Episode

Scott Bentley: Welcome dear listener. Welcome to Adventures in Coffee, a podcast by Caffeine Magazine, sponsored by Oatly.

Jools Walker: Now in this second series, Scott and I are going to explore the world of coffee for people who were curious and quite interested about what's in their daily cup.

Scott Bentley: Yes, Jools, we're all trying to learn a little bit more about where our food drink comes from.

So we made this podcast to shake the beans of the coffee world and peek behind the portafilter.

Jools Walker: Oh aren’t you good with the puns today. I'm Jools Walker a very proud east London. Yes, I am that woman that rides a bike. Yes, I am that person that is a very everyday coffee drinker and loves it.

Scott Bentley: Now I am Scott Bentley. I am the founder of Caffeine Magazine.

I'm also, if you didn't know, a freelance art director and all around coffee, dork and Jools in today's episode, we're going to be taking you deep into the bean. We're going to be talking about blends.

Jools Walker: So Scott, I am going to be completely honest with you. I've got no idea what to expect or what it is that we're going to be talking about.

So score me on blends. What does this entail?

Scott Bentley: I want to ask you one seemingly simple question. What is a single origin coffee?

Jools Walker: A single origin coffee is a coffee that comes from one place.

Scott Bentley: Perfect. How big is that place? Are we talking a country, a region, a farm? Are we talking a part of the farm?

Jools Walker: Um, can I just stick with coffee comes from one place as my answer, please?

Scott Bentley: Yeah you can, you absolutely can! So as an industry, I don't believe we've really locked down. You know, what this term single origin means. And that's probably one of the reasons why you're struggling with it because it's actually a term that most of the industry is struggling with too.

Jools Walker: So does that mean you're going to be, I don't know, taking me on a journey to understand what the term single origin actually means?

Scott Bentley: Yes. It's a story about where our obsession with this term single origin comes from. And it's also a story about blends. And also it's a story about community language and those problems about having a specific principle that kind of holds a whole community together.

Jools Walker: There is many a layer going on here.

Scott Bentley: This is a tiramisu. It's a tiramisu episode against layer and layer.

Jools Walker: All over again

Scott Bentley: Yes

Jools Walker: All right. I'm going to equate this with like Josie cycling brain is going to switch on where you're talking about community and identity. Kind of like the e-bike debate that happens in cycling, you know, we're all in it together. We all love being on bikes, but there is still that constant.

Is it proper cycling? Is it real cycling? You know, does it count? that kind of vibe is what I'm getting here?

Scott Bentley: Absolutely.

Jools Walker: But what exactly is it? Am I in for?

Scott Bentley: You are in for a story which is half historical deep dive and another part, which is sort of more philosophical discussion.

Jools Walker: Okay. I get the feeling that Jools is going to be taken to coffee school today.

Scott Bentley: But by the end of it, you are going to be like an eighth grade student. You're going to know exactly what it is when we talk about this term, single origin

Jools Walker: Textbook, pen, I'm ready to go. Let's do this.

Piano

Scott Bentley: But before we get there, let's have a quick word from our sponsor.

Jools Walker: And this is a sustainability hack brought to you by Oatly.

So Scott, last week we discussed how hand washing your dishes actually uses more greenhouse gases than using a dishwasher does.

Scott Bentley: Yeah, that's true. But, um, I mean, not everyone has got either the space or the money to buy dishwasher.

Jools Walker: Agree. So that's why our friends, our Oatly have given us yet another sustainability hack for those that don't have dishwashers and wash their dishes by hand. So, you know, you could do something as simple as using a bowl that, you know, cost you a quid down the shops, and this will actually cut your carbon impact by 130 kilograms every year. And that is about the weight of a lion. If you get Scott, another two friends on board, when washing up using a bowl, you just save just shy 4,000 kilos of carbon over 10 years. And that's the way of an entire pride of lions.

Scott Bentley: Yeah, that's good. Isn't it? It's good. Do you know what I've got another hack for you? Not only can I cut down my carbon footprint with a one pound bowl, I can also cut down the cost of my kids' haircuts. I can use. To put over their heads and cut around it.

