This is a great example of taking a coasting or downward-trending venture and pivoting into something new, without sacrificing your existing cash flow.
It seems like the proof of concept is going well, confirming that the basic model is sound. What comes next is to scale it up.
The farmers are also researching existing innovations in the field (i.e. harvesters), with the goal of extending those innovations to meet the field's unique challenges.
They are also selling initial product, which although is much more expensive than similar products of this type, is serving to bootstrap continued and expanded production, with the goal of reducing price by increasing supply.
(Huh, I think I went off on a tangent and started taking about Tesla.)
I don't understand why people would throw shade onto this. Not only is this entrepreneurial spirit, it's _successful_ entrepreneurial spirit.
Did I miss the pricing bit? All I saw was a quote saying that specialty coffee that sells for $120/lb exists, not that these places are selling it. (if you're looking for it you can find absurdly expensive anything, the only coffee you'll find at that top price is probably kopi luwak where they harvest the beans from civet poop)
... It's probably not from civets if an animal did even poop it out. Demand has increased so high, even highly abusive farms can't keep up. So they just outright lie about the beans or have some other animal eat the beans and shit them out.
The only coffee you'll find at that top price is probably kopi luwak...
I don't know about $120/lb coffee, but it's not that hard to find pretty expensive coffee. "Hula Daddy" Kona Coffee runs up to $90/lb, depending on the type:
(I've noticed that Kopi Luwak really doesn't seem to show up on the radar of most coffee snobs, despite the claims of the sellers, which has always made me suspicious of it. Also, it's a lot more than $120/lb; it's not uncommon to find it going for over $300/lb.)
You can get 'enzymatically treated' fake Kopi Luwak for only a ~20% premium over a regular, good quality bean, and I would say it's actually better than the real stuff. I also think arabica varieties are overrated in general, and a good blend that includes a robusta, with its excellent crema-producing properties, is almost always a better cup.
That being said, $100+/lb coffees are pure wankery. If people want to spend their money that way, so be it. But just because something is rare or expensive doesn't make it actually taste better.
I'm sure you know this, but for a fraction of that cost you'll get a green top grade coffee bean. Roast it yourself so it's always fresh. You won't look back. I've tried robusta. It looks amazing but is deadly strong and tastes like burning tyres.
I've roasted a few times, simply using an old hot air popcorn popper. It was a lot of fun, but there isn't anywhere local I can get good green beans. Do you have any recommendations for on-line shops?
Regarding robusta- first crack tends to be hard to hear, which can mess up your roast if you aren't careful. My subjective recommendation is to use them for ~10% of your total bean bill. Crema for days when you pull shots, great earthy flavor. Pairs really well with Sumatran beans.
Thanks - I'll try again.
I'm probably not much use to you as I'm in NZ. I just went around asking at places that said that they roast it. I got funny looks but everyone untried sold me green beans. Eventually I got far back enough in the chain to find the supplier that everyone buys from. The defensive attitude goes away when they know it's for home use, not potentential competitor. The supplier have a taster employed and a list of about 50 coffees that I can buy. The taster is an excellent source of knowledge that can always recommend something new and great.
One suggestion: skip the hot air and use a stovetop popcorn popper. Both the air popcorn poppers and specific air coffee roasters struggle to get hot enough in my experience.
I have tried kopi luwak and IMHO it taste bad, I couldn't finish it.
I think there is one more expensive than that one and it is the Black Ivory, collected from elephants waste [1]. But after been disappointed by the kopi luwak I am not interested in expensive coffee, give me a cheap colombian like Juan Valdez, or some organic colombian.
The theory behind Kopi Luwak was that the civets knew which (coffee) berries were perfectly ripe, so ate them; in the process, pooping out the seeds (coffee beans).
Once humans found this out, now civets are kept in cavity and fed just coffee berries (i.e., they have no choice, just eat whatever is put in from of them). Natually, the beans that come out will be no different than average coffee beans. Yes, there's this whole "civet digestive enzymes" part, but that plays a negligible role IMHO.
The important question is: is it good? I typically spend around $25 / pound on coffee beans, which is a fairly large amount of money. But: the beans I buy are very freshly roasted right near where I live and make excellent coffee (which I make by the cup, pour-over style), and I only drink a cup or two a day.
