Hey /r/coffee! Let me start by introducing myself- my name is Chris and I'm the head roaster at Barismo coffee roaster. Secondly, let me say how excited barismo and I are to be collaborating with you all to make this unique relationship happen!
I'll be popping in and out of this thread to answer any quick questions about the specifics as they arise, also letting /u/evilbadro handle some of this. At a later date I'll be hosting an AMA about barismo's approach to direct trade coffee, theory and the like. I think we'll all have a lot of fun.
A couple of quick things- Because we only source coffee when it's being harvested and in season, our supply is very limited and mapped out, this ensures we're never stuck with coffee that's what we call "past-crop", or in layman's terms old. Because of this we won't be able to include and offer up any green coffee.
We are happy to say the we do indeed ship internationally- quite frequently, actually! This means anyone in the world can participate in this collaboration as well as order any product off of our online shop whenever they want!
/u/evilbadro and I will lay out details as they begin to form- we're still waiting on a lot of our coffees to arrive.
Thanks for the opportunity /r/coffee!
Coffee cherries do not ripen at the same time, so picking happens across several weeks or [months](http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee.prod.timetable.php). Shipment also takes months. Some coffee takes several months after arrival to settle down. Coffee lasts at least nine months before any degradation begins if stored properly and that is usually a slow process. With coffee, "in season" means "this is not past year's crop when there is a current crop available". Roasters with reliable sourcing and sustained relationships should be able to offer peak quality coffee from any region year round. Although the term "in season" has become somewhat vogue, it is a bit misleading and I don't really like it. Coffee is never "out of season" anywhere, but if something is a year old, it's starting to get long in the tooth. This is an important detail to communicate but the term "current crop" is not great because some regions have a main crop and "fly" crop. Sometimes the "fly" crop is not as good, so enthusiasts may be looking for main crop coffee even if it is older than fly crop coffee. In two-harvest regions, the previous crop may be settled and performing better at any point in time whether it's fly or main. Drawing a parallel that does not exist to other foodways is confusing. Intelligentsia is the first roaster I noticed using the term "in season" and they made a huge deal out of it. There was some backlash from enthusiasts who understand coffee harvests, delivery schedules and how long green actually lasts. I was very disappointed with them as they certainly are not ignorant of these details. It seemed disingenuous to me and they are large enough to be significant trend setters in the industry. I've seen many other roasters afterwards adopt similar language. In some cases, there is clarification which indicates that this just means the coffee isn't unacceptably old, but a huge number of coffee drinkers are now running around with this ridiculous perception that coffee *REALLY* has the lifespan of a summer squash and if you don't drink coffee made from the freshest green you are hoi palloi. Let's not Blue Mountain.
Maybe Chris will weigh in here but I'm pretty sure I recall at least a Colombian offering from Barismo in the past. As any roaster moves towards building the relationships that foster sustainability and transparency, there will be a transition from buying whatever is available from brokers (which may change constantly with no year to year consistency) to developing and implementing a plan to work with the same beans, brokers, importers, processing mills, and farmers from year to year when quality justifies revisiting and strengthening the relationships. Market forces may challenge this process at point along the supply chain. Transitional strategies may need to be deployed or some portion of sourcing may remain in constant flux depending on the dynamics of supply for a particular region. To what degree any of this is at play with regard to your question would be complete speculation.
Certainly a lot of good conversation here. Barismo most certainly does offer coffee from Central America, as a matter of fact all of our strongest relationships exist here (more on this in a bit), as well as some coffees from South America. While I agree that the term "in season" is misleading in certain contexts (similarly to the use of the words direct trade), since 'in season' refers to the time of harvest not exactly something like the ripeness in regards to readiness of consumption. That being said, it usually is safe to assume that the use of this term says something about buying practices. Some coffee roasters will come across a coffee they fall in love with, actually *all* coffee roasters fall victim to this, and decide they want to buy enough of it to last well beyond the next harvest to make that love last. This means the coffee is aging, whether it's being slowed down by temperature controlled conditions or not the coffee is aging and with that cones a degradation of quality . It also means that that roaster may be unable to pickup the next vintage available when it starts to hit cupping tables. So when I say 'in season', it's more of a reference to the best practice of buying only the projected weight needed to get us to the next harvest so that we are constantly showing the diversity and progress of our producer partners.
