I feel like I should preface my comments with some of my credentials.  I have owned and operated an independent coffee shop for years, complete with 25lb roaster. I learned to roast from my step-father, a Roast Master. I've taken countless roasting and tasting classes from other bests in the business.  I've stayed on a finca for a week picking, processing and hand-roasting beans.  Not that a week is particularly long, but it helped me understand more of the phases of coffee production than the typical coffee consumer.

I am also a big fan of fair-trade in general, and often shop fair-trade products for everything from gifts to housewares.  With that and having had a glimpse of the worklife of coffee farmers, I have great respect for what Equal Exchange does.

But what I have found with fair trade coffee is that the quality of the green bean is, uh, inconsistent. The range in size/grade is so wide that roasting can only result in an uneven product.  Some beans end up burned to a crisp, others are under-roasted.

Buying roasted beans is no better.  Besides starting with beans of varying sizes, and therefore having the same uneven roast in the end, they are often roasted too far past the second crack.  This is partly due to consumer expectation (rather recently developed by Starbucks and Peet's) that all coffee be "French" or dark roast (burnt), and partly due to inexperience.  A bean can only fully develop its full compliment of flavors and undertones with a slow, gradual roast, and released from the roaster immediately after the second crack (unless you're going for an espresso roast).  Some human roasters are doing this; some roasters are automated and programmed to work quickly to crank out more beans.

As every coffee company across America has caved to the charred standards, we've lost a lot of variety across the spectrum of coffee shops, from indies to large chains, but it seems to me that only in Fair Trade coffee has the over-roasted "flavor" been so thoroughly embraced, and coupled with roasting too quickly, it makes for a rather unpleasant cup with an aftertaste reminiscent of an ashtray.  I keep trying every Fair Trade coffee I can find (most recently, Sol Colibri), but they never seem to be able to break free from the Charbucks Starburnt Starbucks-defined standards of flavor to present a low-acid, complex and interesting medium roast that excites the tongue, and that I cannot support.

If Equal Exchange is going to focus on the small farmer, I wholeheartedly urge them to also support those farmers in meeting the highest standards for the grade of bean, and to send their roasters back to roasting school* and eschew the dark standard (double entrendre intended).  Until then, the sad fact is that there are many who will continue to equate fair trade with poor quality.

*OK, there's not really a roasting school.  Unfortunately.

Interesting about the taste of the coffee.  I'm not a coffee conoisseur at all, though I do drink the occasional cup.  I'm much more of a tea person, and I find that the Equal Exchange teas are uniformly awful, with a thin, cardboard-y taste and an aroma reminiscent of Lipton.  Obviously someone must like it, though, or they wouldn't stay in business--there aren't that many eco-conscious suckers out there buying things they know will taste awful to support fair trade, are there?

No, it's not that they're suckers, I know (because they say so) they think Peet's/Starbucks is good coffee.  I can't even convince my friends that my step-father's perfect roast is an excellent example of coffee, because they all were raised on dark dark dark (I'm in Seattle, don'tcha know).  They tell me my coffee tastes "weak" even as I point out the buttery undertones, the caramel finish, and the long mellow aftertaste.  Starbucks has done an incredible job of marketing - gosh, with a Starbucks on every corner and a line out the door, they must be good! - and so people who never drank coffee, or never developed a taste for better coffee, assume theirs is the gold standard.  Anyway, if all you're drinking are espresso drinks drowned in milk, cream, and sugar (in the form of their specialty drinks), then you can barely taste the coffee, so who cares if the lingering aftertaste (not to mention mouthfeel) is that of an ashtray?  So, carry that on over Fair Trade and I can see why they feel the need to pander to the tastebuds developed by Starbucks.

For my part, if I'm not at home, I seek out Fair Trade coffee at indie shops, even though I know it won't taste good.  So maybe I'm the eco-sucker in this exchange, huh?  ;-)

   I am not in the coffee business, and I guess I am ignorant and silly, but politics aside, I never thought Starbucks coffee tasted good.

   (Of course most Americans think that what is called mustard in the US actually tastes good, and people buy Lipton tea, which I consider abhorrent.)

   I always drank the coffees from the Thanksgiving Coffee Company (mostly anyway) when I was living in SF, I particularlty liked their French Roast End the Cuba Blockade (Organic Fair Trade).  The name might not be right, but it tasted just about perfect to me.

    And to any of my friends who drank it.  I should say that I made it at home in my own little expresso maker.  And it wasn't laden with sugar, just a little milk.

    My point would be that suggesting that all Fair Trade coffee tastes bad seems curious to me.  Perhaps Truly Scrumptious doesn't like it.  But I did.  And other people do as well.  Everyone who buys it doesn't prefer Starbucks.

    (To be honest, I wasn't that great a fan of Starbucks organic fair trade coffee either.)

patrick

Thanks for the links, Shawn, and for introducing me to the word monopsony.  How did I miss it until now?

I didn't see quality standards for the humble bean itself, or did I miss it?  I see in individual Producer profiles mention of "sun dried" and "technical training in __" as examples of their attention to quality, so I'm not sure what's happening between farm and shelf that I can't see that quality coming through.  Maybe jet lag is furthering the problem by making what's on the shelves/in the shops a bit old (stale) and also not up to newer standards...?

Anyway, when I must buy coffee I'll take the fair trade mud over the monopsony's "finest" any day!  :)

Patrick, my point was not so much that no one should like it (or that only Starbucks fans would like it) but that the standards for a good cup have sunk and that seems to be what Fair Trade is using as their measure.

I know people like it, just like people like cheap wine, Hershey's milk chocolate, and Budweiser.  Everyone's allowed to decide what they like.  But that shouldn't mean that the microbrewers should make their beer more watery, or that a fine chocolatier should add more oil and filler to their product, or that any producer should otherwise bring their standards down to the level of that defined by mass marketers (or by the monopsony, my new favorite word).

This has been a long process, this slippery slope of coffee quality.  So I think that Fair Trade producers entered the market quite awhile after taste buds had been well manipulated to accept a rather bland cup, and their quality reflects that.

Now, not to put too fine a point on it, you're talking about the Thanksgiving Coffee roast you buy to use as espresso, while I'm talking about coffee.  Plain ol' ordinary medium-roast beans ground to be brewed for a plain ol' cup of coffee.  Any beans used for espresso should be dark roast to hold up under the extraction method, but a cup of coffee is like a fine wine to me, offering complexities and characters that unfold over the course of enjoying the cup, right on into the long finish.

   There is no good coffee near me (the closest is a mickeyd, and I pass), so I drink swill (instant don't ask!).

   You are correct that we are talking about two different things (that was not clear to me before, thanks!).

   I did notice that when I went back to the states, that a lot of the coffee was atrocious (the cuppa joe kind).  Shudder.  

   You should offer coffee tastings to help people train their palates!  (If I ever get back that way, I would love to attend!).

patrick

My world is now hemp/soy/bamboo fibers, but I still loves me some good coffee.  :)