I'd see my way to paying more if the beans were somehow qualitatively better - I had some $50 / lb coffee once that was totally worth it (I hate to use the word mouthfeel, but this coffee really legit had a velvety rich mouthfeel that I'd never experienced in a cup of coffee before or since, and a great aroma and flavor to go with it), and I've tried other coffees that were high up on the expense level that were totally not worth it. Most probably aren't worth it.
So: how does it compare? Is the ridiculous price just because you're from california? No thanks, I'll take my ethiopian amaro gayo, tyvm.
Alrighty then. You pay $25 for freshly ground coffee roasted right near where you live. And you only drink a cup or two a day. Let's call that 1.5 cups a day. A pound will provide 48 6 oz cups which will last you 48/1.5 = 1 month.
So it doesn't matter that your coffee was roasted very near where you live since on average it's two weeks old.
Me, I live in Oakland and I like a local roaster McLaughlin in Emeryville. I can get beans or ground from Farmer Joes, also local. But I don't overvalue locality to the extreme. I buy McLaughlin because I like the taste and for what it's worth, I buy ground not bean.
He didn't say he buys a pound at a time, just that it's priced $25/lb. Nor that his "cup" (colloquially) was 6 oz in size, though for some reason coffee machines do seem to define their "cups" as 5 oz, coffee prep directions are always related to 6 oz., and the American unit of measurement is 1 cup / 8 fluid oz. (I assume we're discussing America here, because everyone else measures out their coffee in grams).
Using my mug - which I describe as my morning cup of coffee/tea - of 12 oz., buying a half-pound at a time, the "average" age of the coffee is now a couple of days.
If the entire strength of your argument goes away on the basis of tweaking a couple of variables by reasonable degrees, you should probably reconsider the argument.
I buy coffee by the half-pound, fwiw. Each cup uses around ... well, exactly 25g of beans. Which gives me about 9 cups per bag, which I go through in about a week. The last cup is usually the one where the coffee isn't blooming anymore when I pour hot water on it.
But there are certainly people who enjoy all different kinds of coffee. I'm not one to tell them what to do.
> So it doesn't matter that your coffee was roasted very near where you live since on average it's two weeks old.
"Time since roast" is hardly the only reason to prefer locally roasted beans. Actually, it's not a good reason at all, since you can ship roasted beans across the country a few times before they're ready to be ground and brewed.
Some folks just like to support their neighbors, and buying from local roasters could also mean fewer shipping miles (and less carbon emissions) attached to that that bag of beans.
As far as this 'support your neighbors' culture goes: it's an interesting thing to me because at a national level the politically correct response becomes the opposite (support free trade), and it also turns into a very inflammatory and controversial issue--likely because of nationalism. Even more interesting, it appears liberals and conservatives switch sides when going from local to national framework, i.e. liberals tend to support local, but not support protectionism, while conservatives appear the opposite.
I buy shirts that are made in San Francisco, but the fabric is almost certainly not made in the U.S. The global supply chain enables products that are in some sense "made locally". Same goes for coffee. So it's totally reasonable to be against protectionism and for buying "locally".
It can be something as simple as being able to talk to the roaster. I have a few good sources of coffee I use, but I prefer the local roaster. I do so because we can engage and he'll recommend a new coffee because he knows it's a match to my preferences. He is a former WBC contenter and have roaster for other WBC contenters, which is a testament to his skills. But I do it because I like to talk to the roaster behind the coffee.
Starbucks roasts, what, 100m pounds of beans annually? In that 100m, there are plenty of awesome beans. But they have to make all 100m lbs taste good, consistent.
Whereas a small roaster can selectively buy 50 lbs of the best beans and make it taste perfect.
Did they say they bought a pound at a time? The coffee I but is also sold as $n per pound, but it's sold bulk, and I buy about ⅓ pound at a time, since that will last me a week or so.
This is exactly why I stopped obsessing over how recently my beans were roasted. I take my coffee pretty seriously but I cannot tell the difference between days and weeks with coffee beans.
