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.

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,

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

Classic Origins, Mission-Driven Companies: 9 Roasters New to Coffee Review

Our monthly reports are a bit like a coffee grab bag — we never know what kinds of submissions we’re going to receive, but we always get some surprises that steer the month’s given theme in specific directions. And that’s really the point with our reports: to pose a question and see what potential answers surface. The end result is never comprehensive, but it’s always engaging and

Mexico Coffee: Processing Innovation, Cooperatives, and the Tradition of Collaboration

While Mexico is somewhat under the radar when compared to more popular coffee origins, the country has been producing coffee since the late 18th century, and given recent developments, may well be poised to become a model for coffee production in the 21st century. In this month’s report, we review nine exceptional coffees from four different Mexican growing regions. Coffee farmers

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

Sticking with the Classic: 8 Coffees from Southern California Roasters

The ever-evolving world of specialty coffee continues to see rapid growth in the area of product differentiation, with a strong emphasis on processing innovation at the farm level. In the last decade or so, as the story of each individual coffee has become more important to the consumer, it is variation in processing method that seems to get the most attention. Perhaps that’s because

Fruit Bombs Are the Point: Natural-Processed Espressos Defy Convention

The Coffee Review lab has smelled like a candy store for the last few weeks — a Willy Wonka factory for grownups. Of the hundreds of coffees we cup every year, a growing percentage of them are natural-processed. In the wine world, the word “natural” doesn’t mean anything in particular, is more of a marketing term designed to imply minimal intervention in the winemaking process. In coffee,

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,

Darker-Roasted Coffees: Not Just Old-School Anymore

Every few years, we at Coffee Review like to survey the dark roast landscape. Dark-roasted coffee is a daily staple for some coffee drinkers and anathema to others. But there appears to be a sweet spot that appeals to a wide range of coffee-drinking styles that’s not too light and not too dark, making equal space for those who drink their coffee black and those who doctor