Modern growing methods may be culprit of 'coffee rust' fungal outbreak

Modern growing methods may be culprit of 'coffee rust' fungal outbreak

The Cupping Table Trap

Not too long ago, while on a trip to origin, the producers who had arranged the trip set up a cupping to show off the variety of the coffee they could provide. Each table had a number of microlots of various process methods and farms and there were a number of tables. The coffee producer that I had a relationship with was there and I immediately recognized the flavor profile I had come to expect from his farm. There were a couple of other farms that had similar profiles but there were also some microlots that had unexpectedly unique flavors that really set them apart from the rest. One in particular stood out. It was noticeably sweeter, honey-like in its sweetness, with an almost crystalized ginger quality. There was only about 50 bags of this coffee available and if I wanted I could lock them up right then and there with the producer. It was a moment every coffee buyer pines for, that special find, an exclusive deal, a Direct Trade dream. I asked to have samples sent back to the Roastery to cup them again when I returned. When I did, I wondered what I could have been thinking. What stood out from the crowd in the origin cupping room now reflected a flavor taint. Without the other cuppers around gushing over this sample, the shine disappeared. Once again I was glad that I didn't fall for the cupping table trap.

I was reminded of this episode just last week in the cupping room while sampling production roasts. With the seasonal weather changes the coffee cools faster and a couple of coffees’ profiles had changed more than expected. Anyway, while cupping a client stopped by and, after having a go around the table, was struck by one in particular. It was noticeably sweeter, honey-like, maybe more like molasses. I told him this was a coffee slated for a temperature adjustment. That this molasses flavor he was tasting would change to a more liqueur-like characteristic with a couple of degrees increase in final temperature. But he's hooked now. I know how he feels. He's got the bug of discovery, wants to have that experience at his shop, share his treasure. He's fallen for the cupping table trap.

The process of cupping is enjoying much attention these days and cuppers are often exalted for their ability to ferret out the nuanced subtleties hidden within coffee. The once esoteric art of cupping is now taught at workshops held everywhere, indoctrinating a whole new legion of master cuppers with their own arcane vocabulary. This naturally has spread out to the masses as converts share their new found gospel of taste. The altar of this new faith is the cupping table. A magical realm where secrets are revealed by revered adepts, bestowing favor in the form of a cupping score.

Of course, it wasn't always this way. The business of cupping was the purview of coffee traders and coffee buyers whose aims were not the same. For traders, the principal concern was defects and taints that could negatively affect a coffee's value. For this reason the cupping samples are given a very light roast, commonly referred to as a trade roast, to expose any off tastes. Particularly where taints and defects are concerned, it is not enough to be able to describe a flavor characteristic, one must also identify its cause. If something jumps out at you on a cupping table it is not always for the best of reasons. Coffee growers and traders have historically focused taste terminology on defects since the principal concern was rejection by buyers.

Mike Sivetz observed that quality cupping language should consist of three characteristics:1. A vocabulary pertinent to the item being tasted; 2. a common agreement on a taste or odor impression from the same sample; and 3. a depth and breadth of coffee tasting experience. In the past, most vocabularies for coffee flavor leaned heavily on taints and defects, not because we were looking for them but rather to avoid them and, if identified, to fix the problem. Coffees that were free of off flavors and displayed clean characteristics were approved for trade.

While popular notions of coffee buyers as intrepid explorers dominate our media depictions today, historically the reality has been far more mundane. Most coffee buyers of the past worked for large roasting firms producing a few blends for the commercial trade. Their job was not a search for an elusive coffee, it was rather to find the cheapest possible coffee for the blend. These cuppers, too, would have trade roasted their samples to reveal taints and defects. The goal wasn't to find the best bean, but the cheapest with the least defects. If they shaved even a penny off the cost it was worth it since most customers were not brand loyal - coupons dictated sales. Naturally, the coffee couldn't be so offensive that customers would object, but most commercial blends had so many components that it was a muddled mess anyway, making it near impossible to distinguish one brand from another.

Even with the rise of specialty coffee most roasters still focused on blends. Now, however, the goal was to create a complete coffee. One that could serve as the flagship of the brand and have wide appeal.

This emphasis on blends may have influenced what was desirable in a single origin coffee. Many roasters sought to align themselves with well known estates that could offer exclusive, signature profiles. It wasn't so much a uniqueness that was sought after, rather an ideal. Again, this coffee needed to be complete in and of itself, not needing to be blended. The operative trait associated with quality in this case was balance. Estates could deliver on this quality by crafting a signature profile from combining beans harvested from different parts of the estate. In this scenario, the cupper is not only responsible for identifying attributes that would detract from the experience, i.e. defects and taints, but for crafting a distinctive flavor.

