Hi, hello and howdy. It's Kate, and today we're diving into a magical, sometimes messy world of green coffee. Also, this is Tiny Sidecar if you didn't know. Welcome. Green Coffee, aka the raw beans before they become your beautiful brew. This episode is for anyone who's ever wondered how does coffee actually make it from origin to cup? What is coffee? Is coffee a crop literally anything that you could think about when it comes to that raw green, much more dense bean? So we're gonna dive into that. We're gonna talk about all sorts of things. And I think that this episode, while it is for someone that just wants to learn some 101 basics about coffee, it's also for the people that are already in it. I think as an industry, we tend to try to gatekeep things or not share information. We're worried about trade secrets, that kind of thing. Which I get, if you have a producer that you absolutely love and you want to keep that to yourself, that's on you. But I do think that we're in an era or a generation or a decade, whatever you want to call it, that we as professionals are starting to share more information, and that's good. Being better educated, being educators, teaching each other things can only do us better when it comes to the coffee world. So this episode might be for you, my green coffee buying friend. Um, so let's buckle up and talk about my favorite thing. Come on. So I think the easiest place to start is obviously what is green coffee. Now, if you're just a consumer at home or maybe a barista, but you're not super connected with your roasting company, then you might be wondering what the heck is she talking about? Green coffee is raw coffee. Anything before it's roasted. Simple and to the point. Now there's different steps that happen to coffee before it comes to a roasting company to be roasted, and that's a whole nother episode. But most of that actually happens at origin. Let's hit the basics first. Coffee grows on a tree. On that tree, it's a cherry. The cherry has two beans inside or seeds, and they pick the cherry. Cherry comes off the tree, obviously, and it goes through some sort of process after that. There's a whole slew of processes and things that could happen to it, but basically the process gets it to the point where it's in something called parchment. Parchment is a shell that's around the coffee bean, and before it can be roasted, that shell needs to be cracked off. So if you've seen a coffee bean, which I'm sure you have, after it's roasted, think about if it had another protective layer over it that's hard, and that'll get broken off to release that green bean. After it's released, it goes through some rest periods, but ultimately it ends up in bags. The bags go in containers. The containers get shipped most likely over the sea to your roasting company. Now, even when it hits wherever it's going, it's usually not going straight to your roasting company. But again, we don't have to get super into the logistics there. So, green coffee number one is unroasted coffee. Now, green coffee can come from anywhere. When you hear the words single origin, that's what they're talking about. So if this coffee just came from Ethiopia, it's a single origin. If it just came from Guatemala, single origin. Now it doesn't mean that it's a single farm. So I can take three coffees from Guatemala and put them in a blend, and I can still call that a single origin, because it came from Guatemala. When it comes from a single farm or a single lot, that's its own thing as well. But basically, whenever you hear those terms, it's just telling you where it came from. Now, if you haven't been lucky enough to see green coffee in person, let's chat about it. It kind of looks like a green lentil as far as the coloring, and it smells grassy. Sometimes you can get some hints of what the smell might be as far as flavor profile, but for the most part, it's a much more grassy scent to it. And while I personally have not put a green bean in my mouth to chew on it, other people have in front of me, and there isn't a lot of flavor profile there. So really basic as far as flavors, smells, things of that nature, and very different than what you would expect from a roasted coffee bean. It's also important to note that green coffee or coffee in general is a crop. So origins like Ethiopia, Guatemala, Brazil, Nicaragua, all of these places, they have certain growing seasons, harvest seasons, and that coffee is only available to be purchased for the most part in that time. Sometimes when a coffee from a crop isn't purchased, you have some accessibility to it throughout the year, but you're gonna get the most coffee from that origin based on when its harvest happens. If you miss that harvest season, might not be able to get that coffee until the next season. So if a origin has a smaller crop than usual, and we're talking about the country as a whole, then less people are able to get that coffee, obviously. So it puts some pressure on supply and demand. If you do miss that buying period, then you might be looking at another origin for a similar flavor profile that you were looking for in the first. So let's say that I was trying to find some fruity notes from an Ethiopia and I wasn't able to get it during that harvest, then I