Age & Green Coffee
Every coffee has a home, even if it isn’t mine.
Heads Up: what follows are practical tips and takes on how to use less-than-ideal coffee. If your coffee perfectionism is unexamined, keep an open mind here and don’t come after me until you’ve considered your response for one or two extra minutes.
Coffee, as consumers know it, is a dark beverage that makes existence tolerable and work days possible. It wakes us up, makes us productive, and sometimes provides just the right level of distraction from whatever is making our lives difficult at the moment. It’s a social lubricant, giving us a place, time, or reason to get together. It’s eternal, everlasting. It’s also “shelf stable” and is always there on the supermarket shelf for us. And hey, we’ve all got our delusions and gaps in knowledge about the shelf stability of a lot of our food staples (who checks the date on their mustard jars?). There have been times when I found a bag of coffee in the back of the cupboard from several months ago and thought, “what the heck, I’ll brew it anyway.” It didn’t kill me, and I didn’t hate it.
Coffee beans (seeds) also come from a fruit, which is seasonal, like most other fruit. Most folks who know a little about coffee will tell you that roasted coffee is only good for a few weeks, ground coffee just a few days (or minutes depending on who you ask), and brewed coffee is good for a little more than half an hour. What about green coffee, before it’s roasted? For commercial roasters, green coffee is good for a couple of years with adequate storage, but for premium or specialty roasters it’s only good for about 6-9 months with strict storage.
This has been the great foundation upon which the “third wave” specialty coffee movement built itself, but like most things: it’s a bit too general. So many factors will either lengthen or shorten a coffee’s shelf life: the species and cultivar/variety, plant nutrition, processing technique, speed and temperature of drying, storage of dry parchment, milling and storage again, transport, and storage (again). All will have an effect on the final product.
After some “ideal” time, the coffee (no matter how it’s roasted and/or brewed) will begin to exhibit negative flavors at worst - woody, papery - or at best will simply lose its “sparkle,” which professional coffee tasters will describe as “faded.” Some will call these flavors “baggy,” but there’s a queue of pros who will quickly correct that term, as “baggy” is a flavor flaw that describes contamination from the jute bags in which most coffee is shipped. They’d prefer “LOOMy” - which they would say is technically correct, short for Loss of Organic Materials (faded) - or some other, more accurate term I haven’t learned yet.
Phoenix Coffee Co’s Christopher Feran wrote a great article about the activity going on in green coffee, at the microscopic level, as it ages in the warehouses of the world. His hypothesis describes the changes that green coffee goes through as the embryo and microbes consume the remaining sources of nutrition in the seeds (this is what leads to the fade in flavors, as there are fewer organic acids and sugars left over time). It’s a highly recommended read - good food for thought. Of course, some research needs to be done on this (beyond just a single coffee professional’s limited resources and budget), but I think it’s a great contribution to this conversation.
Baylee Engberg of Trailhead Roasters in Portland, Oregon, dropped some very hot takes when she was on the Boss Barista Podcast, specifically about the sustainability issues presented when roasters remain rigid in regards to past crop coffees. It’s wasteful; where’s that commitment to producers that we all claim to hold so high when we turn our noses up at coffees for which a lot of people have toiled for a long time, at considerable expense? In particular, in 2020 when cafes and roasters weren’t able to sell as much of the coffees they’d already committed to, warehouses were filling up with piles of good coffee considered just past its prime.
It’s possible most consumers would never note these flavors, either due to habituation or because their preferred roasting brand could take a flexible approach to handling faded coffees.
Roasters could just push the coffee further and further towards the dark roast end of the spectrum as the green coffee ages in their warehouse. Or they could use their skills to limit the development of bitter flavors (which dark roasting certainly highlights) through decreasing the effects of the caramelization phase of the roast. Or even roast it as they always have and try their best to “hide” it in a blend with fresher, more vibrant coffees. Blending is a great way of getting more out of coffees than the sum of their individual parts. Mixing a faded coffee with something fresher and more vibrant can do a lot to distract the palate from the unpleasant, woody flavors. Some coffees’ flavor profiles can actually help to show those “negative” flavors in a more positive light. Or, blending with fresh coffee from the same source, at a small percentage, can be a good way to maintain the integrity of that particular offering. I’m not sure where I heard it first, but this method is best described as “weaving” the older coffee into the newer one. Adding the newly arrived coffee at 20% is a good place to start, increasing it by 5% more until the woody flavors start to fade away. This can help the roaster land on an appropriate blend recipe, and can give the buyer an idea of how much time they’ll need to eliminate their old stock; this proportion will of course change over time. Basically, there are plenty of things a roaster can do to use this coffee without damaging their brand and, to some extent, their quality standards.
There does come a point in a green coffee’s shelf life where accommodating roast profiles and blending can’t cover up a “faded” product. This is where the transparency narrative rubber meets the road. The main non-financial risk to the roaster is to their reputation - passing off a faded coffee to their wholesale accounts without context can do more than leave a bad taste in their mouths, it can break trust in the brand. Roasting companies work really hard to build trust with their clients, so this isn’t a viable long term strategy. For the roaster, repeating this mistake too often can be a real downer for their own team - production roasters, QC crew, trainers, and retail staff. It can also be a problem for their suppliers, as purchasing volumes will be inconsistent and frequency erratic. Producers can feel the brunt of bad buying and planning as well. Coffee producers work really hard to make the product to specification, and having a buyer on the other side who can’t commit due to too much inventory inconsistency really messes with their long term planning. This can cause a “logjam” in the supply chain, where everyone is looking at warehouses full of fading coffee wondering how they’ll sell it. The solution is transparency with the roasting company’s client base, and up-front messaging - about the supply chain and flavor implications of past-crop coffees; about the commitment to producers, and what that means in terms of flexibility and buying; and about the different tiers of quality and the fact that - here it is again, folks - there is a home for every coffee.