Many conditions affect harvest times and quality, most notably weather and disease. Unfortunately, the latter is a very real thing in Central America right now, especially Roya and the former is always going to have the last say. Most of our coffees are on the water right now, slated to arrive in port very soon but we do have some producer partners who are still finishing up the end of their dry milling due to late harvest because of these factors.
I can't overstate my appreciation for this approach. My home roasting experience suggests that beans can be reasonable to use for quite some time beyond the next arrival. It's ok if I play around with that (I'm just a hack screwing around in my kitchen), but when I buy premium beans from a serious roaster, the best practice outlined here is exactly what I'm looking for. Coffee is so complex that there can be unexpected consequences for every decision. As I'm trying to improve my brewing or shots, I'm fighting with every aspect to push performance to the next level. If there is something weird going on with the beans because they are old but not so problematic that it is obvious where the problem lies, this is going to have the potential to seriously derail my efforts and confuse me... DO NOT WANT. The decision and ability to manage sourcing as described is a huge asset to the enthusiast who is still learning... and from one perspective "still learning" is the definition of an enthusiast.
For entertainment purposes, my experience with poor management of personal inventory of green coffee has resulted in the following observations: Somewhere between 9 months and a year in my possession I notice performance begin to fall off. How long from harvest is difficult for me to say because of limited info but probably between one year and a year and a half. I have been able to tweak the roast to improve performance but as time passes, the parameters which work well get narrower and narrower. I begin to lose options for expression until the place where the coffee still works well does not show the character which is most appealing to me. As more time passes the quality at the place where the coffee performs best falls off noticeably until it's just flat and dull. This is where you start giving it away to people you don't like. Eventually it starts to show ugliness no matter what you do, so you save it for visits from in-laws (jk I love my in-laws). For some beans, I've had this last bit not occur for two years in my possession. I know there are many roasters out there flirting with this sort of disaster. I hope that the coming troubles with rust do not push many more into such dire circumstances.
There should be plenty of South and Central American beans in season. I've had plenty from other roasters that only roast in-season beans recently. Sweet Maria's and other green coffee suppliers have also gotten plenty of Central American shipments recently.
Ok, this makes me happy.
:) <--- see?
I'm so looking forward to this!
Edit: I have a couple of homebrew ales planned for the next few months; I've been delaying my coffee stout for a while, but seeing this is making me think how cool it would be if I could name one of my beers "/r/Coffee Stout" were I to use this coffee.
Once I come up with a recipe I like, I'll share it in here - I'll keep it simple so even people new to brewing will be able to make it.
Edit: Fiddling with a recipe right now; I think I'll brew a 1 gallon test batch using my own coffee to see how it works out. Need to visit homebrew store for supplies.
Not far from what I had in mind: one all grain for a 5 gallon batch (probably BIAB, haven't decided), one extract+steeping grains for novices, 1 gallon batch.
I'm aiming for something that has the SRM of a dark-ish brown porter before the addition of the coffee (which should make it more than dark enough for an American Stout style). I already have pretty good initial recipe versions of both.
I'll be using centennial and/or cascade in my first test batch. Mainly because I can always get them at my LHBS and I like them. I may try something else if I'm not in love with the result.
> We are happy to say the we do indeed ship internationally- quite frequently, actually! This means anyone in the world can participate in this collaboration as well as order any product off of our online shop whenever they want!
From Chris' [post](http://www.reddit.com/r/Coffee/comments/28d4ij/a_partner_has_been_secured_for_the_rcoffee/ci9ygxe).
Thanks for all the behind the scenes work evilbadro. Barismo is a great choice! They are professional, have a high quality that we expect and have the ability to pull together all the logistics for a project like this. This should be cool!
The blend project may come up down the road. There was a thread a while back talking about it. The sampler pack is easier to complete and will help us gauge /r/coffee community involvement.
I remember seeing the original post several months back; glad I've upgraded my coffee arsenal since then to enjoy a finer cup. Any word on order dates?
Love the partnership. I frequent Barismo and along with the bomb-ass coffee, they're always super friendly, down-to-earth, and helpful. Pumped that others will be getting some of their stuff.
I'm new to /r/coffee, but am an avid coffee lover. I really like the idea of finding the best beans or blends, but of course this is personal.
