Just a couple of thoughts on your post…

We don’t purchase blends from Intelligentsia, other than for espresso and our house coffee. The composition of these blends change throughout the year based on what is currently fresh and tasty. For example our espresso blend contained a little Rwanda for a short time, and now it’s a blend of three different Brazils. They’re doing single origin espresso now and so far we’ve had SO Bolivia and El Salvador shots to offer our customers but only for a limited time (a couple weeks each) as the coffees sell out quickly.

Our single origin coffees are typically available for a couple months once released, and then they are out of season. I guess another nice thing about working with Intelligentsia is that their coffees are very popular and they run through those lots quick. For example this week we got a brand new crop of Direct Trade Panama (Santa Clara). The harvest was completed in February. It’s looking like it will only be available for another month. WHAT? I like this coffee and am just getting used to it and it’ll be gone already? That’s awesome because something else will be ready to jump in and take it’s place on our menu. The Panama is shaping up to be consumed within 5-6 months of harvest completion. Not too shabby and the coffee tastes really delicious right now.

Of course as a small retailer I cannot follow Geoff Watts around the world and verify everything they are doing firsthand, so there is a little trust involved. Just like customers trust that we’re doing everything we can to keep our inventory fresh. We put roast dates on all our coffee bags, rotate the freshed coffee to the front of the store, and pull them once a week so we can quickly use them up while the flavors are at their best. I’ve been satisfied with the answers they’ve given when I’ve posed similar questions to what you have asked here- but the cool thing is that they seem to be working really hard to push that freshness envelope. I hope they are doing some of the things you mentioned with packaging and I’ll be sure to ask next time I chat with them. I definitely agree that if the coffee is that good it’s worth the extra $$ to preserve its flavor. We have at least half a dozen local roasters within walking distance of our shop (one of the better ones is across the street), but we’ve been so blown away by the flavors we get from Intelli’s coffees that we gladly pay more than DOUBLE the wholesale price to get it. Our pound prices are sometimes four times what the guy down the street is selling his coffee for, but ours doesn’t taste like cardboard.

Anyway- thanks for reading and I really appreciate your thoughts. We’ve been doing this for over two years and try to learn something more each day.

What I do know is that doing nothing to protect the coffees and therefore slow degradation leaves you at the mercy of the shipping routes and ambient temp/humidity fluctuations in storage. Aroma will begin fading in the first few months, followed by acidity and finally sweetness. If you are lucky, it won’t begin to pick up jute flavors or pale with woody tones until the very end. Naturals are the worst because they just get so nasty unruly, sourdough bread, all kinds of spit bucket smells whereas the washed coffees just become empty dull.

I don’t see a strong difference between a coffee 8 months off harvest and one 10 off. Some coffees turn jute on the boat ride, much less lasting a good 10 months. A bag liner, vac sealing, or other methods can slow the process buying time but I don’t like the idea that fresh is a 10 month period after harvest. Then again, 10 months is an amazing feat for a huge company with year round blends.

I would love to get coffees that taste like that first 3 month window. Vac seal at origin, bag liners, expedited air freight. If the coffee really is that good, an extra 25-50cents/lb to slow degradation is worth it. Recycle the extra packaging and there will be little excuse to not invest in it. A large company could arrange this effectively without breaking a sweat. For a little guy like us, it takes tremendous energy and cost to arrange something like vac sealing and a hell of a lot of luck.

Not trying to bring you down, love the site, just felt like this topic needed some debate.