The main takeaway should be that buyers and roasters can be flexible in their handling of a changing agricultural product. To remain rigid in one’s approach to coffees is severely limiting (not to mention unsustainable), and ignores the realities of a very challenging and common issue. Every roaster will eventually run into this problem, and can be prepared to handle it in a way that doesn’t involve just throwing it out. Besides being extremely wasteful - and heartbreaking considering the amount of work and investment each and every coffee seed requires just to make it into the warehouse - it’s an expensive solution, not one most small businesses can afford.
Warning: Technical Jargon Ahead…
Some roasters like the challenge of roasting their way around the problem. None of the solutions will be as good as having fresh coffee, but that’s not the thing we’re trying to do here. Here is a thorough but definitely incomplete discussion of tools a roaster should have at their employ:
1. Bigger Batches. I’ve got to thank Jen Apodaca for her awesome blog post on Royal Coffee’s site. Larger batches will contain more moisture overall, which will help to preserve it within the batch. Larger batches also have more efficient radiant and conductive heat transfer (seed-to-seed), due to there being less empty space in the drum (drying convective heat). This of course has plusses and minuses.
2. Roasting Darker. More flavor influence from the process of caramelization can definitely hide the faded flavors, but darker roasting also risks introducing bitter elements to the profile. And, what if the roasting company has built its brand on lighter roasts?
3. Quicker Drying Phase. The first half of the roasting process is often referred to as the “drying phase,” due to the fact that not much “cooking” or flavor development is happening. We’re simply eliminating the moisture from the green coffee during this time. Preserving the moisture can help the coffee to retain more elements that create volatile aromatics (some of which are understood to exit the drum with steam during this time). Slowing down the roast just after this phase can then get the roaster closer to good development without needing to roast darker. This also has plusses and minuses.
4. Stalling or “Baking” Post First Crack. Since caramelization increases bitterness and “dry” flavors, some roasters try to avoid it by not spending too much time in the caramelization phase after first crack. Some will shorten post-crack development time, while others will let the temperature stall at first crack for a couple of minutes (this is also a method I saw an Italian roaster use for espresso, to very “authentic” results). This method will allow the interior of the seed to continue roasting, while reducing the stress on the exterior. There’s no “right” way to roast, and this highlights the fact that it’s all down to the roaster’s taste.
5. Basing Decisions on Cup Quality Rather than Age. Some coffees just last longer than others. Rather than merely casting a coffee aside when its younger, fresher siblings arrive in the warehouse, we should taste the coffee and appreciate what it still has to offer. Luckily, with recent improvements in processing and storage, green coffee is beginning to hold up for longer times. The old thinking around “seasonality” (that term really bugs me) needs to be updated, and as true Specialty Coffee professionals, our focus should go back to what’s in the cup.
6. Cold Brew or Espresso Blends. Since cold brew is such a large segment these days, it makes sense that some would create blends specifically for that purpose. Since cold brew doesn’t have the same extraction dynamics as conventional brewing, many of the flavor components will present themselves differently - lower flavor acidity, more emphasis on “low notes” such as chocolate and nuts. This means that what may be a problem in some coffees (vibrant, lively acidity) won’t be a problem for cold brew. Since most cold brew drinkers like lower flavor acidity and nutty, chocolate notes, a faded coffee may be a good fit for the product. When roasting for espresso, roasters aim to tame the acidity, seeking balance and sweetness in a concentrated beverage. Faded coffees do lack the sweetness that fresh crop coffees tend to have, so this may or may not be a good solution.
The next 2 come from Peter Giuliano:
7. Leveraging a good relationship with importers. Some people think that “direct trade” necessarily excludes importers, and this is a great example of why that is short sighted. A good importer can help find a home for any coffee. This may mean a financial loss for a roaster, but will minimize loss. Importers can be valuable partners in situations such as this.
8. Second brands. Many food companies have alternative brands with different attributes, and coffee is no exception. A diversity of brands might serve a roaster very well here, keeping in mind that the concept of “Specialty” is a spectrum, not a binary.
There’s also this:
9. Sell the Green Coffee. This is where community engagement and relationship-building (including with local “competitors”) shows up. There may be a local or regional roasting company for whom these faded coffees aren’t a problem. If the price is right, they’d gladly take it off your hands for their blends. It’s worth striking up conversations with these folks long before any need arises: getting to know who’s out there in your own community, building a network of people who can lean on one another for any number of things that will eventually pop up - machines break down, construction projects disrupt things, supply chain issues abound. Plus, it just feels good to be connected to people doing similar work. You’ll have sounding boards and information sources for local issues that affect everyone. Community, yo.
As you can see, there’s no blanket solution for the issue of faded coffees (except maybe basing opinions on the cup rather than the harvest date). Thankfully, there are lots of like-minded, practical roasters out there who would rather take on the challenge than just cast it aside. Here’s hoping we’re in the majority, and that as we move deeper into systemic issues like climate change and supply chain challenges as an industry, we can remain open and flexible to a changing landscape. And, you know, keep the producer and their needs at the center of our decisions, not just our narrative.