There's a tonne that can be written here. I like light roast, aromatic coffees, so I think I'm often lampooned as some sort of apologist for anything that any roaster wants to sell as expensive, but hopefully if you actually read what I have to say, you'll agree that my view is a bit more nuanced.

In essence, everyone wants to over-simplify and dumb down things, and my view is that consumers should have useful information from roasters, based on which they can make meaningful buying decisions to end up with what they like and expect, and not be surprised.

Jeff wrote:Luca has had some choice words about how coffee is marketed at retail, much of which I agree with. When used simply as a marketing tool to boost revenue at retail, there isn't any positive value to the consumer.

Yeah, look the summary of it is that almost every time you read a description of a coffee with some sort of notable processing technique, the description is usually fresh fruits and flowers, and certainly implies that it is very clean. But the reality is often the contrary. Usually you certainly get more intense flavours, but often they are more dried out, confected or dirty. That's all fine, and many people love these coffees, but they are simply not fairly described. I would say that most roasters probably rationalise that if there's acidity it's a fresh fruit flavour and they probably confuse intensity with the nature of the flavour. And many consumers love it and are happy. Or they have an information asymmetry and would buy whatever is thrust at them by someone that throws something authoritative sounding at them, so the roaster will justify their actions by saying "well, the customers seem to like it", but the customers may well accept technically defective coffee thrust at them in this manner.

So, to get into the detail, basically we can often get some information from aspects of the processing that aren't fully described to us as consumers. A great example is that you'd be forgiven for thinking that "wet processed" or "washed" coffees have no fermentation step, but actually they have a great deal of difference in these steps, which you can taste. For example, they may be picked, pulped and then left to dry ferment overnight, then washed, then left to ferment under water for another day, then they may be dried. Or they may be pulped, washed off and head straight to drying on the day of picking. The former is closer to a traditional Kenyan "washed" process, whereas the latter is closer to a traditional central american washed process. I have a local roaster that has two washed Guat caturra that they sell as "washed", but which have these processing differences. The one closer to the Kenyan process has markedly more fruit to it in the cup, and is still every bit as clean as you'd expect from a washed coffee. And, of course, the drying makes a great deal of difference. Perhaps not in the cup soon after harvest, but certainly as the coffee ages. So even with the old processing methods, we could usually benefit from more information.

Sal wrote:The conundrum: Is a cup of coffee that tastes nothing like coffee a good cup of coffee?

But what "tastes like coffee". Look, let me be blunt. When people say "coffee that tastes like coffee", usually it is people who are saying something like "I don't want fruits and flowers and acidity in my coffee; that doesn't taste like coffee", so, what they mean is fairly bland, non-distinctive coffees, pooled regional Brazil and Colombia lots roasted to be baked. For many people, baked roast is what "tastes like coffee". And there's nothing wrong with people liking that, as long as everyone knows what they are getting and aren't surprised, misled or deceived. (Philosophical side question - if you are a roaster that has cultivated a market of people that really just want baked, not distinctive coffee, is it ethical to play to their ego and sell them premium priced coffees where you have baked all the distinctive flavour out of them? Well it certainly happens.) So if you want something that is nutty, chocolatey, toasty, caramelly ... if you want those sugar browning, roast type flavours, stop reading here and just avoid paying a premium for any coffee that has a fancy process, because it is basically never going to meaningfully contribute to what you want in the cup. I've just saved you a tonne of money; you're welcome. If I had a dollar for every time someone has been disappointed by fruity and floral light roasts when what they really wanted was something sweet, low acid and high in body, I'd be a rich man.

With all that out of the way, let me dump here a few notes of my experiences with different ferments ... I'm sure people will chime in that they have had different experiences ...

Anaerobic Natural or Carbonic Maceration Natural

OK, let's start with the big one. So, the cherry gets picked and then it is separated from oxygen. With CM, this should probably be by the introduction of CO2, but they might argue that CO2 is produced from fermentation so there's no need to add CO2. So this might require beautiful gleaming stainless steel bespoke tumbling vaults like Elida estate has, or they might put the cherry in a garbage bag and tie a knot in it. It might be temperature controlled with an elaborate jacketed water cooled pumped system, or they might chuck the garbage bag in a dam. Or there might be no temp control - they might just leave the garbage bag out for a few days. Whatever the case, you will be asked to pay a premium for it.