This technique would be adopted by cooperatives as they, too, entered the realm of specialty coffee. Individually, small farms’ quality and flavor was often inconsistent and unreliable, but by combining attributes together into a coherent whole cooperatives could produce coffee that rivaled estates. For roasters such as myself, these coffees are often preferable over estates since the trees are more likely to be heirloom varieties grown in very biodynamically diverse environments as opposed to hybrids grown in specialized shade or even, too often, full-sun conditions.

In both cases, whether working for a roasting firm or working at origin, cupping is not simply a passive exercise, and quality isn't stumbled upon - it is something created. Today, however, with the focus on microlots this model is largely forgotten. We have come a long way since the days when a few commercial brands dominated the coffee market and now coffees are lauded for their own unique characteristics rather than simply for being the next Jamaica Blue Mountain. But what may have been lost along the way is that different is not always good. Having a sound knowledge of taints and defects, and an idea what one is looking for in a quality coffee would avoid the cupping table trap.

Some of this may have come from the very thing that the SCAA initiated to improve coffee quality at origin - cupping competitions such as The Cup of Excellence. In the beginning many growers would put aside a small lot that would be carefully prepared for the competition but many are simply baffled what it is cuppers are looking for anymore when they see farmers who do little or nothing with their lots win. Many view the competitions merely as one would a lottery ticket - it doesn't make much sense to make a special effort preparing a coffee for the competition when there's no sense to what wins.

Some of this also may have to do with the cozier relationship that roasters are encouraged to develop with growers in the world of Direct Trade. But grower and roaster interests are not always aligned and an inexperienced buyer may not recognize a known taste fault in a delivery and a grower is not obliged to train him or her. This goes beyond the obvious taste faults from growing to the more subtle taints from processing. Too often I hear taste descriptions that are the result of a mediocre coffee being subjected to processing taint, intentionally or otherwise. I recall one grower insisting on a sample's “wineyness”, when it was obviously ferment, despite the spin.

Perhaps, though, the real culprit here may be the trade roast itself. Trade cupping is meant to expose possible taste faults from taints and defects, not reflect potential flavor. A good coffee, free of taints and defects, is clean and straightforward at a trade roast. This would certainly seem boring after awhile. This may be why process taints are gaining favor among those cuppers caught in the cupping table trap, they create an impression of complexity and diversity. Some may argue that we are entering a new era of taste acceptance, that the old rules no longer apply. I must disagree. Taste faults are not taste preferences, ignorance does not make it so.  

Sivetz further asserted two aspects of taste terminology for coffee. One consists of the trade or lay terminology by non-chemists, e.g., growers, traders, and buyers. The other is chemical terminology by chemists, chemical engineers, and food technologists; the industry benefits from a combination of the two. While I am no chemical engineer myself, I benefited greatly under his tutelage when confronting the different taste attributes in coffee. Particularly when it came time to call a duck a duck when confronting an unusual taste characteristic on the cupping table. 

Recognizing a defect should be obvious to any cupper; harder, I think, is to recognize taints. Some coffee taints are generally accepted in the trade, i.e. processing taints such as dry-processed beans from Sumatra. Many would argue that this taint, so long as the dry-process is done properly, characterizes this coffee, is part of what makes it unique. Sivetz himself long carried Sumatra coffee in his roastery. But there are too many dry-process coffees out there, not just from Sumatra, that are simply dirty tasting and fermented. This is not character, this is not uniqueness - this is sloppy processing. Coffee left on the side of the road to dry is not quality coffee regardless of poetic waxing.

While the days of looking for the one complete coffee are over, we should be equally concerned about falling for “anything goes”. We can become so fixated on finding something different that we forget what’s good. Knowing the difference between a taste fault and a taste preference is crucial to creating true specialty coffee. One can develop a warped view of coffee flavor on the cupping table if one loses sight of the purpose of cupping. This trap can be avoided when one recognizes that the cupping table is a tool to be used for quality, not a world to stumble through hoping to discover treasure. Much of my own work on the cupping table isn’t looking for something new but cupping what we have done, i.e. production roast cupping, with an eye towards improving it.

In the world of coffee you can always have something different, but that does not make it good. True coffee professionals not only identify great coffee, they create it.

