Jute free since 07

I know 'in season' is marketed as a cutting edge deal or at least that's the pitch. In an industry full of so much gimmicky nonsense and blatant chicanery, it is a good start. The thing that I want to know is what about the handful out there who aren't going the jute route? Where do we fit in this whole in season model?

There are two roasters local to our area who are adamant about not storing coffees in jute. We are very happy to to be one of them so excuse our barismo bias. Are there any others in North America whose entire storage is vacuum packaged?

If you want in season, you have to keep the coffee as close to the farm gate as possible and the concept that freshness is only a byproduct of time is a bit of a generalization. Time is only one of several factors that affects freshness. Setting a sell by date on milk would be silly if it were not stored in a proper container, away from contamination, and then kept at stable appropriate temperatures.

Why do we assume green coffee is so immune to age that it can sit in jute bags for months in open warehouses and say that the coffee will be fine? How can we even begin to account for the conditions of storage the coffees endured in transit? The fluctuating humidity and wildly changing temperatures are as fickle as ... well, the weather.

If we are going to trademark every term about quality, let's start with accounting for how the coffee get's here. Was it really fresh and in season when it arrives 3-4 months off milling and wasn't protected in some degree from the factors that act as catalysts for degradation?

This week provided an affirmation of just how difficult this issue is. I had to rejigger my whole roasting profiles as the new vacuum packaged at origin coffees began arriving. The Kenya Kiandu was our most recent lesson in how freshness makes a huge difference. After moving through an excellent batch, we began working through a bag that had lost it's seal at some point during transport. It was not the same coffee. The sweetness was there but the roundness and freshness of the coffee was no longer there. It just wasn't as dynamic and was a bit on the tannin side of the equation. That's still better than the wood and paper notes you see as a coffee really turns the corner and you have to move darker to balance the coffee.

I am profiling the Guatemalan coffees that have just arrived which were vacuum sealed at origin like the Kiandu and I will honestly say, I intend to work to have every coffee we source jute free from this point on, before it's arrival. It isn't cheap but fresh coffee doesn't begin and end at the roast date on the bag, it starts way back at the mill as that coffee leaves parchment and begins the long journey here.

En jute y reposa

There were two big debates on this trip and one of them centered around reposa, the resting period where coffee is off the patio but still in parchment. This is a way to let water content stabilize and in theory, to get a more homogeneous product. Reposa often happens in a place with a balance of temperature and air flow that will allow the green to settle but not promote mold growth.

The debate for me came from the materials used in reposa. I often have a big problem with jute. Jute bags are the scourge of great coffees everywhere and yet there are few alternatives that aren't much more expensive. One common exchange is the plastic feedbag that is used for agricultural products and comes much cheaper than jute. The problem is that it does not 'breathe' freely and molds will grow so it is never used in transport.

This presents an interesting balance as a coffee in reposa will homogenize better if stored in jute but risks some contamination during this critical stage. If the sterile feed bags are used, there is the real risk that the coffee may have increased mold growth. The jute quality seems to play greatly into this as the thicker and better quality the bag, the more the flavors seem to seep in. A pristine coffee could quickly develop nutty hazelnut flavors that in time will become the hallmark of baggy notes. You probably won't pick it out in a darker roast but with the right profile, you will.

The best project we undertook was to get some green coffee last year at Finca Vista Hermosa and vacuum seal it. I then returned with the green coffees and kept them stored in both frozen and room temp situations. Having this coffee taken straight from reposa and sample milled gave a stark contrast to other coffees from FVH that had made the travel from origin via ship and packed in jute.

We recently roasted a sample of the jute coffee vs the vacuum sample with an almost identical profile through first and in the drop. The results were staggering. A fresh clean note and sweet acidity on the vacuum sealed coffee and a spice snappy unpleasant acidity on the jute coffee. At close to a year from harvest, this presents a unique comparison.

The quick summary of what we learned this trip was that coffees stored in plastic during reposa are a risk for one problem while in jute another. It's possible that drying racks of either metal or wood with liners should be considered for progressive farms to use at this stage. The other item reconfirmed what we already knew, coffees deteriorate and fall apart as they age and jute is a big contaminant. Aroma first, acidity, and then finally sweetness goes all the while the bag flavors increase.

At some point, we are going to have to see if reposa can be done in a vac sealed bag on the way to Cambridge.