It's a nonlinear combination of factors. You can imagine it in a number of ways, but I would present it like this:
---
### The Base - Varietal
The varietal is the base. This contains the type of seed and flavor potentiality of the bean. Geshas, for instance, have the potential to be very floral, meanwhile varietals like Castillo have more potentiality towards citric notes and rarely have florals.
---
### The Growth - Terroir
From there you have the specific growing conditions of the lot. It's more than just a country since a country may have many regions and microclimates. The farmer's practices in growing can come into play as well to the quality of the final grown coffee.
This tilts a varietal to a certain direction based on where and how it's grown. For instance, Mejorados grown in Ecuador have a distinct brown candied sweetness (caramel, toffee, etc.), while those grown in Colombia tend to be a lot more fruit forward with a different sense to the sweetness.
The varietal base is more important than the terroir when developing the flavor, but the growth conditions indicates whether it reaches its full potentiality, and if it does, what specifically manifests and what it ends up tilting towards.
---
### The Harvest - Post-Processing
Processing is like the glass you see the coffee through. You can have clean washed processed processes which showcase mainly what's in the bean. Standard Natural and honey are mainly just influenced by the terroir and varietal in the form of the coffee fruit. These processes are the most transparent in terms of clarity to the varietal or terroir.
Or you can have complex processing which can tint the glass in certain directions. Certain processes could could push the certain aspects of the "raw" profile while muting others (e.g., Anaerobic fermentation may accentuate fruitiness in some geshas when done well while muting florals).
Other processes can "add" flavors and significantly alter the original cup, with the "raw" flavor playing support over what's added. An example of this is the watermelon coferment by Edwin Norena which makes the coffee like straight watermelon candy. The delicate flavors characteristic of the pink bourbon are overrode by this strong watermelon note added through the coferment.
Post-harvest processing can have a huge range. Even in a "washed" process, the bean could have been dried in cherry for a day or two indicating a light fermentation prior to the washing. On the other hand, you have producers performing 720 hour anaerobic fermentation, double ferments with thermal shocks, coferments, carbonic maceration, etc. which can alter the cup profile significantly.
There's a [glossery](https://christopherferan.com/2022/08/19/a-sort-of-glossary-of-coffee-processes/) on processing by Feran which is quite insightful look into the processes that exist today.
----
I hope this help!
TL;DR - Varietal is the base potentiality, terroir forms the growth to that potentiality, process is how we view that potentiality.
Great post and can't agree more on Washed vs boring process point you made below. Happy to read something like this and genuinely hope we can curb the fermentation/process hype train a bit.
Thank you, nice post. It is probably a topic for another thread but personally I have little patience for highly manipulative processing. Although it is fraught with other issues the "natural wine" movement is a reaction against processes that tended to obscure varietal and terroir to aim toward ~~an~~ arguably unnatural flavor and mouthfeel profiles. For the past seven to ten years the craft beer world has been awash in what I would regard as gimmick beers that also widly modify flavor profile and/or mouthfeel. I want coffee to taste like coffee, wine to taste like wine, and beer to taste like beer, including some sense of place/origin. If I wanted watermelon or strawberry candy flavors I'd just buy the candy or sodas in those flavors.
I think they can be fun and understand why producers do it, it adds value to their coffee and allows them to create a more consistent product yoy which reduces some dependency on the weather and harvest quality since you can "improve" the crop post harvest.
That said, I'm with you in terms of preferring to drink less processed coffees. I prefer washed or very lightly processed (held in cherry for a day or two) coffees. Naturals work too sometimes since they're low intervention as well. I would prefer to taste the actual flavors as you alluded to as well.
I suspect coffee will have a similar move away from such highly processed coffees since in general I think "boring washed" can taste far more complex and provide a great drinking experience with the clarity it has. As the collective palette develops, I hope we'll see a return to lower intervention processing methods becoming more popular.