Seasonal Coffee

Not too long ago, while visiting a number of coffee bars in a particular city, I began to notice a peculiar phenomena. It is fashionable these days if you are a third-wave coffee bar to offer a few different coffees from a select number of roasters, usually whoever happens to be the new hip thing. The rationale behind this selection is the latest buzzword in coffee: seasonality.

What was peculiar was that I began to notice it was the same few coffees coming from three roasters. At one shop it would be Roaster A with Coffee X, Roaster B with Coffee Y, and Roaster C with Coffee Z; but at another, Roaster C would have Coffee X, and Roaster A would have Coffee Y, while Roaster C would have Coffee Z. This pattern would switch around randomly from shop to shop. Each bar, of course, when asked why they had a particular coffee from said roasters would share the gospel of seasonal coffee.

The concept of seasonal foods and seasonal eating has been gaining traction in recent years with the popularity of farmers markets, slow food, and farm to table eating. It is a response to the increasing commodification of food and the adverse effects of diets that are largely made up of processed foodstuffs. Adherents to this philosophy point to the increased flavor and nutrients of eating foods that are in their harvest season, along with the health benefits of a variable diet that reflects the changing seasons. It stands to reason that one should not expect the exact same foods year round, but with globalization that is exactly what we see in grocery store aisles. Almost anyone can taste the difference from a tomato sourced locally from a farmers market or backyard garden to one from the supermarket.

It seems only inevitable that this concept would be appropriated by the coffee industry. Here's how one prominent roaster explains:

      We've dedicated ourselves to transforming our experience of coffee from a generic commodity to a really special beverage, and treat it more like fresh produce than some faceless staple. . . This understanding of coffee as produce has wonderful implications: it lets us think of coffee as a fresh, artisan-crafted food, with all the delicious experience that brings. However, many in the coffee industry are unaware that, like all produce, coffee is a distinctly seasonal crop.

There is some truth behind the seasonality of coffee but the error here is the simple fact that coffee is not produce, it is the seed of a cherry. It is, in fact, one of the few products in the world in which the fruit is discarded and the seed is saved (although recently I was introduced to a beverage product derived from the fruit that touts its antioxidant characteristics). Moreover, it is an equatorial crop. The harvest season occurs over a number of months, requiring repeated pickings as fruit ripens. The harvest times themselves vary according to each country's relation to the equator. Some countries situated directly on the equator experience more than one harvest season, essentially delivering fruit year round. After picking the cherry and removing the fruit, the beans are often stored in the protective parchment until final milling. This resting period, or reposa, is important for mild flavor. Producers are not racing against the clock to get the coffee out before it goes bad. Rather, they are challenged to give the coffee enough time to bring out its best characteristics.

Experienced roasters have long known that there are ideal times within the harvest season to source coffee, but once the beans are milled, bagged, and stored appropriately, that coffee is good for a long period, long enough to cover to the next crop.

I can forgive a new roaster for falling for this fallacy, but when a market leader, who should know better, participates in these shenanigans it bodes ill for the Specialty Coffee Trade as a whole. This knowing deception seems more an attempt to create an artificial sense of scarcity rather than truly educating consumers. But I believe that this sophism has other adverse consequences beyond simply duping customers - it inhibits the opportunity for long-term relationships between farmers and would-be consumers. Most, if not all, of our best selling coffees come from producers we have been sourcing from for more than a decade. In many ways, we have grown together through our long-term relationship. It is through these relationships that we have been able to create some really special coffees. The simplest benefit comes from selecting our lots at the peak of the harvest. Producers are more likely to do something special for a roaster that comes back year after year and they often develop a good sense of what we are looking for in a coffee. So when the best cherries are arriving at the mill they can be set aside for specific customers. Its simply something one does for a relationship that is built on trust and respect.

This trust and respect extends to our customers who have come to rely on us for their favorite coffees. Sure, there are those who like to explore different varieties, and we occasionally will bring on a coffee on a limited basis to see if it builds a following, but to spin this as seasonal smacks as fallacious in my opinion. Co-opting buzzwords from other industries is no way to build respect in our own industry. Someone once said that the Specialty Coffee Industry has a self-esteem problem, that we are constantly trying to borrow from other, seemingly more respected industry segments, like taste-terms from wine. Likewise, promoting seasonal availability in coffee is a me-too gambit.

