Coffee reviews

Coffee reviews

Coffee review: National Wildlife Blend

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #15. A review in our conservation organization coffee series.

National Wildlife Federation Blend (discontinued)

The National Wildlife Federation, founded in 1938, is a very well-known conservation organization whose mission focuses on protecting wildlife. In addition to lobbying and activism, NWF promotes Backyard Wildlife Habitat for homeowners and schoolyards, and publishes the popular magazines Ranger Rick and National Wildlife.

NWF coffee is available through Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, the Vermont company that donates 5% of pre-tax earning to environmental and social causes that has a firm commitment to sustainability. Happily enough, they are equally committed to good coffee.

The NWF blend is certified Fair Trade, certified organic, and shade grown.  According to the web site, it is a blend of Central and South American coffees.  It specifies one source, the La Trinidad Cooperative in Oaxaca, Mexico. This is in the Pluma Hidalgo region, where coffee is traditionally grown under dense shade. Although it is not noted at the Green Mountain site, this cooperative of 230 small holders is or was certified by Rainforest Alliance. So far, so good!

Browsing around the other organic offerings at Green Mountain provides clues to other components of the blend. The South American portion must come from the La Florida cooperative in the Chanchamayo region of Peru. This is a large cooperative (1000 farmers) and the last data I looked at showed 167 of them were certified shade grown by Smithsonian. Central American Fair Trade/Organic coffees include one sourced from the Segovia region of northern Nicaragua from the PRODECOOP coop — grown under heavy shade. Their Guatemalan comes from the La Voz Que Clama en el Desierto coop near Lake Atitlan, an area known for growing coffee in the traditional manner.  This is coffee you can feel good about drinking.

And you will not suffer for it. This was far and away the best “conservation coffee” we tasted, and the best blend we have tried, equaling many of the single origins we have reviewed here.  The large beans were roasted to full city, medium brown with a sheen but no droplets of oil.  The beans had an interesting whiff of tobacco, as well as a fresh grassy smell.

Bright and lively, it had a nice acidic zip and zing when hot (“It’s moving around my mouth,” noted CoalTit). It got smoother and mellower as it cooled, and maintained faint hints of chocolate.  We enjoyed much more than we expected, after the other coffees, and thought this would really impress grocery store coffee drinkers and gain converts to sustainable coffee; a couple of us thought we might like it for our everyday coffee ourselves.  3.5 motmots.

Blends/Multiple / Coffee reviews

Coffee review: Wild Birds Unlimited Birder’s Blend

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #14. A review in our conservation organization coffee series.

Wild Birds Unlimited Birder’s Blend. Certified Fair Trade and Certified Organic. Shade grown, as determined by roaster (see the review on other Songbird Coffees for that story) from regions that typically grow in shade (Matagalpa in Nicaragua and (Lake Atitlan in Guatemala).

Wild Birds Unlimited (WBU) is the largest franchise system of retail stores catering to the backyard bird feeding hobbyist in the U.S.  The stores are well-stocked with a lot of very high quality products, and employees, while often not bird experts, are well-trained and knowledgeable about bird feeding and its apparatus. WBU funds the Pathways To Nature grants which fund projects in the National Wildlife Refuge system, and partners with various organizations to support a number of bird conservation initiatives.

One partner is the American Birding Association (ABA), and a portion of the sales of the WBU Birder’s Blend go to the ABA, since this coffee is one in the line of Songbird Coffees, one of which we reviewed here. But since many people may first encounter a Songbird Coffee at a WBU store, we thought we’d review it separately.  It also gives us a chance to try one more in this line of a number of choices.

This was described as a light roast, but it was clearly full city, with all beans shiny with oil and medium-dark brown.  The package had no roast date, but there was a decent amount of bloom in the French press, so the beans were quite fresh.  However, this is unlikely to be the case if purchased at a WBU store, which probably don’t have huge turnover.

