Portland has been lucky to host the Specialty Coffee Expo 2023 – the largest in North America and one of the world’s largest coffee industry conferences.
Passed the time when there were two brands on the shelves, and coffee was a commodity product like sugar or salt. Now it’s easy to get lost in coffee aisles of gourmet stores and upscale supermarkets, and the choice for coffee lovers will only grow based on trends we observed at the Expo.
Coffee Terroir
Interestingly, we noticed a lot of wine trends in coffee. For starters, the origin, all the way down to a farm, is gaining importance and popularity. Now gourmands have the opportunity to taste unique coffee from boutique farms.
When we tasted Cup of Excellence coffee from Peru, the package had all the information we would expect to see on the wine label and more: vintage, coffee variety, farm name, and altitude, farmer’s name, and even tasting score from the national competition.
To draw a parallel, you can try a simple, inexpensive 2022 Oregon Pinot Noir from grapes harvested all over the state or 2011 Archery Summit Arcus Estate Pinot Noir produced from the grapes grown at Arcus Estate vineyard in Dundee Hills AVA (appellation) of Willamette Valley of Oregon.
While this specificity is expected in the wine world, we were happy to see that the terroir concept of the wine world is gaining popularity in the coffee universe.
At the Expo, there was even a single-origin tasting event by Coffee Tasters (sommeliers in the wine world). Just like it would happen at a typical wine industry event too.
Fermented Coffee
Another wine-like trend is fermented coffee. After all, wine is a product of fermentation. Many vendors offered it as an option. Wonder what is fermented coffee and where it comes from? No, it’s not a wine made of coffee.
Have you heard of Kopi Luwak – the most expensive coffee in the world? The secret behind its rare and smooth flavor profile is in fermentation. The ripe coffee cherries are eaten by Asian palm civets, cat-like creatures roaming the forests of Bali at night. They digest only the soft outer part of coffee cherries and excrete partially fermented beans. The beans are then gathered, cleaned, and roasted. As gross as it may sound, some are willing to pay as much as $100 per cup of cat poop coffee (another name for Kopi Luwak)!
While some farmers replicated the process by keeping civets like rabbits in cages, feeding them coffee cherries, and sifting through poop, others decided to skip the poop stage altogether by adopting winemaking principles.
Harvested coffee is placed in large vats and inoculated with various yeast strains with some added sugar to start fermentation. After partial fermentation, beans are cleaned, washed, and roasted.
You may wonder if it smells and tastes any different from regular coffee or if it’s a gimmicky thing that only “pro” coffee tasters can tell and “Elon Musks” of the world can brag about. It is different, for sure.
We can always tell even by smelling it. Whether from South America, Africa, or Southeastern Asia, all beans had a dominant fruit-forward aroma, with notes of red berries, tropical fruits, or flowers. So it’s not coffee that has a hint of this or that. Those non-coffee aromas stand out.
Cold Brew
First, Cold brew (do not mistake it for iced coffee) is another technique borrowed from winemaking called pre-ferment maceration or cold soak. This technique is used in rosé and red wine production when crushed berries are kept in contact with juice at a low temperature (intentionally) for some time before fermentation to extract color and flavors.
The same thing happens during the cold-brewing coffee process. Unlike in hot water, coffee releases its flavors much slower. While it takes between 30 seconds for espresso to 5 minutes in a drip machine, cold brewing takes 12 to 24 hours, resulting in a more mellow, less acidic, and less bitter taste. Think of it as fast food vs. slow cooking when flavors are infused gradually.
Cold brew popularity is poised to grow due to the number of ready-made drinks, industrial machinery, and household-level gadgets we’ve seen at the show. Wait till we see “scientific studies” proving the benefits of cold over a hot brew.
One of our favorites was fermented Robusta from Vietnam.
Flavorings and Creamers
We were surprised by the number of vendors representing flavors in the bottles at the Specialty Coffee Expo.
If you like flavored coffee, the choice is endless. There were some classics as well as some innovative flavors. Some tasted good, and others as perfume or sweetened laundry detergents. Not that we know what that taste like.
While we prefer coffee unaltered, we could see the allure of adding some to our cocktails and occasionally to coffee. As we learned long ago, adding flavor is better than buying ready-flavored coffee because that’s the easiest way for the coffee roaster to mask stale or poor-quality beans.
Creamers
Another surprising observation was the number of alternative coffee creamer brands. While we prefer a more traditional cream or whole milk, max vanilla ice cream atop hot café glisse, we tried nutty alternatives.
Surprisingly, some plant-based creamer alternatives paired exceptionally well with coffee, including a non-grainy pea protein creamer.
So if you’re on the fence about plant-based creamers like we were, maybe, it’s time to try. You never know!
Digitized Coffee
With the latest technological advances, coffee joins home winemaking when consumers can control every step of the coffee-making process, less growing their own tree.
We are a long way since the introduction of the first drip coffee maker.
While there were tons of industrial and coffee shops equipment at the Expo. Robotic baristas may soon take over the many counters of coffee shops.
Still, we were more excited about the high-tech kitchen solutions for everyday coffee lovers. There were futuristic home coffee machines with spaceship-like controls capable of counting every bean and controlling temperatures to the tenth degree. Everything is digitized, and coffee machines are so advanced that we can tweak them to make our favorite espresso or mocha from anywhere in the world.
Still, when it comes to coffee roast levels, consumers are limited to what’s popular and available, which happens to be “bold.” For example, we prefer light to medium roast sparsely available. So our coffee purchases are driven backward. First, we look for medium or light and then check other characteristics of that coffee.
Technically, we can roast beans in a regular oven but Achieving the right and even roast levels takes artful skill. We don’t recall coffee roasting classes in school, though.
So we were excited when we saw Bunafr’s coffee roasting machine at the Expo. The size of a large drip coffee maker, it can roast a couple of cups of beans in ten minutes. It means that what was previously only possible behind the closed doors of coffee-roasting plants can now be done in home kitchens, and finally, we can “tune” the coffee to your taste just like we do with our other gadgets.
These are just a few trends of many from Specialty Coffee Expo 2023. It was an exciting event driven by many entrepreneurial young people from all over the world. We got to speak with coffee farmers from Africa, South America, and Southeastern Asia. Many saw it as a chance to break into the American market. There is a lot of competition, which is excellent news for coffee drinkers because it means more choices.
What’s your favorite coffee and coffee gadget? What coffee would you suggest to try?