might look to a different origin that also has those flavors. Now, just because an origin typically has certain flavors doesn't mean that they're not capable of producing coffee with other flavors. Ethiopia is traditionally known for berry and floral. However, with some of the new research that's happening in Brazil, I know a particular farmer that I can go to, and they might be able to produce something with floral and berry. So as coffee evolves, your options also evolve. Now I think it might go without saying, but green coffee is important because it's really where that cup starts. These are the people that take care of your plants, that take care of your cherries, that get it all the way to your cup. And so knowing who those people are, knowing what they're passionate about, knowing what they're excited about is ultimately going to change what kind of coffee lands in the consumer's hands. Okay, so sorry for the interruption, but this is coming from editing, Kate. And listen, I was just listening up to this point in the episode, and I was somehow reminded that I've always been curious as to what a popcorn factory looks like. Now I get what you're thinking. You're like, Kate, this is about green coffee. I'm totally there with you. But I did just YouTube it, and I think it's worth a look from you. So obviously finish this episode. It's gonna keep getting good, but then go hop on YouTube and look at what a popcorn factory is like. And I'm not talking about like the popcorn that hasn't been popped, I'm talking about the popped popcorn. I know, I know, it's a weird tangent, but just do yourself a favor and report back. I'm curious to know what you think. There's conveyor belts everywhere. Okay, bye. But green coffee is really where my heart and passion came from and what got me into this industry. When I realized that you could purchase coffee in a way that would support people either socially or environmentally, create different chains of sustainability, that was really what grabbed me. And it's the thing that I think about every single day. It just lives rent-free in my head about how I'm purchasing coffee now and what I could be doing in the future to continue to take that plan and make it even better and make a larger impact. Coffee really has all these avenues that you can explore and you can decide where you want to grow and what you really take from it. I think we need people that are super passionate behind the bar. We need people that are super passionate at the roaster, we need super passionate importers and exporters and buyers. Like you need all these people to exist for coffee to continue to excel and grow. Now, in our previous from Origin with Love, we started to talk about how you can cup at Origin at the farm. And that's one way to start trying coffees. The other thing is that as you build a friendship with people and they understand what you're looking for, whether it's your importer or if you're working directly with the producer, they also might send you samples. And if you've kind of stuck with a particular crop of coffee every single year, you're gonna get a sample just to verify that it's in the same realm as it was the previous year. It's really important when you're learning about green coffee and potentially purchasing it that you start to build your palate, that you start to talk to other people in the industry, figuring out what they're tasting, share some notes. It's always important to give feedback back to producers or importers on what you're liking or not liking, and it's a whole process learning how to use a sample roaster over a commercial size roaster. So this area of just sampling and learning the basics is a whole learning curve, and you have to give yourself some grace. It's kind of like when you're barista and you're learning how to steam milk. Maybe you do it right the first time, but most of the time it's the practice that really helps you perfect things. And certain people have different roast styles and like preferred curves that they use when they're sample roasting to help bring out certain flavors. They might have like their go-to, this is what I do for all of them. Like there's definitely different methods, and you just have to find what works for you and for your business. This is also the part of coffee that I would say be a student first. It doesn't matter if you've been in the business for a year, for 10 years, for 20 years, there's always gonna be someone next to you that you can learn from. And whether it's your producers, if it's your importers, if it's your baristas, your customers, your clients, your restauranteers, like whoever it is, know that that person's input is gonna help you grow and help you shape into the person and the professional that you want to be. Get that feedback and be open to it and ask questions. Good relationships with anyone really start from a mutual interest in something and a mutual respect. If you go to any of these relationships thinking that you know everything because you've been doing it or you took this class or whatever it might be, you're really just shooting yourself in the foot. And I think we've all met those people in the coffee industry that were like, yeah, they might know a lot, but they're not my person, and