You may have seen the poll I recently posted to the blog asking you to make a choice between two hypothetical cups of coffee. In essence asking if you would prefer to drink an average coffee (ie rated on green quality) that was roasted to show it at it’s best, or a really excellent coffee that was given an average roast, showing it at less than it’s best. While a little confusion and debate lingered over what exactly a 90 point roast would be, in no small part fuelled by the honourable Mr Cho’s mischief (I love you really Nick), a clear winner emerged in the vote. You chose the average coffee that was given a really excellent roast.

So would I for what it’s worth.

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Oh dear. I was involved in a bit of a Twitter kerfuffle over the last week. I think the Twitter medium compounded the agro, the limitations of Twitter really stifle any serious discussion or elaboration of points. Everything ends up being a soundbite. A little bit of hastiness on my part didn’t help either, in fairness. I think, and hope this post might add some clarity to the points I was trying to make.

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So many stale coffees.

I remember when I started blogging, the idea was to be very Irish consumer-centric, to see what was available locally, and to judge it in that context. On a monthly basis, however, I buy no coffee in Ireland, not a single bag. I have Square Mile and Hasbean monthly subscriptions, and I tend to top those up with a few more bags of beans over the course of the month. Sometimes these come from the UK, sometimes from Scandanavia, Canada or the US. It’s not cheap. Our intermittant group-buys on boards.ie do help with combined shipping costs, but nonethless, I shudder to think how much I’ve spent on coffee (and shipping) in the last year.

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Fruits of Paradise

Here’s the hypothesis: Robusta isn’t inherently crap. If grown and processed with the same level of care and attention typical of speciality coffees, you can arrive at a superior robusta, one that could be drank on its own, without revulsion. I know that in some quarters, Kenneth Davids of CoffeeReview.com has lost credibility in recent times, awarding high scores to espresso pods and favouring stale Italian espresso blends over high end US ones. Nonetheless, when he awarded a score of 94 to India Sitara, a single origin Robusta espresso from Paradise Roasters, I took notice. Even if you discount the hyperbole in the review, and don’t expect the fruit and flowers, even if you accuse him of exaggerating, I wondered could you still be left with a palatable Robusta? Paradise Roasters no longer offer the India Sitara, but it has been replaced by another coffee from the same estate, Indian CxR. The name CxR denotes a hybrid species, a cross between Congo coffee (Coffea congensis) and Robusta cofee (Coffea canephora), and again is offered as a single origin espresso (this time, however, scoring a measly 90 on CR).

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