Coffee reviews

Certifications / Coffee reviews / Rainforest Alliance

Coffee Review covers Rainforest Alliance coffees

Kenneth Davids’ excellent Coffee Review takes on Rainforest Alliance coffees for its September reviews. Please go read his concise and insightful introduction to the reviews. He provides a good overview of the RA program and how it differs from Fair Trade, how they complement each other, and RA’s efforts to adapt their standards to different cultures and types of coffee organizations.

Davids makes a couple of interesting observations about the RA coffees submitted by roasters for the reviews. Two dozen roasters submitted 34 single-origin RA-certified coffees, but they only represented eleven producers. Familiar RA producers Daterra Estate in Brazil, Panama’s Hacienda La Esmeralda, Selva Negra estate in Nicaragua, and the Mesa de los Santos farm in Colombia (which is also certified Smithsonian Bird-Friendly) were all in the mix.

In addition to the twelve submitted coffees that were reviewed, Davids threw in a review of Kraft’s Yuban coffee, which contains 30% RA-certified beans. The rest, based on his trained palate, is cheap robusta:

Based on a reading of cup profile, the blend we cupped (Yuban Original) probably contains enough Brazil from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms to qualify for the certification seal, with a good part of the remainder of the blend inexpensive robustas, perhaps steamed to remove flavor taints. The result is a Rainforest Alliance Certified version of the bland, woody, faintly sweet supermarket profile that has come to dominate canned coffee shelves over the last two decades.

I understand the theory behind RA working with Kraft or other multinationals to get them to buy more certified beans. However, I think there is a serious problem with consumers thinking that this is a truly sustainable coffee if 70% of the beans are not certified, and likely cheap, sun-grown beans grown with chemicals. Nor do I think RA is doing itself any favors by putting its seal on crappy-tasting supermarket coffees, especially when it is highly likely to be the first or only RA-certified coffee consumers will encounter.

Go enjoy the reviews and give some of the coffees a try — just skip the Yuban.

Caribou Coffee / Coffee reviews / Latin America / Retail and specialty roasters

Coffee review: Caribou Colombia Timaná

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #38.

Pursuant to our backgrounder on Colombia, here’s another review of a Colombian coffee, one which is quite readily available, Caribou Coffee Colombia Timaná.

This is Caribou’s regular Colombian offering. It is Rainforest Alliance certified (100% of the beans), and comes from the the area near the southern town of Timaná in the Huila department (coordinates 1.983,-75.95). It is primarily of the Caturra variety, and grown at 1600 meters.

Caribou sources this coffee from a cooperative called Asociacion de Productores Agricolas de Timaná or ASPROTIMANA. In late 2005 ASPROTIMANA started the process towards Rainforest Alliance (RA) certification, with 26 growers participating. Now all 52 members (with 53 farms averaging about 6 ha) have received RA certification. As I mentioned in the previous post, there are many growing areas in Colombia at high altitude in which clouds provide shade. Growing coffee under additional cover in these areas creates problems with very low yields and sometimes issues with pathogens such as fungi.  Farmers in these areas often preserve adjacent forest plots. This is the case with the ASPROTIMANA growers. Almost 250 ha are in coffee grown in semi-shade (fulfilling RA requirements of 70 trees per ha of a dozen species), with another 35 ha being set aside for conservation.

This was a light roast with a really pleasant aroma; one taster found it “buttery and complex.” This was a very nice middle-of-the-road coffee, and we agree with Caribou when it says that it is “the perfect beginner’s coffee” or “perfect everyday coffee.” I have to say that (in keeping with making coffee like an ordinary person) that I prepared it one day in a French press a bit too strong. It was even better like this: more richly-bodied and robust, another reviewer that day described it as “resonant.” Another was extremely enthusiastic and rushed down the hall, cup in hand, to my office to ask me what he was drinking. We gave this coffee 3.5 motmots.

In 2007, Coffee Review gave it 88 points. It’s also one of the coffees available in several of Caribou’s Roastmaster’s Choice Clubs.

I also tried the Colombia Timaná Reserve, one of Caribou’s Origins Select coffees. It is from the same producers, but only from 6 select growers. This was also very nice coffee, but I honestly could not detect a significant difference from the regular Timaná, although more discerning tasters might very well be able to. Anyway, kudos to Caribou for this tasty, sustainable selection.

Coffee reviews / Latin America

Coffee review: Terroir Coffee El Descanso

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #37.

As noted in the the post with background information on coffee growing in Colombia, finding a notably tasty, really sustainable coffee from Colombia is still not incredibly easy. There are a couple of choices for those concerned with migratory and resident bird habitat preservation. One includes coffees that are often known as “Cerulean Warbler” coffees. Thanksgiving Coffee Company imports and roasts one on behalf of the American Bird Conservancy which was reviewed here (includes background links).

The other option is Mesa de los Santos, a farm that is certified organic, Rainforest Alliance, and Smithsonian Bird-Friendly. We reviewed this coffee from Counter Culture here, but it is one of the most widely available Bird-Friendly coffees on the market. Just Google it and you can get your hands on some pronto.

One roaster doing a great job of sourcing small lot, specialty coffee in Colombia is George Howell’s Terroir Coffee. We recently tried a selection from Terroir, El Descanso. Terroir has run out of the 2007 crop reviewed here, but they will have a new crop available in October 2008.

El Descanso comes from the 8 hectare farm of Jesus Orlando Lopez, at 1700 meters in southwestern Huila. Terroir indicates this is of the caturra variety, although Sweet Maria’s Tom Owen notes (in the pages indicated below) that the farmer is using the castillo variety in his new plantings.

