• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Coffee Review

The World's Leading Coffee Guide

Advanced Search

  • Reviews
    • Latest Reviews
    • Top 30 Coffees of 2024
    • Top-Rated (94+)
    • Espressos
    • Best Values
    • Taiwan Coffees – 台灣送評的咖啡豆
    • Single-Serve Formats
    • Reviews by Country of Origin
    • Reviews by U.S. City
    • Green/Unroasted
    • Advanced Search
    • Equipment Reviews
  • Reports
    • Latest Reports
    • Africa
    • Americas
    • Asia-Pacific
    • Espressos
    • Annual Top 30
    • Processing Method
    • Social/Environmental
    • Tree Variety
    • Blends
    • Equipment
  • Equipment
    • Equipment Reviews
    • Equipment Reports
  • Journal
    • 2025 Editorial Calendar
    • Top 30 Coffees of 2024
    • How Coffee Review Works
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Kenneth Davids
    • Our Team
    • Our Advertisers
    • Learn
      • Interpreting Coffee Reviews
      • Reference
      • Glossary
    • Contact Us
  • Trade
    • 2025 Editorial Calendar
    • Becoming an Advertiser
    • 2025 Media Kit
    • Campaign Package Deals
    • Getting Coffees Reviewed
    • Quoting Reviews
    • Award Certificates
  • 中文 – Chinese
    • 評介和獎章宣傳使用條款
    • 台灣送評的咖啡豆
    • 如何將您的咖啡送評
    • “行銷攻略” 促銷活動

Shop for top-rated coffees at Durango Coffee Company

Shop for Top-rated coffees at Barrington Coffee Roasters

Shop for top-rated coffees at Kakalove in Taiwan


Kenneth Davids

The Coffee and Fruit Co-Fermenting Debate

The latest controversy to stir up the world of fine coffee is a debate over the legitimacy of creating unique-tasting green coffees by adding natural fruit to the fermentation tank during processing. What’s left of the fruit itself is long gone by the time we experience these coffees, but if the process is successful, complex fruit and sweet sensations may linger in the bean and in the cup,

December 12, 2024
Read Now

Guatemala Coffees 2024: Classic with a Geisha Boost

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

October 11, 2024
Tasting Report | Reviews

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,

April 10, 2024
Tasting Report | Reviews

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,

October 14, 2023
Tasting Report | Reviews

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

May 11, 2023
Tasting Report | Reviews

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

March 13, 2023
Tasting Report | Reviews

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

January 5, 2023
Tasting Report

Everyday Single-Origin Coffees: At the Intersection of the Familiar and the Exceptional

  While there is much to be said for the new and different in coffee — for surprising new cup profiles generated by the latest processing methods, tiny lots of coffee produced from newly rediscovered tree varieties — there is also a lot to be said for the pleasures of consistency. Even for those coffee lovers willing to pay big bucks for a few extraordinary cups of a super-distinctive

August 12, 2022
Tasting Report | Reviews

Brazil Naturals: Tradition and Innovation

  When I first opened a specialty café in Berkeley, California 40 years ago, a Brazil always appeared among the standard whole-bean coffee offerings in the 10 or so glass-fronted bins that held our whole-bean coffees. All of the popular and glamorous coffee origins of the time were there: Guatemala Antigua, Kenya AA, Costa Rica Tarrazu, Sumatra Mandheling, Colombia Supremo, and the new,

May 12, 2022
Tasting Report | Reviews

The World and the Cupping Table: 25 Years of Change at Coffee Review

  Coffee Review has been reviewing coffees and reporting in depth on the world of specialty coffee since 1997, making this our 25th year of slurping, spitting and writing. Over those 25 years, we have published reviews of thousands of coffees, tasted tens of thousands more, and produced more than 250 in-depth monthly reports on coffee growing regions, processing methods, tree varieties,

January 7, 2022
Tasting Report

Coffee equipment reports photo

New Series of Equipment Reports

Our mission always has been to help consumers identify and purchase superior quality coffees. But purchasing superior quality coffee beans won't guarantee a superior quality coffee experience if poorly prepared with inferior equipment. So it's not surprising that we frequently receive requests from readers for reviews of coffee equipment. In our most recent reader survey, 88% of respondents were

March 8, 2020
Read Now

Coffee Tasting Report: November 2019

Anaerobic Fermentation and Other Palate-Bending Processing Experiments

I recall that, in high school, teachers graded essays based on various conventional writing categories — grammar and diction, clarity, organization, etc. But most also gave credit for originality. Often, some friend’s paper would show weaknesses in regard to comma placement, word choice, and clear organization but attract a high grade for originality. Perhaps you could say that some of the