Jools Walker: Okay. Scott, I've got asked you how old are your kids again? 13 and nine, right? You're going to send a nine and a 13 year old kid to school with a bowl haircut.

Track 1: What's wrong with that? My parents did it to me.

Scott Bentley: Do you know how much a kid haircut costs these days?!

Jools Walker: Yeah. And I also know that I've got some phone calls to make at the end of this hack.

And that was a sustainability hack brought to you by Oatley.

Music

Scott Bentley: So Jools to start us on this journey on to take is back to a time before we had trendy cafes, tattooed baristas, before we had the names of farms on coffee bags. And to take us back there. I spoke to this, the person.

Francois Knopes: So my name is Francois Knopes. So I'm a fourth generation coffee roaster.

I've got memories of my father and my grandfather before me roasting coffee. I live and work in London where I worked for a company called Perky Blenders in east London. And I'm the head roaster and the green coffee buyer for the company.

Scott Bentley: That’s really interesting. You say that your family have all been coffee roasters as well.

It's quite a niche thing for y'all to be involved in. How was that as a child?

Francois Knopes: I've got those early memories of like playing in my, my dad's a roastery and, you know, in roasteries you've got like huge piles of coffee bags. And then, uh, I remember I was jumping from one to the other, so that's my earliest memory as a, as a child from the roastery.

Jools Walker: That's quite lovely, actually.

Scott Bentley: Um, so Francoise’s, great grandfather began this coffee roastery in the south of Belgium in 1936

Jools Walker: Oh wow!

Scott Bentley: And then his granddad took over in 1958. And recently we found this amazing little time capsule that gives us this lovely window into the world of coffee roasting back there in Belgium 50 years ago

Jools Walker: Oh a coffee time capsule. I like this, I, I open it.

Francois Knopes: So when my grandfather passed away, we went to his house and then we had to look at, you know, all the books and all the piles and you know, like many, many years of like stuff that has been accumulated. And then we found it a note pad actually. And in that note pads, we found actually the recipes of like the blends that they were using back then.

Jools Walker: I love this stuff genuinely. I love this because it makes me think of like digging through my own family history, but a family history that involves like coffee and generational stories and notepads. This is what I'm hearing. Scott, the notepads.

Scott Bentley: You want to see them Jools

Jools Walker: Yes

Scott Bentley: You want to see the mopeds?

Jools Walker: Yes. Open the notepads.

Oh, this is genuinely beautiful. I don't speak French, but it's actually beautiful handwriting that looks like it's been done in like a fountain pen or some ink based pen like that. And it's like an old school tech school book. Do you know what it means?

Scott Bentley: Yeah

Jools Walker: Just like an exercise book. That's got these, these notes in there and it's, you know, everything's sectioned off, you know, there's. It looks like there's part one part two part three, like of

Scott Bentley: They’re the blends. No yeah they’re the blends

Jools Walker: This is fascinating. This is really like a window on a coffee history.

French track

Scott Bentley: So Jools like you, I don't, I don't speak French, but I thought what I'd do is get Francoise to kind of like read out some of the things on these notepads to you, in this beautiful seductive French accent,

Scott Bentley: Thought you might might like this.

Jools Walker: Thank you. I appreciate this already

French track

Scott Bentley: These are the coffees that Francoise grandad was sourcing. These, the coffees he was sending to his community.

French track

Jools Walker: It genuinely does just sound lovely.

Scott Bentley: Beautiful!

Jools Walker: Yeah. There was some, some words that I could sort of pick out like perfumey and what have you. And it just, it just, I don't know, it just sounds deliciously descriptive.

Scott Bentley: So I asked Francoise to translate these coffee blends and tell us what was his granddad putting in them? You know, what was he selling to his community at that time?

Francois Knopes: Number one is a Santos coffee with Robusta. Number two is Santos coffee with Arabica. So it’s quite…it’s quite nondescript. And the number three is Brazil Santos on its own. Um, number four is, uh, a Santos again, it's all the same Santos, extra prime. So I'm not too sure what that means with Colombia.

Jools Walker: Now what I'm getting from that is that there weren't many coffees in his range and I need to know what Santos is. What's this Santos that I keep on hearing?