Unfortunately, I don't know what the metric is. I just have this snippet from the article:
> A year earlier, Coffee Review, a trade publication, had given Good Land’s Caturra coffee a score of 91 out of 100, and depending on the roast, brew and time of harvest, the farm’s coffees have scored from the mid-80s to the low 90s on other quality tests.
Unfortunately the article is a bit light on details like which roasteries are selling product. But I imagine some research would find the info, including current varieties and prices.
As for the high price now, I think it's because of the in-development and scarce nature of the product.
So, keep drinking what you're drinking (and kudos for finding your fave), but keep an ear out for future news!
Cost of production from variety to variety at this farm is going to be fairly consistent. The reason coffee has traditionally been relegated to developing countries is because of labor costs. To get a good harvest with quality in mind, farmers typically have to do several passes through the fields of coffee trees to select the coffee cherries at their optimal ripeness. Altitude also factors into quality as well, since coffee that slowly ripens due to cooler temps typically translates to a better product. Farms at high altitude can have some pretty gnarly topography.
Coffee farms where attention to quality is less important and raw output more important will plant trees in full sun, nice conventional rows, and then send mechanical harvesters down each row to strip pick the trees, harvesting cherries that might range from under ripe to perfectly ripe to over ripe. Yields might be higher and labor costs lower, but quality suffers and these beans are typically sold in the commodity market.
I think it screams the need for price increase. If not enough people want to purchase coffee at the price to support local labor, then either sufficient demand does not exist or a new method of performing the laborious task needs to be invented.
The reason labor is cheaper in other countries is because those people have no other options, and I see no reason for taxpayers to subsidize a luxury good.
$25 is not very much when you compare it to other luxury goods, like wine or whisky or cask-aged beers. I started drinking coffee because it was a relatively inexpensive hobby.
If you're from Italy, Spain, or France to name a few, you do drink a glas every day. But either way, a single good bottle of wine is at least a pound of good coffee. Few people drink that much coffee.
My local roaster / coffeeshop: http://www.andytownsf.com/ I usually get the Amaro Gayo Ethopian beans (I tend to prefer african beans to south / central american ones, and ethiopian over the rest of africa, but that's not hard-and-fast, the $50 / lb beans were also from andytown, but central american, costa rica IIRC).
Seriously and in all honestly they roast the best beans I've ever had. I've lived on both coasts, had a lot of coffee. It's not super cheap ($10 - $17 for a half-pound) but it is worth it. There may be better coffee, but I imagine it is one of those logarithmic scale things - I'd have to pay 10x for a 10% increase in taste or whatever.
I can give an unsolicited recommendation for Red Bird Coffee's Red Bird or Blue Jaguar espresso blends. They are reasonably priced (~$14 / lb) and have been extraordinarily consistent for me (I usually make Americanos). When I order beans it's clear they were roasted one or two days before they were shipped.
Also had a wtf reaction to that number. "Cup of joe" implies black coffee, or at most cream or milk added. The most expensive cup of black coffee I've had is one from a vacuum style system in Japan ($10~). Pour over cups in shops are usually on the expensive side due to labor, and are $4-5.
Espresso based milk drinks at a boutique shop are 3.50-5.00.
Obviously you can order ridiculous Starbucks drinks that add up, but all things considered, a $12 cup of joe is a pretty rare purchase for an American.
I think you're overthinking the meaning here. I'm sure that "cup of joe" is used simply to vary the vocabulary used in the article, rather than the specify a cup of black coffee.
There are 60-75 tablespoons in a pound of coffee. Which should make 30+ cups of coffee. 2 tablespoons per cup. If you're needing substantially more than that in your Aeropress you're probably being somewhat wasteful. Possibly your grind is coarser than it needs to be.
Ideal is entirely dependend on brewmethod, bean, preference, and age of the roast. I very rarely go above 1:15, and often closer to 1:10 for pourover. For espresso it's a different beast, but usually something like 18-20g pr cup.
I don't understand. You're saying that when I measure two tablespoons and brew a lovely cup of coffee every morning that what... I'm in an artificial reality? I'm hallucinating?
How can it be called wrong if they like it? I like my espresso as thick as I can get it out the machine. Tamp the hell out of it, over pressure the boiler (12 bar) and go for it. I'm sure I'll damage the machine doing this but after 10 years it still seems ok. The Rancillio Silvia is well suited to this brewing method.