The first sip was pleasantly citrusy, very lively and bright. It had a nice sweetness with just a hint of caramel.  I think we were all happily surprised, and we found it better than the Panama blend Songbird Coffee.  Like that coffee, it also did turn a bit bitter as it cooled, and was better in a drip machine, as it lost some of the  brightness and liveliness in a French press. It earned 2.5 motmots, and we think it would turn at least some people on to sustainable coffee, except real cheapos.

An addendum: Curiously, the package uses a portrait of the Common Yellowthroat (Geothlypis trichas), a warbler that nests over much of North America.  It winters in the southern U.S. and much of Latin America from Panama north (although there are a number of resident subspecies in the tropics).  However, it is a species generally found wet areas, including marshes, reed beds, and mangroves — typical lowland habitats –not habitats where coffee is grown.  I found only a couple references to this species being found on coffee plantations (in Jamaica), where they were actually much more common in sun coffee than shade coffee.  It is certainly not a species characteristic of coffee farms.

Blends/Multiple / Coffee reviews / Retail and specialty roasters

Coffee review: Audubon coffee

[For reference only…Audubon Coffee Club is now defunct]

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #13.  Audubon Premium Shade Grown Coffees. A review in our conservation organization coffee series.

The National Audubon Society promotes a small line of “habitat-friendly certified organic premium shade grown” coffees*, which are available at some supermarkets, and via their Audubon Coffee Club web site. All the coffees are Rainforest Alliance certified. They are distributed by Rogers Family Company, whose other brands include San Francisco Bay Gourmet Coffee, The Organic Coffee Co., Fairwinds Coffee, Cunningham’s Coffee, Pleasant Hill Farms Quality Coffee, and East India Coffee and Tea.  Rogers Family Company only buys beans from “farms that have demonstrated an interest in environmental responsibility” and in fact, owns at least two plantations.

Several kinds of Audubon coffee are offered: a Breakfast Blend, Rainforest Blend, French Roast and Decaf, and can be purchased ground or whole bean at the web site. Nowhere on the web site or package can you determine the country of origin of these coffees, much less a region or farm (although they may be sourced at least in part from the Rogers Family Panamanian farms). Nor do you get a choice of roast.  A roast level is not indicated on the package, but on the web site, away from the individual product pages, it notes that beans are “roasted to their fullest flavor point – a little darker than most coffees.” (Update: the web site is now much more thorough, and the coffees are now certified organic and 100% Rainforest Alliance certified.)

In my local grocery store, Audubon coffee was only available ground, at about $9.50 for 12 oz.  I purchased the Breakfast Blend, featuring the John James Audubon portrait of a Red-shouldered Hawk on the label.  An interesting (odd?) choice of bird, as many populations are not migratory, and those that do winter in the northern tropics are found in lowlands and avoid higher elevations, where most coffee would be grown.

The bottom of my package indicated it was distributed by JBR Gourmet Foods, Inc.  JBR changed its name to Rogers Family Company in late 2005.  I hoped this coffee wasn’t that old!

As luck would have it, there were many people hanging around the day we tried this coffee, so we had a lot of opinions. Most of us were unenthusiastic.  The most frequent comment was that it tasted over-roasted, burnt, and bitter.  Even fresh, it kind of tasted like coffee that had been left cooking in the pot too long.  It was quite acidic, but left a “hairy” feeling on the tongue. For the tasting panel regulars, it was not much beyond diner coffee.

Ergo, regular reviewers gave this coffee a very low score, averaging 1.25 motmots.  Two reviewers who frequently drink grocery store coffee liked it more, and their average score was 2.5 motmots. This was an interesting result, and indicates that this coffee might be a “step up” for ordinary coffee drinkers and convince them to switch to sustainable coffee.  However, I expect that many people would need to be farm more impressed to spend the extra money.  It is probably better fresher, or whole bean, but alas, I picked this up the way many people might — off the shelf of a busy grocery store.

