- Posted by jbviau
- Mon, 01/02/2012 - 02:06
How to waste good coffee: Part 2
A trip to Target this morning left me with a “small world” coffee experience and simultaneously reminded me of something I’d written a while back, so I thought I’d take a moment to briefly describe what happened.
No matter how many things I have to cross off of my list while shopping at Target or how flustered I get trying to keep track of my almost-4-year-old amidst aisle after aisle of potential distractions—Vacuums! Blenders! Lightning McQueen! Fruit snacks!—I *always* make time to browse the coffee section. Not that their selection is all that compelling per se; I just like to keep tabs on how it changes.
So, today at the local Tar-zhay I came across a 10-oz. tin of Guatemala El Socorro, which placed first in Guatemala’s 2011 Cup of Excellence competition. Score, right? Not.
In the blog post I referenced earlier, I was critical of how Target’s Archer Farms brand cheapens specialty coffee such as El Socorro. Here’s a relevant quote:
“…Coffee Bean International regularly bids for high-ranking “Cup of Excellence” winners all over the world and provides the freshly roasted fruit of their labor to Target, which then packages it in nice-looking tins and lets it sit in their stores’ coffee sections for up to a year (my source on the 12-month shelf life is the last post in this thread). Seems like a shame to me. If you can find these beans literally right after they’re made available, they *might* be worth trying, but I doubt Target could get them distributed sooner than 6 weeks post-roast.”
6 weeks? More like 6 months in this particular case, as the “best by” date on the bottom of the El Socorro tin I saw read “08 JUL 2012.”
I had to laugh at first, because the day before I’d polished off a 12-oz. bag of the very same coffee, bought through ROASTe. Except that my batch was fresh (expertly roasted to order by Olympia), 2 oz. larger, and only $3 more expensive since I don’t pay for shipping here (thanks to Prime).
Which El Socorro would *you* rather buy? It’s pretty much a no-brainer.
I’m not laughing now, though. The more I think about it, the more I feel borderline angry about how Target apparently muscles out smaller competitors in COE auctions and then manhandles their delicious winnings. And, yes, I do mean delicious. Olympia’s description of El Socorro is right on: “Aromas of cedar and flowers open up into flavors of citrus, caramel, and spice.” I don’t know that my Aeropress has ever made better coffee than it did with these freshly ground beans. They deserve rock star treatment, in my opinion. Instead, Target ships them all over N. America more or less stale from the beginning, undoubtedly destined not to live up to their true potential in the cup. From what I’ve read and gathered via email with Olympia, it sounds as if they had to work extremely hard to get their hands on El Socorro outside of COE. I can’t help but wish that more people were able to taste this coffee the way Olympia showcases it. Sure, the farmers get paid either way, but their efforts seem to go unrecognized in Big Box Land.
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REVIEWS & COMMENTS
@BADBEARD
jbviau | Fri, 02/10/2012 - 09:39Hi there! Thanks for your comments. I'd love to know how CBI handles the roasting for these COE coffees, too. The thing about COE--to me, at least--is that it only gives us a ranking of the coffees that were *submitted*. So even if a smaller roaster can't get its hands on a COE lot, there always seems to be a chance of finding something stellar that wasn't part of the competition. Keep up the good work, btw!
TARZHAY COE
badbeard | Fri, 02/10/2012 - 01:36This is an interesting post. I remember the first COE (Rwanda I think) coffee I looked at in one of the local stores (figuring that hell, CBI is roasting in Portland, can't be too far off to be horrible), and actually bought more for the fact that I was thinking about the packaging angle for my own coffees. The roast date was only a couple weeks out so I bought the can, and true, the coffee was ok, not great, but at least roasted light enough to have half a chance of being drinkable. when you just try to picture the massive industrial scale of CBI's equipment you have to hope there's a small shop roaster reserved for these special coffees...after all, the lot sizes are so miniscule for COE winners that there'd be no point sticking the whole darn lot into a 4-bagger, right? Well, not sure how they roasted it, but it could've been worse.
As to the larger argument of a megacorp muscling into the arcane microlot world...no harm done, someone's going to buy (probably in Japan, where the fetishistic "rara avis" rules still apply; check out the auction winners list if you can crack the code of the www.cupofexcellence.com site) it somewhere and then you will likely never get to taste it. Small roasters rarely get a chance to purchase these coffees, short of the occasional Sweet Maria's auction participation, and then the premiums are seemingly scandalous (though not really, per se). what I have to rely on often is the broker/importer insider knowledge of a non-COE lot which has the same characteristics and might be close enough to the winning lot to give a customer the sense of said ivory tower green.
@WAKEKNOT
jbviau | Wed, 01/18/2012 - 23:26Maybe so. But this stuff isn't fresh! At least not in the way that most of us here interpret "fresh."
GOOD POINT
Wakeknot | Wed, 01/18/2012 - 21:50on the other hand I guess perhaps getting people who have never had fresh coffee exposed to the coffee is worth it?
@SON TON
jbviau | Tue, 01/03/2012 - 15:20Thanks. I've actually heard good things about Coffee Bean International, but I do question what Target does with their beans.
AGREE STRONGLY!
Son Ton | Tue, 01/03/2012 - 15:15I agree strongly with your opinion! It seem like the people who buy these coffee in the COE don't even know coffee at all or maybe they are in it just for the money.
@CHAMIE
jbviau | Tue, 01/03/2012 - 11:16Yup, as I mentioned earlier, I'm sympathetic to the "gateway" argument for AF's COE coffees. That said, I wouldn't buy them as gifts for anyone.