I don't want to collab with them. You know what I mean? So keep your doors open, ask your questions, be humble about your knowledge point, and know that coffee is constantly changing, so there's just no way you know everything. Now, green coffee doesn't come down to just if it tastes good. There's so much more to it than that. Now, if I was having my own personal roaster and it was in my home and I was buying a very, very small amount of green coffee just for myself, then maybe it would come down to whether it just tastes good or not. But there's a whole business to running a roasting company. It comes down to what the price is, what ethics they have behind it, what the relationship statuses are. Um, yes, the taste obviously is important if it's leaning into what I need it to lean into or not, but there's tons of factors that can contribute to how you purchase green coffee. And you'll see these different strategies across the specialty market. So some people only buy African coffees, some people are really into Central American coffees, some people, you know, they market themselves as only buying the highest end coffees, some people only do incredibly light rose, some people love a dark rose. Like you'll see different buying strategies across the market. A lot of this is knowing your customer base and who you're trying to sell to in the first place. You really have to be in tune with what you need in general. I also think like who you put in this role in your company definitely will make or break what that model and strategy is. And understanding that you're gonna have all these amazing, beautiful coffees put in front of you or incredible missions, but it doesn't mean that that's the right coffee for you. You have to be strategic because you'll want to buy everything. I remember when I first started buying coffee, I got that feedback of like, you have to be picky and you have to decide what's gonna work and what's not gonna work because there's way too much coffee in the world that you're going to want to purchase because it has a cool story, it has cool flavors, it has this, it has that. Like it's once you get into specialty coffee buying, you could find something that would just every day you could find something new. You know what I mean? So be picky, be choosy, figure out what matters to you and what you're wanting. The other thing to think about is green coffee after it leaves origin has to travel over the seas. So it literally gets on a boat. And I think what's funny about my green coffee buying story is that I started buying green coffee shortly after COVID. And if you were in the coffee industry, or I mean, if you were alive during COVID times, you know that there was so many shipping delays and so many crazy things with containers. And the first year that I bought coffee, I was getting a contract from Sumatra. It was previously bought by the other green coffee buyer before me, and that thing sat on a boat at harbor for seven months. We couldn't get our Sumatra, and we had to scramble and keep buying smaller spot lots. Spot means that it's already in the US and it hasn't been purchased out yet. So you can it's typically smaller amounts of coffee that you'll buy on spot, but the scramble and people just didn't know. They were like, you could get this tomorrow, you could get this a year from now. Like, we have no idea. And then also, green coffee is similar to roasted coffee, where freshness is a priority. And if you think about hundreds of bags of coffee sitting on a boat over an ocean, which moisture also is an issue with coffee, um, you can get the concern of is that coffee even going to be good by the time it gets to me? You know? So I think that was probably one of the hardest things that has ever happened in my world with green coffee, and it just happened to happen right when I started, and just navigating that. Um, but again, it's a good example of having strong relationships with your importers and trying to figure things out together. Like they want you to be successful just as much as you want to be successful. So um keeping those relationships strong is obviously top of mind. Now I know that probably something that's on top of mind is like what I wish people knew about green coffee buying. I would say that there's just so much going on in the producer's side of the world at origin. My biggest thing that I've learned as I've purchased more coffee is all of the passion that you see at cafes, you see at roasting companies, you also see at farms. Like, it's amazing to me how we as an industry continue to push the envelope on what we're wanting to see, what we're wanting to try, these new ideas, these fresh ideas. I think the green coffee world doesn't get represented as strongly, I would say, in these new developments and things that are happening. I think that there's also, you know, when you go to a cafe and someone walks in and they're like, you shouldn't put cream in your coffee, like you just drink it black, it appreciate it black. I think that there's other parts of the industry that also do that with green coffee. People are playing around with co-fermenting, which co-fermenting is a process where you might put strawberries in with the um cherries as they're in a tank where they