It's All a Part of the Process

Goooooood morning friends! Welcome to another Smooth Coffee Co. blog update. Today, we're gonna get a little nerdy with it. We'll dive into the 2nd Stage reviews for this round of coffee samples and talk a little about why we're even taking the time to taste these coffees twice. But before we get into that....

1st Draft Packaging

This week we saw the first draft of packaging mockups for Smooth Coffee Co. These mockups, along with all of our brand imagery, comes courtesy of my buddy Brennen Handley of Two Wolf Design. He is an exceptional designer, artist, and friend, and I'm incredibly grateful to be in his portfolio.

From here we'll be exploring the use cases of the new light blue and creme colors he has added to the brand palette, messing with potential sticker shapes as seen in the center of these mockups, and iterating on a couple of simpler color schemes to keep focus on the product information.

I'm sure I sound like a Two Wolf fanatic repeating this again but the fact of the matter is... I am. So thank you Brennen for being such an exceptional collaborator and visionary for this project. Preciate you brother!

Coffee Samples

After last week's introduction to the Smooth Coffee Co. sample roasting process I decided to narrow focus a bit on the six remaining coffee samples from last week's tasting. I decided to focus on just one of the washed process Burundi's along with the natural process Burundi and the Ethiopia samples. But, before we continue, a quick aside:

2a) Coffee Processing

I tossed the words Washed and Natural around a lot last week, so in the name of "Making Modern Coffee Accessible to Anyone" I offer you a short definition for each of these words as it pertains to coffee. If you are already familiar with the meaning of these words or are disinterested in this knowledge then please feel free to skip below to the header "1st Stage, 2nd Round Review" to get back to the Smooth Coffee news.

When coffee is harvested in undergoes "processing" which involves a couple of steps. The processes have some distinct differences which can radically affect flavor, but also have and have had major implications in the world of coffee growing and importing over the last 100 years. Here we'll get into the two most common process styles in the modern coffee world:

The Natural Process

The "Natural" process is the name attributed to the oldest method of preparing coffee for consumption. 

When a coffee plant is harvested the cherries that contain the coffee beans (which are in fact seeds and not beans) are left out to dry with the pulp and skin of the cherry fully intact. This allows water to evaporate, concentrating the sugars and acids of the cherry and imparting some of those compounds into the coffee beans/cherry seeds. The cherry skin and pulp is then separated from the coffee, which is then packaged and shipped off around the world. 

The result of this process can generally prepare a coffee to be roasted for brighter flavor notes (think fresh fruit for African coffees, peanuts or praline for South American coffees, etc). This process also imposes higher risk for coffee farmers, especially in the high volumes of modern day global demand, due to the increased risks of mold and decay from laying a bunch of fruit out in the sun. Which leads us to the second processing method of the day.

The Washed Process

The Washed Process dominated the American coffee market for the majority of the 20th century due to its relative ease of execution and low risk compared to the Natural process.

When a coffee is slated for being "Washed" it is harvested and separated from the cherry skin and pulp before drying in the sun, significantly reducing risk of mold or decay but losing the imparted sugars and acids from the coffee cherry. This process became wildly popular for major commercial coffee operations and remains popular to this day because the coffee processed in the washed method was far less likely to mold or spoil at origin or in transit.

Nowadays, Washed coffees can be just as beautiful as Natural coffees, and generally offer up more round and rich notes (think stewed fruits or jam for Kenyan coffees, dark chocolate or roasted nuts for Brazilian coffees, etc).

Other Processes

One of the coolest parts of the modern era of coffee is the range of experimentation happening at the farm level of coffee production. The Honey process (a hybrid of the Natural and Washed processes where the skin and pulp of a coffee cherry is removed but the coffee seed is not completely cleaned) was one of the first experimental styles to hit the market and has since developed into a wide range of processing styles. The modern day sees coffees being fermented in anaerobic (oxygen free) chambers, inoculated with yeasts, etc. I won't be exploring coffees of this nature quite yet, but after I get Smooth Coffee Co.'s foundational offerings in place I intend to explore ways to make these coffees approachable and accessible to anyone as well.

1st Stage, 2nd Round Review

With those brief and generalized definitions in place, let's get into what it means for Smooth Coffee Co.

My goal for SCC's foundational offerings is to be diverse but approachable, offering a moderate spread of flavors with one end of the spectrum appealing to enjoyers of a more classic coffee flavor profile (deep, rich, developed) and the other end designed for those with a more "modern" palette (delicate or experimental). I want all of the coffees I offer to be exceptionally present in balanced flavor while offering complexity to those who want to chase an agronomically representative cup of coffee, but can also appease those looking for their simple, consistent, predictable morning wakeup call.

As it pertains to the coffees currently under review, I pinpointed the Washed process Burundi as one of those potentially classic-oriented coffees and took it a little darker with a tad more development to see what it could offer up. In the end it performed very well, offering up a nose of cooked candy cap mushrooms and a notable bump in rich chocolatey undertones. I've convinced this coffee has a lot to give, so this coffee is definitely on the buy list!

The Natural process Burundi caught my attention in the first round with some light and floral notes with a little richness and sweetness to back it up. I took it even a little lighter than before but upped its development (a variable we'll talk more about next week) to try and draw out a little more flavor from it. The results of these changes were unexpected, lending itself to more grape and milk chocolate notes, but not offering up a particularly clean cup. One of the sample roasts stood out as a clear favorite, so I'll be revisiting this coffee one more time before making a final purchase decision.

And lastly, the Ethiopian coffee was a wild card because it doesn't have its process listed on the importer's website. For a few reasons I assumed it was a Natural process coffee but in the first round it offered up some jammy and malty notes. I decided to roast a couple extra samples of this coffee and cast a wide net, stretching it lighter, darker, more and less developed across four roasts. The results were unfortunately disappointing, with none of these profiles offering up any fruit or flavor of note. Right now I'm assuming I messed up the cupping process in some way and will be revisiting this coffee throughout the week, aiming to make a purchasing decision before the next round of samples arrive.

Later this week I should have a box full of samples from Honduras, Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Bolivia landing on my door step which will offer an immense amount of data and help get this sample roasting/tasting protocol dialed in tight. Suffice it to say, there is a lot of tasting to do in the near future, which brings me to my last topic for this blog post.

Community Educational Tastings

I'm going to start offering up the opportunity to join in on these coffee tastings as they take place. If you would like to participate, get exposed to a ton of different coffees and help guide the future of Smooth Coffee Co. then now is the time to jump in! Tasting opportunities will become available through the Smooth Coffee Co. Instagram, so keep an eye out there.

TTFN

No major business updates this week, so we'll wrap up this blog post here. Thank you very much for reading, and I'll catch ya'll next week! Cheers!

Love,

Noah