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
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.
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
2018 Holiday Gift Coffees
Every year in November, we put out a call for special coffees that roasters around the world are featuring for the holidays. It's always a surprise and a delight to discover what surfaces during this weeks-long cupping. And what we learn never fails to be compelling in multi-faceted ways. Some roasters approach seasonal offerings by composing creative, often unique, blends, while others prefer
“Big-Bean” Coffee Varieties: Novelty, Scarcity, and Atypical Sensory Pleasures
Among the hundreds of coffees we review each year at Coffee Review, a very small percentage represent what we've come to affectionately call "big-bean" varieties, coffee from tree varieties that produce beans that are dramatically larger than average. The most common of these are Pacamara, Maragogipe and Maracaturra, though there are some even more obscure varieties whose beans are also
Mountain States Coffee Roasters: High Elevations, Classic Coffees
In 2017, Coffee Review began exploring the vibrant roasting scenes in various regions of the U.S., beginning with last year’s popular tasting report on coffees of the American Southwest. This year we take a look at roasters in the U.S. mountain states: Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming. We received samples from all five states. Of the many lovely and interesting coffees among them, the
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
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
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
African Great Lakes Coffees: Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Congo, Tanzania
The countries whose coffee regions nestle around the Great Lakes of Central Africa—Rwanda, Burundi, and key growing areas of Uganda, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—make appearances in the news cycle more often for conflict than for coffee. But these countries are also longtime coffee-producing lands that have, within the last 10 years or so, emerged as important sources of
Coffees from Brazil: Chocolate, Simplicity and Some Surprises
For more than 150 years, Brazil has produced more coffee than any other country in the world. Coffee prices worldwide fall and rise on the slightest whisper of good news or bad news about Brazil’s next coffee crop. Brazil also is among the world’s most technologically advanced coffee producers. Nevertheless, for buyers of high-end single-origin coffees, Brazil shrinks to something smaller than,