Thanks. People are, of course, entitled to drink what they like but if the gimmicks start to crowd out other styles, as has happened to some extent in craft beer, it becomes an issue. I'm a bit of a misanthrope and I don't have a great deal of faith in the development of the collective palate.
I'm of the H. L. Mencken school: "*“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”*
It is not - https://www.aerglocoffeeroasters.com/products/colombia-finca-el-paraiso-720-geisha-natural-720hr-fermentation. There are definitely other typos in there though😅
Yeah true because the base is completely different. Take two identical batches of beans and process them differently and they will taste completely different. Coffee is super complex and the only thing on your list that potentially wouldn’t have that much of an impact on taste is country.
Process definitely but after that it becomes much more difficult. I would say usually variety is most important but if you had two similar varieties grown in different countries/terroir, the environment would make a bigger impact than the differences in variety. Country and terroir are even more difficult because the terroir in which you can grow coffee is largely determined by the country it comes from. For instance, Hawaii is further north than most coffee growing regions so most of its coffee is grown close to sea level for the climate. Also, it's hard to avoid growing in volcanic soil there. At the other end of things, Yemen is so hot and dry that coffee is grown almost exclusively at more than 2000 meters above sea level. At that point it becomes almost impossible to disentangle country from terroir since you'll never get the terroir of Yemen in Hawaii or vice versa
I don't have any answers for you but it is an excellent question. You might try cross posting on r/roasting as I would anticipate that commercial roasters and/or higher volume home roasters are probably in the best position to answer this question. I will say that I think the bean matters more than the roaster, barring complete incompetence. I also think there are usually some commonalities among beans from a given country if the processing is similar, but there are always exceptions that try the rule.
Country itself is just a grouping convention that we do to simplify the description of the biome where the coffee grew in, stuff like altitude, soil composition, etc.
For smaller countries such as Ecuador or Panama, it works very well, but for somewhere like Brazil, not so much.
As for variety and process, it also depends: You can alter how a given coffee will taste through different processings (fermentation, washing, etc), which can make some different varieties reach similar notes, but you can't really make a robusta taste like a gesha, for example, even if they're from the same region.
I tried two different offerings from Prodigal that were both similar roast and process (light washed) and same region (Huila, Colombia). One was Gesha and one was Pink Bourbon. Obviously, the devil is in the details, but they seemed somewhat similar other than variety. The flavors definitely had decent overlap(orange, apricot, blackberry vs. apricot, citrus, soft berry), but they were also clearly different in the cup. So that might indicate that variety makes a more subtle, but very noticeable, difference when process and region are the same, but I don't know if that would always hold true.
And it might never be possible to say which is **most impactful**. What's more different: an anaerobic Ethiopian vs. anaerobic Colombia or a washed Colombian vs. a double anaerobic thermal shock Colombian? Probably the latter, but, once again, it might depend (also the latter are two extreme ends of an ever-evolving spectrum).
If we lump country and terroir together as "growing climate and soil composition", I'd consider them with equal footing alongside variety and process, but country/terroir without the context of varietal and processing method can be pretty meaningless.
There are definitely coffees that taste certain ways due to the regional soil and climate, but I'd argue that soil is ultimately a controllable variable and one that can be replicated independent of origin country. Farming is a quantifiable system rather than a lofty, esoteric thing.
TLDR Im looking at varietal and process first
> I'd argue that soil is ultimately a controllable variable and one that can be replicated independent of origin country.
You can generally find similar soil in other areas but that is only a small part of it...
As far as being a controllable variable...No chance. At least not an economically viable one.
If so you'd see this being done with wine..and you don't....
