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Transcript below.
Topic: Green coffee freshness and crop cycles.
Coffee Smarter Expert: Jared Hales, Hacea Coffee Source
Connect: www.haceacoffee.com • @haceacoffeesource on Instagram
Editor’s note: This is the second of our in-depth examinations of green coffee. These monthly columns will drop on the last Wednesday of every month. See you again in July!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Coffee plants are harvested annually leading to a roughly one year lifespan for green coffee to be considered Fresh Crop.
Green coffee that is still available after a new crop comes in is considered Past Crop. The value of the green coffee goes down if it isn’t sold prior to a new crop being harvested.
The actual freshness of a green coffee is directly related to how it is processed and stored, not necessarily by being labeled as Fresh or Past Crops.
Green coffee is generally considered better when it has been Rested for a period of time. This often happens prior to being packaged and shipped from origin.
A green coffee importer—like Hacea Coffee Source–works with roasters to ensure they have available fresh crop coffee that works with the roaster’s preferred offerings.
Jared and Luke Hales are CO-Founders.
Visit Hacea Coffee Source at Coffee Fest Anaheim
INTERVIEW*
*This transcription has been edited for length and clarity.
R!WC: Hello, welcome back. This is another edition of the Green Coffee column presented by Hacea Coffee Source. Jared, you are one of the founders and CO-CEOs of Hacea Coffee Source, along with your brother. Thank you for helping educate me on green coffee and educating everyone reading and listening. I appreciate it more than you know. What are we going to learn about today?
Jared: Today, we'll talk about green coffee freshness and crop cycles at the farm level, which is directly related to coffee freshness.
R!WC: I did not have "crop cycle" in my notes. So I'm excited to learn about that. You actually just mentioned to me, right before we got started, that this is one of the questions you get asked about the most is about green coffee freshness?
Jared: Yeah, that's correct. You know, it's a critical question. As we work with roasters year-round on their offerings—having the conversation about freshness versus consistency is a big topic.
So, for example, a blend can be used to introduce different components that are harvested at different times. So the freshness is constantly being rotated. But without getting too far into that now, let me step back and kind of take it from the farm level at the country of origin.
As most of us already know, coffee grows around the equator, around the world, at higher elevations. Around the equator, there is much less of a season or less of a seasonal shift between, let's say, summer or winter, right? For the most part, the amount of daylight remains the same from the first of the year to the end of the year.
So you always have the sun up at 6:00 AM and down at 6:00 PM, and the weather mostly stays the same as well. You're not getting snow, and you're not getting intense heat either. You're mostly getting a pretty stable weather condition.
Now, that being said, there is a pretty critical shift in weather that happens around the equator. That would be the difference between the dry season and the wet season. This does sometimes get described as summer and winter at the equator. But for the most part, the temperatures don't really change as much as cloud coverage and rainfall. And certainly not the daylight, the lights not changing.
This shift has a really big impact on the crop cycle of the coffee during the dry season, which is when the coffee is picked and processed. This is actually convenient because it's easier to do in the dry [season]. For example, you don't want to be climbing a mountain in the rain, right? That's a little bit counterproductive.
So once the plant is harvested and all the coffee is removed from the plant, then the wet season will come in. When I say wet season...it is wet, like in some places, [up to] three meters of rain in a year. [I'm] talking like fill your room up with water, something we don't ever see in California here.
This water comes and springs the plant back to life, and the plant will flower. These flowers ultimately have the potential to turn into the fruit that holds the seeds, which we've talked about before as being the green coffee.
This cycle between the dry season and wet season influences the flowering and the development of the coffee fruits and the seeds. Now, as I mentioned, this is a seasonal change. It only happens once a year. The harvesting of the plant itself typically only happens once per year.
This really gets us into coffee freshness because, let's say, we love Ethiopian coffee, for example. You can only buy that coffee one time a year. Once you have roasted it, put it in your cup and drunk it. It's gone. It's gone until next year.
So a lot of roasters who love Ethiopian coffee may want to serve that coffee year-round. So we get into this conversation of freshness, like how long does coffee stay good for?
