The value of transparency

A bag of coffee should answer the 3 W's: Who, what, and when?

Who produced this coffee? The land owner and the mill that had a hand in creating this product should be identified (when known).  There must be as much information as is needed to begin to build a relevant understanding of the production chain in growing/picking/milling a coffee.  Who is the starting point of a long chain of questions to ask about what makes a coffee unique.

What makes this coffee special? Elevation, processing at the farm/wet mill/dry mill, regional location, and special packaging of the unroasted coffee for transport.  Things that can impart or change/preserve the flavor of a coffee add to the knowledge base a consumer builds over time of what they prefer while trying different coffees.  Do I prefer bourbon or caturra more? Am I more interested in higher elevation coffees?  The list goes on but how can you build those preferences without knowledge of them existing as a contributing factor to a coffee.

When was this coffee harvested/roasted?  Knowing the crop year is a nice item but it's often too rare an addition.  Knowing the roast date is one of the most basic and fundamental tenets of good coffee.  The nicest production with the best terroir roasted to perfection will be wasted by staling.  A clearly labeled and recent roast date is the first real indicator you will get your money's worth or have a chance at a better coffee experience.

"If coffee is truly to learn something from the wine model, it is that brand identity for farms (even in a blend) adds value for both the producers and their consumers."

Identity is a powerful thing.  Prominently displaying the producer information gives the farm a brand with a sense of the components that go into creating the flavors of that coffee.  This is so valuable that even larger roasters borrow this identity and sense of place by naming some of their large mill and co-op blends with farm style or estate-like sounding (although slightly misleading) names.  

With single estate coffees, this process of identifying the producer and micro lot name is becoming more main stream every year.  For espresso, it is clearly not the case as we are sliding backwards locally.  (A recent cafe crawl of what are supposed to be top shops in town found that almost all not serving barismo were serving a blend with unknown -to the barista- components.  Seeing great gear with talented barista precisely executing mediocre dark roasted blends was a let down.  That disappointment inspired this post.)  The long known secret with roasters is that you can mix together lesser quality components, roast it darker, and charge a better markup if the mystery inside is not revealed (as long as it says espresso on the bag).  Identifying the constantly changing mix of coffees in a blend and having cafes/consumers look up the components could cause problems by revealing the secrets of the blend.  Those secrets may not be glorious  and the previous perception of a good deal could easily turn around with a little more delving into the ingredients.  High end micro roasters working with estates are more likely to abandon the faceless blends identified with mass produced roasting outfits and more have been opting for complete transparency.  If coffee is truly to learn something from the wine model, it is that brand identity for farms (even in a blend) adds value for both the producers and their consumers.

The basic question: Is the roaster proud enough of the product to show what's in it?  Transparency is that affirmation.  Labeling with confidence speaks to knowledge of the coffee and what makes it special. That, in turn, can infer there is knowledge of how to continue to make it better.

Understanding the 2011 label

For every retail bag barismo provides detailed brew specs on each coffee roasted for espresso (look for the tamper icon) in the following format near the bottom of the label:

That last line provides a suggested date to which bags can be rested in unopened packaging to degass. Degassing is important for espresso because unlike drip coffees, espresso is brewed under pressure which can cause the CO2 trapped in coffee from the roasting process to bond with H2O yielding H2CO3 or carbonic acid. This yields a slightly sour or metallic undesireable taste. While resting some is ideal, resting too long is simply staling and pleasant volatiles will escape. Remember though, we provide brew specs to help repeat how we are serving on our bar to our preferences. The coffees at barismo often have a large range of brew specs where good results can be had on a range of machines and grinders.

For drip, the items covered are similar. Below the roaster's mark is the approximate temperature in Celsius. Look for the bean icon to be gram weight of suggested dose followed by the approximate volume of water in milliliters.

Since our preferred method is to brew by the cup, we offered a level of detail that makes repeating those tasty results at your local coffee bar much easier. We don't put a rested date because drip is best consumed in the first two weeks after roasting. After opening, keep the coffee in it's one way valve bag closed tightly to keep out of oxygen, heat, and moisture contamination.