Scott Bentley: You've kind of hit the nail on the head. And also for me is this sort of specialty coffee nerd who likes to know where everything comes from. It just comes across as so generic. I mean, there's literally a handful of coffees mentioned there, you know, there's nothing on here.

That tells us who the farmer is, what region it's from. I mean, literally Santos is the name of a port. It's just a shipping port.

Jools Walker:  Oh okay

Francois Knopes: The Brazil Santos was basically a big mix of a big mishmash of like lots of coffee produced in Brazil

Scott Bentley: So imagine this you're a farmer, you're in Brazil, you're hundreds of miles away on this plateau.

You've got this beautiful farm you're picking these really lovely cherries is really lovely coffees. And I think it's blended with the coffee on the farm nearby, and then it goes down somewhere else and it gets blended in with another load of coffees and finally gets taken to the port with loads of other coffees from loads of other places and just gets banged in again, and there it is. That's Santos coffee for you

Jools Walker: So even though different, different coffees, different farmers, different growers, it all just gets lost, blended and labeled and it's Santos, that's it?

Scott Bentley: Yeah, absolutely Jools. And, you know, what's really interesting is the, you know, these coffees, they're just really didn't taste that great compared to, to these standards.

Francois Knopes: Coffees, we're just not as good as they are today. I mean, probably some coffees were produced decently and then. But then even then, like, I think, I think overall the quality of the coffees that roasters were using back then was lower.

Scott Bentley: Imagine this you're a farmer, you've got a piece of land. You're making some great coffee.

You're putting lots of time and energy into it. And then it's just getting blended up, with loads of other coffees from loads of other farms, yet maybe they haven't got such great coffee, so that great coffee that you were growing just gets kind of diluted down and just gets lost. And you know, the whole thing, it just becomes a numbers game.

Piano

Scott Bentley: So look, Jools is the state of play. There's like mediocre coffee, everywhere. Things are getting blended before they even get to the ship. What does this mean for Francoise granddad?, Picture this scene, you know, the ship is coming in from Santos or something like that. And it's a docking in Antwerp and along the side, there, there's all the coffee roasters and they're all just getting coffee from the same lot. You know, this is all just the same coffee that they're getting.

Francois Knopes: When you think about it, everyone was kind of roasting the same. You didn't know, you know, everyone was using Brazil Santos, everyone, every single roaster.

Scott Bentley: I mean, can you see the problem for someone like Francoise granddad?

Jools Walker: Well, yeah, I mean, if it's a, you know, a small coffee community and you've got the three roasters getting exactly the same coffees to then roast up and, and sell, what makes you different from John down the road? There's nothing to distinguish you as a roaster. If you've all got the same thing.

Scott Bentley: Absolutely. You all have the same coffee. All basically tastes the same eyes, pretty underwhelming compared to what we get today. So the way in which you distinguish yourself is what Francoise granddad does.

Francois Knopes: So well, ultimately, the roasters were doing is they're trying to achieve a more complexity. So because of ever using more modest ingredients, the reason why they were mixing a coffee, from Mocha with a coffee from Santos and a coffee from Colombia is because they wanted to achieve just more complexity in the final cup.

And that was very much like the, the craft of the roaster back then. It was not only being able to know when, you know, your coffee is cooked to perfection and roasted to perfection, but it was also knowing which coffee is going to compliment which one and create something that it's more interesting.

Jools Walker: This is good. Cause this has sounded like being like a chef.

Scott Bentley: Absolutely

Jools Walker: Yeah, it's talent.

Scott Bentley: Absolutely. You see, it's very much what your, your mum does in the kitchen. She's got her own understanding of what spices to put with what things, because it's her thing. So this is the same here with the coffee roasters is, you know, blending, different origins, blending, different coffees becomes this skill.

Piano

Scott Bentley: So Jools I don't know if you remember when you were going all giddy over Francoise, beautiful French.

Jools Walker: Shut up

Scott Bentley: That's essentially Colonel Sanders standing up and giving you his secret recipe to Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Jools Walker: Damn.

Scott Bentley: This is my assumption. So I asked this question to him. These recipes were, these kept secret? Was everyone allowed to see these?

