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It seems like a bad idea to sell bad coffee on purpose. But here's the story behind it...

I was sitting around with a bunch of roasters and coffeeshop owners, bemoaning the low coffee market prices, how it hurts farmers, lowers coffee quality, and ultimately hurts the entire coffee trade. Some people profit in the short term, but these are big companies that use coffees actually priced at New York "C" market levels. When the coffee market dips, their retail prices don't follow. As a group, the roasters and cafe people I was chatting with hadn't dropped prices much either, because we don't buy cheap coffee, and we don't pay low prices.

My idea was for coffeehouses to offer a free taster cup of market grade coffee next to theirs, and let people decide for themselves what they want the coffee farmers of the world to grow. Well, there were no takers, except me of course. When I can, I buy a cheap crappy coffee and offer it for whatever we pay for it. This is and "educational experience" so we linit it to 1 lb. because I would rather be hung by my toes than seriously sell unscrupiously cheap coffee, the kind that is breakling the backs of repectable coffee producers throughout the world.

Now, for a caveat --- it is actaully hard for me to get coffee as bad as the kind many big roasters use. These coffees often come in polyethylene "super sacks" (they are not even worth putting in a burlap bag), and they are sometimes not even whole seeds, but broken bits called "triage coffee." They often contain moldy beans, lots of dead "black beans", and a lot of rocks and sticks. Large roasters use equipment called destoners and scalpers to remove foreign matter from ultra cheap coffee. So what we offer here is the lowest grade coffees I can get from the port of Oakland without buying supersacks. Another fact: many cheap coffees originate with old, past-crop green coffee. So not only is it bad, its not from the current crop. There are coffees in warehouses in New Orleans... I have seen them ... that are 5, 8, 10 years old! These coffees are traded over and over again without ever being roasted. These are commodity coffees.

I have modified the idea of our Thumbs Down to include Specialty Coffees that are sub-par. The intention here is to offer a "calibration coffee" that reminds us how good our "usual" home roasts are, that there are really awful coffees being offered out there with all the same markings, in the same get-up, as good lots but they are as abyssmal as cheap dreck.

Notes: We offer Vietnamese Robusta as an educational experience for our customers and ourselves. When you hear that the coffee market is at 60 cents, this is the coffee we are talking about. This is the coffee that has become the second largest coffee producing nation behind Brazil in a short course of 8 years, and all this crappy coffee is coming to the U.S. for use in low-grade canned coffee, and freeze-dried or spray-dried usage. But it is also used in some medium-quality commercial blends and is hidden quite effectively using a new technique: steaming. In fact, this process of steaming robustas was first implemented in Germany and is spreading widely through Europe. Europe, a consistent consumer for decades of medium quality high grown Central Amercian coffees, has started to replace these with steamed robustas, meaning the European coffee quality is sliding, and there is a great lack in demand for these high grown "marginal specialty coffees". You can see how this would severly affect the coffee market, and be a huge part of the low prices coffee farmers are receiving for their crop. The costs of production are fantastically low in Asia, compared to Central America. And you can bet you booty that any type of highly processed coffee beverage made from a powder at your local coffee boutique, such as Mochachino and Caramel Iced Frappelatte are made with Vietnamese Robusta. And all those bizarre "cappuccino machines" and truck stops... you guessed it. Institutional coffee suppliers use this for large, low quality office coffee. so give it a try, but we ask you to respect our 1 Lb. Limit, for your safety and for our reputation! Now think about it, this is GRADE ONE coffee. Makes you think, eh?

Notes: Okay, so what's the "lesson" behind a mix of various coffees like this? Well, it is define the term BAGGY, so the fact that this is blended from different lots is primary flavor attribute of the coffee. The primary flavor is BAGGINESS, and you can learn by comparison how this differs from the musty-earthy flavors of Indonesian coffees, the almost leather-hide flavors of some natural Dry-Processed coffees (Ethiopia, Yemen), and even the carefully aged coffees, like our Aged Sumatra offering.

Some background and personal notes on green coffee and bagginess: Baggy flavors are the result of several factors: the fats in the coffee absorbing the smell of burlap, the loss in moisture content as the coffee ages, and other chemical changes. Green coffee is physically dense, and stores quite well (depending on the origin, the altitude/density of the seed, etc) ... but all things have their limits. We used to talk about green coffee lasting 2 years from arrival date. Pish! For some origins theses changes in flavor can emerge in 1 year, 9 months, even 6 months for some decafs! Add in poor storage conditions (too much humidity, exposure to freezing temperatures, too dry, etc) and there are really no set time guarantee for green coffee. What we do is make sure every coffee has an arrival date in the review, and that we are sold out or refresh the lot with a new arrival within 4-6 months, which will allow at least 6 months storage for the buyer with NO shift in flavor. After that, bagginess might be detectable in some coffees, whereas others will be solid as a rock. We are really obsessed with the freshness of our green coffee stock and everything here turns over very rapidly.