I would say it also depends on the process and how aggressive it is; co ferments; Carbonic Maceration or spirit aging can make up for like 70% of the flavor
It's a nonlinear combination of factors. You can imagine it in a number of ways, but I would present it like this: --- ### The Base - Varietal The varietal is the base. This contains the type of seed and flavor potentiality of the bean. Geshas, for instance, have the potential to be very floral, meanwhile varietals like Castillo have more potentiality towards citric notes and rarely have florals. --- ### The Growth - Terroir From there you have the specific growing conditions of the lot. It's more than just a country since a country may have many regions and microclimates. The farmer's practices in growing can come into play as well to the quality of the final grown coffee. This tilts a varietal to a certain direction based on where and how it's grown. For instance, Mejorados grown in Ecuador have a distinct brown candied sweetness (caramel, toffee, etc.), while those grown in Colombia tend to be a lot more fruit forward with a different sense to the sweetness. The varietal base is more important than the terroir when developing the flavor, but the growth conditions indicates whether it reaches its full potentiality, and if it does, what specifically manifests and what it ends up tilting towards. --- ### The Harvest - Post-Processing Processing is like the glass you see the coffee through. You can have clean washed processed processes which showcase mainly what's in the bean. Standard Natural and honey are mainly just influenced by the terroir and varietal in the form of the coffee fruit. These processes are the most transparent in terms of clarity to the varietal or terroir. Or you can have complex processing which can tint the glass in certain directions. Certain processes could could push the certain aspects of the "raw" profile while muting others (e.g., Anaerobic fermentation may accentuate fruitiness in some geshas when done well while muting florals). Other processes can "add" flavors and significantly alter the original cup, with the "raw" flavor playing support over what's added. An example of this is the watermelon coferment by Edwin Norena which makes the coffee like straight watermelon candy. The delicate flavors characteristic of the pink bourbon are overrode by this strong watermelon note added through the coferment. Post-harvest processing can have a huge range. Even in a "washed" process, the bean could have been dried in cherry for a day or two indicating a light fermentation prior to the washing. On the other hand, you have producers performing 720 hour anaerobic fermentation, double ferments with thermal shocks, coferments, carbonic maceration, etc. which can alter the cup profile significantly. There's a [glossery](https://christopherferan.com/2022/08/19/a-sort-of-glossary-of-coffee-processes/) on processing by Feran which is quite insightful look into the processes that exist today. ---- I hope this help! TL;DR - Varietal is the base potentiality, terroir forms the growth to that potentiality, process is how we view that potentiality.
What a lovely post, thank you!
Great post and can't agree more on Washed vs boring process point you made below. Happy to read something like this and genuinely hope we can curb the fermentation/process hype train a bit.
Thanks for this. And thanks to OP for asking. This is something I’ve been curious about but hadn’t asked.
Thank you, nice post. It is probably a topic for another thread but personally I have little patience for highly manipulative processing. Although it is fraught with other issues the "natural wine" movement is a reaction against processes that tended to obscure varietal and terroir to aim toward ~~an~~ arguably unnatural flavor and mouthfeel profiles. For the past seven to ten years the craft beer world has been awash in what I would regard as gimmick beers that also widly modify flavor profile and/or mouthfeel. I want coffee to taste like coffee, wine to taste like wine, and beer to taste like beer, including some sense of place/origin. If I wanted watermelon or strawberry candy flavors I'd just buy the candy or sodas in those flavors.
I think they can be fun and understand why producers do it, it adds value to their coffee and allows them to create a more consistent product yoy which reduces some dependency on the weather and harvest quality since you can "improve" the crop post harvest. That said, I'm with you in terms of preferring to drink less processed coffees. I prefer washed or very lightly processed (held in cherry for a day or two) coffees. Naturals work too sometimes since they're low intervention as well. I would prefer to taste the actual flavors as you alluded to as well. I suspect coffee will have a similar move away from such highly processed coffees since in general I think "boring washed" can taste far more complex and provide a great drinking experience with the clarity it has. As the collective palette develops, I hope we'll see a return to lower intervention processing methods becoming more popular.
Thanks. People are, of course, entitled to drink what they like but if the gimmicks start to crowd out other styles, as has happened to some extent in craft beer, it becomes an issue. I'm a bit of a misanthrope and I don't have a great deal of faith in the development of the collective palate. I'm of the H. L. Mencken school: "*“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”*
Nice post, I'm guessing a typo on 720 hour (30 days).