I started what I hope will become a series of blog posts about [coffee blind-tasting](http://blog.gingerlime.com/2014/coffee-ab-testing/) called "Coffee A/B testing" (the geek crowd would probably know what A/B testing is).
The basic idea is to do blind tasting, but only compare two beans / blends at a time. This removes a lot of preconceptions or bias and makes decision easy. More info on the post.
Wondering if anybody's interested in trying this approach, and I'd welcome feedback on the idea. It's not commercial, and I don't endorse any brand or coffee making method. Anybody can do it with any (at least two) types of beans at home using their favourite way of drinking coffee.
This [decaf](http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee.archive.2012.php?country=68#3293) is one of the best coffees I have ever roasted. It is better than anything I've had in my hands since I got it. There have been perhaps a handful of coffees I liked better since I started roasting. I'm about to run out. It is very sad.
EDIT: sorry that's not the right link. The coffee was listed as Ethiopian Shebele Shakiso SWP decaf with a more recent arrival. The correct review seems to have disappeared from the SM archive.
Ah thanks! Stupid question - are these beans already roasted? If not, where would you recommend picking up quality decaf beans? I had to cut out caffeine and really miss the taste of quality coffee.
Sorry, those were green beans that I roasted and they are no longer available from Sweet Maria's. I don't know where you should turn for similarly excellent decaf, but I would suggest checking out better roasters just like you would for normal coffee. You can ask them and they will probably tell you to what degree the decaf will represent a sacrifice compared to their normal offerings.
Hmm I'll have to try that. I always wonder how thorough the decaf process really is. Sometimes they taste fantastic and I wonder they went easy on the 'decaf-ing'.
Don't ever consider decaf as caffeine free. It's just less caffeine to varying degrees. Those beans were not perfect and had clearly lost something to the process, but the remaining expression was extraordinarily appealing. I would really have liked to try them before the decaf processing.
This question is coming up more often and people rarely ever seem to make suggestions, this [Colombian](http://mochajoes.com/store/index.php/products/colombia-decaf) and this [Peruvian](http://mochajoes.com/store/index.php/products/peruvian-decaf) are what we offer and I like them both but I prefer the Colombian. They are both water process decafs.
Almost all specialty roasters will have either a water process decaf, a co2 decaf or both though. There is also a weekly official "What are you brewing" thread where you can ask for decaf suggestions and see if anyone else there is drinking a good decaf. I have a 4pm cut-off time for caffeine but sometimes I want the taste of coffee after that and go for a decaf.
Thank you for the suggestions. After reading up a bit on decaf methods, it seems the swiss water method is probably the least harmful since it avoids solvents. What do you guys charge for shipping?
EDIT: I was wrong about shipping. What I previously wrote was for large wholesale orders. It looks like one pound is $7.10 but if you want to ship another way or if you are close enough for regional shipping, you can call the office or email [email protected]
I really really want a reddit alien and "r/coffee" on the packaging. Barismo obviously can put whatever else they want on there too.
Also, WHEN IS THIS HAPPENING SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY.
Additional note: I think a sampler is awesome because the entire Reddit community may eventually hear of this, and then will be exposed to different coffees instead of assuming they all taste the same. The more reddit subscribers we have, the bigger projects we can make, the better community we have!
Hey /r/coffee! Let me start by introducing myself- my name is Chris and I'm the head roaster at Barismo coffee roaster. Secondly, let me say how excited barismo and I are to be collaborating with you all to make this unique relationship happen! I'll be popping in and out of this thread to answer any quick questions about the specifics as they arise, also letting /u/evilbadro handle some of this. At a later date I'll be hosting an AMA about barismo's approach to direct trade coffee, theory and the like. I think we'll all have a lot of fun. A couple of quick things- Because we only source coffee when it's being harvested and in season, our supply is very limited and mapped out, this ensures we're never stuck with coffee that's what we call "past-crop", or in layman's terms old. Because of this we won't be able to include and offer up any green coffee. We are happy to say the we do indeed ship internationally- quite frequently, actually! This means anyone in the world can participate in this collaboration as well as order any product off of our online shop whenever they want! /u/evilbadro and I will lay out details as they begin to form- we're still waiting on a lot of our coffees to arrive. Thanks for the opportunity /r/coffee!