November 9, 2019
Tasting Report | Reviews

At Long Last, a 98-Point Coffee

For years, we have deflected criticisms that, on one hand, Coffee Review ratings are too high (though they are in line with wine reviews) and, on the other hand, that we never go past 97, even with coffees that propose a combination of flawless perfection with startling distinctiveness. I recall a conversation with George Howell, who years ago challenged me when we lavished great praise on one of

October 22, 2019
Read Now

Coffee’s Economic Paradox: $40 Charged in Paris, $3 Paid in Kenya

The Coffee Paradox, by Benoit Daviron and Stefano Ponte (Zed Books, 2005) analyzes at length the disturbing trend that, just as coffee has grown fashionable and retail prices for coffee have increased in regions where coffee is consumed, like North America, Europe and East Asia, the basic prices paid to growers for their green coffees have decreased, rather radically. In 1997 the composite price

September 20, 2019
Read Now

Tasting Report: The Coffees of Papua New Guinea

El Salvador Coffees 2019: Pacamaras, Bourbons and Change

When we focus a report on a single origin, in this case El Salvador, we try to time the report so that we are testing mainly freshly arrived coffees, coffees that represent the best of the year’s new crop. This year, however, we were a bit too early with our report timing. Many of the coffees we cupped early in July lacked vivacity and aromatic range, suggesting perhaps that they were last year’s

August 17, 2019
Tasting Report | Reviews

Women of Ketiara Cooperative harvesting coffee

Sumatra: Earth, Chocolate and Change

The pleasures of a fine traditional Sumatra are not quite conventional coffee pleasures. The characteristic layering of chocolate, pungent fruit and earth notes in an exceptional wet-hulled Sumatra may mildly turn off coffee drinkers who enjoy more orthodox coffee pleasures: juicier, sweeter fruit, say, or more citrus and flowers, or a suave balance with no savory earth suggestions at all. But

April 9, 2019
Tasting Report | Reviews

Top 30 Coffees of 2018

We are pleased to present the Top 30 Coffees of 2018, Coffee Review’s sixth annual ranking of the most exciting coffees we tested over the course of the past year. Coffee Review’s goal is to celebrate coffee roasters, farmers and mill-owners who make an extra effort to produce coffees that are not only superb in quality but also distinctive in character. In particular, we aim to honor the

January 1, 2019
Tasting Report | Reviews

The New (and Old) Instant Coffees: Convenience Aspires to Quality

It sounds easy enough. Brew the coffee, take out the water, keep the stuff that’s left, package it, and let the consumer put the water back in later. Coffee … instantly. But judging from the 24 soluble coffees we tested for our September tasting report, it isn’t quite as easy as it sounds.  It has always been difficult to judge whether the generally dreadful quality of instant coffee sold in

September 9, 2018
Tasting Report | Reviews

Natural-Process Espressos: Fruit and Chocolate Exalted

I recently led a tasting of fine coffees at a consumer event. Only one of these coffees was natural-processed, i.e., had been prepared at the mill by drying the coffee seeds or beans inside the whole fruit. The other samples were all washed coffees, processed by drying the beans after the fruit skin and flesh had been removed. The washed method is the traditional norm for fine coffee in most

August 14, 2018
Tasting Report | Reviews

Cold-Brewed Black Coffees: Quality in a Can?

As we sweat our way into summer 2018, enjoying coffee chilled on ice is peaking as the latest specialty coffee trend. Espresso, of course, has long appeared in various cold-blended café concoctions like frappés and smoothies, as well as in bottled ready-to-drink (RTD) beverages heavy on sweetener, milk and flavorings. But this latest cold coffee trend differs from those earlier products by

July 13, 2018
Tasting Report | Reviews

  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 16

Primary Sidebar

Shop for top-rated coffees at Durango Coffee Company

Shop for Top-rated coffees at Barrington Coffee Roasters

Shop for top-rated coffees at Kakalove in Taiwan

Become an advertiser

Get Coffees Reviewed

Connect with Us

Sign Up for Our Free E-Newsletter

Enter your email address below to receive our free e-mail newsletter
  • Coffee Reviews
  • Tasting Reports
  • Reference
  • Glossary
  • Please Support Our Advertisers
  • Contact Us
  • Journal
  • Kenneth Davids
  • Interpreting Coffee Reviews
  • Roast Definitions
  • Caveats about Coffee Ratings
  • Editorial Calendar
  • Getting Coffees Reviewed
  • Advertising Opportunities
  • Quoting Reviews
  • Copyright
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site Security

Copyright © 2025 Coffee Review. All Rights Reserved.