Later in that same trip I had the opportunity to visit a local green coffee warehouse. While looking over all the pallets of coffee I couldn't help but notice those same few coffees that I had seen around town. Our guide to the warehouse explained that in addition to storing coffee for other roasters they were also bringing in a few coffees to sell to a handful of small roasters in town. That way these roasters could simply come by and buy a few bags at a time as needed.

Then it dawned on me: Seasonal is whatever happens to be in this warehouse.

After the Harvest

Fair Trade Betrayal

Last year Fair Trade USA stunned the coffee industry with its announcement that it was pulling out of Fairtrade Labelling Organization (FLO), the international body that governs the use of the Fair Trade mark, and changing its criteria to allow certification of estates as part of a new initiative they are calling "Fair Trade For All."

This decision was made without consulting producer groups or licensed roasters currently certified with Fair Trade USA and came as a shock to both parties. Members were left confused, as it seemed that Fair Trade USA had abandoned its core supporters. Fair Trade USA claimed that it had to act unilaterally since FLO had spurned earlier efforts to expand the certification criteria.

By and large, this move has had little overall public impact. Indeed, it seems as if the general response has been a collective yawn both within the industry and among customers. This comes at an especially dangerous time for the Fair Trade movement as it has been revealed that there is explicit language in the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that poses a direct threat to protections for small producer groups and Non-Government Organizations (NGO's).

Should we care?

That all depends on how you perceive the Fair Trade mark. Does it represent a movement or a market? If it is a market, then expanding the criteria would seem to be a good thing. But if it is a movement . . . criteria matters.  This movement vs. market question has long dogged Fair Trade since it began and it may be helpful to review a little history on how we got here. 

For the better part of the past half century, since the ending of WWII, the price of coffee was controlled by the International Coffee Agreement administered by the International Coffee Organization. This agreement came about after world leaders reflected on the many causes that led to war and national instability. It was recognized that there was a link between poverty and terrorism (I know, crazy, right?). In an effort to build stability in the developing world it was decided that developed nations needed to work together in order to create income stability. Coffee was seen as a logical vehicle to this end since the areas it is grown in tend to be hotbeds of revolutionary impulses. The International Coffee Agreement was a tool to regulate the flow of coffee around the world in order to maintain a stable price that farmers could rely on to provide a positive cash crop.  Not only would the amount of coffee produced be regulated, but so too the amount of coffee imported into developed nations that were party to the agreement. The Soviet Union was not a part of the agreement since they did not have a convertible currency, neither was much of the middle east, since imports there were considered marginal.

Did it work? Well, aside from a couple of years of severe frost in Brazil when coffee prices soared, the answer is unequivocally yes. Unless, of course, you are a commodities speculator. Its hard to make much money in a stable market.  And if you subscribe to Free Trade ideology, nothing rubs you wrong more than a working, international, market control mechanism. So, in a wave of market reform movements unleashed in the 1980's, the International Coffee Agreement was suspended in 1989 with the result in the collapse of the price of coffee since Brazil had been stockpiling coffee for years and now could dump it on the world market, much of it below exportable grade; coffee trash, as it were, since the agreement not only covered how much a country could export but of what quality as well.

I recall when this happened. I had been a coffee roaster for only a few years then and I couldn't believe my good fortune. Almost overnight, the price of coffee was cut in half. It was a boon for profitability- if you were a roaster, that is. If you were a coffee farmer, particularly a small coffee farmer, it was disastrous. Before long, I would reconsider what kind of boon this was. I began to notice the availability of good quality coffee drying up. Today, I am embarrassed to admit that it took the decline in coffee quality to wake me up to poverty around the world, but that's the truth of it.

As I began my travels around the world learning about coffee growing, what I began to understand was the connection of environment to coffee's flavor. The coffees I loved the most, the ones that really stood out to me, were the ones coming from traditional farms. It was these traditional farms that were the most under threat in the new "market" reality. The new reality stated that it was a speculator who dictated the price paid for coffee.  The new reality said if you couldn't compete with the market, then you need to leave. And leave the farmers did, swelling the population in urban areas where jobs were few and crime was high.

During this same period missionary groups and activists began to bring the issues of globalization to the public's eye. Ten Thousand Villages promoted indigenous handicrafts and the Max Havelaar label was born in Europe. Small producer farmers in Mexico pushed to use the Max Havelaar label for coffee. In 1989, forty Alternative Trade Organizations (ATO) joined together to form the International Federation for Alternative Trade, and the founding of the Fair Trade Federation.

