Taste of Sustainable Coffee

[OriginalMary]

In my opinion, sustainable coffee tastes better, because the grower tends to put more care and detail into producing the crop. What do you guys think? Do you have any good sustainable coffee stories?

 

[Musicphan]

I think sustainable coffee can be both great and bad... the growers are only one part of the process.. good/bad impacts on flavor can occur at the mills/importer/roaster.

 

[ensoluna]

Sustainable coffee means that the farm or coffee cooperative has direct contact with the buyer (such as major roasters (Blue bottle, Klatch..etc).
Direct contact means which farm their coffee is coming from.

it has nothing to do with "taste" of coffee.

 

[Musicphan]

Maybe I'm confused... I always was under the impression that sustainable coffees was a typical described for organic/FTO/Bird certified...

 

[ensoluna]

yes, that is one of the criteria of being sustainable.

however, in coffee origin side, sustainable usually means that buyers know exactly which farm they are buying from and visit the farms whenever they come to the origin and try to make the relationships directly with the owners of the farms.

 

[DiegoFjord]

I do understand the sentiment and the feel-good nature of words like sustainable but there is so much more. Does anyone ever talk about whether the coffee farm itself is mono-culture/poly-culture/perma-culture etc? Those factors to me would have a much greater impact on the sustainability of a particular coffee.

 

[ensoluna]

Personally, in Guatemala, I see most of lower quality Arabica beans are from mono-culture farms at lower altitude, with heavier production. No shade grown, just coffee plants, nothing else. Also, most of Robusta in Brazil & Vietnam apply mono-culture.

However, most of SHB (strictly hard beans) are from Poly-cultured farms, higher altitude and cooler climate. The beans must have some shades (banana plants for lower altitude, Avocado trees and lemon trees for higher altitude) in order to grow slower. (too much sun will make cherry ripe too fast which means loses flavors and characteristics)

for perma-culture, it is not practiced, nor even possible in Guatemala.
I am sure that most of people knows about this, but it is a "philosophy" of working together with nature, including other plants & animals in their all functions in nature. And now, when we talk about perma-culture, it even has expanded to include economic & social system, in this case, coffee system.

if you ask me, maybe this might be possible in "kona island" for Kona coffee that can demand 3 times of pricing than other 3rd world country coffees.