There was a lot of soulful, old-fashioned coffee pleasure to be had among the 38 single-origin Guatemala coffees we tested for this month’s report, along with a few subtle sensory shocks and surprises. Given the waves of experimentation with processing methods pursued by Central American coffee producers over the last couple of years, I thought we might need to finesse our way through trade-offs
Tasting Reports – Most Recent
Coffee Review has published more than 250 monthly coffee tasting reports since February 1997. The most recent tasting reports appear below in reverse chronological order. You may narrow your search by category from the main navigation drop-downs or by using the key word search feature that appears in the page header. The content in tasting reports and associated reviews was correct at the time of publication but may not remain accurate over time.
Should Serious Coffee Lovers Care About Celebrity-Branded Coffees?
Our notions of celebrity in the U.S. have expanded over the decades. Being a Hollywood icon is no longer the only gateway to stardom, as evidenced by the growing pool of “influencers” from many walks of life. From YouTube trendsetters to musicians powerful enough to tip various political scales, the minimum basic requirements are a smartphone, a bit of charisma and an audience. Many household
Convenience vs. Quality in Ready-to-Drink Black Coffee
Summer is upon us, and that means one thing for many coffee lovers: cold coffee. It sounds like such a simple beverage, but the number of brew methods and packaging technologies currently on the market, many of them proprietary, make choosing a ready-to-drink (RTD) coffee confusing. We decided to cut a path through the complicated landscape of RTD products in hopes of getting some
Single-Origin Espressos: Anaerobics Crash the Party
What is a single-origin espresso? Very generally defined, it’s an espresso produced from a single crop of coffee grown and processed in a single country, region, cooperative or farm. In other words, it is not a blend of coffees grown in different places or at different times. Single-origin (S.O.) espressos allow an espresso drinker to explore the wider world of coffee in the same mindful,
Hawaiʻi Coffee Roasters’ Unique Place in the Global Coffee Scene
When most of us think of Hawaiʻi, we think of perfect beaches, iconic sunsets and unparalleled relaxation. When coffee lovers think of Hawaiʻi, “Kona” is often the first word that comes to mind. But while the Hawaiian Islands are, indeed, a paradise, they’re also a place where coffee is a critical part of the economy — an economy that’s been hammered over the past few years by the
2024: Coffee Review’s Year in Preview
Every year in December, Coffee Review’s editorial team hustles to choose the topics for the following year’s editorial calendar. This, our January report, shares some thoughts on the topics we chose and how we chose them. See our full 2024 Editorial Calendar. In November, as Coffee Review compiles its annual Top 30 Coffees list, we carefully consider the factors that made the coffees we tasted
A Deeper Look at Coffee Review’s Top 30 Coffees of 2023
In 2023, Coffee Review blind-tasted more than 3,000 coffee samples from hundreds of leading roasting companies and coffee producers around the world. We ultimately published nearly 600 reviews on CoffeeReview.com over the course of the year. The Top 30 Coffees of 2023 is our editors’ ranking of the 30 most exciting of these coffees, representing roughly 5 percent of the coffees we
Fruit- and Spice-Fermented Coffees: The Cup and the Controversy
At the experimental tip of the specialty coffee world, the excitement never stops. The latest processing twist from Colombian and Central American coffee growers involves putting natural fruit, herbs or spices into the fermentation tank with the coffee during processing. The fermentation tanks are usually sealed, making this fermentation anaerobic as well. Readers of our March 2023 report know
New Coffee Varieties: Sidra, Chiroso, Pink Bourbon, Wush Wush
I’ll start with a familiar story. Around 2004, a Panama coffee farmer, Price Peterson, found a field of coffee trees growing on his property that was different in appearance from other trees. He entered the coffee from those trees as a separate lot in the 2004 Best of Panama green coffee competition, and that coffee, competing as the “Geisha” variety of Arabica, blew away that year’s competition,
The Evolution of “Fair Trade” Coffee
Although the term “fair trade” has been in use for over 75 years, it is not linked to one specific group or organization. Conceptually, fair trade is a global movement that includes producers, consumers, various nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations, and for-profit businesses; it is a system designed to build a more equitable trading model for a range of products, including coffee. In 1973,
