I have been roasting for years. I mostly buy from Sweet Marias's, but lately from Happy Mug. I have generally been happy with both.

People like Happy Mug often because it tens to be cheaper. Places like Burman's and CBC tend to be more expensive based on my glances.

Obviously prices and quality can vary, and may or may not be correlated. How you choose green coffee? Everyone obviously wants to get a good value for their money.

That's a hard question to answer. As a home-roaster, I don't buy green coffee in large quantities and don't have a relationship with an importer who's willing to send me lots of samples to roast to help chose between green coffees so I mainly stick with buying from Sweet Maria's because I feel like I will get good quality coffee with low defect counts and that I can pick a green coffee that I like from the information about the coffees that they provide on the website.

I have purchased green coffee from other sources, but have not based my decision on where to buy coffee primarily on cost but rather primarily on coffee quality and availability of a green coffee that I want to roast and drink.

Case,

I recently started a thread with a similar but more narrow question. I think the responses apply to your question as well.

"Good for Espresso" - Ease in Finding What You Like?

Thanks, I'll check it out

As of late all my coffee buying is based on 'Greens Alert' from HB. I figure the roaster is paid for and it's still cheaper than buying roasted beans. '

And being a rookie I seek out less expensive green coffee more than I do a certain flavor profile. It's still to easy to botch anything I drop down the chute so I stay away from expensive beans.

Mike cmon. You have learned a ton and roast great now. Go get some of these Crown Jewel samples.

Happy mug has good prices, not over inflated
There are resellers that are asking way too much

75% of my beans are washed central american. This is what I prefer.
I will usually get others to try too.
I haven't found a good selection of those at Sweet Maria's in a while

I dont like naturals, i dont like florals.
I prefer single estates.

Choices start to narrow quite a bit

Cost.....do i like it......is it hard to get
I've liked quite a few $ 4- 5 coffees more than $6-8

With the idea of "value", sustainability is a factor in most all of my green coffee purchases. For SM they claim to pay above the going rate for cherry and negotiate a price the farmers are happy with. Genuine Origin, a subsidiary of Volcafe has on the ground technical agents and model farms teaching sustainability using the "Volcafe Way". In essence a business model where the farmer can follow a specific protocol, and increase production/profit on a year to year basis. Large estates may be inherently sustainable due to their volume and lower production costs. Farmer co-ops are another model for sustainability, some are said to be well run and others not so much.

Some countries are struggling in the coffee sector, Burundi and Rwanda are two examples were they produce outstanding coffee on a par with Central America according to Tom at SM. Supporting them would be another way to address sustainability. Of course buying a few pounds of green coffee probably doesn't move the needle, it takes a Starbucks, Peet's, or other player to make a difference. SM ran a big sale awhile back on those two countries, all of which were fantastic coffee's.

Circling back to Happy Mug, those Costa Rican's look enticing

Thanks! This is not what I meant by value, but I also place value on sustainability. I recently roasted an awesome Rwandan coffee, so perhaps I'll get more.

Sweet Maria's tends to have lower prices as well. As others have mentioned in other threads, I don't like how they sometimes sell old coffee, and list 'new' coffees when they received them months in the past. I do like their detailed descriptions and especially the numeric rating system as it adds some degree of quasi quantifiability. But, their descriptions are often too detailed and unrealistic/subjective: no one getting precisely notes of "belgian wit beer, brewed in 2018 then cellard in oak barrels for two years". But, there is enough good to make up for the bad.

I get what your saying about "fresh crop" or recent arrivals; and Sweet Maria's has a different model where they space out offerings maybe to have more variety? They say all of the new offerings are re-cupped to check them just to make sure. Happy Mug is listing the US arrival dates in the offering. Just on a cost basis HappyMug is less expensive or better value.