Re: Mabey I''m just a Jerk...lol
Tough_Duck said:
I''ve been roasting coffee for 15 years now and with internet commerce I''m seeing some wierd stuff. What''s with all the funky names attached to coffees?
But in all my years I''ve never seen a bag come in with "Guatemalan Antigua chimbutu Valley estate strictly east side of Juans donkey" written on the side. I see internet articles where the guy is talking about some farmer and he''s dropping all these names like I''m a fool if I don''t know who they are. Pedro Fillipe was just telling me the other day that the "yaya come binways" are excellent this year. .
When asked for a good coffee I usualy just say. Ethiopian Yrgacheffe and Guat Antigua mixed 50/50 roasted to a colour a little darker than milk chocolate. (45 if you own an Agtron E-10)
I couldn't agree more with all the wierd names, but I think this is just another marketing technique designed to appeal to "coffee snobbery" and persuade people to buy the product. In facvt reading some articles, you would think that some roasters get their bags of coffee from a certain spot in a 50 sq mile plantation...this spot is shaded differently, watered by a sylvian mountain spring, has extra special soil and no insects. The plants fed on liquid ambrosia of the gods! I suppose we have cup of excellence to thank for this :-D
To talk of coffee generically is the right way e.g. Yirg or Guatemala, Costa Rica etc.., to specifically mention a posh sounding estate, is usually marketing, unless it's to identify a particular batch in a particular year from a particular suppliers....as we all know the quality of any coffee changes from crop to crop.
To me even the poncy roasting names irritate, like full city, vienna and other more colourful eiuphemisms I have heard. I'm a simple soul and stick to.
- Light
Medium
Medium - Medium dark
Medium Dark
Dark
Very Dark
Like you I often describe a reference colour related to milk chocolate, because that's almost universally the same colour e.g. slightly darker/lighter/the same as milk chocolate.
So back to blue mountain...best coffee in the world, well no not usually, just a price that reflects limited production/supply. I was once fooled many years ago, not any more. A good Yirg, or a nice Guatemalan, indeed many other coffees, well roasted can often blow it away. I visited Cape Verde once, what a load of hype for a Coffee that generally is nothing special, but again price reflects limited supply..
So much depends on the roasting as well, that often class coffee can be turned into rubbish and some coffees you think you might not like, roasted differently can suprise you..
If I could be given the choice of
$20 per kg coffee roasted okish
$6 per kg coffee roasted by a roaster with godlike roasting abilities
I know which coffee I would choose 8)