countries,” he said.

Crap…

Um… Minister? Dude? We’ve been there. Done that. Planting varietals that boost coffee yields has always proved a disaster. Every. Single. Time.

Plant your fancy decaf coffee. We’re totally cool with that. Hey, it might even sell! But leave the heirloom varietals alone, okay? The world wants quality coffee and Ethiopia knows how to deliver.

Don’t mess with it.

You may recall that I was pretty chuffed with Green Mountain’s 2006 eCafe Gold Competition auction lot — Ethiopian Shanta Golba Natural Process Sidamo. If you don’t recall (or don’t wanna click) here’s the particulars:

Extremely fruited, with peach and blueberry aromas, and a little whiff of cocoa and cinnamon when wetted. Fruit plays large in the flavor, too… blueberry, strawberry, spiced peach and cardamom, with a dark chocolate understory. The finish, while not everything it was a year ago, it still sweet and resonant, and fades to a pleasant, dusky leather. Yeah, this is one of those coffees you think about dabbing behind your ears, too.

You may also recall that Barry Jarret of Riley’s Coffee got some of the green, too, and I was keen to get my hands on his roast to compare them side by side. Well, I did. And I did. And to sum up, I could simply say, Barry Jarrett is a coffee roasting genius.

Barry’s roast of the Shanta Golba is everything that Green Mountain’s offers, and more. The fruit tones in the aroma are more distinct, more pure, more alive. The acidity — while mild overall, as is the Green Mountain roast — is crisper in Barry’s roast. The flavors in the cup are rich, and exceptionally fruit-forward. Strawberry is a predominant note, backed up by peach and blueberry. And where the finish of the Green Mountain cup takes on dusky notes, Barry’s roast remains purely fruited. It’s as if Green Mountain’s jammy cup were made of dried fruit, and Barry’s, fresh: in the finish there’s nothing lost, nothing diminished at all.

Highly recommended.

If you’re lucky it’s still available at Riley’s Coffee. Go get some.

You make your picks, you takes your chances… that’s how it goes when you bid on coffee at auction. Will the coffee be everything that you found in the auction sample? Will it be shipped carefully and travel well? Will it arrive — and clear customs — sometime in the next… Idunno, twelve months, maybe?

Such is the story of the coffee Green Mountain won in the 2006 eCafe Gold Competition — an auction program that highlights some of the best and brightest cups in all Ethiopia. The program includes both washed and natural process coffees, and — while washed Ethiopians (typified by over-the-top, face full of flowers aromas of Yirgacheffe) still rule the Ethiopian market — it’s the unwashed, natural coffees that stole the show in the 2006 auction. We placed our bets on a brilliant and fruit-forward cup from the Shanta Golba cooperative, a garden coffee grown in the far reaches of Sidamo. And then we waited.

And waited…

Until finally, just a scant few weeks ago, our coffee arrived. Nearly a year after the auction closed.

Now you well know that the clock is ticking when coffee’s been roasted… you have only a matter of weeks (just how many is still argued) to enjoy that bean. The clock ticks for green, unroasted coffee, too. You may not watch the second-hand sweep so intently, maybe, but there’s an undeniable tick-tick-tick playing in your head just the same.

Green coffee tends to lose its intensity over time and its flavors can become brittle, its finish can fall off, and there’s the very real danger that it will take on “off” flavors… those that have nothing to do with the coffee itself, and everything to do with how it’s been stored, or what it’s been stored in. (Nobody likes coffee that tastes like a jute bag. Nobody.) So you might imagine the anticipation in the air, and the white knuckles of that first test roast of the now-landed coffee, and the anxiety around the tasting table to discover… that this was an excellent cup of coffee, still. Maybe not so bright as it was eleven months ago, but maybe a little more rounded, too.

Extremely fruited, with peach and blueberry aromas, and a little whiff of cocoa and cinnamon when wetted. Fruit plays large in the flavor, too… blueberry, strawberry, spiced peach and cardamom, with a dark chocolate understory. The finish, while not everything it was a year ago, it still sweet and resonant, and fades to a pleasant, dusky leather. Yeah, this is one of those coffees you think about dabbing behind your ears, too.

Want some? Better hurry. The very last batch that Green Mountain has available was roasted on Monday, and there are probably fewer than 50 pounds remaining. Or, our good friend Barry Jarrett got some, too, and I know he roasted a batch just last week. I’m really, really hoping he gets around to shipping some of his this way ’cause I’d love to compare them side-by-side, ’cause how often do you get to do that?¹

The final word? Recommended.

Notes and Links

1. Not very often. Seriously.