These organizations united South and the North, developing with the developed activists with markets. Out of this grew a tension between two competing visions, according to Daniel Jaffee, author of Brewing Justice, one that sees Fair Trade as a tool for modifying the dominant economic model and the other that emphasizes fair conditions for products from the South.

In the first vision, cooperative models are promoted to contrast the dominance of market forces that favor multinational corporations who have a history of exploiting under-represented communities, especially rural village communities. The second vision sees the march of globalized commerce as a given and seeks to merely reform certain aspects of its practices, such as working conditions. Is Fair trade a corrective to the structural unfairness of globalization or is it an alternative, competing vision of world trade? What's important to our discussion here, though, is that it is the close collaboration of cooperative groups that provided the formation of the Fair Trade movement in the beginning. It could be said that it was these cooperative groups that co-founded Fair Trade, and as a result have a say in its criteria.

As Farmers Markets gained popularity in the US as a way for consumers to experience face to face interactions with food producers, standards based certification acts as an effective surrogate where such face to face interactions are impossible, allowing customers to embed such transactions with greater morality and responsibility. 

In 1997 all of the national certification entities united to create the Fairtrade Labelling Organization (FLO) in Bonn, Germany to create an international standard for certification and in 1999 Transfair USA debuted the mark in the US. It was a heady time for anti-globalization activism, and Starbucks was a favored target. It would be here that the clash of Fair Trade activism in the North would be played out, and the actions of Transfair USA would set a questionable precedent for the future of Fair Trade in the US.

An aggressive consumer awareness campaign highlighting the poor pay farmers received for coffee narrowed the discussion of Fair Trade in the US, much in the same way that the meaning of Organic has been reduced to a question of allowable inputs. This narrowing of message may have seemed necessary to communicate to consumers used to sound bite narratives and easy solutions. Indeed, just purchasing coffee with the Fair Trade label was an easy way to feel good about purchasing a product whose origins are largely shrouded in mystery.  But focusing on consumers meant that many roasters found themselves on the defensive, not the least of them as what many considered the biggest baddie of them all: Starbucks. In one of the more convoluted explanations, Starbucks claimed that there was both not enough supply and not enough demand for Fair Trade Certified coffee!

Transfair USA was quick to want to work with Starbucks, seeing them as a way to mainstream the idea of Fair Trade to consumers and a way to leverage other roasters. But the decision in 2000 to bring Starbucks into the Fair Trade movement caused a number of problems. The first was that the contract agreement was secret, while the Fair Trade system is supposed to be transparent. The arrangement exposed the issue of Transfair USA being both a certifier and promoter, while FLO has separated the certification and promotional functions to protect legitimacy. The certifier is the gatekeeper of that legitimacy.

Rather than creating greater acceptance for Fair Trade products, the entry of Starbucks raised serious questions about corporate involvement.  Some worried that large corporations could sow confusion about the level of their involvement with Fair Trade, using the mark to essentially deflect consumer concerns of exploitative trade arrangements. If Transfair USA allows such companies to promote the Fair Trade seal, wouldn't that lead to consumers being cynical about the integrity of Fair Trade?

These issues compelled Cooperative Coffees Network to withdrawal from Transfair USA in 2004. Over the next few years an exodus of roasters occurred, citing a lack of commitment to Fair Trade principals. Many began promoting the Fair Trade Federation mark, which certifies companies who commit to 100% Fair Trade purchases. But for those roasters who, for various reasons, unable to source all of their coffees from Fair Trade sources there was no alternative.

Meanwhile, some roasters began creating their own look-alike seals, under the nomenclature "Direct Trade," and sowing further confusion among consumers by claiming that they were better than Fair Trade since they claimed to pay higher prices to farmers than the Fair Trade specified minimums. Such copy cat seals are particularly deleterious. It would be akin to Walmart deciding that it wanted to allow its customers the experience of a farmers market and setting up a fake market populated by representatives of Tyson and Monsanto in their parking lot. Direct Trade is the Intelligent Design alternative, it suggests certification legitimacy where none exists.

But when the certifier is also the promoter, there is the tendency to wish to expand available products to certify. This is exactly what has happened to Fair Trade. Consumers wished to see the seal on other products beyond coffee, especially tea and bananas. The problem being that these products are rarely grown in cooperative farms. So the criteria for these products focused on fair labor standards.