To scale up for drip brewers, we recommend an 8g per 5oz starting point.

Back labels

We have been running a campaign of back label information that ranges from specific coffee information sets to general concepts that help you get great coffee brewed up.

Our front labels are some of the most detail rich in the industry. We take pride in the level of information we have to offer refined specifically for each coffee. The back labels look to expand upon those concepts. Great coffee isn't simple, so we are always looking for ways to provide as much helpful information as possible to you.

Keep an eye out for the range as there are multiple in each series geared towards all the key concepts that go into creating a great cup of coffee.

Limited release bags

We have been doing a limited release series of bags. They have a new style wrap around label to separate them from other offerings. Look for the wrap around label (see El Bosque Red on the right) and be aware it might be a fleeting glimpse!

These limited edition lots will be available online and in small quantities in store. We will be launching a weekly offering available of a specific limited lot that is being roasted each week that will start the 15th with the CoE winning Colombia and move on to our Limited release Hawaii Margogype lot, then the Bosque varietal lots (as a sampler), and even an offering of the hugely popular Gildardo Gutierrez Colombia Micro-lot in the fourth week!

Since we have so little of these coffees, we'll be offering them back to back to keep things interesting!

Lucid ink blot!

For lucid, a two Colombia pairing, we decided to play off the name and do a Rorschach ink blot look to the label ink.  It's actually an outline of Colombia filled in and mirrored to get the 'blot' look.  Simple, fun, and it shows a little thought went into it.  It also has been rather tasty lately!

We try to do special labels for the espresso pairings/blends, some get more complex than others.  See the Clockwork labels and the Soma ink if you are really curious.  For the single origins, we have stuck to the countries and color coding.  It's worked as I find myself missing that 'green' bag when it's not on the shelf!  It gets complicated when there are multiple offerings from the same country on the shelf so we encourage you to save old labels of great coffees and write on the white space what you liked about them.  If we know the exact coffee you loved, it makes things easier when searching for a similar one.

Notes for July 4th

We've carried over a trend for labels where we make small redesigns to the style as new crops arrive. Last year, the labels were featuring country outlines where as this year we are moving to solid country outlines and changing how we display the brew information.

A first peek at the new labels comes with the El Llano microlot (soon to be followed by three more Costa Rica offerings). We will also be adding a lot of the information and photos we have collected about our farms to a large info sheet. We are a bit timid about overdoing the labels and losing the clean look though so they won't change much. The problem I find with our style of label and the transparency of it is that it gets imitated a lot nowadays. In September, we will have been open for 2 years. Not a lot of time but we have had the same wine inspired labels since the beginning. Listing blend contents and percentages for the espresso and giving as much pertinent info as we can about each single origin coffee (including the most rare item, how it was packaged in transport from origin). In part, it would be interesting to develop our own standard for seasonality relevant to the method of packaging for marketing purposes but our goals internally don't fit with that kind of approach.

The next few weeks should see the arrival of our Guatemalan offerings. Even with a bad year for output and many farms oversold, we were still able to get the two core farms we wanted to work with. Sadly two more will have to wait until next year. By the end of the month or early next month, we have two Kenyas arriving. We had some trouble arranging these coffees due to a bad year for output but we have found two very solid coffees, one of which is exclusive to us (coined by a friend as a pico- lot) and should be a star in the lineup for those who love fruit. The other problem because of the low production is that the costs are very high this year for Kenyan coffees. We struggled to find the best coffee we could that would match up to the inflated prices and we are lucky the work has paid off. More El Salvador is on the way and Ethiopian coffees are still to come.

We will reopen tomorrow, enjoy the holiday!

About a label

This is not the first version of our labels and it won't be the last. Currently though, our main goal is to have a label that is simple and transparent.



