Thursday, January 15, 2009

In Season Coffee

This upcoming Intelligentsia text is what's all about : working with the freshest beans on the right moment. I took over their text since I can't explain it any better.
It's a struggle to reshuffle that main House Blend all the time, but it's worth it, because that way we can work 'in season'.
It's time the consumer starts to understand there's a season for every type of origin. Of course vac packed greens are going to be a big help, but here in the Antwerp harbour we don't see them yet, except for the Daterra's.


Have a good read :

"Specialty Coffee has it all figured out, right? Direct relationships with growers, careful roasting, Baristas pulling perfect shots� we�ve squared the circle. Not exactly, as there is a final missing piece: seasonality.

Coffee is just like great fruit and vegetables. Most coffee-producing countries have only one specific harvest season each year, and once the coffee is picked from the tree, it begins the inevitable process of slow decline, losing quality with the passage of time. The result is that no matter how great a coffee tastes while in its prime, the day will always come when it loses the very things that made it so tasty in the first place.

What then does Intelligentsia In Season� mean? It means that our coffees are offered only while they are fresh and retain the vibrancy that both nature and the fastidious coffee farmer intended. It means that the coffee offers the same kind of compelling traits it did when we first selected it and brought it to our Roasting Works

The coffee industry has long perpetuated the idea that coffee is a year-round crop without recognizing publicly that the harvest cycles do not allow for this. So you really need to know when a coffee was actually harvested. Selecting your coffees in this way ensures that you are getting them while they are their most delicious. The Intelligentsia In Season initiative is our commitment that every coffee encompassed by this effort has no more than 10 calendar months between its sale and the completion of harvest."

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