If these products can be certified Fair Trade and not come from cooperatives, why not coffee? At the 2003 FLO annual assembly this very question came to a vote. The vote failed due to substantial opposition from farmer organizations and progressive roasters. Transfair USA's (now Fair Trade USA) claim that FLO was dragging its heals on the question is partly true, due to the fact that it is a member organization and the members opposed the idea. Fair Trade USA's decision then to pull out of FLO and move ahead with certifying estates is in direct conflict with member directives. That they made this decision without consulting even their own members further complicates the matter.  Who did they do it for? Roaster members were not asking for it, and producing members certainly were not behind the idea. Their "Fair for All" campaign suggests that they are doing it for farm laborers who currently do not have a stake in the current certification criteria. But the fact is there are already certifying agencies that do address this, namely Utz Certified and Rainforest Alliance.

This has left US roasters who wish to remain true to the original tenets of Fair Trade in something of a quandary. Moreover, it left FLO without a certifying agent for the largest consumer coffee market in the world. In the interim, Fair Trade Canada has accepted those roasters formerly certified with Fair Trade USA who wished to comply with international standards.  Many roasters, however, have taken a wait and see approach with Fair Trade USA. For their part, Fair Trade USA has stepped up promotions of cooperative projects, perhaps as a way to deflect criticism. Regardless, their decision to include estates in their criteria is a betrayal to the cooperative groups who help create Fair Trade. Many of these groups are ambivalent to this change, some are outraged, but know that Fair Trade USA still commands the largest consumer market for certified coffee.

Should we care?

I think we should. Fair Trade Certified coffee still represents a tiny fraction of sales in the US market. Fair Trade was built on the ideals of cooperative enterprise and it is this ideal that is being eroded by Fair Trade USA "experiment" with certifying estates. Small farmer producers are still the most vulnerable players in global commerce. By supporting small farmer producers you strengthen village communities, giving a voice to those who traditionally have had little say in their's or their children's future. Fair Trade is more than just a marketing label, it is a commitment. Fair Trade USA has betrayed that commitment by placing brand promotion over label integrity.

For our own part, we have made the transition to Fair Trade International. Fair Trade USA's move to separate itself from FLO represents a final blow to what has been, admittedly, an increasingly tenuous relationship. As a small roaster committed to small farmer cooperatives, Fair Trade USA's move is a slap in the face to not only small producers but small roasters as well. It seems to me that this move is one simply to increase Fair Trade USA's available products, and thus increase its own coffers. It is not something that we want to be a part of, nor is it something that is in the best interest of coffee producers. It is a betrayal to its members, both South and North.

Source Washing and the Illusion of Transparency.

Not too long ago McDonald's determined they had an image problem and wanted to do something about it. No, they didn't want to address the issues that contributed to the problem, they wanted a PR campaign! The problem, as they saw it, was that too many people saw McDonald's as a huge, soulless, corporate monster hellbent on destroying the health of its consumers and the livelihoods of its suppliers, or something to that effect. The solution would be to put a face behind the product. One post featured a beef farmer, another a potato farmer. By focusing on the people who supply McDonald's they hoped to deflect the negative image the public held.

It would have been a successful campaign had they not decided to deploy it through social media that allowed for user comments. All went well for a short time until they were forced to take down the posts as negative comments began to dominate the discussion. By opening up the posts to comments they inadvertently exposed themselves to their own hypocrisy. Many users were not swayed by the campaign and called out the company on their practices.

This story reminded me of an experience I had recently during the Specialty Coffee Conference in Portland. I had accepted an invitation from a Brazilian coffee exporting firm to tour Portland area roasters and participate in a program that included a cupping of a number of Brazilian coffees. The invitation came from a long time friend in the coffee industry who got his start in Brazil. He knew of my long held unfavorable opinion of Brazilian coffee but he assured me that Brazilian specialty coffee had come a long way in the last decade and deserved a closer look. Knowing that I am highly opinionated but often wrong, I decided to keep an open mind and hear what they had to say.

The heart of the presentation centered around the transparency the program offered. Every roaster would be supplied with a tracking number that identified the background information of that particular lot. It was even tied into a Google Earth map that would pinpoint the exact location on the farm where that coffee was sourced. Moreover, it would pull up detailed information on the farm itself. This pop up included all the requisite info on the farm, i.e. type of coffee tree, harvest technique, elevation, and best of all, a picture of the farmer.

I found this information was somewhat problematic rather than having its intended effect of drawing me in. First off, the Google image showed what any ecologist would recognize as a "Green Dessert," a landscape of monoculture devoid of any other living organism. This form of industrial agriculture has been championed in the last sixty years as a revolution in production. But with it has come the dark side of run-away chemical inputs and runoffs, habitat destruction and loss of indigenous flora and fauna. The identification of the land owner as a coffee farmer (a third generation coffee farmer no less) was just as egregious, this guy is a coffee farmer about as much as Howard Schultz is a barista. All of this made for a complete example of what I have come to call source washing.