The origin takes a secondary place to the farm name/blend name but is still noted. Below, you have some simple color coded info on the processing and other identifiers about the coffee such as region or coop. We have been emphatic about transparency for blends and are adamant about percentages on the bags. We are glad to see other roasters taking the same tact in the US market. We have not put certifications such as Fair Trade or Organic on the relevant bags for many reasons.

At the recent NERBC, I was confounded by a company rep pitching a Kenya that was sourced through 'the second window'. I was a bit confused because it almost sounded like he was pitching it as a recent coffee but that 'second window' hasn't appeared yet for this harvest so the Kenya had to be approaching a full year off harvest and I guarantee it wasn't vacuum sealed so add jute bagged to the equation. It reminded me vintage is relevant and we need to rethink noting which coffees are sealed at origin because past crop has a different meaning if the coffee was in jute as opposed to sealed.

Anyway, we have blocked off a small section of the bag for brewing instructions. In most cases, this is just a suggested guideline to help consumers out. You would be surprised how simply having 27 seconds on the bag can induce many customers to ask, 'How do I get the shot to 27 seconds?' That's an incredibly powerful moment where many doors open that lead to better coffee at home. Most machines don't have solid temperature controls but it helps to have a ballpark target to offset around so we included specific brew temps and also dose.

While not every consumer will have the equipment to follow the specs, we felt generic specs were a bad idea. On Poker face, the specs are pretty much what Nik uses at Taste, for Linnaean St. it's the specs Simon uses. You can probably pull those coffees a dozen ways but I always think of a consumer walking into a cafe or tasting, having a shot, then getting frustrated about not being able to repeat it at home. Believe me, I was there many a time. Having the specs helps and I have a lot of emails from home espresso enthusiasts where the discussions have gone from getting a new grinder to flushing routines and dosing technique. All of which is good discussion to have if they want to come close to the cafe experience.

10 Reasons coffee doesn't taste like the bag descriptions

10. Water - There are times when water plays an issue in what tastes are coming from a brew. Use good water, filtered, or even bottled if you are not sure. Sample different waters and compare.

9. Grind - The grind is off or worse, your blades are dull and worn out. Worn out blades are the most common problem in cafes and frequent home users.

8. Brew time - Over or under steeping can leave you with an undeveloped cup or some unpleasantly bitter or dry notes. Pay attention to time.

7. Temperature - If you have a home drip coffee maker, your temp is probably too low, a common espresso machine, your temp is either way too high or way too low. Either way, check it and eliminate it as an issue.

6. Crop variance - Few coffees will ever be exactly the same throughout an entire offering. The more bags, the more likely there will be some natural crop variance throughout. This is unavoidable in all but the most premium lots.

5. Weather - Humidity or ambient temperature could have played a part in either storage or in creating variance during the production roast. This is an unseen factor which cannot be accounted for by the end consumer.

4. Roaster error - You could write a novel on this point. Needless to say, nobody is perfect and sometimes the coffees run the profile but something was wrong. Something wasn't cleaned, an appropriate change was not made to compensate for environmental variation, or worse in that the roaster could not identify the error even post roast. I know some roasters just cannot handle the wet and high grown coffees so they end up with raw tasting sharp astringency and other weird flavors that vary batch to batch.

3. Brew method - Everyone has different evaluation methods. We cup and then vac pot, (then espresso for some roasts) but that's not common. We heard one roaster uses a technivorm for evaluation but most people just use traditional cupping which often doesn't taste like your home brewer's profile. For espresso, it's as simple as the difference between using a GB5 and a Robur vs an E61 with a Jolly, don't expect the same tastes.

2. Age - Coffee gets old. Roasts age and fade in the weeks after roast but more interestingly, unroasted coffees fade and change. So X roaster prints a thousand fancy labels and you buy one bag of retail coffee the first month it arrives. Buying a second retail bag three months later, the chances are it won't be the same but the label won't change because it's cheaper to print labels ahead. Simple common sense tells us that as raw coffee fades in color, something is lost so it should be a given for anyone who reads this blog to accept coffee gets old.

