A GUIDE TO GOOD COFFEE

• Seasonality
• The Fresh Sheet: Current Coffee Offerings
• Freshness Facts and Fictions
• Caffè Sole's Standards
• Home Storage, Grinding & Brewing Recommendations

Few coffee drinkers are aware of coffee crop cycles, but among coffee pros seasonality is a constant topic of discussion. While most roasters make money selling blends (whose flavor remains constant through skillful seasonal substitution) or dark roasts (whose char obliterates varietal flavor), the savvy buyers choose pure, unblended ("single origin") coffees that are fresh and in season.

At Caffè Sole our focus is on a limited selection of freshly picked new crop coffees that change with the season. As well, we offer a handful of carefully formulated staple blends.

Springtime is a transitional season for coffee just as it is for produce. In South America, where the main harvest occurs in late fall, things are winding down, but there are still outstanding coffees (from Colombia and Brazil, for example) to be found. Meanwhile in the highlands of Central America, where the bulk of the world's best coffees are grown, the harvest is ending and we're just seeing first arrivals from the highest altitudes (where the most flavorful coffees are grown).

While most folks think of Latin America when they think of coffee, the coffee tree is actually a native of Africa. And while distinctions in flavor between Central American beans tend to be subtle, top African coffees are so unique and distinctive in flavor and aroma that even first-time drinkers can easily identify them. Taste our new crop selections from Kenya and Ethiopia, which are described below, and you'll see for yourself the superiority of coffees from their land of birth.

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Seasonal Single Origin Selections

Colombia: Thanks to Juan Valdez^®, Colombia is the one unblended origin coffee most consumers recognize; yet it will rarely be seen on our offering list. Why? Too much money spent on marketing and not nearly enough on product has become the tradition here. However, every once in a while a classic coffee slips through the system.

Our current selection from the Cundinamarca zone is grown at altitudes approaching 6000 feet, using the old tipica cultivar, grown on tiny family-run farms that have been growing this coffee since the earliest years of coffee in Colombia.

In the cup this is archetypal Colombian: very full-bodied, with a fragrance of fresh herbs and walnuts, vibrant high-altitude acidity, lovely butter caramel finish.

Guatemala: Without a doubt there are more great regional coffees to choose from in Guatemala than in all the rest of Central America. While the Antigua region is the only one known to most consumers, other regions increasingly threaten to displace Antigua's claim to be the best coffee in the country. A case in point is this stellar selection from Guatemala's northernmost region, Huehuetenango (pronounced "way way tenango").

This particular coffee comes from one of the most magnificent farms I've every visited. El Injerto's coffee gardens are planted at altitudes of 5,000-7,000 feet, with each Arabica type planted, harvested and tasted separately. State of the art ecological processing and commitment to farm worker well-being make El Injerto an excellent example of sustainable agriculture.

This coffee offers the classic Guatemalan flavors of dark chocolate and nuts, with the added element of a winey, citrusy (especially orange) character that seems to occur only in coffees from the Huehuetenango region. A great Central American coffee that will only get better as we head into the summer months.

El Salvador: This tiny but mighty Central American republic has one of the oldest and richest coffee farming traditions in Latin America, although it is little known among North American coffee drinkers. The best Salvadoran coffees are grown by small-scale farmers and sold under the name Itzalco (a famous volcano) under some of the strictest quality control standards in the world.

Our current selection from the Santa Rita estate is 100% shade-grown, ultra high-altitude coffee grown exclusively using the low-yielding but intensely flavorful heirloom coffee plant called bourbon. Mouthwatering aromas of butter caramel and citrus are followed by flavors of dark chocolate and caramel buttressed with lively palate-cleansing acidity. Coffee does not get any better than this.

Kenya: Ask a professional coffee taster which coffee is his or her favorite and chances are that the answer will be "a great small farm Kenya." Even average-quality Kenyan coffee is so good it's used to "clean up" blends made up of lesser coffees. The truly great lots have a purity and intensity of flavor unmatched by any other origin. Classic Kenyas are the most red wine like of all coffees, offering aromas of blackberry and cassis, a velvety full body, and mouthwatering red fruit tanginess. Our current offering from the Githika farm is a superb example of all these qualities.

Kenya is the only producing country to sell all of its coffees through an auction system in which farmers reap the financial rewards for quality. Buyers around the world receive samples late each week during the main crop auction season, which runs roughly from January through June. The best lots are usually quite small - from 15 to 100 bags of coffee, so even smaller roasters can buy the best quality, provided they are willing to pay up. In the past we have paid a high premium to get the best coffee Kenya has to offer. For this reason, we can attest to the value of the auction system in allowing small quality-oriented roasters the ability to support small, quality-oriented growers who are our logical partners.

Ethiopia Harrar: This is primal coffee, from coffee's native land (the beverage itself having been named after kaffa, a city in Ethiopia). Cultivated completely naturally since time immemorial in the arid highlands of the Harrar region of eastern Ethiopia, Harrar is the coffee to try if you think all coffees pretty much taste alike.

The unique microclimate and rustic processing techniques result in a coffee with a room-filling aroma of wild blueberries intermingled with spice and cedar. The flavors are more complex than any blend: blueberry, milk chocolate, spicy wood, cocoa and red fruits. Our current selection comes from Mohamed Ogsaday, whose family has grown the best Harrar coffee for as long as I can remember. This coffee's wildness and intensity can be shocking to the uninitiated, but be forewarned: once you've tried it, no other coffee may suffice.

Blends

An artful blend offers complexity and consistency in flavor. Our blends are few in number but carefully conceived and meticulously fine-tuned.

Caffè Sole Blend^TM Rustic yet refined, our signature house blend is a celebration of the exotic richness of the Indonesian archipelago. Syrupy-smooth, with a multidimensional aromatic character and flavors that are at once earthy and refined. Especially excellent brewed in a plunger pot or espresso machine (available decaffeinated).