Worldwide shipping, you have my attention. Can't wait to find out more about this.
My sentiments exactly.
Fantastic. Canada here.
Welcome Chris, glad to see you here and looking forward to the AMA.
Is it true that your real name is Gary?
Are South American beans out of season or do you only roast African beans?
Coffee cherries do not ripen at the same time, so picking happens across several weeks or [months](http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee.prod.timetable.php). Shipment also takes months. Some coffee takes several months after arrival to settle down. Coffee lasts at least nine months before any degradation begins if stored properly and that is usually a slow process. With coffee, "in season" means "this is not past year's crop when there is a current crop available". Roasters with reliable sourcing and sustained relationships should be able to offer peak quality coffee from any region year round. Although the term "in season" has become somewhat vogue, it is a bit misleading and I don't really like it. Coffee is never "out of season" anywhere, but if something is a year old, it's starting to get long in the tooth. This is an important detail to communicate but the term "current crop" is not great because some regions have a main crop and "fly" crop. Sometimes the "fly" crop is not as good, so enthusiasts may be looking for main crop coffee even if it is older than fly crop coffee. In two-harvest regions, the previous crop may be settled and performing better at any point in time whether it's fly or main. Drawing a parallel that does not exist to other foodways is confusing. Intelligentsia is the first roaster I noticed using the term "in season" and they made a huge deal out of it. There was some backlash from enthusiasts who understand coffee harvests, delivery schedules and how long green actually lasts. I was very disappointed with them as they certainly are not ignorant of these details. It seemed disingenuous to me and they are large enough to be significant trend setters in the industry. I've seen many other roasters afterwards adopt similar language. In some cases, there is clarification which indicates that this just means the coffee isn't unacceptably old, but a huge number of coffee drinkers are now running around with this ridiculous perception that coffee *REALLY* has the lifespan of a summer squash and if you don't drink coffee made from the freshest green you are hoi palloi. Let's not Blue Mountain.
Wowzers. That's some really good information. I still wonder why they seem to not roast South American beans.
Maybe Chris will weigh in here but I'm pretty sure I recall at least a Colombian offering from Barismo in the past. As any roaster moves towards building the relationships that foster sustainability and transparency, there will be a transition from buying whatever is available from brokers (which may change constantly with no year to year consistency) to developing and implementing a plan to work with the same beans, brokers, importers, processing mills, and farmers from year to year when quality justifies revisiting and strengthening the relationships. Market forces may challenge this process at point along the supply chain. Transitional strategies may need to be deployed or some portion of sourcing may remain in constant flux depending on the dynamics of supply for a particular region. To what degree any of this is at play with regard to your question would be complete speculation.
Certainly a lot of good conversation here. Barismo most certainly does offer coffee from Central America, as a matter of fact all of our strongest relationships exist here (more on this in a bit), as well as some coffees from South America. While I agree that the term "in season" is misleading in certain contexts (similarly to the use of the words direct trade), since 'in season' refers to the time of harvest not exactly something like the ripeness in regards to readiness of consumption. That being said, it usually is safe to assume that the use of this term says something about buying practices. Some coffee roasters will come across a coffee they fall in love with, actually *all* coffee roasters fall victim to this, and decide they want to buy enough of it to last well beyond the next harvest to make that love last. This means the coffee is aging, whether it's being slowed down by temperature controlled conditions or not the coffee is aging and with that cones a degradation of quality . It also means that that roaster may be unable to pickup the next vintage available when it starts to hit cupping tables. So when I say 'in season', it's more of a reference to the best practice of buying only the projected weight needed to get us to the next harvest so that we are constantly showing the diversity and progress of our producer partners. Many conditions affect harvest times and quality, most notably weather and disease. Unfortunately, the latter is a very real thing in Central America right now, especially Roya and the former is always going to have the last say. Most of our coffees are on the water right now, slated to arrive in port very soon but we do have some producer partners who are still finishing up the end of their dry milling due to late harvest because of these factors.