GATEWAY COFFEE
Chamie | Tue, 01/03/2012 - 10:43I have a collection of half a dozen Archer Farms coffee tins that I use to store dry goods, including opened bags of coffee that I'm using up pretty quickly. As Gary noted in his comment, if you're used to drinking coffee from the supermarket -- especially those transparent bean hoppers that sit there for months but are touted as "gourmet" coffee -- Archer Farms coffees are pretty darn good. They are a good way to introduce people to the differences in taste among single origin coffees -- and maybe I've just been lucky and got fairly fresh beans. That said, for the same price, I can get beans that I know are freshly roasted, and depending on the roaster, I can even order my own blend and roast levels for coffees that I like -- so for me, Archer Farms coffees are a thing of the past. The tins do look pretty sitting on my shelf, though.
@SAMUELLAW178
jbviau | Tue, 01/03/2012 - 09:52Walmart, too? I'll have to check. Ugh--that means I'll be going to Walmart, which I try to avoid (too crazy busy on weekends).
@YEAHYEAH
jbviau | Tue, 01/03/2012 - 09:50Yup, I don't sweat it when I don't finish a bag, but I do dislike seeing quality coffee *entirely* wasted. I wonder if Target has done any post-purchase research on how people like their COE coffees?
@HOONCHUL
jbviau | Tue, 01/03/2012 - 09:48Which Target coffees did you buy back in the day? Any COE tins?
RIGHT
samuellaw178 | Mon, 01/02/2012 - 23:01It's a waste of good beans when they're stale. I've seen there is an emerging trend of single origin gourmet coffees even on the Walmart shelf(but they're stale most of the time). However, this goes to show that more and more people getting introduced into better coffee. We're on our way there!
TOO BAD
yeahyeah | Mon, 01/02/2012 - 19:20That is too bad, it sound like a potentially delicious bean. I do like that it exposes people to single origins.
I, LIKE MOST PEOPLE, WAS
hoonchul | Mon, 01/02/2012 - 18:18I, like most people, was perfectly happy with coffee from Target...that is until I went online learned more about coffee and of course roaste.
@KARRDE
jbviau | Mon, 01/02/2012 - 17:42True. Fortunately the Archer Farms COE coffees come in whole bean only.
IT'S PRETTY SAD WHEN GREAT
Karrde | Mon, 01/02/2012 - 15:12It's pretty sad when great crops like this end up pretty much wasted by letting them sit in the same can for a year or more. It's even worse when they come pre-grounded.
@GMANJENKS FOLLOW-UP
jbviau | Mon, 01/02/2012 - 14:31Saw your reply, Gary. Right, it's awkward/clunky sometimes that you can only make one comment under each blog post unless you're the OP. About freshness, my experience with Archer Farms COE coffee was different. The one time I bought it at Target--a #1 Colombian lot from El Porvenir--was almost exactly two years ago. I realize now that the beans were 9 months post-roast by the time they made it into my kitchen (judging from the "best by" date, which I wrote down). When I opened the bag inside the tin, there was absolutely zero aroma. I did some checking on the forums over at coffeed.com and CG at the time, and it seems I wasn't the only one who'd been a little disappointed. I got a few barely decent cups out of that El Porvenir but nothing that competes with even a good coffee pod.
@GMANJENKS
jbviau | Mon, 01/02/2012 - 12:57Gary, your palate is fine, I'm sure! ;) I'm making an assumption here (glad you pointed it out) that much of this coffee goes unsold/unnoticed. If, on the contrary, people are buying it and enjoying it, then I agree that what Target is doing in cases like these could be seen as good in terms of coffee evangelism. About freshness, were you still seeing decent bloom on the COE coffee you bought last year? Congrats on the siphon!
NOT TRYING TO BE CRITICAL
GmanJenks | Mon, 01/02/2012 - 13:51Josh, my palette is in no way as refined as your`s and please don`t take my comments the wrong way.
I don`t consider myself a coffee expert, I just know what I like. I can`t tell you which flavours in a cup, just whether or not I like it and if I like it better than another I have had. I bought the Archer Farms COE Rwanda Kopakaki Dutegure on a trip to the U.S. last year. This is the only whole bean COE I have ever had, all others had been in pods. I liked this coffee a lot, I even had enough left over to try in the siphon I received for Christmas and this coffee (dated Jan 13 2012) still tasted GREAT!!! Could it be that this could have tasted better if it was fresher, could be but based on the equipment I have I don`t know that I would have been able to taste it.
I think this is a great way to introduce the normal Target shopper to better coffees. I look back at my own personal journey this would be a gateway into the world of specialty coffee. The average coffee drinker doesn`t spend hours on the internet surfing coffee websites and forums but for specialty roasters to survive they need their product being introduced to more and more people.
Josh... I couldn`t find a way to reply to your question other than editing my original comment. The coffee bloomed well and didn`t taste stale at all.
@ERICBNC
jbviau | Mon, 01/02/2012 - 09:50I remember that! At least this time they got the labels right.
@INTREPID510
jbviau | Mon, 01/02/2012 - 09:49Sure, a laugh never hurts, but I suppose one can also just choose not to buy it at Target. Might be the only way to make a difference in this case.
NUMBER ONE?
EricBNC | Mon, 01/02/2012 - 03:22Last time I called and talked to the folks handling these products in the target HQ I was informed that all COE coffees were winners and that first place doesn't matter - unless they land the 1st place crop - then it matters again, meh...
TEAR
intrepid510 | Mon, 01/02/2012 - 02:19Yeah i have seen it too at target a shame that they do this but like i witnessed with the target Starbucks employee not knowing how to make an americano all you can do is laugh.