Now to the cup: You might not note the age of this coffee by appearance (I really can't, the yellower coffee is simply dry-processed). You might notice a slightly lower 1st crack temperature. You might notice a flat smell after roasting. You WILL notice a haylike smell when you grind it, provided your roast is to a City-Full City level. You will find the same smells in the wet aromatics as you brew it. And then the taste. You might find it a bit like a DP coffee, Sumatra, a Yemen, at first. But note how the rustic flavor finishes. It smells and tastes like wet cardboard, papery, hay-straw, grass (old, dry), and yes, burlap cloth. Welcome to the world of bagginess! Now, a few might find this coffee not too offensive, especially roasted to a Vienna or so. Fine ... but ask yourself, is this coffee attractive? Do I want another cup right now? Do I want to wake up tomorrow to this coffee? If you answer yes, well, I just can't help you!!!

Notes: We offer this past crop coffee as an educational experience for our customers and ourselves. This time around we have a Indian Cherry Robusta. Cherry Robusta is a category of coffee that refers only to India Robusta, and only to those of the dry-processed variety. There can be some interesting high grade cherry robusta, but in general this type of coffee is not picked discriminately, not sorted well, and has many overripe and immature seeds mixed with it. Even at it's best it is a cup with some edges to it. And what we have here, while not the best I have had the pleasure of trying, is nearly that ... it gets A LOT worse than this folks. This has no foreign material in it and no black beans. There are a lot of under-ripe immatures in there though. What we hope you identify in this cup, in the smell when you grind it, brew it, and the cup aroma and flavor, is the experience of Truck Stop coffee. This is the typical robusta experience here, and can provide a contrast not only from good arabica coffees but also from the premium robusta coffees we offer for espresso blends.

Notes: We offer this past crop coffee as an educational experience for our customers and ourselves. But there is something very important to keep in mid with this Ye Olde coffee offering: this was actually very good top-grade coffee to start with, and it simply got old. This is not a Huixoc lot we stocked but one I bought just for the purpose of showing folks what old coffee tastes like. The shocking thing is that people DO still sell coffee this old, both as green and roasted. Lots of businesses do not move coffee fast enough to keep their greens fresh, or they take advantage of a "broker's special" on an old coffee. It's a slippery slope. Sure, you can offer a coffee with a nice bag and an Estate name, but these do not mean the coffee is good! And age shows in the cup differently with different coffees; There are coffees that are old 1 year after their arrival date here in the U.S. and there are some that start showing age at 8 months! Good coffees too... The problem is compounded when something is wrong with the coffee. I cupped a Colombian of highest quality that had been poorly processed using the Aqua Pulp method, and the acidity had a metallic tone. Still, the coffee was good, but this burr in the flavor scared me off. I recupped it just 3 months later and it had completey unraveled, with an overt hard baggy flavor in the cup. What you can expect here is different roast times, different roast sounds, and a cup character with flat, papery, hard notes, and baggy (like a burlap bag). But you need to know this cup character, because I dare say that if you buy green coffee for home roasting, and you do it for a while, and you look to eBay and other sources, you will get stuck with a baggy coffee at some point. It used to be that roasters had to hold their brokers to account for bad coffee offerings, buy rejecting an arrival based on the sample, or by rejecting spot samples. Home roasters don't have the benefit of sampling. But they need to be able to evaluate coffees, and hold coffee sellers accountable for their offerings. In my mind, home roasters can only help the coffee trade improve by this process.

Notes: We offer this coffee as an educational experience for our customers and ourselves. It's meant to introduce home roasters to the pitfalls of buying green coffee. There is a LOT of coffee out there. Just blocks from our shop are warehouses loaded to the rafters with coffee that, on the surface, all looks like it good be fine. But in fact there is very little excellent coffee (true Specialty coffee is less than 10% of the market) ... and ALL that coffee in the warehouses finds a home. There's lots of way to fudge too, to make a coffee seem like specialty when it is not. Cupping is the ultimate test, but without that you can add a few fancy graphics and a supposed farm name to a bag, and make it look really pretty. But the coffee inside is still the same swag.