I’d like to try this fresher, and whole bean, via the coffee club, or hear from folks who have tried it this way.

*There is some interesting history to this coffee. According to “Sustainable Coffee at the Crossroads” (Rice and McLean, Consumers Choice Council, 1999), Audubon originally sold the very first coffee using Smithsonian’s Bird-Friendly certification criteria, around 1997. It was originally roasted by Boyd’s Coffee and called Cafe Audubon. Audubon dumped it because they were not happy with the sales and marketing revenue.

Blends/Multiple / Coffee reviews

Coffee review: Song Bird Coffee

songbird-coffee-new-logoUpdate: As of late 2016, this line of coffee was re-launched and is now certified Bird-Friendly (and therefore also organic) as well as  Fairtrade certified. It is still roasted by Thanksgiving Coffee Company. There are currently four varieties/roast levels.

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #12. A review in our conservation organization coffee series.

American Birding Association Song Bird Coffee

The American Birding Association is a nearly 40-year-old group that caters specifically to recreational birders. In recent years, the ABA has focused more on bird conservation. One aspect of that initiative was the promotion of Song Bird Coffee, roasted and sold by Thanksgiving Coffee Company. Fifteen cents of each package sold goes to ABA education and conservation projects, and another fifteen cents is returned to the growers [as of 2016, this has been changed to a percentage of each sale].

Song Bird Coffee is sold in 7 varieties, including decaf and flavored; each package depicts a different North American breeding bird species that winters in Latin American coffee-growing regions. Most coffees are certified organic, many are Fair Trade. They are all advertised as shade-grown, although none of them are certified by Rainforest Alliance or Smithsonian even though the descriptions list “shade grown” under “Certifications.”  The web site says,

Thanksgiving Coffee uses verified shade grown coffee. This means that its CEO, Paul Katzeff, or the importer has personally inspected the farm to insure that the plants are properly grown in the shade.

Well, you all know what I think about that. Song Bird Coffees are only labeled to country of origin, but the web site provides further information. All the Song Bird Coffees I investigated do appear to be sourced from areas that typically do grow under shade. However, they are not labeled as Smithsonian Bird-Friendly, which is the only true shade certification. This is a little unsettling, especially since they are targeted at consumers who may just be entering the sustainable coffee market.

We tried the Panama Blend, in large part because it was sourced from Finca Hartmann, a farm whose coffee we have already reviewed.  This was billed as a medium roast, and the beans were on the dark side of medium brown, with a sheen of oil.  Our impression from other Thanksgiving Coffee varieties is that they tend to roast a little on the dark side, which probably helps make these so acceptable to American consumers.

We found this coffee to be substantially similar to the other Finca Hartmanns: a classic cup, soft and smooth, with no remarkable qualities.  It did not cool very gracefully, becoming a little bitter, but less so when brewed in a drip machine, which is likely how most people will drink it.  In fact, when brewed in a drip through a paper filter, it was at its smoothest and most muted.  Although none of us were blown away by it, we think people would find this a nice step up from grocery store coffee, and it could certainly win some converts. It earned 2.25 motmots.

A couple of other Song Bird Coffees have been reviewed at Coffee Review, and received higher kudos, they are noted in this list of the other varieties of Song Bird Coffee, with source information. Many birders know them by their bird labels, which are given in parentheses, along with a link to information about the bird.

*If I had to pick one of these as the most biodiversity-friendly, it would be the Guatemalan. If I wanted to avoid one, it would be the Costa Rican. Real shade coffee is uncommon in Costa Rica; about 30% of Costa Rican production is sun coffee, and about 50% more is in shade monoculture…they allow very minimal shade to be labeled “shade coffee.”  I was unable to determine a precise source for this coffee, although the importer notes the varieties are bourbon, typica (both those require some shade), cataui, and caturra (both of those used in CR for sun coffee). I’ll be writing more about Costa Rica in the future.