Francois Knopes: No. Oh, no. Oh no. That's why very new notepad. And so I guess the notepad must have been in like some sort of drawer, like to close with a key or something like that, just to, you know, traditionally I think most roasters in Europe were keeping their recipe secret.

Piano

Jools Walker: Yeah. I did like closely guarded. Of course it would be closely guarded

Piano

Scott Bentley: So this was the old world of coffee. Yeah. Everything was a blend. Things are blended at origin. Things are blended before they got to the poor things are blended by roasters. Everything was a blend

Piano

Scott Bentley: But then something happens and it happened as Francoise father was taking over the roastery from his grandfather. A little revolution happened in the world of coffee.

Francois Knopes: So my father took over the business in 1980. I think he worked pretty much like my grandfather for the first 10 years until 1990. And then in 1990, you had a bit of a revolution within what was called then the specialty coffee movement.

I remember my father went to the US for a trip. Uh, and then he, when he came back, he was like, wow, it's incredible. Like the market and the US is so totally different from the marketing in Europe. And so, you know, the coffee world is moving and we need to move with it.

Scott Bentley: So when Francoise father came back from the US he kind of understood that people were starting to become more interested in the terroir, you know, essentially where this coffee has come from.

Francois Knopes: First you had the Brazil Santos and that everything was mixed. So maybe some of those coffees were exceptional and some of those coffees were very mediocre and then you blended everything together and it was quite generic. And then suddenly people realized, well, maybe coffees from this specific region in that country are actually distinct, a little bit better than other regions, and people started like getting that, the same thing you get in one with terroirs, you know, and people saying like, oh yeah, really like coffees from not just this country, but they're specific terroir in this country.

Scott Bentley: And this was a bit of a moment of revelation. Is that the whole thing where, you know, we've done in previous episodes where you put two coffees side by side, you kind of go, “aaah they’re different”

Jools Walker: Yes.

Scott Bentley: This one over here is much better.

Jools Walker: Yeah

Scott Bentley: So imagine there's all these coffee professionals around the world and this style to taste more and more specific, you know, lots of coffee.

And this moment of revelation happens, you know is this almost this our “aha moment” And this is also what happened to Francois

Francois Knopes: And I remember that one coffee that really like opened my eyes, but it was an Ethiopian coffee from the region of Harar and it had that like incredible blueberry taste. But that was the first time in my life where I could taste so much fruit in the coffee and that's really when I started thinking, ‘wow, there's so much more to coffee than, you know, what we all used to’.

Jools Walker: Well, it's like a Eureka moment there, isn't it? There's a whole world of coffee out there. There's a whole world that needs to be explored.

Scott Bentley: Absolutely. So naturally this is what happened.

Francois Knopes: Some of those coffees would taste so much better than, than others. And so we needed to keep them separate so they could sell them and create a new market for higher and higher quality.

And this went up and up and up and up to the point where now we're talking about, you know, all those super incredible nanolots that are selling, like for like just like 50 kilos of coffee. It's tiny, tiny.

Jools Walker: Oh, okay. Is that what you touched upon this in our very first episode, didn't it me when we were having the discussion about me getting a Geisha coffee and the absolutely kind of insane prices that people pay for them.

Scott Bentley: Yeah.

Jools Walker: And I guess got the reason why people pay these insane prices for something like Geisha coffee is because. It's the opposite of blending. I mean, you know, your actually drilling down to something very specific here. So it's the specific plants that are grown in that place, which produce especially amazing flavors.So it's the singularity of it. It's the, the nicheness of it.

Scott Bentley: Absolutely Jools, and yeah, this is essentially what the specialty coffee movement is all about. It's about getting, you know, more specific.

Piano

Scott Bentley: So Jools, I want to just sort of start to, you know, pull all this together because I think this is where the problem lies in our industry. We're kind of at this sort of crossroads, should we embrace blends or not? Because for so long now in specialty coffee, blends have been seen as a bit of a dirty word.

It doesn't have the terroir. It doesn't have the badge of honor. It doesn't have this nanolot thing attached to it. It can't command these hugely high prices anymore. Some of these roasters they're all bought in on single origin. So there might be some shade being thrown around here.