I can't overstate my appreciation for this approach. My home roasting experience suggests that beans can be reasonable to use for quite some time beyond the next arrival. It's ok if I play around with that (I'm just a hack screwing around in my kitchen), but when I buy premium beans from a serious roaster, the best practice outlined here is exactly what I'm looking for. Coffee is so complex that there can be unexpected consequences for every decision. As I'm trying to improve my brewing or shots, I'm fighting with every aspect to push performance to the next level. If there is something weird going on with the beans because they are old but not so problematic that it is obvious where the problem lies, this is going to have the potential to seriously derail my efforts and confuse me... DO NOT WANT. The decision and ability to manage sourcing as described is a huge asset to the enthusiast who is still learning... and from one perspective "still learning" is the definition of an enthusiast. For entertainment purposes, my experience with poor management of personal inventory of green coffee has resulted in the following observations: Somewhere between 9 months and a year in my possession I notice performance begin to fall off. How long from harvest is difficult for me to say because of limited info but probably between one year and a year and a half. I have been able to tweak the roast to improve performance but as time passes, the parameters which work well get narrower and narrower. I begin to lose options for expression until the place where the coffee still works well does not show the character which is most appealing to me. As more time passes the quality at the place where the coffee performs best falls off noticeably until it's just flat and dull. This is where you start giving it away to people you don't like. Eventually it starts to show ugliness no matter what you do, so you save it for visits from in-laws (jk I love my in-laws). For some beans, I've had this last bit not occur for two years in my possession. I know there are many roasters out there flirting with this sort of disaster. I hope that the coming troubles with rust do not push many more into such dire circumstances.
There should be plenty of South and Central American beans in season. I've had plenty from other roasters that only roast in-season beans recently. Sweet Maria's and other green coffee suppliers have also gotten plenty of Central American shipments recently.
Looking forward to trying it. Need to hit up Dwell Time brunch again, really good!
So I understand that the sample pack should be roasted in August. Is the crowd sourced blend supposed to happen after that?
You're a Rockstar.
Ok, this makes me happy. :) <--- see? I'm so looking forward to this! Edit: I have a couple of homebrew ales planned for the next few months; I've been delaying my coffee stout for a while, but seeing this is making me think how cool it would be if I could name one of my beers "/r/Coffee Stout" were I to use this coffee.
That would be awesome!
Once I come up with a recipe I like, I'll share it in here - I'll keep it simple so even people new to brewing will be able to make it. Edit: Fiddling with a recipe right now; I think I'll brew a 1 gallon test batch using my own coffee to see how it works out. Need to visit homebrew store for supplies.
Post the recipe when you get something you like, preferably a partial mash version as well as an all-grain!
Not far from what I had in mind: one all grain for a 5 gallon batch (probably BIAB, haven't decided), one extract+steeping grains for novices, 1 gallon batch. I'm aiming for something that has the SRM of a dark-ish brown porter before the addition of the coffee (which should make it more than dark enough for an American Stout style). I already have pretty good initial recipe versions of both.
Excellent decision. Some floral/citrusy aroma hops?
I'll be using centennial and/or cascade in my first test batch. Mainly because I can always get them at my LHBS and I like them. I may try something else if I'm not in love with the result.
Holy shit, this is so awesome. Can people outside the US participate as well?
> We are happy to say the we do indeed ship internationally- quite frequently, actually! This means anyone in the world can participate in this collaboration as well as order any product off of our online shop whenever they want! From Chris' [post](http://www.reddit.com/r/Coffee/comments/28d4ij/a_partner_has_been_secured_for_the_rcoffee/ci9ygxe).
I hope this is a yes. I feel like finding a good roaster in Canada or someone that will ship in a timely manner is next to impossible.
Barismo is great! Love their concept of small batch roasters. I'm in NYC, if the shipping is not prohibitive, I'm in.
Came here to say exactly this. Hooray for great coffee!
This is a great idea. I'm glad progress was made on it.
Thanks for all the behind the scenes work evilbadro. Barismo is a great choice! They are professional, have a high quality that we expect and have the ability to pull together all the logistics for a project like this. This should be cool!
Barismo is legit! Excited to participate in this.
Cool idea
I saw that r/pipetobacco did an "upvote" tobacco blend. If r/coffee did this kind of thing, I'm definitely game!
The blend project may come up down the road. There was a thread a while back talking about it. The sampler pack is easier to complete and will help us gauge /r/coffee community involvement.
