Espresso Overview‘s tasting stories try to reply to espresso questions that may best be replied by way of tasting the coffees that pose the questions. Generally, this implies blind-tasting an entire accumulation of coffees — 50 to 100 in step with article — and reporting in truth on what we discover, together with calling consideration to the excellent of those coffees with evaluations and scores.
In 2025, we plan 5 such tasting stories.
February-March: Nationwide Roasters
This hour’s first record for February/March asks the query: What’s going to espresso fans who experience delicate mini a whole lot of traceable coffees from smaller roasters in finding once they purchase from greater distinctiveness roasters that promote national, in some circumstances, international? (We’re having a look at you, Starbucks, Peet’s, Blue Bottle, Counter Tradition, Entire Meals, et al.) We’ll anonymously layout a space of coffees from a choice of those massive nationwide roasters, blind-taste them and check them for freshness, next record on each the successes and screw ups with scores and evaluations.
April-Would possibly: Roasters on Course 66
Highways and occasional have lengthy been entwined in American fiction, and for our April/Would possibly record we’ll jerk a digital force alongside some of the storied highways within the U.S.: Course 66. We’ll pattern coffees from one of the vital many regional roasters alike to that path, a stretch of freeway that for many years carried vacationers around the U.S. heartland from Chicago to Los Angeles, via 8 states and 292 cities.
June-July: Robusta and Alternative Non-Arabica Species
Espresso Overview readers are no doubt conscious about one in every of distinctiveness espresso’s maximum power taboos: Thou shalt now not roast or promote espresso from timber of the Robusta (Coffea canephora) species. Traditionally, the distinctiveness espresso global has have shyed away from having anything else to do with Robusta, the hardier, inexpensive extra to Arabica that now provides round 40% of the sector’s espresso. This prohibition is in large part tacit and unspoken, however is in line with a judgment of Robusta’s cup persona as inescapably uninteresting and sour in comparison to Arabica’s better sweetness, sunny and complexity. The one reason why a espresso corporate would roast Robusta, espresso fans had been given to consider, is to economize.
Now, on the extra adventurous edges of the distinctiveness espresso global, there’s a brandnew pastime in Robusta. It’s pushed in massive phase by way of the blackmail of worldwide warming, which has the possible to radically let go lands appropriate for the manufacturing of Arabica, a fussy plant that calls for quite imposing rising elevations within the tropics with cool nights however negative frost. Robusta, at the alternative hand, can thrive at warmer temperatures than Arabica and is most often a lot hardier. Not too long ago, the seek for a extra climate-resilient espresso plant has prolonged to alternative espresso species as neatly — to Liberica, a hardy species broadly grown and ate up in southeast Asia; Excelsa, intently similar to Liberica; and Stenophylla, a unprecedented and just lately rediscovered species that, analysis suggests, tolerates imposing temperatures generation exhibiting a space of sensory persona related to high-grown Arabica.
For our June/July 2025 record, we can be trying out as many examples of distinctiveness Robustas and distinctiveness variations of alternative non-Arabica species as we will flip up. We can possibly imagine blends that construct vital significance of Robustas (minimal 50%) in addition to single-origin choices, and can settle for submissions meant for both brewed or coffee preparation.
August-September: Mocha-Java Blends
The sector’s first mix, Mocha-Java, mixed the one two coffees the sector knew in round 1720: Mocha from Yemen and Java from the Dutch colony of that title. In spite of the arbitrary nature of this mixture and dubiousness about how those early coffees in reality tasted, Mocha-Java has remained a remarkably fertile mix idea, conserving a core sensory expectation generation stimulating continuously impressed permutations. Are recent variations of this mix reliable of its lengthy and prominent historical past? We can survey and honour one of the vital untouched permutations at the richly generative Mocha-Java theme with our August/September 2025 record.
October-November: Costa Rica Coffees
For many years, Costa Rica was once famed for its high-grown, meticulously ready washed coffees, cleanly vintage in profile, the extreme in consistency. Next, foundation within the 2000’s, the Costa Rica “micro-mill revolution” exploded with its processing experiments. Abruptly, we had brandy-toned natural-processed Costa Ricas, svelte honey-processed Costa Ricas, and ultimately, candy-toned anaerobic-processed Costa Ricas, all competing with the blank, sweetly dazzling Costa Ricas of custom.
Whither Costa Rica in 2025? Will it incline extra towards the sensory surprises of processing experiments or the hovering magnificence of the vintage? To find out with our October/November record.
December: Supremacy 50 Coffees of 2025
Each hour since 2013 we’ve printed an inventory of the Top 30 most fun coffees from a number of the hundreds we examined. In 2013 more or less sixty coffees scored 94 issues or upper. Clearly, any espresso incomes 94 issues or upper is phenomenal. On the other hand, some coffees are rarer and extra unique than others. We felt shall we construct some tough alternatives and start at a last checklist of 30 with out omitting any that obviously deserved inclusion.
On the other hand, the selection of coffees we check each and every hour has grown from roughly 300 in 2013 to over 700 within the moment hour. And in the ones intervening 11 years, now we have distinguishable an increasing number of outstanding coffees come throughout our cupping desk, as manufacturers, investors and roasters all develop extra inventive and resourceful, and alternatives for collaboration between the two of them accentuate. If, in 2013, 60 coffees out of 300 scored 94 issues or upper, in 2024, more or less 30 out of 700 scored 96 issues or upper. It sounds as if that the age has come to increase our checklist of 30 lead coffees to 50. We sit up for sharing our Supremacy 50 Coffees with you on the finish of the hour.