Francois Knopes: And then sometimes coffee roasters are using blends to basically use their old past crop coffees or the coffees that are fading just to make them move very quick.

Scott Bentley: You know, as a coffee roaster, you can get away with bulking up coffee blends with like, let's just call it below par coffees, something which is like not interesting, but is going to get a job done. So the specialty coffee movement started looking down at blends, started saying if it's a blend is not very good.

And there are many, there are many coffee roasters around the world that have now decided they're not doing blends, blends a bad single origin is good. This is the polar views that this movement currently seems to have. My problem with that idea with that ideology is that in my view, and I think there's a case to be made.

The all coffee is a blend of some sorts, and this is what I want to get to next. Where does the blend begin and where does it end?

Jools Walker: Okay. This now sounds like it is getting way more philosophical than expected, but I'm ready. Let's let's dork up and just get deep into the weeds of coffee and blends

Piano

Scott Bentley: I want to just bring James our producer in here, because he was also on this call with me to Victor Rebello who is a Nicaraguan farmer.

James Harper: Yeah. So Jools, uh, Scott and I, we jumped on this call with Victor.

Victor Robello: My name is Victor Robello from. Um, third generation of coffee, business family.

James Harper: Now I've been to this part of Nicaragua, where Victor's farmer is, imagine these rolling Hills and these giant trees that kind of burst through the forest canopy imagine like these really tall people, you know, standing in a crowd of like shorter people and like stretching out their arms above everybody's heads. So what I did with Victor is I was like, okay, let's zoom into a pair of those coffee trees. Side-by-side

Jools Walker: Okay.

James Harper: They're like brother and sister, the same variety right next door to each other under the shade or one of those giant trees above. And I asked Victor this question, would you agree that like each tree in your farm has a slightly unique flavor compared to another tree?

Victor Robello: They're all different, they’re all difference, but, uh, to be very honest, I have never cupped one tree by tree

Jools Walker: So even though the trees are on the same plot of land, each tree is going to have its own unique, different flavor to it.

Scott Bentley: I don't think this is too much of a stretch to say that, you know, one tree might got a little bit more nutrients.

Jools Walker: Right

Scott Bentley: It might have been had a little bit more sun.

Jools Walker: Yeah

Scott Bentley: I'm not saying these differences are big, but I'm saying theoretically, each tree can produce fruit that tastes different to its neighboring tree, even though is genetically, you know, essentially the same.

Jools Walker: Yeah.

James Harper: So let me, I'll take you to my next question for Victor, which leads us into a philosophical quagmire.

Jools Walker: Right

James Harper: If you were to cut every tree, hypothetically, it would taste different hypothetically, right?

Victor Robello: Eh, yes.

James Harper Right, right, right. So as soon as you add a secondary, let's say you have all the coffee from one tree. Now let's add the coffee from a second tree. That is a blend.

Victor Robello: That would be a blend. If you have a different variety.

James Harper: Oh, what? Okay. What's your definition of a blend?

Victor Robello: It has to be a variety, a the different generic variety.

Jools Walker: Okay, this is, I wasn't expecting that as, as the answer.

Scott Bentley: If I'm reading this right. I think what Victor is trying to say is that if you mix the cherries from two coffee trees that are essentially identical in their genetics, that's not a blend.

And I can understand why he comes to that conclusion because most people are not going to be able to tell these apart.

James Harper: But Jools, there is a logical inconsistency with this approach. Imagine one of the mountains on Victor's farm covering coffee trees, they're all the same variety of coffee, but let's say there's a hundred meters difference in elevation between the ones at the top of the mountain and the one at the bottom of the mountain.

Now you could take the trees at the top of the mountain and call that a nano lot. And you could also take the trees at the bottom of the mountain and call that a nano lot. But what Victor is saying though, is if you were to blend those two nano lots. You shouldn't call that a blend?

Jools Walker: What does it actually mean to, to, to blend coffee then? If, what is a blend? I need to know what a blend is

James Harper: That is the question Jools! That is the question…

Piano

James Harper: And, you know, Jools, while I was asking these questions to Victor, I was thinking to myself, am I completely wrong with this? I mean, just the rest of the industry have an answer.