The industry standard is basically one year, but that's only really because of the crop cycle. As an importer, if we're offering Ethiopian coffee from the 2023 crop, and in the meantime, the 2024 crop now develops, gets picked, shipped, and is available—then the [original] crop from 2023 is now considered old—quote-unquote old. Past crop is the phrase we use. That's really only because the new crop is now available, which puts a lower demand on this past crop.
My goal as an importer is to never have past crop coffee, right? But at the same time, we want to support roasters who want to serve Ethiopian coffee year-round. It's this really fine balance of selling out right on time or when the new crop becomes available.
That's a lot easier said than done. This is where communication with roasters plays a really big part. We have conversations with roasters about their usage and run-through rates that are really important for both of us so that neither of us is left with past crop coffee.
When it comes to the actual quality of the coffee, it's kind of a different story. Just because the new crop arrives doesn't mean that that past crop coffee suddenly tastes bad, right?
No, it's just, it's just a timing issue. Quality is more related to how the coffee is treated during every stage, from picking on really. By taking care of that seed—from farm to roaster—the shelf life of the coffee has actually increased.
Most really well-processed coffee will taste great for over a year. I've even had coffees that tasted amazing after three years. I've recently tasted coffee that was seven years old that tasted pretty good. I mean, not what it was, certainly, but pretty good. It wasn't our coffee, someone else's, but it was clearly taken care of. Conversation continued below…
R!WC: And by taken care of...you're talking about not just when you receive it, but you mentioned along the way—how it shipped, how it's packaged, and how it's stored, which is what we're going to get into on our next you know, connection.
Jared: Right, and also how it was processed. How it was fermented and dried has a really big impact on the shelf life of it. In addition to what you mentioned,
R!WC: As a recap then, if I'm someone who is buying green coffee to roast and my source, my importer, is saying, "Hey, there's this coffee from Ethiopia, it's six months old, or it was processed eight months ago or [even] a year ago..." As long as it's in that yearlong timeline and the new crop hasn't come out yet, it should be fresh, essentially.
Jared: It's technically considered fresh crop. Yes.
Now really, my point here that I like to drive home is that it really comes down to tasting the coffee, knowing the processing details of the coffee, and understanding where you're going to put that coffee on your menu.
For example, if you have a seasonal menu as a roaster, you may want to rotate it along with the harvest cycle around the world so that you're always serving very fresh coffee. Coffee definitely doesn't get better as it sits. By using coffee sooner than later, you're more likely to be serving it at its best and more likely to be serving it at its peak performance, with some caveats, of course.
R!WC: Before I let you go, I have to relate this to my previous experience in the beer industry. [Most beer should be drunk] as fresh as possible or within a small window. An IPAs [peak freshness] is going to be in that 30 or 60 days from brewing range. A lager is good for longer, but you still want to be drinking it fresher.
But there are some beers, especially dark beers or stouts, that are sold to be aged or taste better with time. Does that apply to any of the coffees that are harvested? You mentioned seven years, but are there some coffees where there is a benefit to aging a coffee for any reason?
Jared: So opinions vary across the industry. Coffee is generally preferred rested a little bit, and that is usually done while it's still in the parchment layer at origin.* It may be rested for two months before it actually gets hauled and shipped. Kind of to your point there, when you taste coffee that's really fresh, it has a certain character to it, almost like a green taste to it, you know, kind of what you'd expect a fresh seed to taste like. So there is something to be said about that. But usually, it's done before it even gets here.
R!WC: Interesting. Anything I missed today?
Jared: No, I think the main takeaways here are past crop versus current crop (or fresh crop), as well as quality being more related to the actual coffee and the seeds themselves rather than to any kind of date or timeline with a few exceptions.
R!WC: Well, this gets me really excited about our next conversation about storage, which I think has a pretty big impact or is a corollary to this conversation. And, of course, people can always find a lot more information on haceacoffee.com.
*Origin refers to the locale where the coffee is grown.
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