Ever stood in the grocery store, facing the coffee shelves and wondered just who it is that buys all of that stuff? All sorts of wonderful marketing gimmicks confront you…Full Flavour, Fresh Roast, Gold Coffee. There are some haunting secrets behind all of those dusty vac packs and oversized cans of folgers and nescafe. Secrets that I’ll reveal, but I won’t be held responsible for!

It was about 4 years ago that I attended the first SCAA conference that I’d been to. I was pretty new to roasting coffee, and very eager to learn more about the beans I was roasting. I was overwhelmed by the information available….and to be frank, out right disgusted by some of it as well.

I knew for a fact that there was a big difference between the coffees I roasted and sold and the coffees found on supermarket shelves. These giant cans of Maxwell house and Nescafe (which oddly enough means ‘not coffee’ in some languages) perplexed me. Why on earth would one want to purchase such a vast amount of coffee??

Coffee is like bread. Bread goes stale within a week or less…….same goes for coffee. Really, no matter what you try to do to keep it fresh, staling is inevitable. Why then are these coffees on supermarket shelves showing an expiry date that is somewhere between 8 months and infinity?

To put it simply, those coffees are allowed to go stale, to go bad, before they even leave the processing plant! Yes, odd, I know. You don’t really find stale bread sitting one a supermarket shelf, well……I suppose Melba Toast could be construed as stale, but hardly. After these coffees are roasted…..coffees like Nescafe, Maxwell House, Folgers, etc. They are allowed to go stale for god knows how long before they are packed into those wonderful, freshness preserved packs that you see lining the shelves, covered in dust. And those oddly infinite expiry dates…..well, this staling process makes sure that the coffee you buy will be flavourless and dead regardless of when you purchase it…..the day it arrives at the store and is put on the shelf, or a year later when it is still sitting there waiting for the unsuspecting consumer to pick it up, read the marketing gimmicks and take it home for a taste.

So……all in all, if you are someone who really does enjoy coffee, my god man, pull yourself together! Get yourself out, find a roastery nearby, and sample some true, fresh roasted coffee. Your tongue will love you for it…..and now that you know those others are all stale, your mind will love you for it as well.

Its not the end of the world, you can still turn yourself around and hope that you long forget how those capitalist coffee wannabees have tortured you so!

Now….gimme some coffee!

Cupping Ethiopian coffees is probably one thing that I can easily say I look forward to. Especially each summer when the new crops begin to arrive in North America, where I spend each day roasting. After a couple of bad years for Harrar crops, I was worried that when this coffee arrived, I might be disappointed again. Luckily, coffee producers in this region of Ethiopia have managed to put out a great crop this year.

These beans are dry, or naturally processed. This means that the cherries are allowed to dry on the beans before they are milled and dried further. The result is a very fruit, robust and complex coffee. Some coffee afficionados aren’t all too interested in dry process coffees, claiming them to be the result of rotten fruit, or harbouring fermented flavours. Thats all fine and dandy of course…..but I love dry process coffees, and its always a pleasure to sample them!

Ethiopian Harrar (Harar) Coffee Review

Roasted By Dave Barrett – Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Dave has been roasting coffee for over 5 years, and handles green bean purchases as well as overseeing Roast Master duties at Planet Bean Coffee Roastery.

• Roast: Cinnamon
• Origin: E. Harrar – OROMIA
• Grade: 4
• Crop: Current (2008)

Aroma: Raspberry, caramel, toasty and slightly smokey

Wet Fragrance (crust): Somewhat sour as it steeps, malty with a hint of fruit.  In breaking the crust, mild notes of nut and fruit come out.

Acidity: Winey with the majority of sensation occuring on the sides of the tongue

Body: medium

Flavour: Very very sweet coffee, notes of berry, malt and wonderful earthy tones.

Aftertaste: Somewhat short, but very pleasant!

After a few years of poor Harrar crops, the producers have finally nailed a great crop for the 2008/2009 season!

I rate this coffee 86/100 on my cupping sheet.