This farm won 12th place in the 2006 Cup of Excellence. At the time, it was indicated that the coffee was sun-grown. However, the Terroir web site notes that El Descanso is being reforested and applying for Rainforest Alliance certification. The bag came with the RA seal on it; I don’t see it specifically listed on the RA site, but there are many producers listed for Huila in a sort of generic form and El Descanso may be included in one of those listings.

In addition to coffee Sr. Orlando Lopez has plots of yuca, sugar cane, and beans, and a couple of pastures. The “rastrojo reserva” is, I believe, set aside for compost or mulch, or may be a fallow field.

The tasters all really enjoyed this coffee, which was obviously a step beyond the ideal Colombian profile. The aroma was distinctive, and our amateur noses couldn’t quite pin it down. Suggestions included honey, fresh baked caramel buns, and yogurt-covered pretzels. Like some of the best and brightest Central American coffees, it had a lovely almost citrus “zing” on the first piping-hot sip. Citrus and honey were again mentioned, as were faint cherry, blackberry, ripe plum or yellow plum (leading to an off-topic discussion of the difficulty in obtaining truly good plums around here). It remained sweet as it cooled, with candy and chocolate notes moving to the forefront.

We really enjoyed this coffee, and felt it was a great example of what the best Colombian coffees have to offer. We gave it 3.5 motmots.

Our next review will be a very nice Colombian that is also Rainforest Alliance certified, always available, and easy to obtain!

Caribbean / Coffee reviews

Coffee review: Barrington Haitian Highlands Ferrace

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #36.

In a previous post, I gave background information on coffee growing on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. We reviewed two selections from the Dominican Republic, and now were on to Haiti.

Haitian Highlands Ferrace, Barrington Coffee Roasting Co.

This is the only non-Haitian Bleu coffee I found, and is a project between Barrington and the non-profit Fondation L’Espoir. The coffee is grown in the Grande-Anse region of Haiti, in the nation’s southwest, by 140 farmers around Pic Macaya, the second highest mountain in Haiti (highest elevation 2347 m). Pic Macaya is one of the most biodiverse and important areas on the entire island. While much of the area is protected, at least on paper, within the Macaya Biosphere Reserve, the area is threatened by subsistence agriculture, charcoal making, and other unsustainable practices. Assisting farmers with

You can view powerful images from Pic Macaya in a slideshow by author and photographer Eladio Fernandez, who is a well known champion of Hispaniolan biodiversity and conservation.

The roast was very light — around 7 or 8 at this visual guide to roast levels by Sweet Maria’s. When I smelled the beans, I thought perhaps too light. Having under-roasted a few beans myself, this sort of grassy aroma was familiar to me.

In the French press, it had a mild, sweet, chocolate taste, with a bright peak when very hot. Despite my trepidation due to the lightness, I was happily surprised, although I was equally pleased with its potential  as its actual taste. Others trying it out noted “bland peanuts,” “cereal, maybe Cheerios,” or a “yeasty-ness”. I believe these are signs of undeveloped flavor from not roasting quite enough. Brewed, it was disappointing, dull and sort of lifeless. The light roast wasn’t too light to spoil it totally, but had the roast gone just a tad further, it would have preserved the soft sweetness and brought out more chocolate and candy notes, eliminated baked goods from the mix, and give it enough oomph to stand up to a drip. I’d be anxious to try a fresh batch (this had no roast date) just a tad darker. I think it would be a super breakfast coffee.

One taster commented, “I’m tasting rioting and political strife.”  No way to roast that out. Overall, we gave it 2.75 motmots.

For another perspective on a non-Haitian Bleu, some rustic dry processed coffee, check out this post at Dan Humphries’ blog.

We’re waiting for a new crop of Haitian Bleu. When that’s available and we can order some, we’ll post a review.

UPDATE, Sep 2008: First, we are still waiting for Haitian Bleu to become available. Meanwhile, Barth Anderson from Barrington sent along the new 2008 crop of Ferrace. Here is a photo of Pic Macaya with the microregions Barrington is working with in the foreground.

We discussed the issue of our perception of a too-light roast. I offered that it was entirely possible that what we felt were flavors due to under-roasting might be part of the character of that bean, and/or that pushing those beans a little farther would be ruinous. Barth explained that Barrington’s goal with their coffees is to find a roast that doesn’t overwhelm the character of each bean and that, indeed, going any further with this Haitian coffee would have “blown out the coffee.”

Overall, I found this crop nicer than the first, although upon our first taste of it we reached the opposite conclusion. We found a really unexpected, sort of plastic or chemical flavor it the cup. Barth explained that they felt there was a rough or unpolished side to this coffee. While it’s possible that this was what we were picking up, the fact that I never came across it in subsequent tastings leads me to think we might have just gotten a bad bean in our first tasting.

Nobody voiced any of the cereal-like or yeasty qualities that we found in the 2007 crop. A few people found it a little thin and lacking in body which ended up offsetting the ratings from those who found it light and sweet and quite nice. For that reason, it ended up with a very similar rating as before — the devil of averages. I did something I don’t often do, which is using this coffee in a blend with a darker roasted bean (in this case, a Brazilian washed coffee), 75% being this light Haitian. I thought it gave it just what it needed, and can offer this as a great option for those who favor a little darker roast.

This is a project and coffee worth supporting, and Barth Anderson and Barrington continue to work to “reveal the extraordinary potential [they] know can exist with this coffee.” Kudos.