coffee society journal — the honest take
The most argued-about coffees right now are co-ferments, which are lots fermented with fruit, spices, or wine yeast in the tank, things like cinnamon, mango, or passionfruit. Some of them taste incredible, and some are just flavored coffee with a fancier story. Here's how to tell what you're buying, and where we've landed on it.
01what's actually in the tank
02the case for and against
For: co-ferments give producers a new lever, and higher prices along with it. A farm that can't compete on altitude can compete on craft, and some co-fermented lots have won serious competitions fair and square.
Against: transparency. When a coffee tastes overwhelmingly of cinnamon, buyers deserve to know whether that came from fermentation skill or from a bottle of oil, and competitions, cafes, and drinkers are still working out how to label the difference. There's also a quieter cost. A heavy co-ferment can erase the farm's own character, the variety and the place that made the coffee worth naming in the first place.
03where coffee society lands
We taste co-ferments with the same blind rule as everything else, so the cup has to win first. When one earns a spot, the label will say exactly what was in the tank, because “what did I just taste?” shouldn't be a question you have to go digging for. What we won't sell is coffee flavored after the fact and dressed up as processing. If we ever carry a flavored coffee, it'll say flavored, in big friendly letters.
04common questions
The good ones, yes. Fermentation has always shaped coffee flavor, and adding fruit to the tank is a technique like any other. The debate is really about honest labeling, not the method itself.
Ask, or buy from roasters who volunteer it. One tell is that co-ferment character tends to weave through the cup and fade gently, while infusions often sit on top, loud and identical from the first sip to the last cold one.
If you buy coffee to taste a place, meaning a farm, a variety, a harvest, then a tank full of mango can feel like it's drowning all of that out. Both preferences are legitimate, and labels should let you choose.
labels that tell you everything
Variety, process, farm, and roast date are all on the front of our bags, so the label reads like the answer key. When something unusual is in the tank, we say so.
shop with full labels anaerobic, explainedcoffee society · specialty micro roaster · berkeley, ca · est. 2023