Piano

James Harper: So what I did is, a few weeks ago, I went with Scott to Cafe Culture, which is a B2B industry trade show for the coffee world here in London.

Festival track

James Harper: So what happened? Right? I was walking around and I found people who work in the green bean space, and I asked them that same question, two trees combine the beans from two trees. Is that a blend?

Piano

James Harper: If you mix those two coffee trees together, would that be a blend?

Interviewee at CC: Yes.

Interviewee at CC: No, yes, no?

Interviewee at CC: I suppose it is but it isn't

Piano

Akshay Dashrath: Very good question. Um, in reality, it actually is

James Harper: Those two beans from those two trees together.

Interviewee at CC: Yeah.

James Harper: Would that be a blend?

Interviewee at CC: It's a simple yes or no, is it? aah no.

James Harper: Why not?

Interviewee at CC: It's a very good question. You put me on the spot. It'd be a single farm coffee. So you wouldn't think of it, a blend.

Otherwise every coffee is a blend in the world.

James Harper: Isn't it?

Interviewee at CC: So. Exactly. So you could, yeah. So if, oh, this is really difficult. Why did you have to catch me at five o'clock on Friday? It was really unfair of you. Um, they're all blends. I changed my mind. They're all blends. Yeah. Even even different branches at one bean from one branch, one bean from the other, makes a blend.

Jools Walker: There is no simple answer to this. There's a lot of conflicting answers about what is a blend, what, what doesn't make a blend. If it comes from the same farm, it can't be a blend, but it can be a blend because it's two different trees.

James Harper: There is no consensus at all.

Scott Bentley: We broke the coffee world

Piano

James Harper: So Jools I think you can probably tell, you know, Scott and I are very chuffed for a smashing this term, single origin. So it's like a million pieces of glass on the floor. Now, um, what I'm going to do is get a hammer. I'm going to smash a little bit further with smash decent to microscopic shards.

Piano

James Harper: So while I was at cafe culture, I caught up with this person called Laura.

Laura Meunier: So my name is Laura Meunier and I work for Ensambles, Cafés Mexicanos, It's a Mexican green coffee company that sources and exports green coffee to Europe.

James Harper: And she basically shine a light on what is being an open secret in this industry for a very long time

Laura Meunier: This is one of the first things I actually realized when I started working in El Salvador, is that when I arrived there, I had that conception.

That's a lot of coffees were unique in the sense that they were like single origin or a single producer or a single something. And then I realized when I got there, that actually like to even make like a 10 bag lot, usually because coffee farmers in the world are very small scale. They don't produce that amount of coffee themselves in their own farms, so you need to blend coffees together to be able to make decent volumes for export.

Jools Walker: Okay. So Laura's, she's in the coffee industry, she was under the impression that it was going to be, you know, the, the whole thing with the single origin, the speciality coffees, how these are done, and even her eyes are opened up to the fact that in order to, to make the, the amounts of coffee that they need to, to produce, you still have to blend it with others.

So, I don't know that that sort of level of purity that people talk about or is perceived to exist in, in coffee is kind of smashed to pieces because it still has to be a blend?

Scott Bentley: Absolutely Jools, and if you go to Africa, things would get even more extreme. Generally speaking farms are generally quite large in central and south America.

If you go to a farm in Ethiopia, Rwanda, you know, places like that, farms are much smaller. I mean much, much smaller, so they're not making 600 kilos of coffee per season. I mean, they'd be lucky to make 60, you know, or even maybe even less than that. So when you see a single origin on a bag of coffee that comes from an African country, that's actually more likely to be the mill, not the farm.

And there is a mill where many, many farms, bring their coffee and they sell their cherries and they get a price for those cherries. And that is then sold as a single origin.

Jools Walker: Yes. This is a whole element of scale. When you think about the scale of coffees that these farms need to produce, and if the farm only produces like 60 kilos of beans or something like that, this then makes sense for it to be blended with other beans to get to the scale that, that they need.

Piano

Jools Walker: So blends are all right. I mean, why don't we just blend everything? We can take different coffees from different regions, put them together. It's going to be fantastic. What? Just stop the episode here. I think that's it.

