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.

Canada: Doing Fine though Not So Different

This month’s survey of almost forty retail-roasted samples from twenty distinguished Canadian roasters confirms both the depth and liveliness of the current Canadian specialty coffee scene. It also suggests that Canadian specialty coffee roasting has proceeded in an essentially parallel track to specialty roasting in the U.S., although it’s possible to speculate on some very small differences in

Single-Origin Espressos

The practice of roasting a coffee from a single farm or cooperative for espresso brewing is a tactic that appears to be carrying the day at the higher end of the North American specialty coffee world. The old argument against single-origin espressos and in favor of blends ran: Put a single, unblended coffee under the magnifying intensity of espresso brewing and the coffee is liable to come out

The Single-Serve Compromise

The well-publicized commercial success of the Keurig single-serve brewer and Starbucks' efforts to get in on the single-serve action have created much breathless reporting and speculation in the financial press, but we don't hear much about the quality of the coffees the various contending single-serve systems are putting out, or their advantages (or pitfalls) for the coffee-engaged consumer. For

Readers’ Nominations

Perhaps we can take this annual cupping of coffees nominated by our readers as a kind of informal sampling of the state of specialty coffee based on the People’s input. At least a very small part of the People. If so, this early 2011 sampling provokes the following (strictly organoleptic-dotal and non-scientific) trends and observations. Conclusion one: The taste for darker roasted coffees has

African Intensity: Yirgacheffe, Sidama and Environs

When we taste our way into the world of southern Ethiopia wet-processed coffees -- the most famous names are Yirgacheffe and Sidamo or Sidama -- we enter a special and different sensory world than the one to which most North American coffee drinkers are accustomed. These coffees, produced largely from heirloom varieties of Arabica that are hardly grown anywhere else in the world, display intense

Prize-Winning Coffees from Latin America

The story this month may be more about what’s not reviewed here than what is. As in years past, we planned a review of competition-winning green coffees offered to North American consumers. These competitions are events "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

Brandy and Surprises: The New Naturals

For those unfamiliar with the emerging language of fine coffee the title of this article may be a puzzler. What’s a “natural” and what makes some of these “naturals” “new”? Natural is a positive name marketing-savvy Brazilians came up with some years ago to describe coffees that until that time were called “unwashed” or “dry-processed.” These are coffees consisting of beans that were dried

Quiet Distinction: Coffees of Guatemala

Guatemala is a tease of a coffee origin in sensory terms. It would be very difficult in a blind cupping to pick out any of the coffees we reviewed this month with absolute certainty as Guatemalas if they were mixed in with, say, other Central Americas. Yet all twelve of this month’s samples clearly share certain quiet but pervasive commonalities: balanced acidity (seldom overbearing or sharp),

Tall-Drink Espressos: Best Blends for Big Milk

One old-time coffee generalization certainly got shot down by this month’s reviews: the notion that the way to get pronounced espresso flavor in large (i.e. caffè latte-sized) volumes of hot milk is to roast the hell out of the coffees. The idea used to be that the burned pungency of darker roasted coffees would cut through the sweetening, muffling impact of the milk better than medium roasts,

Summer Selections: Coffees of Note

Coffee writers need vacations too. What we offer here in place of our usual monthly tasting report is a set of reviews of exceptional coffees that came into the Coffee Review lab during July 2010. The article originally scheduled for August (Tall Milk Espressos) will appear next month. In a sense, this fill-in-for-Ken's-vacation article is a roaster's choice exercise. The roasting companies

Pity the Poor Decaf Drinker: Signature Decaf Blends

I am a positive thinker when it comes to coffee, but this month's sampling of fifty decaffeinated blends from thirty of North America's finest specialty roasters tested my optimism. Almost every month our reviews reveal impressive new coffee possibilities powered in part by a fresh generation of specialty coffee roasters and coffee producers. Typically our monthly surveys turn up multiple samples

Along the Andes: Coffees of Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru

The short version is simple: Three coffee origins with massive growing elevations and substantial plantings of traditional varieties of Arabica but with little to no presence in the specialty coffee world suddenly provide us with fifty-three largely impressive, often distinctive coffees. For years Bolivia, despite ideal, very high-altitude terroirs and plantings of the old and respected Typica

Micro to Macro: Southern California Coffees

This month's cupping of forty-two coffees from seventeen southern California roasters hints at a drama that is currently enlivening the coffee scenes of other American metropolises: Newer, smaller roasting companies that put more focus on medium-roasted small lots of precisely sourced coffees are pressing older, often larger companies that produce darker-roasted versions of more generic origins

Mysterious No More: Sumatra Coffees

Ever since specialty coffee pioneer Alfred Peet popularized Sumatra coffees on the menu of his famous Vine Street store, their pungently fruity, earthy/musty profile has attracted a loyal following among American coffee lovers. Along the way they have been regularly tagged "mysterious," a word also often applied to the seldom-visited Indonesian island they come from. Well, mysterious no more, or

Island Coffees: Hawaii and the Caribbean

This month's reviews consider coffees from two famous island growing regions -- Kona and the Blue Mountains of Jamaica -- together with a handful of coffees from less famous island origins: Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, plus a scattering of non-Kona Hawaii coffees. The conclusions, rather sadly, are predictable for coffee insiders but perhaps a surprise for more casual coffee

Coffees of Sulawesi, Bali, Java, Flores, East Timor

In beverage-world terms, coffees from Indonesia and East Timor could be considered the single-malt whiskies of coffee. Generally absent are the tart fruit and sweet floral notes of the finest pure, high-grown, wet-processed coffees of Latin America and East Africa. In their place are rich, ambiguous notes of nut, aromatic wood, sometimes earth, sometimes a chocolaty fermented fruit. Most of these

Fourteen Covers of a Classic Tune: Mocha Java Blends

Around 1740 Europeans had a rather limited menu of coffees to choose from: Mocha, the world's original commercial coffee from what is now Yemen, and Java, a recent introduction by the Dutch from their colony in the Pacific. Inevitably, these two coffees came together to form the world's first blend. In the years following, other, now more famous, coffees from Latin America began to fill out

Best (or Should-Be-Best) Selling Single Origins 2009

With this month's review we aimed to evaluate those single-origin coffees that sell best all year. We were after the sturdy, consistent coffees that make up the backbone of roasters' single-origin programs, the coffees they absolutely need to have in bags or bins to avoid muttering customers or nasty emails. We hoped to bypass for now the precious and the extraordinary, the tiny lots flown in by

Something for Everyone: India Coffees 2009

India is a considerably better-known coffee origin in Europe than in the United States. And even in Europe it tends to be a source whose profound coffee originality is hidden inside blends rather than foregrounded in single-origin or trophy coffees. For example, India provides some of the world's most valuable coffee types for espresso blends, yet these same exotic coffee types are seldom offered