For the better part of its history, the coffee industry has been guilty of the exact opposite - purposely concealing the origins of the coffees used in mass-marketed blended brands. The advent of the Specialty Coffee market changes matters only a little. Many roasters, while promoting the idea of using only high quality Arabica coffee, still preferred marketing blends, partly to create a sense of exclusivity, partly because it was easier to sell coffee with catchy blend names that evoked exotic locales rather than the locales themselves.This practice had the added benefit of allowing the roaster to substitute particular coffees whenever availability or price dictated. When you have a blend with five or so components in it no one is going to notice that you switched a coffee from Colombia with one from Brazil.

Despite the prevalence of blends some origins were able to develop a value identity. Even before the Specialty Coffee movement, the Federation of Colombian Coffee Growers launched an incredibly successful campaign in the US market encouraging customers to look for "100% Colombian Coffee" using the now iconic Juan Valdez and his donkey as their model. Maybe because of this early success, Colombian coffee has not always had the reputation it deserves in the Specialty Trade, being perceived as somewhat passe' to the Specialty Coffee drinker. Other countries followed Colombia's lead and became early names in coffee, notably Kenya and Sumatra. While Kenya made a concerted effort to create a quality association with their coffee, Sumatra is a different matter altogether. Coffee from Kenya gained notoriety for its clean, winey flavor with big floral notes, and it represented a refined taste. Sumatra, on the other hand, was the Rolling Stones to Kenya's Beatles, dirty, musty, often over-roasted; it represented the hardcore coffee drinker.

As roasters and consumers became more sophisticated, so too coffee's specificity. Soon customers were familiar with more than just the country of origin - regional names entered the lexicon. Savvy consumers looked for Guatemala Antigua and Ethiopia Harrar. Before long, roasters distinguished themselves by the individual estates from a given region so one could find Costa Rica Tarrazu Hacienda La Minita.

Recently I have noticed that some roasters have begun identifying the particular variety of the coffee tree in an ever increasing quest to up the ante in sourcing. I dread the day when a customer comes in and when asked what they may be looking for responds, "Well, I was into pulped natural yellow caturras, but now I find I am leaning more toward honey processed pacamarcas." Source identity devolves into a narcissistic notion, as product identity becomes an individual referent rather than any relationship to the choices we make and their impact on the world.

All of this hyper-inflated source identification obscures a very harsh reality: that 70% of coffee is produced by about 10 million small producers. Any roaster who has made a trip to origin cannot escape the sheer magnitude of poverty that goes hand in hand with coffee's production. Some may recognize their own complicity in a system that too often exploits the most vulnerable in the course of global commerce.  These Roasters have come to recognize that who they sourced their coffee from is just as important as what coffee they sourced.  Many Roasters purposely sourced coffees from small-farmer cooperatives that followed traditional farming techniques. They participated in a cooperative movement that actively promoted community development in the most impoverished areas. This coalesced into what now is known as Fair Trade, a third-party verified certification program that provided consumers an opportunity to choose a product that reflected ethical considerations.  Other certification programs soon followed calling attention to environmental concerns and worker rights. Rainforest Alliance and Utz Certified are just two examples.

No industry likes to have its dirty laundry exposed, and the coffee industry has long nursed its romantic notions of idyllic mountains and rustic farmers. Much of the push back for certified coffee has come from roasters who otherwise have a reputation for quality. This has led to the very dubious practice of identifying coffee as "Direct Trade" to compete against certified trade marks. I have heard roasters respond to customers asking for Fair Trade that their Direct Trade is better than Fair Trade because they pay the farmer more than the Fair Trade price, reducing the issues of trade down to simply a dollar amount. This ignores the fact that Fair Trade sets a minimum price for coffee paid to farmers. Moreover, Maxwell House buys their coffee direct from origin but I don't think anyone would believe that stamping their own Direct Trade mark on the side of the package guarantees credibility. Without third party verification this remains an empty promise, an illusion of transparency.

So, too, having a Google image of a mono-crop coffee farm with a fact sheet promoting the land owner provides little in the way of real value. What it does is source wash over the reality of global trade and environmental concerns. It creates a false sense that quality is something separate from how that product is grown and the conditions of its production. We can make a difference in the world based on what we consume, but source washing blurs this choice and allows those who are unconcerned about their impact to profit from those who want to do good. Roasters who participate in source washing merely muddy the waters.