Our current Thumbs Down coffee is particularily interesting to me, and challenges pre-conceptions about what is "good coffee" and what isn't. Why? Because this coffee has everything going for it. It is a fairly fresh, current crop Guatemalan coffee. It is from a true Estate: Bella Cruz. It is single-origin. It is certified Organic. It is shade-grown. It is the highest grade, SHB, Strictly Hard Bean, which means it is grown at the highest range of altitude. The preparation of the coffee is excellent, it is screened, and there are very few apparent defective beans (I rated it at .2 per 300 gram sample defects). And it's not even that the cup is that bad : it has acidity, it has a hint of sweetness, it has body. But it is not good. Not good at all. Not for a Guatemala at least (if you like coffee with off flavors you might just think it is fine!) The first hints come with the wet aroma. Smell it ... it's not that bad but doesn't it seem just a bit unattractive? It's got some sweetness and maybe a little floral, but more like a chemical smells floral than something truly attractive and enticing. Now, I don't find the first sip that bad, and I am more prone to find the good aspects of the cup at first. But as the cup cools, and as the coffee lingers on your palate, and especially in the aftertaste, well after the coffee has left your mouth ... do you get that flat, rubber flavor? There's also hay-like, straw flavors in there. When the cup is cool the aroma seems really off, and I can't get over the ultimate off aftertaste. It's just yucky. I am sure you could put sugar in it and it would be fine. I am sure this is a lot better than coffee served at many restarants and coffee shops. But that's no excuse. This is not a good cup.

Notes: We offer this past crop coffee as an educational experience for our customers and ourselves. But there is something very important to keep in mid with this Ye Olde coffee offering: this was actually very good top-grade coffee to start with, and it simply got old. This is not a coffee we stocked but one I bought just for the purpose of showing folks what old coffee tastes like. *another problem; I have 2 bags of this that is old Guatemala Huehuetenango, and then we are going to switch to an old Honduran coffee. Both perfectly illustrate the problem of age, of past crop coffee character. And both started out not with a commercial grade coffee, but with a top notch coffee. Another thing to keep in mind: this coffee is not THAT old, and many in the coffee trade would not refer to this as old at all! But that's something that needs to change. There are coffees that are old 1 year after their arrival date here in the U.S. and there are some that start showing age at 8 months! Good coffees too... The problem is compounded when something is wrong with the coffee. I cupped a Colombian of highest quality that had been poorly processed using the Aqua Pulp method, and the acidity had a metallic tone. Still, the coffee was good, but this burr in the flavor scared me off. I recupped it just 3 months later and it had completey unraveled, with an overt hard baggy flavor in the cup. What you can expect here is different roast times, different roast sounds, and a cup character with flat, papery, hard notes, and baggy (like a burlap bag). But you need to know this cup character, because I dare say that if you buy green coffee for home roasting, and you do it for a while, and you look to eBay and other sources, you will get stuck with a baggy coffee at some point. It used to be that roasters had to hold their brokers to account for bad coffee offerings, buy rejecting an arrival based on the sample, or by rejecting spot samples. Home roasters don't have the benefit of sampling. But they need to be able to evaluate coffees, and hold coffee sellers accountable for their offerings. In my mind, home roasters can only help the coffee trade improve by this process.

Notes: We offer Vietnamese Robusta as an educational experience for our customers and ourselves. When you hear that the coffee market is at 60 cents, this is the coffee we are talking about. This is the coffee that has become the second largest coffee producing nation behind Brazil in a short course of 8 years, and all this crappy coffee is coming to the U.S. for use in low-grade canned coffee, and freeze-dried or spray-dried usage. But it is also used in some medium-quality commercial blends and is hidden quite effectively using a new technique: steaming. In fact, this process of steaming robustas was first implemented in Germany and is spreading widely through Europe. Europe, a consistent consumer for decades of medium quality high grown Central Amercian coffees, has started to replace these with steamed robustas, meaning the European coffee quality is sliding, and there is a great lack in demand for these high grown "marginal specialty coffees". You can see how this would severly affect the coffee market, and be a huge part of the low prices coffee farmers are receiving for their crop. The costs of production are fantastically low in Asia, compared to Central America. And you can bet you booty that any type of highly processed coffee beverage made from a powder at your local coffee boutique, such as Mochachino and Caramel Iced Frappelatte are made with Vietnamese Robusta. And all those bizarre "cappuccino machines" and truck stops... you guessed it. Institutional coffee suppliers use this for large, low quality office coffee. so give it a try, but we ask you to respect our 1 Lb. Limit, for your safety and for our reputation!