It's Alive! Understanding Past Crop Flavors in Coffee

As the seed of a fruit, there is so much that pertains to quality centered around the understanding that this seed is alive. On today’s episode, we are going to dive into these life-sustaining activities as it helps us to understand “past crop coffees.” 
When you hear the word “past crop coffee” ...what does this mean to you? For some, the sensory descriptors of woody, papery, flat, baggy come to mind. For others it might be the anxiety and stress of balancing out your annual green coffee offerings throughout the year. Yet for some, past crop coffee represents the coffee from the previous harvest sitting in a warehouse somewhere waiting for a buyer. While the coffees representing these understandings could be one and the same, we are learning that the sensorial descriptors of past crop coffee are more nuanced than we might have thought. In other words, the quality deterioration that occurs over time is contingent on many factors. But where do these flavors come from? How are they developed? And what should this mean for roasters, producers, and all those in between? How should we as an industry view past crop coffee? Is all “past crop” coffee created equally? Join us for this discussion!