ferment in a tank, or like seeing if yeast helps develop flavors differently, or you know, like there's just a lot happening in the producing countries, and being a part of that in any way is so cool, along with just like, you know, the climate's changing, or rust is a huge problem with coffee trees, and so how are we combating that? So I think where you have a cafe problem solving the details of a cup, and let's say the roasting company is problem solving the details of a bag, the farmers and the producers are doing all of the details of a farm, of this huge area and problem solving how to get hundreds of thousands of pounds off of trees in a very select amount of time. And so they're really doing this large amount of work, and it's still very detail-oriented and very special. Um, and I just don't think that we talk about that or see that enough. And it really is just like a very special when you get to look behind and see through that and understand just the tiniest glimpse. Cause really, I mean, I've only been on farms for a few weeks of my life in comparison to people that work on them and that small glimpse of what they're doing and the hard work that goes into making this beautiful, beautiful thing that we all love. I mean, I just it's it's incredible. And I think producers are so cool, like from so many different levels and factors. So I think having more understanding of where coffee actually comes from, the amount of hands that touch coffee before it gets to you, we just don't talk about that enough. And I don't think we ever will. Like, there's no amount of talking about that that could ever do justice to the amount of work that that person did in front of you. So the other thing that I'll tell you, and I don't even think this is a hot topic. I think that this is pretty well known in the community, but maybe not as much in the consumer community. We talk a lot about I think the last thing that I really want to touch on today is really let's talk about certifications. So certifications are those things that you see on your coffee bag, right? Like organic, fair trade, and not just coffee. I mean, this is everywhere. Rainforest alliance, all of the things. And I think that while they have good intentions, sometimes they don't perform how you would want them to. There's a much larger story to these um particular stickers that you might be looking for. Now, don't get me wrong, I like the idea behind them and I'm always for improving. But I think where you might go a little wrong is only focusing on that side of the story. So we talk about this a lot in the sense of like it's pretty easy to be organic when an auditor comes, right? It's harder to follow the line in a way that like shows your ethics, shows your ethos. So, like, for instance, if we're talking about Rainforest Alliance or something along that, are you just meeting the bare requirements for that? Or are you going above and beyond because you have a passion for this particular thing? I will always be someone that leans into the person that's showing me all of the side projects and their passions, because then there's no worry on if it's just a sticker to be a sticker and like you met some bare minimum requirements, or if this is something super special and I just know that this is your bare minimum and you're going above and beyond. So I would take them with a grain of salt. If there's a particular thing that's incredibly important to you, even then I would still go to your roaster or the producer if it's like that obvious that you know who the producer is and check out what else is going on for them. I very easily know who some of these people are when I'm meeting with them and visiting them because you can tell their passion, you can see what they're excited about. And I think that goes on all levels. Like if you're really excited about finding something that's really high, unique, specialty grade, then find the people that are really passionate on the field because they're gonna continue to give you quality every single time. So, just a little tidbit from me. I think I get that question a lot where people are wondering how important certain things are. And I will tell you without a doubt that the more you look into a roaster that's really passionate, producers that are really passionate, importing companies that are really passionate, surround yourself with the right people and you'll find the right product. And just like that, we're already at 20 some minutes. So we're gonna wrap things up for the day. But know that this is just a taste of green coffee and what it has to offer. So if there's a particular part of the episode that you're extra curious about, or if there's something that I miss that you want to talk about, shoot me a message. And if you have a particular question, feel free to slide that my way as well. And if you really want to be brave, send me an audio clip of what your green coffee learning curve was. Mine was Sumatra on a boat, but I'm sure that yours is pretty special too. As always, thank you for coming and hanging with me for a little bit. So excited to have you, as always. And I can't wait to see what next week brings us, takes us, wherever we head next week. Thanks for being in the sidecar. Chat soon. Bye.