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Blends/Multiple / Caribou Coffee / Coffee reviews / Retail and specialty roasters

Coffee review: Caribou Rainforest Blend

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #3.

Today, a more pedestrian coffee, the organic and Fair Trade Rainforest Blend from Caribou Coffee, a Starbucks rival in many northern states.  Caribou not only has better coffee, in my opinion, but clearly has a stronger commitment to sustainability.  As I wrote about before, Caribou is on its way to having half of its beans Rainforest Alliance certified.  It also supports Coffee Kids, Grounds for Health (women’s health in coffee producing counties), the National Breast Cancer Foundation, and helped build a medical clinic in Guatemala.


The coffee: This blend is certified Fair Trade and organic, and is labeled as shade grown.  The web site states the beans are from Papua New Guinea, Guatemala, Mexico, and Brazil.

The beans: It is given a roast darkness of “6” on a 10-point scale.

Brewed: The first sip brought us all a surprising “zing” that Coal Tit accurately described as “juicy.”  Contrary to logic, this effect was hard to detect when a gold filter was used, but seemed to show up better with an unbleached paper filter after several trials. I find complex coffees really intriguing, but for the most part, on a daily basis I do not want to be mindful of my coffee.  I want it to taste good, but I don’t want to pay attention to it every time I sip it.  The Rainforest blend fit the bill.  Star[bucks]ling found it to be sweet, bright, and crisp.  Really, you can’t say a lot more than that.  But after our previous more flavorful coffee tastings, he went on to try to come up with more subtle tastes. “You don’t get any kind of wood?” he asked.  Uh, no.  But good for you!

Bottom line: We expected this to be a pretty ho-hum, good but without any distinguishing characteristics.  We were wrong and pleasantly surprised.  Pleasant is a good word, not complex or fascinating, but just distinct enough to be interesting, very balanced, clean and mild, a nice everyday coffee.

When to drink this coffee (field oriented): All day long, doing spring migration counts or breeding bird census work, even on warm days.

We’re rating this 3.5 motmots. This average came about from lower scores from people who like more forthright flavors, and high scores from those who reward friendly coffees they can drink all day.

Fair and Direct Trade

Intelli on Fair Trade

Geoff Watts of Intelligentsia Coffee wrote a long e-mail lucidly explaining the shortcomings of Fair Trade and Intelli’s strong commitment to farmer relationships, posted at green LA girl. It’s excellent and insightful.

First, he defines sustainable coffee as being profitable to the farmer, enough to enable him to invest, not just subsist; and not damaging to the ecosystem, so the land is preserved for generations.  He goes on to describe

  • the many factors that go into the cost of producing quality coffee, and how the Fair Trade model does not have a mechanism for rewarding quality or taking into account the cost of living and other differentials that occur among farmers of different areas,
  • how much of the FT minimum price actually gets to the farmer, and how the FT minimum also often ends up being the maximum,
  • why Intelligentsia would rather spend ten cents a bag in the producing company, rather than spending it to put a FT sticker on their coffee bags,
  • the depth of Intelli’s relationships with their coffee producers, which dramatically highlights the importance of purchasing coffee from roasters with these types of relationships,
  • and how the FT model is beneficial to and works best with commercial and entry-level specialty coffee.

Many thanks to Geoff for writing and to Siel for posting this.  It really helps consumers (and me!) to understand sustainability issues and make, um, intelligent decisions about the best coffees to drink to support farmers and the environment.  Go give it a read.

Birds and other biodiversity / Research on coffee growing

Research: Shade coffee farms as habitat for monkeys

Williams-GuillÁ©n, K., C. McCann, J.C. MartÁ­nez SÁ¡nchez, and F. Koontz.  2006. Resource availability and habitat use by mantled howling monkeys in a Nicaraguan coffee plantation: can agroforests serve as core habitat for a forest mammal? Animal Conservation 9: 331-338.

The incredible contact roars of Mantled Howler Monkeys (Alouatta palliata) are a frequent wake-up call to visitors to the New World tropics.  They were studied in a Nicaraguan shade coffee plantation, which had a diverse (60+ species) canopy which insured that preferred foods were available to the monkeys year-round. The monkeys did not avoid areas of coffee plantations, but stuck to the larger trees. The authors concluded that shade coffee can serve as alternate wildlife habitat and corridors between forest fragments for howling monkeys and possibly other forest mammals.

Africa / Coffee reviews

Coffee review: Rocket Coffee Company Ethiopian Sidamo

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #2.

The main reason I launched the C&C tasting panel was because Larry of Rocket Coffee Roasters in Phoenix wrote to me and generously offered a sample for review. He sent an organic, Fair Trade Ethiopian Sidamo, roasted on May 25.  It got delayed due to the holiday weekend, and we convened our first panel on June 1.

The coffee: Most coffee in Ethiopia is grown in shade, at least half in medium or heavy shade. I’m pretty sure all Ethiopian organic/FT coffees are from the Oromia cooperative, and all their coffees are said to be forest-grown. This is a dry-processed bean — I believe all the Ethiopians I’ve tasted so far have been washed. The dry processed beans are supposed to have more body and earthiness than their counterparts.

The beans: The roast looked a bit past full city, with a mix of some lighter beans in with the dark. For the life of me, I could not place the smell of the beans when we opened the bag.  Star[bucks]ling immediately said, “Cherries!” Risky Kingbird thought it smelled sweet.  I didn’t even think it smelled like coffee. It had a musty odor to me, which I later found out is not unusual in a dry process Ethiopian.  Karen (“PhillyVireo”), a former coffee vendor, immediately identified it as an Ethiopian before we told her what it was.

Brewed: Piping hot, both  Star[bucks]ling and Risky Kingbird thought it had a tea-llike taste. “It’s almost like having a tea bag in your coffee!” Star[bucks]ling said.  Meanwhile, I was sort of speechless.  This coffee was so distinct I didn’t know how to describe it.  It only took a minute or two before the flavors developed and we all had the same Eureka moment: Berries.  Lots and lots of full berry flavor. Risky Kingbird did not like the aftertaste, but the rest of us found it extremely nice, and very long lasting.

In a french press: None of us liked this coffee better in a french press. We found it mellower, but less distinctive; the berry flavor just didn’t come through. Several of us immediately tasted what we could only describe as cardboard (wood? paper?).  Risky Kingbird, CrackedCorvid, and PhillyVireo thought it brighter as a french press, while Star[bucks]ling and I found it heavy.

More professional opinions: Rocket describes this bean as “A true and classic representation of the best Ethiopian. Blackberries, currants and deep, dark chocolate provide exotic flavor and a medium body.”  A Sweet Marias review of a dry Sidamo described it as funky and a bit musty, or earthy with fresh leather (I think this was the “cardboard” smell/taste I detected. Coffee Review offers a nice discussion of characteristics of wet and dry processed Ethiopians.

Bottom line: Complex implies a variety of overlapping flavors, perhaps identifiable to more sophisticated drinkers.  To us, “deep” seemed a better description, lovely fruity notes that began softly, climbed in intensity, then waned gracefully, lingered pleasantly — a smooth berry symphony.  Maybe not an everyday coffee, but surely a good choice when you want something different.

We’re rating this 3.5 motmots; the average was a bit higher than that, but I can’t make any more fractional motmots.

When to drink this coffee (field oriented): Owing to the nice body and grand, fruity flavor, the Rocket Coffee Roaster’s Ethiopian Sidamo had a dessert feel to us.  Drink it after a long day in the field, during the evening’s group meeting comparing notes and compiling data around a rough wooden table, with the coffee matching relaxed, satisfied, and mellow moods.