Sole Sunrise^TM The yang to Sole Blend's yin, Sole Sunrise is a tangy, citrusy, palate-cleansing blast of high grown Latin American coffeeness. The Bordeaux of breakfast blends, Sole Sunrise's penetrating sweetness and enticing aroma make it our first choice for drip brewing.

Espresso Amrita^TM Aromatic and flavorful with a nutty, fruity finish that lingers long after the last sip. Espresso Amrita combines top quality coffees from three continents in proportions carefully refined over more than twenty years of espresso-specific blending. Sure to please fans of authentic Northern Italian espresso.

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Green (unroasted) coffees are at their best upon arrival from origin. Their flavors gradually fade over the next 6-9 months, after which they're suitable only for French Roast or flavoring.

In the fifteen minutes or so it takes to perfectly roast a batch of coffee all of the latent aromas and flavors present in the beans are developed. Roasted coffee is exceedingly chemically complex: over 600 components have been identified so far. The most enticing aspect of coffee (so much so that even non coffee drinkers can be made to salivate) is also its most fragile: aroma. Coffees of different origins have varied amounts of aroma in the bean. Further, when roasted, light-to-moderate roasts are more aromatic than dark ones. Coffee's aroma is at its best soon after roasting.

Freshly roasted coffee beans release a minimum of three times their volume in carbon dioxide (CO2) gas as a natural byproduct of roasting. In the ideal universe of the microroaster this presents no problems: roast the coffee very frequently, store it carefully at room temperature, and sell or brew it all within a week or two of roasting. Unfortunately for coffee lovers, less than 1% of the coffee sold in this country is freshly roasted.

From worst to best the most common attempts to achieve coffee with an extended shelf life are as follows:

1. Canned, ground coffee. The beans are ground and allowed to sit in huge degassing silos (otherwise the CO2 would explode the can). Unfortunately the CO2 takes most of the coffee's aroma with it on its way out of the silo (the hiss when you open the can offers the last remnant of the aroma).
2. Whole beans sitting in a bin in the supermarket. Purveyors of "supermarket gourmet" would have you believe that the beans being whole constitute guaranteed freshness. In reality you'll probably get fresher coffee by reaching for a can of Yuban^®.
3. Flexible, multi-layer packaging with one-way degassing valves. Pioneered in the 70's, this is the commonest form of packaging for "gourmet" or "specialty" coffees. Ideally just-roasted coffee is placed in the bag, after which nearly all the air inside is removed by vacuum prior to sealing. CO2 from the coffee goes out the one-way valve; oxygen can't come in.

In practice not-so-freshly-roasted coffee often goes in the bag, oxygen is often not removed prior to sealing, etc. More important, the C02 that exits the bag takes the coffee's aroma with it, and the bag materials - laminates of foil with various plastics - are a costly, unrecyclable, unbiodegradable nightmare. Convenient as this package is for corporate roasters, the "good enough" end product is no substitute for impeccably fresh, locally roasted coffee.

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We roast our coffees daily in batches of ten to twenty pounds at our roasting plant here in Boulder. Coffee is shipped to our stores in reusable food safe containers labeled with the roast date. We hand pack coffee for retail sale out of these containers, and roast date each bag.

While freshly roasted whole bean coffee has a shelf life of up to 2 weeks, our policy is to brew or sell all coffee within 7 days of roast date in order to guarantee our customers coffee of unrivaled freshness. Past date coffee is donated to local charities.

Our standards for ground and brewed coffee are equally rigorous: espresso and drip coffee are ground freshly as needed; espresso shots must be brewed to standard (1 fl. oz. in 18-24 seconds) and served immediately; drip coffee is brewed into insulated containers with attached timers and must be sold within 30 minutes.

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Buy fresh weekly: If possible, buy only as much coffee as you will use within a week, and store the beans in the bag they come in or in an airtight container in a cool place in your kitchen. Don't refrigerate or freeze your coffee: the 'fridge isn't cold enough to extend shelf life appreciably, while freezing causes precipitation of ice crystals in the beans and ruins the coffee's aroma.

Grind just before brewing: Unless you buy coffee daily (ground coffee is stale in 24 hours) you'll need to have a home grinder. For most purposes (drip and plunger pot coffee) a simple $20 blade grinder is perfectly adequate, though burr grinders are better still. 15 seconds in a blade grinder for drip, 10 seconds for plunger pot will yield the correct grind.

Use filtered or bottled water: Boulder tap water is excellent, but should still be filtered for best results - a simple pitcher or faucet-mount unit from PUR or Brita is sufficient. Alternatively, use bottled spring water (our local Eldorado water is excellent), but don't use distilled or reverse osmosis water to brew coffee or tea.

Use the right amount of coffee: Start with 1 heaping standard coffee measure (2 Tablespoons) of coffee for each 6 ounces of water and adjust to taste. That's roughly a full blade grinder's worth of beans for a quart of coffee. At the other end of the exactness spectrum, try brewing by weight like we do in the store: 60-70 grams per liter of water (about 2 dry weight ounces, .12 on a digital scale, per quart).

Use a low-tech, high-taste brewer: The two best ways to brew coffee at home are the plunger pot and handmade pour over drip using the Nissan thermos. Home electric drip brewers are convenient but can't brew anywhere near as good a cup of coffee as you can achieve by boiling water and pouring. Home drip coffeemakers don't get the water hot enough (especially at high Colorado altitudes) and take far too long to brew (bitterness is inevitable after 6 minutes of brewing, and most home drip makers take twice that long to brew).

Make only as much as you'll drink, and savor it fresh: No matter the method, drink within 30 minutes of brewing.

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