1. Personal palette - I think of some of our west coast friends who caught the light roast bug. They constantly use terms they are familiar with like 'jolly rancher' or 'stone fruit' which is probably accurate but not everyone will relate. Tasting notes can be very subjective simply because your vocabulary is based on your own personal experiences. Worse, some cuppers give you notes that are romantically inclined and can border on romantic imagery vs the impression of a distinct taste.

Personal palette is most often the reason or excuse given when you buy a bag and don't get the taste descriptors. This can often be followed by either delicate or often abrasive critique of your brew method/water/personal ability depending on how customer service is at that roaster. Let's put it simple, chances are you won't get the bag descriptors in your cup.

It begs the simple question, how useful are taste descriptors on the bags?

The sweet potato is cooked

There's a lot of weird descriptions we use in coffee for many different things. It seems to me that a lot of it for me comes down to having a similar vocabulary or else it just doesn't make sense. One of the terms our Taiwan brethren use to describe a specific point in the roast is when the proverbial sweet potato turns from starch to a 'cooked' sweetness. Only the nose knows when that is!

If that makes any sense to you, you might be quite ahead of the curve.

There are a bundle of terms that we have from 'green' astringency to 'pencil lead' bitters and of course the 'baggy' and 'bakey' from a variety of variables. It occurs to me that the bakey descriptor is a hard one to quantify as it can be anything from a full on cardboard 'generic coffee' aroma to a simple oft unnoticed dulling of aroma and fruit. My favorite though is the term 'charr.' It's what we use to describe the caramel note imparted by the perforated drum. For instance, you may bake corn in an oven vs over an open grill. The latter being our little roaster. Easy to burn and hard to cook through but the reward of getting it just right is an explosive balance of mid tones AND fruit in the same cup.

My least favorite descriptor is acidity and you won't see me use it much to describe a pleasant coffee. Acidity is really a misunderstood term so I propose we simply rethink it or at least use it more sparingly. It's just too all encompassing of the good and the bad without distinguishing either. Many strongly acidic coffees can often be attributed to either a roast byproduct(intentional or not) or a problem with the coffee. A bit green and improperly dried where the astringency is often erroneously described as acidic is something I have seen quite a bit of. When the acidity is pleasantly balanced, not a byproduct of error or defects, then I typically term it as fruit which it will often resemble. A nice cup of coffee can have ample fruit character without closing your throat or turning your stomach. A fruity cup can be juicy or jammy but it shouldn't curdle your milk!

This one particular coffee we roasted tonight is a strong Kenya. Powerful aromatics and fruit in the cup like a pleasant Lychee or Longan fruit. Something tropical and sweet but I dare not say it's acidic in the classic manner. Past roasts where a green astringency showed through after days of rest were most definitely acidic/tannic/astringent. This roast was decidedly sweet and juicy with a popping aroma which beats down the roast we did only two days earlier that we were wowing over. It has a nice acidity but it's not acid nor acidic, therefore I just call it fruit and be done with it. Maybe acidity is a dirty word in many circles but maybe we just need to understand it a little better instead of throwing a big blanket over it all with one generic term.

I really believe building a vocabulary is key to quantifying many different things. Since we had nothing to point to, no guide, we defined our own roasts in our own terms. Mostly the errors as we saw them and quantifying the resulting tastes of those errors. This must have really confused our Taiwanese friends who did a double take at our desire for less 'roast' flavor in the coffee. I mean, coffee is roasted, so all the flavor is roast but we were so tired of that dull bitter smoke that we referred to it as 'roast' flavor. A singular note that stood out from the rest of the coffee flavors that was often simply akin to hardwood smoke.

Even in espresso, I use the term bile to describe one sour and acidic to describe another because depending on which is prevalent, you may need to decrease or increase the brew temp. Quantifying things in relative terms is just a simple aid to relating and understanding what you are tasting and relating what that comes from. Be it in the roast or in the brew method, a label helps even if it sounds funny or a bit silly.