I was astonished, honestly. The barista said it wasn't that unusual.
Who knows, maybe they just sip it all day in which case it's still a lot of caffeine but probably tolerable. A lot of people will drink 4-6 8oz coffees over a workday, which works out about the same.
Side note: coffee is also produced in Puerto Rico. Whether or not that should be counted as part of the US is debatable but it's interesting that there was no mention.
Edit: NPR article from 2015[1] discussing coffee production in Puerto Rico.
From a formal (legal as well? IANAL) standpoint, Puerto Rico is an unincorporated US territory, and thus not a part of the United States. A territory has to be incorporated to gain that status. They're only considered part of the US for "specific legislation."
Because it's distinct culturally and politically from the 50 states and (along with the US's other territories) therefore not always necessarily included when one is discussing the United States. Nor do its inhabitants necessarily identify as Americans.
I'm not sure why you're being so pedantic, anyways. I was just hinting at a reason for why the author of this article didn't mention Puerto Rico when they said that Hawaii was the only place in the US where serious coffee cultivation occurs.
No, obviously not just like Washington DC. I'm not even expressing my opinion in the matter I'm just explaining why Puerto Rico isn't always included when people say "the US"! Why did I get downvoted?
As with the wine industry, University of California at Davis has established a coffee research program, in part funded by Peet's Coffee. I did a double take the first time I heard of this, but it make sense and now I wonder why it didn't happen sooner, given UC Davis' focus on specialty agriculture:
So what? There are lots of status symbol/gimmick products that are successful. Also, I would expect the price to go down over time as production and use of automated machinery increased.
I hope the prices for these coffees come down, though I get why business-wise it makes sense for them to target the ultra-high-end market at their stage. The idea of good coffee from somewhere as close as California is a bit exciting to me.
---
Sorry if the rest is slightly off-topic. After reading all the comments here about the coffee prices mentioned in the article, and seeing what every considers "normal" prices, I feel compelled to make the following PSA:
Save your money and roast your own coffee at home, if you are able to (* more on that below).
I've been doing this for about 3 years now. There's a small learning curve, but as Kenneth Davids puts it in his book [1] (paraphrasing): "The difficulty of roasting coffee is somewhere between frying an egg and making a good hollandaise".
I buy my favorite coffees from around the world as dried green beans for around $5-7 per pound. Furthermore, coffee greens can last quite a while in your pantry if kept in well ventilated burlap sacks (a couple years, or more). This allows me to stockpile like 50 pounds of coffee to roast throughout the year. Also, there's really nothing that quite compares to coffee a day or two after it's been roasted. I can easily brew way better coffee than most coffee shops here in Austin, TX (though there's a couple exceptional ones here with more time/skill/resources than I).
To roast coffee, my low-budget setup is:
- A heavy pan / popcorn popper (mine: https://www.amazon.com/Zippy-Pop-Stovetop-Capacity-Stainless/dp/B00PFRRA0Q)
- A portable heat source (I use an induction range)
- Colander / wooden spoon / shop fan
- A well-ventilated outdoor space (a balcony does just fine), there's smoke / messy chaff
(* if you don't have access to outdoor space, it can be a deal breaker)
Every week, I spend about 20 minutes total roasting a new batch of coffee (end up with ~12oz roasted). Total equipment investment for me was like $150. I can also enjoy some really great espresso with my budget setup (manual lever machine + Pharos hand grinder), but doing that well is a steeper learning curve.
What might need to be emphasized is that much of the "exotic" $25/lb to $50/lb pre-roasted coffee is produced with green beans that you can likely buy online in single pound quantities for around $5 to $10 per pound.
You do lose a little weight in the roasting process, but it's still quite a difference. Here's an article with a summary of the economics, which concludes that the "all in" price of home roasting $6/lb beans is less than $8/lb: https://ineedcoffee.com/the-quick-economics-of-home-roasting...
