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.

Better than Ever: Boutique Espressos

What's a boutique espresso? How about a coffee designed for espresso brewing produced by a very small roasting company for local customers ranging from neighbors to nearby cafes and kiosks. In my most rigorously Platonic version of this definition, the people doing the roasting are ex-baristas (professional espresso machine operators) who got fed up with brewing someone else's coffee and

Hawaiian Coffees 2006: Not This Year

Disappointment implies history. We can only be disappointed if past successes make us expect more good things than actually come our way in the present. Such is the case with Coffee Review's latest revisiting of Hawaiian coffees. First disappointment: A rather lackluster collection of coffees from the famous Kona growing region, with only one of the twenty-two 100% Kona samples we collected

Undervalued Beauty: The Coffees of Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea, the country that occupies half of the enormous island of New Guinea just north of Australia, is certainly one of the least known and least acknowledged of major coffee producers. Many major specialty roasting companies do not offer a Papua New Guinea coffee, and those that do tend not to feature it. But the fact that five of the thirteen Papua New Guinea coffees we turned up

Colombia Runs the Table: Twelve at Ninety

A couple of weeks ago I was leading a coffee tasting for consumers, and I fielded a typical consumer question. What about Colombian coffee? Was it the - (hesitation, visions of Juan Valdez dancing in the head) - best in the world? Before this month's cupping, I would have confidently replied: No, of course not. Colombia gives us some excellent, classic, high-grown Latin American coffees, but

Romance and Perfection: 2006 Readers’ Choices

Several exceptional coffees and some interesting subplots emerged in our annual cupping of coffees nominated by Coffee Review readers (in this case, coffees intended for non-espresso brewing methods). Readers showed their usual good taste, with none of the thirty-six coffees we cupped attracting a rating under 80, and four scoring 90 or better. Some of this month's subplots and coffee

A User’s Survey: Single-Serve Coffee Brewing Systems

Following are detailed reviews of a selection of most of the leading single-serve coffee brewing units on the market as of December 2005. By single-serve coffee brewing units we mean devices that produce single servings of freshly brewed drip-style coffee and related beverages on demand from individual cartridges of ground coffee. Note that these devices are intended to produce individual,

Still Tastes Good: Guatemala and Chiapas

In a world fatigued and oppressed by constant new scenes of flooding and disaster, the news that Guatemala, the southern Mexican state of Chiapas and adjacent parts of Central America recently suffered catastrophic floods and landslides owing to still another hurricane ? this one named Stan ? may have slipped by many of us. But for those coffee growers whose relatives or neighbors were lost in

Not for Beginners: Prize-Winning Latin American Coffees 2005

The eleven coffees reviewed this month are all prize winners from the various green coffee competitions that took place earlier this year across Central and South America. These competitions, during which a jury of international cuppers spends several well-caffeinated days slurping, spitting and obsessing over a gradually narrowing group of fine coffees from a given growing country, have become a

Nice Going: Readers’ Choice Espressos

Coffee Review readers appear to have good taste in espressos. Of the fifteen espressos tested for this review, all were nominated by Coffee Review readers. Of those fifteen, seven achieved scores of 90 or over, and two more hovered in the 88/89 range. This success rate is considerably higher than typically achieved when I simply collect samples based on roaster nominations plus a random sweep

Aromatic Neighbors: Current Crop Panamas and Costa Ricas

If Costa Rica is one of the world's best-known coffee origins, Panama may be one of the more obscure. Nevertheless, these two coffee neighbors share a border, and the growing region for fine Panama coffee is centered only twenty miles or so from the Costa Rica border on the slopes of Volcan Baru. Both origins are respected for quality, although neither is known for a particularly distinctive cup,

Watch It, Seattle: Chicago-Area Coffees

Two aspects of this month's cupping of Chicago-area specialty coffees surprised: First, the relative small number of specialty coffee roasters we found serving a region so large and sophisticated; and second, the high quality of the coffees this small number of roasters produced. A colleague took a quick run through a couple of Chicago-area supermarkets and turned up almost no Chicago-area

Win Some, Lose Some: Decaffeinated Coffees

I think it's safe to say coffee professionals and their fellow fanatics are not fond of decaffeinated coffees. Yes, sneers or shoulder-slumping resignation are common around the cupping table when the decafs show up. Nevertheless, some people love coffee but can't handle caffeine, at least not at all hours and times. Look at it this way: This proves that there is more to coffee than caffeine.

The New Health Beverage: Health-Enhanced Coffees

The unusual coffees in this month's cupping are the offspring of two trends. The first is the discovery that coffee has as much right to claim membership in the surprise-it's-good-for-you club as do long-time club members green tea and red wine. The second, converging trend is the popularity of hybrid beverages that combine familiar ingredients with substances ranging from vitamins to medicinal

Soft and Sweet: Brazil Specialty Coffees

Brazil is a coffee country in transition. Still the world's largest producer of coffee - but now the world's second largest consumer of coffee as well. Still the home of vast patios filled with coffee fruit carelessly stripped from trees and often mildewing as it dries, but also an emerging producer of some of the world's most fastidiously prepared specialty coffees. Brazil still produces a

Progressive Crema: Organic and Fair-Trade Espresso Blends

Here are three things you need to understand to fully appreciate the achievement embodied in the exceptional espresso blends reviewed this month: First, the espresso brewing system produces its best results from coffees that are balanced but complex. Typically, it takes a minimum of three different coffees, often as many as five, to produce an espresso blend that is both complete enough and

Fruit and Flowers: Coffees of Central and Southern Africa

The eastern half of the African continent produces some of the world's most dazzlingly distinctive coffees, distinctive meaning identifiably different in flavor from the rest of the world's production. However, most aficionados' African experience is limited to coffees from the continent's two most celebrated origins, Kenya and Ethiopia, both in East Africa. What about the eight or ten other

Now More Than Ever: Traditional Coffees of Sumatra and Sulawesi

It may seem a bit ghoulish to carry on about the pleasures of Sumatra coffee when communities not very far from the Sumatra growing regions are suffering through a catastrophe of unimaginably horrific proportions. However, as stark as the contrast may be between a coffee cup and news footage of upended cars, shattered houses and body bags, appreciating Sumatra coffee can only help Sumatrans. The

Top Twelve Coffees of 2004

Here are twelve of the most exciting coffees that we reviewed over the past year. Perhaps they illustrate a paradox, a version of the old saw about when the going gets tough the tough get tougher. Although green coffee prices generally spent a good part of 2004 exploring all-time lows and growers as a group suffered greatly, more really distinguished coffees showed up in our reviews than every

Prize-Winning Central American Coffees from the Cup of Excellence

Competitions aimed at finding and rewarding the best green coffees from a given country and crop have proven to be one of the great success stories in the recent history of coffee. The farmers whose coffees prevail in these juried competitions receive recognition and significantly higher prices, while aficionado consumers are rewarded with access to refined lots of exceptional coffees that