The internet is quite talkative at the moment.  The coffee sliver of the internet anyway.  Lots of talk about seasonality, which is a good thing.

This does beg the question – how long is coffee good for?  Green coffee I mean – we’re still arguing about roasted coffee’s shelf life and a great deal more time and money has been spent on that topic in the last 100 years.

If anything, and we are getting into the realm of personal opinion here, green coffee is trickier because green coffees don’t age the same way.  Each lot is an individual little time bomb.  As much as we can look after it as well as we can in storage/in roasteries – we are still working with an individual fuse whose approximate length was determined before the coffee left the producing country.

I hate it when people talk in general terms about the entire production of one country.  However, in my experience, coffees from Kenya have held up a great deal longer than many Central American coffees.  Regardless of packaging method, and stored in the same environment for the same amount of time.  I know there is a lot of stuff out there on storing coffee (check Roast Magazine for some good articles), but let’s say this isn’t the main issue.

You could argue that they have such pronounced un-coffee like coffee flavours that, while they fade, they continue to be easy to spot.  This may be the case, but it is also the absence of baggy flavour which I find interesting.

We should probably find a better word than baggy.  Mostly because we can no longer blame jute as coffees that are vacpacked can end up tasting as “baggy” as coffees stored in jute.  They may take a little longer to get there, but they get there.  Cupping some very old pre-ship samples (that have likely never even seen jute in their lives) was a pretty definite moment for me.

What I want to know, and this is probably a bit of a list, is the following:

- Exactly what creates the jutey/baggy flavour?  Is it the breakdown of something, oxidation, some other reaction?  I went through Flament’s “Coffee Flavour Chemistry” and came up empty.  I will keep looking!  I am sure R.J.Clarke knows!

- Is it linked to processing?  Geoff Watts once told me a little theory he had, which I won’t repeat because a). I was a touch inebriated when he told me so I might get it wrong and b). It is his theory to tell, not mine and c). He may well have changed his mind.  It was, however very much linked to the results of processing before being stored in parchment.  Please Geoff, if you ever read this, correct me if I am wrong.  I know I am being a bit general there.

- Are we, as an industry, prepared to vary our window of seasonality depending on the coffee’s capacity for youthfulness?  Is this even more confusing to the customer, upon whom we probably thrust a dizzying array of information?

- If we can identify the length of fuse on a lot of coffee, should we store it differently?  Is there one perfect storage environment for all coffees, or should we customise a bit more?

Finally – how much of this stress would be saved if we could just move coffee from origin to roaster a bit quicker?  That, however, is another discussion altogether.

My predicitons were:

1. Coffee Packaging takes a step forward

Nothing here to report.  I don’t know if anyone has done anything interesting in 2009 with roasted coffee packaging but I certainly haven’t seen it, and I don’t think it has had an impact.  A poor prediction.

2. Improved Green Coffee Packaging

This is a tricky one.  I am sure that this year people have received record quantities of vac-packed, or grainpro packed coffee.  I know that a substantial amount of coffee that we’ve bought this year has come this way.  I also know that it leaves me conflicted over the amount of waste this packaging generates.  An OK, passable, but not great effort at prediction.

3.  Someone invents a grinder worth getting excited about.

Nope. Nothing here.  I know why, from an R&D cost Vs sales perspective, this hasn’t happened.  For some reason I guess I thought it just would.  A complete failure of a prediction.

4.  Decent Coffee Press in the UK.

I am going to claim this one.  You could argue that the quality of writing hasn’t been where it could be but I think this year we’ve seen unprecedented levels of coverage for speciality coffee – mostly in response to Gwilym’s win – but also covering the blossoming of London’s coffee culture.  I hope it continues.  A pretty successful prediction.

5.  Producing countries in the WBC Top 6.

Another utterly failed prediction.  Raul was just outside the top 6, and I think there was some surprise at who made the top 6 and who didn’t.  Nonetheless I can’t even vaguely claim this one as successful.

So…  Barely 1.5 out of 5 I reckon.  Not good work.  I shall have to try harder for my prediction for 2010, or just give up entirely!  I hope next time I don’t confuse speculation and prediction with wishful thinking!

The one interesting thing, in terms of me trying to salvage my credibility, are the two main predictions that I got wrong in 2008 – the rise of pressure profiling and increase in green coffee pricing – have somewhat come true in 2009.

There can be no argument on the pressure profiling front.  From the Slayer to Strada, but also to Cimbali’s rather impressive pressure profiling machine – the technology is now here and seems to have perhaps captured the interest of manufacturers more than baristas but I think it will continue to be incorporated into new machines.

As for green coffee – it may not yet have reached the peak of March 3rd but after a steep drop it is definitely back on the rise:

(couresy of Wolfram Alpha – the rather splendid search engine for this sort of thing.)

I’ll post my predictions for 2010 around New Year.

Just for fun I am going to make another 5 predictions and we’ll wait and see how they turn out!

1).    Coffee packaging takes a big step forward

Think for a moment about how many kilos of espresso are brewed every day.  Think about how many bags are thrown away each day.  Good packaging is a necessity for quality, but it isn’t recyclable and that is becoming more and more of an issue.  The reusable, valved buckets we’ve been using at Square Mile have been great, and I am glad the bulk of our production goes out in them, but we still have to bag a good deal up.  Hopefully this year we’ll see someone clever devil make a breakthrough and move coffee packaging at least a little closer to closed loop recycling.

2).    Improved green coffee packaging

Vacuum packaging has started to take hold in coffee, but I don’t yet believe it is the pinnacle of coffee packaging.  I think jute has to go, for speciality coffee anyway, and I am head over heals in love with the smell of greens when you open a vac packed bag up (I might love it more than the smell of roasted coffee!).  However I have a few reservations about the long term storage of green coffee in vacuum packaging and I think slowly but surely we are gathering more and more information about how it affects the greens and we can continue to improve the materials and the process.

3).    Someone invents a grinder worth getting excited about

It probably won’t be a major grinder manufacturer.  In fact it definitely won’t be.  However I think there are people out there tinkering and experimenting and I think this year someone will present an idea that will slowly invade espresso grinder production and improve it immeasurably.

4).    Decent coffee press in the UK

It has been interesting to read the increasing number of good articles on coffee appearing in the NYT and the WSJ.  Most of these articles were indeed about coffee in New York but the scope has slowly widened and I hope the trend continues not only in the US, but spreads to the UK.  London’s burgeoning coffee scene is worth writing about!  Just getting the media to take coffee a little seriously would be a massive leap forward.

5).    Producing countries in the WBC Top 6.

An oddly specific prediction but I think this year there will be at least one barista from a producing country really pushing for the top spot.  I think the limitations of choice and greens variety that many feel were on national champions have gone.  Every producing country competing has great coffee growing there and I think judges are more open to that than ever.  I think the shift away from tech and onto sensory open up the field further still.  As for which countries – I am not that brave!

UPDATE: I suppose I ought to clarify this a little more (thanks Jay) – I think at least two of the top 6 will be from producing countries and I think one will be in the top 3.  I did know that various producing countries have been in the finals before (Silvia from Brazil was in the finals with me in Tokyo – so I ought to remember!)

What do people think?  Does anyone have their own predictions that they would care to share?  Post them in the comments or in your own blog and post a link here!