Coffee grows best in high elevation equatorial zones with lots of predictable rainfall - collectively these zones are referred to as the 'coffee belt.' Like cherries, coffee also grows on a tree. In fact, the fruit of the coffee tree is even referred to as the 'cherry' due to the strong resemblance. The coffee belt, which straddles the equator, includes origins as far north as India and Mexico, and as far south as Bolivia, Tanzania, and Papua New Guinea.
Because the seasons reverse across the equator, there's a variance in seasonality within the coffee belt: when it's winter in Bolivia, it's summer in Mexico. To add to the complexity, origins may have shorter or longer harvests due to local microclimate, or they may use different coffee tree varietals that have different growth periods. The result of all of this complexity is that there is essentially always coffee that's 'in season.'
It doesn't end there though - coffee has more wiggle-room in terms of maintaining quality than a spring cherry does - and that's because we're not interested in the sugary, perishable flesh of the coffee fruit (at least not right now- dried coffee flesh can make a lovely tea called cascara), we're interested in the seed. The seed requires several weeks of drying, resting and processing post-harvest, followed by several more weeks or more on a cargo ship. Generally it takes a couple months after harvest for coffee to reach your cup - and that's okay.
A several week resting period is necessary for physical and biochemical processes to take place in the bean that improve it's quality. What's not okay is receiving coffee that's 9+ months off harvest. At this point, the moisture content in the coffee bean has diminished and the coffee begins to taste "age-y"- think woody flavors like cedar. Large mega-roasters get around this age-related defective flavor by roasting it darker. A dark roast will easily hide years of coffee sitting untouched in a warehouse.
The main takeaway is that the "in season" status of coffee differs depending on the origin and depending on where you are in the world, coffee from certain origins may take a little longer to get to you. The best thing you can do is understand the harvest schedule which you can find here - courtesy of Nordic Approach.
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In the coffee roasting business, sourcing is everything. Sourcing encompasses cup quality, producer pricing fairness, consumer pricing fairness, product release timing, inventory age, menu balance, access to farm information, et cetera. Given these factors, a lot of thought goes into identifying and contracting the right coffee lots.
Cup Quality
At the end of the day this is why we're all here, and it's the most important aspect in our purchasing decisions. Cup quality is the overall sensory experience of drinking a coffee; i.e. sweetness, body, acidity, complexity, balance, aroma, flavor, finish, defects, et cetera.
Producer Pricing Fairness and Consumer Pricing Fairnness
PPF and CPF are two sides of the same coin. Traditionally, companies have always attempted to keep producer pricing as low as possible and consumer pricing as high as possible in order to reap the highest possible margin. Since producers have to sell their harvest every year, this structure leaves them with very little bargaining power, the result usually being little to no profit or growth year-over-year. In our opinion the producer that spends an entire season physically laboring to bring their coffee to life should enjoy a greater margin than the roaster that spends less than an hour processing it.
The consumer's price is inextricably tied to producer price, but not always fairly - that's why we always publish the per-pound price of the coffees we purchase, as well as our estimated overhead.
Menu Balance:
Product Release Timing and Inventory Age
Depending on the origin, coffee harvests can take anywhere from weeks to several months to land in New York. Sometimes entire shipments get caught up in customs. Since coffee is always aging after harvest, proper planning and storage is crucial to maintaining the quality of our inventory.
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