New bag labels
While enjoying an excellent Bourgogne, Tim and I noticed the simple, elegant label. It was uncluttered, modern and timeless, and without any gimmicky design elements. Conversation erupted over our own coffee bag labels and those of others. Over the 3 years, we haven’t developed or changed the bag labels much at all, and while they have had plenty of information, we thought perhaps there was too much. Altitude information for instance now seems a little irrelevant and meaningless, however harvest dates and roast dates are essential. We don’t want the labels to appear cryptic like some French wine labels, and we also don’t want an overload of pointless information, keeping them clean and easy on the eye.
So here are our new coffee bag labels which we will start introducing over the next couple of weeks. To make it easy to understand and interpret, here is the label broken down.
1. The name of the coffee
Fairly self explanatory, could refer to the name of the farm, the locality, the mill or the cooperative.
2. The name of the producer
This is often the owner of the farm or estate, it may also refer to the cooperative or the collective of farms or small holders.
3. The origin
Basically, town, region and country.
4. The varietal
The type of coffee plant, or subspecies of the Arabica varietal. This is just like the grape varietal in wine.
5. Taste description
The tasting notes have been derived from several cuppings, they are flavours and aromas we have found and are a broad evaluation of the characteristics of the coffee. Aroma, acidity, mouthfeel, aftertaste, etc are some of the criteria for the taste description. You will, however, find varying aromas and flavours.
6. Harvest date/degassing time
On our regular roasted coffees designed for filter style brewing, we have included the harvest date on the coffee, this will tell you the month and year the coffee was picked and processed. However, on the espresso roasted coffee bags, the degassing time is included. This is very important to take into account when brewing espresso, as espresso roasted needs time to rest and leave behind any flavours and aromas from the roast process. We would normally let espresso rest for a week, however this may change from coffee to coffee.
7. Roast and batch date
One of the most important indictors on a coffee bag, as we recommend to use the coffee within 3 weeks of the roast date. The batch number is for our reference, to ensure we can source all the information from that particular roast.
More in depth information will still be available here, in the Resources section of the website.
March 5th, 2010 at 12:57
Awesome! I think you made some excellent choices in what info to have on the bag. It looks really good.
March 5th, 2010 at 13:01
Oh, one thing I forgot. We used to have the name of the producer on our bag too (Edwin Martinez, Lois Pascoal etc.) but with a lot of the coffees, for example the Kenyans, there is not one single owner, but a cooperative. And we eventually felt in some cases it was hard to point out a single person as being responsible for growing the coffee. Do you have any thoughts about that? Will you just not write the name of the producer on the Kenyan coffees or will you go with the manager of the mill, or something else entirely?
March 5th, 2010 at 13:50
Klaus, we decided to put the mill or cooperative’s name in place of the producers name if there is not being a single person to credit. For example on the Kenyan, we will put ‘Rumukia Farmers Coop Society’…
You are right, in a sense, regarding the fact that not a single person is responsible for producing the coffee, a bit like here – i’m the freakin’ one roasting the bloody coffee, why isn’t my flippin’ name on the bag??
March 7th, 2010 at 11:04
I guess “less is more” sometimes… I see your intentions, but here in CPT, South Africa we are dealing with a much more elementary coffee society with many people still not understanding that coffee does not naturally grow roasted.
We are trying to go for as much information as possible to open up the industry a little and have people learn about, where, what and how the coffee came to be.