From what I've tasted, these coffees usually have one or more of the following:
*dried prunes
*bin juice
*jackfruit/durian
*balsamic vinegar
*sharpie
*liquorice
*miso

Those are the most common flavours. They may have those flavours and other flavours; for example, you might get some raspberry with some dried prune and balsamic vinegar, but I've almost never tasted a fruit flavour without some of the stuff above. These tend to have very strong flavours and aftertaste, but the elephant in the room is that these processing methods often obliterate almost any other contributions to the cup. You can usually tell ethiopian CM naturals from other CM naturals, but you'd be hard pressed to guess where other CM naturals were from or what varieties they are. And, of course, this means that if you are paying a premium for geisha variety and then paying another premium for CM natural, the CM natural often renders the geisha variety almost irrelevant. But that hasn't stopped the cavalcade of CM natural geisha "competition" coffees, which I doubt many people could identify as geisha if served to them blind. I usually score most of these coffees quite highly, but almost never buy them.

I pause to mention the sole exception that I've really mystelf tastes to the above, which is the many panama geishas processed by Jamison Savage (Deborah, Morgan and Iris Estate). With those coffees, and those coffees alone, in my experience, you may actually have some distinctive aroma that would make you guess they are geisha coffees and they will often be free of all of the above things that I have listed and be powerfully clean and aromatic. These coffees are the kings of CM, and the other stuff I've tasted are pretenders to the throne.

Carbonic Maceration Washed

The few of these that I've tasted have usually tasted indistinguishable from regular washed. Abu did make an anaerobic washed geisha that had a sort of more neon luminiscent version of clean fresh lime zest, which I really liked. Pepe Jijon has a few processes where he has a CM ferment and then a regular dry ferment and that makes a mejorado that tasted like a phenomenal kenyan.

Koji

I've tasted a handful and they have ranged from liquorice miso bombs to delightful strawberry with a hint of miso. I'm personally not running out to buy them.

Mossto

This is where producers ferment the goo separately and add it back into the ferment of another coffee. The mossto might be innoculated with a specific strain of yeast. These can often have a synthetic chemical quality to them; tinned lychee or lime dishwashing liquid. They can be very clean, but odd.

Local microbiota innoculated mossto

This is where you get a bunch of marketing words about the importance of terroir and the local environment and natural stuff and such. They take the goo out to the farm and leave it out, to capture the local bacteria and yeasts. I've had some that have tasted like traditional processes and some that have been incredibly earthy and musty (but still selling at several hundred dollars a kilo from roasters who are now on my blacklist).

Thermal shock

So this is usually marketed as the temperature is controlled and the temp change shocks the bean into sucking up the aroma in the surrounding goo. And that may well be true, but it totally skips over the fact that these are ferments that usually have innoculated mossto added into them, which is probably what is really creating the flavours in the first place. These can have a very clean cup, with some cartoonish confected characteristics added in, such as peach gummi bears or tinned lychee. Equally, I've had several with odd vegetal and mouldy tastes to them, and I've certainly seen thermoshock green that had visible green defects like mould and insect damage, so a high price and the processing method isn't necessarily a guarantee of quality.

Yeast innoculation

This is where you have a more regular process but you add yeast. I probably don't have enough information to say anything particularly informed here, but I have had some that I've enjoyed, and where I wouldn't be able to tell you what difference the yeast had made.

Lactic ferment

This is where you dip the cherries, or keep them submerged in, like a 2% salt solution so that the halophilic bacteria outcompete the other stuff, or the non salt tolerant stuff just dies or whatever. Anyway, that's the theory. Again, I haven't had many, but someone sent me a sample that's on my desk right now and it tastes like manure ... I don't know if that's typical, but I certainly hope it's not.