by Ken Fox on Mon Jul 06, 2009 11:00 pm noah wrote:It is always nice to have things put into a greater perspective. Ken, I wonder, what is your opinion on the on-line green bean marketplace in general for home-roasters? Do we have access to the same caliber of beans that the esteemed roasters do? (care to do any endorsements?)
There aren't all that many single origins that will work well for espresso. In my own experience this limited number of coffees comes mostly from the dry processed African universe, although there are exceptions. Jim has made a number of suggestions to me, not all of which have panned out, however all the ones that did pan out were exceptional.
I have not found that there are high end specialty coffees that work as SOs, that are unavailable green. Even exotic coffees like the Ethiopian Biloya from a couple of years ago, was sold by Paradise and by the Green Bean Coop. Perhaps this is because I haven't looked hard enough, but the people who import these coffees (generally in coops that include a number of roasters) also tend to sell greens and at reasonable prices, less than half the roasted coffee prices. I'm sure there is run of the mill stuff you can't easily buy green, but we aren't looking for run of the mill stuff so I don't much care about those.
As to suppliers, I have bought most of my greens lately from Klatch, the Green Bean Coop, and from Sweet Marias. I have previously bought quite a few from Paradise, however none since Miguel left. About half the SOs I"ve bought have been specialty coffees from Ethiopia, a few from Yemen, and an odd few coffees from South America. I'm not much of a cupper so I haven't discovered any of these coffees for myself, but I have no doubt that I could easily evaluate them if I took the time to do so, ordering a whole bunch of one pound lots (say every new African from SM's, for example), roasting them and tasting them. The good ones stand out, and the bad ones either don't stand out or are unpleasant. This is not rocket science.
Hopefully some other suppliers will emerge in the near future, and I'm always on the lookout for them. The biggest problem with many of these exotic greens is that they tend to deteriorate rather rapidly when stored at room temperature. This is not to say that they become bad, but they lose their fruitiness over a matter of a couple or 3 months, and become somewhat ordinary thereafter. I'm experimenting with freezing greens now (ala George Howell, who would detest many of these coffees I like!) to see if this life span can be extended.
ken