James Harper: So Jools, I’m going to have to just burst your bubble for a moment. The thing is you can, could, in theory, you're allowed to do that, but I also met this guy at the show.

Akshay Dashrath: My name is Akshay I run Mooleh Manay Estaste in Coorg India with my wife, Komal

(29:04)

James Harper: Akshay, he's a fifth generation coffee farmer with his partner in Southern India. And he shared this really insightful story.

Akshay Dashrath: When we first started, uh, about three years ago. One of the roasters who purchase from us in India, wanted to blend it, and that was very very sad.

James Harper: What was it a problem for you that you were being blended with other Indian coffees?

Akshay Dashrath: So is my coffee not good enough on its own that it needs to be mixed with something else?

Jools Walker: See I could feel that cause that's, that's a shame you're doing this. This is your thing. And then it almost feels like someone's saying now it's not making the grade we need to mix it with something else. I can understand why he would be offended.

James Harper: Right. The thing is there are many instances where his coffee does get blended and he doesn't care.

Jools Walker: Oh, okay.

James Harper: Because the thing is coffee farms produce, you know, a whole shade of qualities from the mindblowing, to the very forgettable

But you might, you surely must create coffees on your farms that, you know, probably can't stand alone as a single origin.So what do you do with those?

Akshay Dashrath: Um, at the moment you've been selling it to the, uh, commodity market

James Harper: Which go, which go into blends?

Akshay Dashrath: Which go into blends, but we don't, it's not our names on it, essentially. So I'm very Western with the coffees. I personally process for the specialty market

James Harper: So you're saying that you went out one day and got this lot of coffee right off the trees, processed it and sold it to a roaster in India.

And you were like this lot of coffee right. Comes from our farm. We're really proud of it. Show it by itself. And then they blended it

Akshay Dashrath: Yes, it did.

James Harper: And then, but then that same day you had coffees, which weren't as so good cause all farmers do different levels and that went to a commodity market. You're anonymous and you don't care anymore.

Akshay Dashrath: That’s right

Jools Walker: It's very eye-opening that's for sure. Because just, you know, one end of the coffee crop scale for him, he has a, the crop that he's super, super proud of, and you know, it's a bit crappy if they want to blend it on what have you, but then on the other end, it's just like, yeah, this isn't actually that good.

After all, I don't know. It just, it almost feels like maybe I'm getting too deep with this, or maybe I'm getting too confused, but there's this whole thing of being very, very proud of something.

James Harper: Welcome to the club

Jools Walker: And then it's sort of like, actually, nah, you can do whatever you want with that. My name's not going to be attached to it, so it doesn't, it doesn't matter.

James Harper: Right. So essentially my read on this is that it comes down to the farm. Yes, everything is a blend, but some farmers don't want you to blend because they're really proud of what they made. So let's not blend those coffees.

Jools Walker: Right.

James Harper: And sometimes they're happy for you to blend those coffees and you do blend them and you make something that's probably greater than the sum of its parts.

Jools Walker: Right. Okay. Right, James. Um, I just have to ask you right. If, if blending between small farmers is often called something like a single origin or, you know, your regional blend or the Colombia coffee or something like that. What do you actually call a coffee from a single coffee grower?

James Harper: Jools

Jools Walker: Help me

James Harper: It's a hot mess.

Jools Walker: See, I didn't want to be the one to say that, but that's what I was thinking. This is turning into a hot mess.

James Harper: Akshay basically said the same thing.

Akshay Dashrath: I mean, this is a very great topic. It's it's, it's uh, it's, it's, it's extremely good, right? So the single origin means different for different people. See single origin could be an entire region. Um, but for me it's, I mean, single estate is probably easier?

James Harper: So Akshay prefers the term single estate

Jools Walker: Right

Scott Bentley: Maybe the sexy name for this is like single producer lot

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Scott Bentley: So Jools, so where are you landing now? What do you, what have you taken away from this rambling coffee, dork club thing that James and I have taken you on? I feel sorry for you in some ways, and you know, we'll give you your money back. Um, if, uh, if you didn't enjoy this

Jools Walker: If I’m not pleased?

