Question on African Coffees

[Dankey61]

I am not sure whether this has been previously discussed - my apologies if so. Posting here in hopes to be educated or have someone poke holes in my logic.

I've been steering away from African coffees lately on the pretense that most of the African coffees I find are from a collective or co-op and usually described as "heirloom" or a mix of varietals. Essentially in this model, a number of individual farmers (from between a handful to hundreds) form a group where they are able to band together and sell beans as if they were one larger entity. I understand the benefits this model provides to the smaller farmers.

My thinking is that every individual farmer is a different person with different standards, growing practices, different land, potentially different varietals, etc. I have to imagine the lack of oversight, consistent controls across farms, and the combination of different factors brought about my the fact that there are a ton of different farmers involved would lead to an inconsistent end product. For example, you order a bag of coffee from Kenya and it contains Ruiru 11, SL28, AA, etc in one bag? Makes it seem like no one really knows what you're getting, and beyond that given the many different types of varietals in one bag the roast level can be inconsistent as well.
I try to draw parallels to wine with coffee. I like to know what I'm drinking and where it came from. I like to drink something and know "ok, this is how a McLaren Vale Shiraz from X estate tastes" as opposed to "ok this is how Shiraz grapes sourced from all around SA taste". The same goes for coffee and as a result I've been steering towards Single Estate coffees lately.

Am I wrong in my thinking? Can someone please educate me or provide a different perspective? Cheers.

[tompoland]

There are many others here that are far more knowledgeable than I am. So I ll read the post with interest.

Here's my two bobs with the new paragraph the term "african" is very broad and is covering everything from somalian to ethiopian yemenian (is that a word?) and obviously a whole lot more.

My go to bean for medium espresso is pretty much any Kenyan AA bean. I can't tell you anything about the collective or individual farm collection process but I can tell you I haven't had a dud yet.

[Dankey61]

Fair enough and good point - I should have been more careful with my wording and instead compared coffee from a collective to coffee from a single estate than painting African coffees with a broad brush. My mistake. FWIW I probably wouldn't consider Yemen an African country.

[ASA]

My limited, amateurish understanding is that Kenyan coffee farms are generally very small and in Ethiopia the export process highly regulated. Tim Wendelboe talks about this in his podcast, https://timwendelboe.no/coffee-podcast/. From memory he discusses this in episodes 15, 17 and 24, if you're interested.

[Dankey61]

Thanks for this. I will give them a listen over the coming days. Appreciate it!

[Lyrebird]

I try to draw parallels to wine with coffee. I like to know what I'm drinking and where it came from. I like to drink something and know "ok, this is how a McLaren Vale Shiraz from X estate tastes"

I use six different clones of Chardonnay, picked over a period of a week or more, several different cultured yeasts and about half autochthonous yeast and barrels from three coopers incorporating oak from four areas of France, all to make one wine.

My beloved Ethiopian coffees probably have less variation across a batch than that.

[Dankey61]

No worries mate! Appreciate the perspective. We are seemingly looking for very different things in both our coffees and our wines - the beauty of choice! Take care.

[Lyrebird]

Some of what I wrote about comes across as unnecessarily snide. I'm not casting nasturtiums on your taste in wine, far from it. If we all liked the same thing the wine world would be pretty small.

As a counterbalance to the boring comment, my wife lives in fear of interesting wine. If I say "I ordered X because it will be interesting" she will often respond "does it have to be interesting? Can't it be, just, like, good?"

[Barry O'Speedwagon]

Yeh well my current favourite wine (under @$50) is the Serafino Orenje, but I'm not sure many would agree with me. Subtle petroleum fumes work for me. But yes, I like the randomness of African beans (within reason). My SOP is to roast either some India Elephant Hills + Ethiopia Shakiso Estate plus some Brazil PN (or swap one of the ealier beans out), and add a small amount of Central American

[Stronglatte]

There is no objective answer to this question.

For me, the beauty of good coffee is the variety of beautiful flavours to be experienced. If the end goal is to always be drinking something exactly the same then I fear the point has been missed. Even if you get a batch of individual beans which are the same varietal, what good is that if there are still so many other variables at play. Even a McLaren Vale Shiraz varies batch to batch, year to year.

The best way to get consistency is grow one single coffee tree (two trees introduces variety), roast to the same profile in a sample roaster, then with the yield each year you’ll get 400g or so that is theoretically the same as last year - though you’d better dial in the grind quickly as it won’t last long!

[Dankey61]

Thanks Stronglatte. Believe you are right and I am simply overthinking all of this. I appreciate you taking the time to read and provide a fresh perspective. Exactly what I'm looking for!

[t0fu]

well if you want consistent farming practices then im sure commodity grade coffee with some certification attached is the way. Anyways it doesnt really matter if you as a consumer are just buying roasted coffee. Its the roasters problem to source and guarantee high quality consistent coffee. Last month I had some Finca coffee from Tim wendelboe and 2 coffees were presented, both from the same farm and same varietals (like 4 each) and they present different flavours too. It came down to the season they were harvested i think.

[Tsaba1]

I think you are correct in that most are from collectives and co-ops. However, you can find single farm and single producer coffees from Africa. My current bag of coffee from Danes coffee is a single farm single, farmer coffee from Ethiopia. This is not the first time I have had a single farm, single farmer coffee from Africa, they are available but I think they are not that common.