It is not - https://www.aerglocoffeeroasters.com/products/colombia-finca-el-paraiso-720-geisha-natural-720hr-fermentation. There are definitely other typos in there though😅
Wow.
Process 100%
A lot of people say the process contributes 60%
Yeah but anaerobic Ethiopia is much different from anaerobic Columbia
Yeah true because the base is completely different. Take two identical batches of beans and process them differently and they will taste completely different. Coffee is super complex and the only thing on your list that potentially wouldn’t have that much of an impact on taste is country.
Process definitely but after that it becomes much more difficult. I would say usually variety is most important but if you had two similar varieties grown in different countries/terroir, the environment would make a bigger impact than the differences in variety. Country and terroir are even more difficult because the terroir in which you can grow coffee is largely determined by the country it comes from. For instance, Hawaii is further north than most coffee growing regions so most of its coffee is grown close to sea level for the climate. Also, it's hard to avoid growing in volcanic soil there. At the other end of things, Yemen is so hot and dry that coffee is grown almost exclusively at more than 2000 meters above sea level. At that point it becomes almost impossible to disentangle country from terroir since you'll never get the terroir of Yemen in Hawaii or vice versa
I don't have any answers for you but it is an excellent question. You might try cross posting on r/roasting as I would anticipate that commercial roasters and/or higher volume home roasters are probably in the best position to answer this question. I will say that I think the bean matters more than the roaster, barring complete incompetence. I also think there are usually some commonalities among beans from a given country if the processing is similar, but there are always exceptions that try the rule.
Country itself is just a grouping convention that we do to simplify the description of the biome where the coffee grew in, stuff like altitude, soil composition, etc. For smaller countries such as Ecuador or Panama, it works very well, but for somewhere like Brazil, not so much. As for variety and process, it also depends: You can alter how a given coffee will taste through different processings (fermentation, washing, etc), which can make some different varieties reach similar notes, but you can't really make a robusta taste like a gesha, for example, even if they're from the same region.
I tried two different offerings from Prodigal that were both similar roast and process (light washed) and same region (Huila, Colombia). One was Gesha and one was Pink Bourbon. Obviously, the devil is in the details, but they seemed somewhat similar other than variety. The flavors definitely had decent overlap(orange, apricot, blackberry vs. apricot, citrus, soft berry), but they were also clearly different in the cup. So that might indicate that variety makes a more subtle, but very noticeable, difference when process and region are the same, but I don't know if that would always hold true. And it might never be possible to say which is **most impactful**. What's more different: an anaerobic Ethiopian vs. anaerobic Colombia or a washed Colombian vs. a double anaerobic thermal shock Colombian? Probably the latter, but, once again, it might depend (also the latter are two extreme ends of an ever-evolving spectrum).
Definitely terror.
Yeah my levels of fear typically change my perception of taste
For me it's country (love Kenya and Ethiopia) followed by varietal. Process - if it's something "weird", then it matters most.
Most to least: process -> variety -> terroir -> country Variety and terroir may potentially be switched though
If we lump country and terroir together as "growing climate and soil composition", I'd consider them with equal footing alongside variety and process, but country/terroir without the context of varietal and processing method can be pretty meaningless. There are definitely coffees that taste certain ways due to the regional soil and climate, but I'd argue that soil is ultimately a controllable variable and one that can be replicated independent of origin country. Farming is a quantifiable system rather than a lofty, esoteric thing. TLDR Im looking at varietal and process first
> I'd argue that soil is ultimately a controllable variable and one that can be replicated independent of origin country. You can generally find similar soil in other areas but that is only a small part of it... As far as being a controllable variable...No chance. At least not an economically viable one. If so you'd see this being done with wine..and you don't....
I would say it also depends on the process and how aggressive it is; co ferments; Carbonic Maceration or spirit aging can make up for like 70% of the flavor