Plugging a friendly business, Sweet Maria's is nice place to order from, with a large online selection of excellent beans in that $5-$7 per single pound range: https://www.sweetmarias.com/category/green-coffee
I've tried (I use the coffee popper), and it's very satisfying, but also I'm pretty bad at it. I'm pretty sure I can't get the heat to evenly distribute right - I ended up with some beans way scorched. Still, fun.
These were my early experiences as well using a butane stove. The induction range I use gives me fine control over the heat level. That, plus proper preheating and technique at the beginning of roasting ensures you don't scorch the beans, but roast them uniformly.
There's lots of videos on Youtube, and you get the hang of it after a little practice.
That must make one hell of a mess in the kitchen. I got an outdoor power point put in pretty much for this reason - then my mess with the heat gun and colander can be blown all over the porch and though our shoes and bike helmets instead.
Have you tried the stainless steel colander and heat gun method?
Stir 4-5 handfuls of green beans with a wooden spoon until done. If looking done in 5 minutes they are scorched, if not done in 10 they are baked. Setup cost of about $10-20.
Cool. I've watched videos, but I haven't yet tried that method. It does appear to be ultra low budget. Since the roast happens so quickly, is it difficult to control roast levels if you want a light roast at the end?
It is very cheap to do. After 10 years I'm on my second heat gun, first colander and 3rd wooden spoon (though the end is burnt right off).
If you do it during the day it's easier to control as artificial light seems to make it harder to tell how dark a roast is. Also, the sound is a good clue. First crack means I'm close, so I go a bit easier after that.
I've only had a couple that are way off in about 10 years of doing it. I'd estimate that I get it where I want it 80% of the time, not quite right 10% and absolutely perfect 10%. With more effort I have managed better but the extra time didn't justify the effort for me.
Bigger roasts seem to average the temperature better so that helps too.
Is there a word for "I was researching an obscure topic and then a couple hours later a major publication writes about it?"
I was just researching boutique coffee growing farms in tropical Australia and wondering if in the future people would pay double what they pay now for coffee. And then this shows up on hn.
Read through the whole thing looking to explain how this is even possible. Is the "coffee belt" not as absolute as I thought? Can you just grow arabica anywhere?
I'd like to say I spend around that for 8 O'Clock 100% Colombian whole beans in 3 pound bags; which is incidentally the cheapest drinkable coffee on the market (Maxwell House and Folgers, imnsho are nigh undrinkable; for those that grind yourselves, you can get both as whole bean, you just sometimes have to hit up a restaurant supply store to find it).
The only way I'd pay more than, say, $5 a pound (nice round figure, both of us are paying slightly less) is if it was _really fucking good_. I mean, really good. The kind of good that when other people told me how good it is, I'd tell them that I buy the damned coffee, I know how good it is, you don't have to tell me how good it is.
California has dominated the olive oil and wine lists, but it doesn't mean I'm going out and buying $50-100 bottles of wine and $10-20 tiny ass bottles of olive oil. I buy what is good, not what is perfect.
That's about where Blue Bottle and Counter Culture live: coffee that makes hardened street palettes numbed by decades of Dunkies reach for the word "terroir." They have to import from Kenya, Sumatra, a bunch of other complicated places far away. Being able to produce and sell entirely in the low-corruption West—otherwise restricted to Costa Rica—is a game changer.
Experiment and try a variety of beans. You can do this by going to a good coffee shop that has multiple beans and try a different one each day. Once you build your palate you may find you never want to go back.
Worst case you decide it's not worth the extra money and can feel smug in your decision to stick with the cheap stuff.
I did try quite a few over the years. They all tasted different, they all had their own particular personality... but sometimes I just want consistent caffeine that tastes like coffee, and not burnt ass.
Not tasting like burnt ass is, thankfully, a low bar to clear; it's less the quality of the beans and whatnot, and more your brew method when it's that bad.
The place in Palo Alto that I buy cappuccino from has service included, 20% for the servers on top of their salaries. I can't imagine any industry where a 63% tip on top of salary would make sense.
would this meet Rainforest Alliance standards? With coffee being the worlds second largest commodity, I am particularly bothered by both my addiction and the difficultly in finding Rainforest Alliance certified options. It seems like fair trade is easy to find in Trader Joes for instance, but after 20 minutes of looking/reading, I simply couldn't find beans that weren't possibly deforesting rainforests are that had their CO2 footprints examined/offset. Hoping this could be a great win for labor, rain forests (reusing existing agricultural land), etc.