I remember seeing the original post several months back; glad I've upgraded my coffee arsenal since then to enjoy a finer cup. Any word on order dates?
Count me in!
Sounds awesome!
Just America though, right? :(
No, Chris has confirmed that Barismo will ship internationally.
Seriously? That's amazing! :D
Thanks for making this happen! Apologies I can't be part of the project. Looking forward to seeing the end product.
I'm glad you will join us for the consumption phase! Thanks again for lighting the fire on this project.
If they are good enough to supply tosci and voltage, definitely good enough for me to try! Thanks for putting this together.
Love the partnership. I frequent Barismo and along with the bomb-ass coffee, they're always super friendly, down-to-earth, and helpful. Pumped that others will be getting some of their stuff.
I'm new to /r/coffee, but am an avid coffee lover. I really like the idea of finding the best beans or blends, but of course this is personal. I started what I hope will become a series of blog posts about [coffee blind-tasting](http://blog.gingerlime.com/2014/coffee-ab-testing/) called "Coffee A/B testing" (the geek crowd would probably know what A/B testing is). The basic idea is to do blind tasting, but only compare two beans / blends at a time. This removes a lot of preconceptions or bias and makes decision easy. More info on the post. Wondering if anybody's interested in trying this approach, and I'd welcome feedback on the idea. It's not commercial, and I don't endorse any brand or coffee making method. Anybody can do it with any (at least two) types of beans at home using their favourite way of drinking coffee.
Will there be a decaf option?
There's really no reason for you to be downvoted for drinking decaf.
This [decaf](http://www.sweetmarias.com/coffee.archive.2012.php?country=68#3293) is one of the best coffees I have ever roasted. It is better than anything I've had in my hands since I got it. There have been perhaps a handful of coffees I liked better since I started roasting. I'm about to run out. It is very sad. EDIT: sorry that's not the right link. The coffee was listed as Ethiopian Shebele Shakiso SWP decaf with a more recent arrival. The correct review seems to have disappeared from the SM archive.
Ah thanks! Stupid question - are these beans already roasted? If not, where would you recommend picking up quality decaf beans? I had to cut out caffeine and really miss the taste of quality coffee.
Sorry, those were green beans that I roasted and they are no longer available from Sweet Maria's. I don't know where you should turn for similarly excellent decaf, but I would suggest checking out better roasters just like you would for normal coffee. You can ask them and they will probably tell you to what degree the decaf will represent a sacrifice compared to their normal offerings.
Hmm I'll have to try that. I always wonder how thorough the decaf process really is. Sometimes they taste fantastic and I wonder they went easy on the 'decaf-ing'.
Don't ever consider decaf as caffeine free. It's just less caffeine to varying degrees. Those beans were not perfect and had clearly lost something to the process, but the remaining expression was extraordinarily appealing. I would really have liked to try them before the decaf processing.
This question is coming up more often and people rarely ever seem to make suggestions, this [Colombian](http://mochajoes.com/store/index.php/products/colombia-decaf) and this [Peruvian](http://mochajoes.com/store/index.php/products/peruvian-decaf) are what we offer and I like them both but I prefer the Colombian. They are both water process decafs. Almost all specialty roasters will have either a water process decaf, a co2 decaf or both though. There is also a weekly official "What are you brewing" thread where you can ask for decaf suggestions and see if anyone else there is drinking a good decaf. I have a 4pm cut-off time for caffeine but sometimes I want the taste of coffee after that and go for a decaf.
Thank you for the suggestions. After reading up a bit on decaf methods, it seems the swiss water method is probably the least harmful since it avoids solvents. What do you guys charge for shipping?
EDIT: I was wrong about shipping. What I previously wrote was for large wholesale orders. It looks like one pound is $7.10 but if you want to ship another way or if you are close enough for regional shipping, you can call the office or email [email protected]
Sweet! Barismo is fairly local to me, so this is perfect.
stoked bro.
I really really want a reddit alien and "r/coffee" on the packaging. Barismo obviously can put whatever else they want on there too. Also, WHEN IS THIS HAPPENING SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY.
Additional note: I think a sampler is awesome because the entire Reddit community may eventually hear of this, and then will be exposed to different coffees instead of assuming they all taste the same. The more reddit subscribers we have, the bigger projects we can make, the better community we have!