Why Third Wave (Pour-over) Coffee Bars Fail.

Portland was a perfect venue for the 25th Annual Conference and Exhibition of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. Perhaps, more than anywhere else in America, third wave coffee bars have stormed into existence. Third Wave Coffee Bars are notable by how they look and what they do. They are a direct facsimile of current fashion of SCAA Championships. It’s as if the participants are trying to reproduce in the real world the artificial world that exists during these championships. As a result, these new bars imitate one another in the type of equipment used and more importantly, what and how coffee is offered to customers. 

Now, I have been a big fan of the Barista Guild and their efforts to raise the perception of Baristas as a viable professional skill. This is long overdue and has helped our industry staunch the move to automated equipment and look-alike chain operators. But what I have noticed is a disturbing trend in these coffee bars that has more to do with being a part of a club rather than actually serving truly good coffee. These bars can be identified often by what they don't have: they don't have skim milk, or soy; they don't do flavors or 16 oz to go cups. And as far as I could tell, most don't have much in the way of customers, either. What they do have is seasonal single origin espressos from a number of the latest names in roasters, they have pour-over bars featuring Chemex's with metal filters, Hario V60 cones, or Siphon brewers; and they have an educated superiority that leave you degraded, dismissed, and otherwise not a member of the club. 

 I really would like to admire these coffee bars for their commitment to a vision, a vision predicated on coffee quality. But the concept of quality now seems to be more a sense of style rather than a discerning sense of taste. Coffees, and Roasters for that matter, are chosen based on their merits of who's hot right now. Brewing techniques are chosen in a similar fashion, pour over bars provide more theater and the illusion of choice. Never mind that the metal filter is an inappropriate application for the Chemex brewer and one has to adjust their brewing style to compensate resulting in an over-extracted brew. At least the coffee siphon provides excellent cup quality but it is a ten minute exercise and costs, in some cases, $9.00.

 I had debated whether to do a post about pour-over bars before going to Portland and decided to focus my attention on the pour-over experience. We had abandoned pour-over many years ago but I wondered if there had been significant improvements that warranted another look. What I found, aside from the one aforementioned coffee siphon episode, was brewed coffee that almost always was near undrinkable. The problem lies in the substitution of the metal cone for the Chemex or the use of the Hario v60 cones. In either case the issue centers on dwell time of the brew. Great coffee is a function of dwell time and brew rate.  Both the metal filter and the V60 cone allow the water to pass too quickly through the coffee grounds requiring the barista to slow the rate of pour in the center of the grounds. Never do all the grounds dwell in a solution, rather, the water passes through the middle over extracting the same grounds. It is a similar phenomena as cheap electric coffee brewers with inadequate heaters that heat a little water and send it through, heat a little water and send it through, and so on. 

The secret behind the Chemex isn't the carafe so much as the interaction of the carafe and the paper filter that allows the user to fill the funnel with hot water and have a full dwelling of water and coffee with the filter and grind dictating the rate of flow for the brew. The Hario V60 also has too large of an exit hole and the striated fins on the inside of the funnel allow water to channel through the filter requiring the user to adopt a similar pour technique as the metal filtered Chemex. Combine this slow pour with the fact that water temperature stability is thrown out the window. One operator was using the Marco Uberboiler for hot water, a precise controlled water boiler that can deliver accurate temperature, set at 210 degrees to allow for the rapid cooling while pouring. Most places make no effort at all water temperature stability. 

This was one of the major reasons we abandoned pour-over years ago. But what really made us abandon it were the incredible improvements in programmable commercial brewers. If pour-over produced better results than what we could get out of our Fetco Extractor then I would be on board, but the fact is it isn't remotely close to the same quality and moreover, I can make better coffee in my home using a paper filter Chemex or Aeropress without the condescending attitude as an added bonus.

At first I mistook the Third Wave Movement with its penchant for trade roasts and manual brewing techniques as a response to the like of Starbucks and the wannabe chains. Now I understand that it is an attempt to recreate the experience of the Barista Championships that take place at various convention centers around the world. A fabricated event designed to impress judges and their peers, that manufactures in-the-know celebrities of coffee culture. Customers were never the consideration.

I was asked the other day whether I thought Third Wave Coffee Bars are here to stay. If this is what this movement continues to serve, they won't be around for very long.