What makes a coffee taste like it does? Many factors go into what you ultimately experience in your morning cup. First, there’s the tree variety that produces the coffee. For specialty coffees, the varieties in question are, with rare exceptions, of the Arabica species, and there are hundreds of possibilities. Then, there’s the place in which the tree is grown — the coffee’s terroir. (There is
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.
The Fate of a Classic: Washed Central America Coffees
For decades, the classic washed or wet-processed coffees of Central America and Mexico have constituted one of the world’s great go-to coffee types. Usually clean-tasting, usually sweetly-tart, with a shifting array of fruit notes – always stone fruit, typically some citrus and flowers, always notes ranging from nut and caramel to full-on dark chocolate depending on the coffee and roast. And most
Recognizing Coffees from Black-owned Coffee Companies
For new readers who may not be familiar with Coffee Review, we introduced the first-ever 100-point, wine-style coffee reviews to the specialty coffee industry in 1997. Our mission is to help consumers purchase superior quality coffees while recognizing and rewarding the farmers and roasters who produce these coffees. Since our founding, Coffee Review has reviewed coffees in an
RTD Rising: Single-Origin Cold Coffees Elevate the Game
It was only two years ago that Coffee Review last explored the landscape of cold black coffees offered in ready-to-drink (RTD) format. In the 2018 report, we celebrated some excellent samples, but the majority of the submissions were produced from blends of various anonymous green coffees, as opposed to single-origin coffees from identifiable farms, mills or cooperatives, the kinds of coffees
Desert-Island Coffees: What To Drink When You’re Stuck at Home
For most of the world, the first months of 2020 have been a challenging season, with millions across the globe either anticipating, in the throes of, or rebounding from the COVID-19 pandemic. For the past two months, Berkeley, California, where Coffee Review is based, has been under a statewide shelter-in-place order. Whether we’re too busy or not busy enough, we’ve all had time at home to
Coffee Roasters of the Northwestern U.S.: Classic Coffees, Resilient Communities
Each year we spotlight local roasters in the U.S. specifically by regional geography, choosing one region of the country to look at in depth. This year, we invited roasters from the Northwest states of Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming to submit coffees for a blind cupping, and we report here on the nine top-scoring entries. In many ways, the Northwestern U.S. was the birthplace of
Single-Origin Coffees in Supermarkets
We track the specialty coffee industry obsessively, day in and day out, documenting its latest trends toward bespoke experiences (both at cafés and at home) and celebrating the farmers and roasters who are pushing the envelope of coffee experimentation and differentiation in unprecedented ways. But what options are available to coffee-lovers who don’t have the time or inclination to order
An In-Depth Look at the Top 30 Coffees of 2019
Coffee Review’s list of the Top 30 Coffees of 2019 represents our seventh annual ranking of the most exciting coffees we tested over the course of the year. This annual effort supports our mission of helping consumers identify and purchase superior quality coffees and, in the process, helping drive demand and increase prices to reward farmers and roasters who invest time, passion and capital in
2019 Holiday Coffees: Celebratory Blends That Elevate the Ordinary
Every December, we look at some aspect of the vast array of holiday coffees on offer from roasters around the world. This year, we focus on blends — specifically, holiday-themed blends, as interpreted by roasters and available only during the holiday season (roughly November to February). Creating exciting holiday blends has become something of a year-end competition among good specialty roasters
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
Idealism and Achievement: 8 New North American Roasting Companies
Opening a new coffee roastery today seems like a daunting idea. There's the increasingly troubled U.S. economy, but even more alarming is the unprecedented turmoil in the global coffee industry, which includes insultingly low prices paid to farmers, infrastructure challenges, and climate change, which has virtually wiped out some regional coffee industries, put many more under extreme stress, and
Geisha Coffees Continue to Shatter Sales Records — Are They Worth The Hype?
When we last wrote in depth about Geisha (also spelled Gesha) coffees in 2017, a 100-pound lot of this prized variety of Arabica, grown at Hacienda La Esmeralda by the Peterson family, had just broken the then-current record for the highest price ever paid for a green coffee: $601 per pound. Flash forward to July of this year, when that record was shattered by the Lamastus family, whose Elida
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
Exploring “Classic” Espresso Blends: Taiwan Roasters
When we put out our call for classic espresso blends for our June 2019 report, we were not prepared for the overwhelming response: We received 54 samples from roasters based in North America and 46 from roasters based in Asia, all in Taiwan. The magnitude of the response was, perhaps, due to our openness. We had decided not to be prescriptive about what constitutes "classic," but to let roasters
Exploring “Classic” Espresso Blends: North American Roasters
Once a year, we ask roasters to submit coffees roasted for espresso for a special tasting with an outside lab partner, always focused around a specific theme. In recent years, we've covered natural-process and single-origin espresso from the Americas; in 2015, we reported on "open-source" espresso blends, documenting the growing trend of openly revealing blend components to consumers, rather than
Hawai’i: A New Wave of Coffee Innovation
The Hawaiian Islands are known the world over for beautiful beaches, diverse microclimates, and both active and dormant volcanoes — pretty much paradise, as the cliché goes. Hawaiian culture is both uniquely American and, in many ways, happily incongruous with mainstream American culture. One island in particular, Hawai'i Island (often called the Big Island), produces the famous, widely
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
Revisiting the Andes: Coffees From Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia
The three coffee-growing countries that range along the Andes south of Colombia — Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia — have rich and storied coffee histories. When Coffee Review last dove in to this region, with reports in 2010 and 2013, we found many impressively solid, softly balanced coffees in the Latin-American tradition — all produced from classic tree varieties like Typica and Caturra and processed
New England Coffee Roasters: Embracing (and Reinventing) Tradition
The very day we spoke with several roasters in New England whose coffees are featured in this month's tasting report, Dunkin' Brands, parent company of Dunkin' Donuts (now rebranding simply as Dunkin’) and headquartered in Massachusetts, announced plans for expansion. And the company's "Blueprint for Growth" centers not on doughnuts, but coffee, including the relaunch of the Dunkin’ espresso
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