Ten Coffees From Women Producers That Should Be On Your Radar
When we last visited the subject of women coffee farmers for a tasting report in 2017, we explored the landscape of gender (in)equity through the lens of roasters who had purchased coffees produced by women — as farm owners, farmers in the field, as part of cooperatives, and as collectives pulled together by intention or by fate. It is still the case that, while women own between 20 and 30 percent
Plant-Based Milks for the At-Home Barista: Flavor, Frothing and More
When’s the last time you walked into a coffee shop and didn’t see at least one non-dairy milk option? While oat, almond and soy milks are commonly found on café menus, there’s also a surge of other non-dairy milks — from macadamia nut to flax seed — in countless formulations designed for coffee, smoothies and other beverages. While we test hundreds of espressos each year, our standard method is to
Dark Roast Coffee 2023: The Good, the Bad, the Subtle
Ten or 15 years ago in North America, there was little doubt about what a dark roast was, or how it was expected to taste. The beans were very dark brown in color, edging toward black, shiny with oil, and the dominating sensory feature was a richly pungent, charred cedar character usually softened by chocolate and a raisiny fruit. If you were lucky and attentive, you might also pick up some hints
Old Style and New: Coffees of Java and Bali
Java and Bali are familiar names in the atlas of legend and imagination: Java mainly because of an historical association with coffee so powerful that it lent coffee one of its nicknames, and Bali for reasons that have little to do with coffee, but with the famous beauty of the island and its people and culture. Today, both islands produce coffees of charm and interest, and this month we report on
Coffee Brew Bags: Convenient, But How Good Are They?
Among the many paradoxes in the wide world of coffee, one ongoing question regards ritual versus convenience. Some people like the slow, meditative pour-over brewing method, and others prefer to pre-program a batch brew and have it waiting for them when they wake up. And then there are the times when you don’t have a lot of options — camping, air travel, hotel stays — when just about any
Fresh Fruit or “Juicy Fruit”? Tasting 90 Anaerobic-Processed Coffees
Of all of the innovations challenging traditional expectations in specialty coffee today, the use of anaerobic (limited oxygen) fermentation to alter and intensify the character of the cup is perhaps the most striking. Anaerobic-fermented coffees that explicitly and successfully express this method tend to be intense and almost shockingly floral and fruit-toned, with the flowers often
Warm Your Bones With 10 Ski Country Coffees
While the sun is finally peeking through the clouds in our home base of Berkeley, California, much of the U.S. is still blanketed in snow. If you’re trying to dig out of your driveway to go to work, that’s a bummer, but if you’re getting ready to hit the slopes, you’re in your happy place. Either way, you’re going to need coffee, and we’ve found 10 ski country coffees to recommend you get your
2023 Preview: Coffee Trends, Controversies and Change
What is trending in the specialty coffee world for 2023? What will be 2023’s major controversies or issues? Which origin countries or regions should Coffee Review look in on? Every December brings a round of often intense debate and speculation as we at Coffee Review exchange emails and bang heads trying to come up with topics for the following year’s 10 tasting reports. For these reports, we
An In-Depth Look at the Top 30 Coffees of 2022
In 2022, Coffee Review blind-tasted more than 2,500 samples from leading roasting companies and coffee producers, 530 of which we reviewed on www.coffeereview.com. The Top 30 Coffees of 2022 represents a further selection: a ranking of the 30 most exciting of these coffees. This year’s list represents the 10th year we have compiled our Top 30 list of the most exciting coffees we have tasted
Celebrating Traditional Excellence: Classic Coffees from Central America
For many North Americans, the classic coffees of Central America constitute the essential experience of fine coffee. Until relatively recently, wet-processed or washed coffees from traditional tree varieties produced by a string of Central American countries — Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama – typically appeared near the top of specialty coffee menus. But that