One other point - their trees have been getting older and there is more forign competition is growing BUT, demand has outpaced supply with prices being high, more mainstream consumption in North America and now increasingly in Asia Pacific. I read a lot about the Avacado industry (not really sure why) but from what I have seen from the Avacado's growers groups, their profits have been skyrocketing with demand changes over the last 20 years.
Fair Trade standards are actually considered to be equal to Rainforest Alliance standards in terms of environmental and social sustainability. Rainforest Alliance farms prohibit deforestation, have specific guidelines for protecting wildlife and water quality, and demand that workers are paid minimum wage/have the right to organize + more. Read the standard here:
And if you need to find Rainforest Alliance certified coffee, you can find it for sure at all Whole Foods, some of their Allegro brands are certified. Or you can use this tool:
"There are roughly 800 coffee farms in the Hawaiian Islands producing as much as nine million pounds of unroasted beans a year; California produces only hundreds of pounds."
California coffee production would have to increase by five orders of magnitude to compare with Hawaii.
I don't suppose California's farmers are stupid, so I presume it's someone else's stupidity that has made it attractive to grow coffee, the latest in a long line of water-intensive crops, in dry southern California.
When are Californians going to realize that it's this sort of thing, not a decent shower, that is the cause of the ill effects of a decade of drought? And why do Californians keep subsidizing farmers' water-usage when that is plainly the root of the problem?
In the state assembly, there are a lot of reps who answer directly to farmers, and there are a lot of reps who answer to people with a romanticized notion of farming (and an overestimated idea of the importance of agriculture to CA's economy).
Also, the problem you describe is enormous, and not limited to water. I think it's a problem of innumeracy and lazy thinking. "I drove 6 miles to the grocery store in my SUV, but I brought a few reusable bags so I'm doing my part!" seems to be a common sentiment. The fact that they burned 2 or 3 pounds of fuel but brought an ounce (or less) of reusable plastic with them doesn't cross their mind.
There's a good deal of variation. Without digging into how that figure was produced, it could be worthwhile to mention that the production process Jay Ruskey says he's interested in cuts a lot of water out of the process. Once coffee cherries are picked, getting down to the seed inside (aka "coffee bean") can happen one of roughly three ways: "natural process", letting the coffee fruit dry out like a raisin on the seed; soaking/fermentation, letting the coffee soak in water for 24-48 hours once (or often twice in Kenya); mechanical demucilagation, separating the seeds from the rest with a machine. The demucilager is common in Costa Rica. I can dig up some more material later, but the government in Costa Rica is strict about water waste, essentially requiring farmers use demucilagers to process their coffee. I don't know how much this would affect the water involved in coffee production, but I would guess it would drop the amount necessary for production in cases like Ruskey's.
Coffee seems to be more comfortable in warmer and drier locales than tea though, and very high lands. Furthermore, I don't know about tea but coffee can be shade-grown in polycultures e.g. in the shade of fruit trees.
The baristas at work tell me off for adding milk to their batch brew. Mind, they have extremely good quantity control & carefully select their beans, so it tastes pretty good just by itself.
This is relevant, why? "There are roughly 800 coffee farms in the Hawaiian Islands producing as much as nine million pounds of unroasted beans a year; California produces only hundreds of pounds. Globally, 12 billion pounds of coffee are consumed each year
This is a great example of taking a coasting or downward-trending venture and pivoting into something new, without sacrificing your existing cash flow.
It seems like the proof of concept is going well, confirming that the basic model is sound. What comes next is to scale it up.
The farmers are also researching existing innovations in the field (i.e. harvesters), with the goal of extending those innovations to meet the field's unique challenges.
They are also selling initial product, which although is much more expensive than similar products of this type, is serving to bootstrap continued and expanded production, with the goal of reducing price by increasing supply.
(Huh, I think I went off on a tangent and started taking about Tesla.)
I don't understand why people would throw shade onto this. Not only is this entrepreneurial spirit, it's _successful_ entrepreneurial spirit.
I wish them all the best!
EDIT: Spelling