In all honesty, you know, my, my overarching thing that I take away from it is that sometimes it's good to blend coffees and sometimes it isn't.

Scott Bentley: Does that hurt though Jools?

Jools Walker: Why did it hurt?

Scott Bentley: Sitting on the fence that much. Does it hurt to sit on the fence that much?

Jools Walker: Oh, you should've just asked me if I needed some tweezers to pull out the splinters and then I would have known exactly what you mean.

I am now left, worrying around thinking about the term single origin.

Scott Bentley: Yeah.

Jools Walker: But I want to know now. What are we actually supposed to do with the term single origin in coffee? So when you go into the supermarket and you see that it's a single origin coffee from a particular country, does that hold any weight? What are we supposed to do with this now? I want to hear this from, from you.

Scott Bentley: I think the problem with single origin is a marketing term, which has been used and abused by people throughout the years. And I just really think that when we see it, it should prompt us all to ask a question, how big is that single origin?

So if I see if I go to my local supermarket and I see single origin, Colombian coffee, What you're essentially saying is all the beans in this bag are from Colombia, but I'm going to use this tag of single origin as some kind of like premium label. The thing is it's no different to the original Santos coffee.

All it's saying is it came from a country. Now, if it has the name of a farm, you know, that that coffee is going to be grown possibly by, you know, one family, you know, one, one company maybe, if it's an like a micro lot, then you know, that that coffee is not only going to come from one farm, but also one part of the farm.

And there may be a nano lot. That's going to come from even smaller part of that farm. And as you get smaller, these coffees will be treated more delicately and they will be looked after and there'll be separated, and this is why they're, you know, quite often more premium. So really I think that's it. I think, just ask the question. If you see single origin, just ask how big is the origin? Is it really any different to Santos coffee?

Jools Walker: It, it's just quite deep, but it does give you like food for thought when you are looking at, at your coffee in the supermarket.

James Harper: Can I just add, I do have a challenge to everybody out there. Jools, do you have coffee beans in your kitchen right now?

Jools Walker: I do.

James Harper: I have a way for you to taste the purest essence of a coffee terroir and the date it was picked and processed.

Jools Walker: Okay.

James Harper: Pick one bean, and brew that one bean by itself.

Jools Walker: I see a singular bean brewm brew, a singular bean for right, okay.

James Harper: Doesn’t get more pure than that.

Jools Walker: Right, alright. You know what, enough, I'm off to go and maybe have a look at some coffee bags in my kitchen, but let's just roll the credits

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Scott Bentley: This podcast was produced by James Harper, the creator of the coffee podcast, Filter Stories, who you also heard in this episode.

Jools Walker: Yay! And he also plays in tinkles those ivories that you hear in the background. Now, if you liked the show, press the subscribe button on your podcast app. Go on, press it now. Just tap, press it, hit it

Scott Bentley: And also please do leave a review on Apple Podcasts because this actually helps the algorithm recommend our show to other people.

Jools Walker: Now you can follow Caffeine Magazine on Instagram. That will be the coffee dork himself, Scott @caffeinemag, myself Jools @ladyvelo and James Harper @filterstoriespodcast. And we've put links to everybody who’s been on the show on social media.

Scott Bentley: Now you can also pick up the latest issue of Caffeine Magazine at the Manchester Coffee Festival, or you can head over to our website, caffeinemang.com. If you want to pick a copy up now

Jools Walker: Now in our next episode, we are going to be bringing you another one of our Adventures in your Kitchen.

Jools Walker: I'm going, I'm going, it's getting lower.

Scott Bentley: Keep going

Jools Walker: it's getting lower.

Jools Walker: It's getting lower

Scott Bentley: All the way.

We're going to help you. brew a filter coffee using an Aeropress.

Jools Walker: Locked and loaded.

Scott Bentley: Whack it on the mug

Jools Walker: Whacked Oh yes. We're going to get you to the point where you will be competing at the world Aeropress Championships.

Scott Bentley: And that is a thing.

Jools Walker: Right. But until then take care of yourselves and we will speak to you again in a couple of weeks

Scott Bentley: Bye

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