My favorite insights from the coffee field studies:
Olympia Coffee Roasters:
- OCR’s Sam and Oliver shared their unique perspective on coffee terroir. From most important to least important, they listed the following factors as the main determinators of coffee taste.
1. Coffee processing method: such as natural, honey/semi-washed, or washed
2. Varietal: for example, Bourbon, the most common Central American coffee variety.
3. The terroir, which they describe as “the unique cultural properties of production.” - Olympia Coffee Roasters wants to “reveal the mysteries in coffee.” Their business is a very special one, during which it’s remarkably young life, has won Micro Roaster of the Year in 2013 and gained international attention. Sam and Oliver describe themselves as a quality of life coffee company. The company uses a direct trade coffee purchasing model.
Batdorf and Bronson
- Bob at Batdorf & Bronson shared his perspective on terroir: That it is a way to market a unique coffee. He states that most coffee marketing is consumer driven, and what consumers like is seeing the origin of their coffee. Contrary to the perspective of Sam and Oliver at OCR, he believes that the origin has the largest influence on coffee flavor, rather than the processing method or variety of coffee. Much like wine, Bob told us that coffee flavor can be elevation based, and that the elevation has a direct correlation to the cup quality. Also, he shared that young, nutrient rich volcanic soils tend to have the best terroir.
- The tasting at Batdorf was especially insightful into the taste differences with different types of processing. I could taste a distinct difference between the natural process and the washed. The natural coffee we tasted, the Ethiopia Sidamo, was much more full of well rounded, tart fruit flavors.
Featured Image by Chris DiNottia: from Olympia Coffee Roaster’s blog
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