Can bad coffee still be good enough?
17 May 2010
The picture above shows samples of unroasted green beans from two different
batches of 100% Kona coffee. Can you see a difference between the
two? If so, what is the difference? Is it an important
difference or a superficial one? Which coffee would you pay more for,
the one on the left or the one on the right? How much more would you
pay? How much less would you pay for the other coffee or would you
even buy it at all?
Of course it's difficult to tell from just a picture. Scroll over the
picture for a closer view. Seeing the coffee in person, touching it
and smelling it, you'd be able to detect the difference more easily but
it is still somewhat subtle. Even tasting the coffee, it is still a
relatively subtle difference. Both samples look like coffee. Both
samples smell and taste like coffee. Both samples could be sold as
100% Kona coffee. So exactly how bad can coffee get before it's
considered too bad? Every coffee farmer, every roaster, every consumer
has a different opinion of what constitutes "good" coffee and what is
"bad" coffee.
To help in the judgment call, I did a cupping. The timing was convenient
because Shawn Steiman, an
expert coffee cupper and all around coffee expert, just happened to be
visiting for a couple days. He's always looking for interesting
coffees to try so we arranged a cupping with several different coffees.
In the samples above, the beans on the left are fresh and in great
shape. If you buy coffee from Kona Earth that's what you will receive
(except probably roasted first). This coffee received a near perfect
certification report from the state inspector. This particular crop
of coffee has received even more positive feedback than usual from some very
experienced cuppers. In my not-so-humble opinion, it is some of the
best coffee I've grown so far and easily capable of winning awards.
I won't say exactly where the beans on the right came from. They are
100% Kona coffee, just not Kona Earth
coffee. These beans started out as decent coffee but now they are
nearly two years old and past their prime. For two year old beans,
they're in great shape. Still, that's like 80 in coffee years and a
fit 80-year-old is different than a fit 25-year-old.
It's fairly easy to see the difference in age because the older beans are
starting to discolor. They are turning white around the edges instead
of the consistent green of properly stored, fresh beans. This
discoloration isn't really all that bad. There's no mold, no musty
odor, only slight discoloration and a little dehydration. I've seen
far worse discoloration in coffee beans that were stored in an unstable
environment with constant temperature changes and high humidity.
It's great to have pretty coffee beans but the proof is in the cup. So
we roasted up some coffee from each sample and did a controlled cupping.
I'll admit that I am not an expert cupper and I thought I'd have a hard time
telling the difference but it was surprisingly obvious. Still subtle
but definitely there. The good beans had the full brightness that I'm
always looking for in my coffee. The not-so-good beans were flat with a
subtle hint of cardboard. It was still coffee, still better than many
other coffees I've tasted, just not good enough that I'd want to put my name
on it.
So I've decided that the "bad" coffee is trash. That was a difficult
decision because that's over $1000 worth of coffee beans I'll be throwing
out. I don't look at it that way though. If I had no other
coffee then maybe I'd try to sell the inferior beans but I have plenty
of very good coffee and there's no reason to dilute the good stuff with
the lower quality stuff. So the bad stuff will be thrown away.
I'll probably hold onto it a bit longer. For the same reason I have a
broken vacuum cleaner and dirty old microwave oven sitting out in the
barn, sometimes it's hard to get rid of old stuff. What if want to
scavenge parts from that broken vacuum or decide to clean up the old
microwave? What if a wholesale customer comes along that is looking
for old, stale coffee? It could happen.
So I'll hold on to the old stuff for a little longer even though it's
headed to the dump sooner or later. Likewise with the old vacuum and
microwave.
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