Puerto Rico Coffee Overview

We currently have no coffee from Puerto Rico to offer, since none has passed muster on the cuppingCupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest…. table. Sadly we can’t see this changing in the near future, but since we have offered Puerto Rico coffee in the past, we want to share our experience with it. 

Puerto Rico has been a tough coffee origin in recent years. With increased awareness about the effect of low altitude production on coffee, the need for a lot of human labor to hand pick and sort coffee to create truly great lots, and changing weather patterns…well, everything is stacked against Puerto Rico. They don’t have the access to labor, they don’t have the altitude compared to other coffee lands, the picking and preparationPreparation refers to the dry-milling steps of preparing coffee for export: hulling, grading, classifying, sorting.: Preparation refers to the dry-milling steps of preparing coffee for export: hulling, grading,… have been poor, and all of this shows in the cup. 

When it is good, to describe the Puerto Rican coffee flavor it is best to think about the general term “island profile.” These coffees, which include JamaicaJamaica coffee can be excellent mild, lush coffee… sometimes. Like Kona and Puerto Rican coffee, it is soft, mild, clean and well balanced when it is good.: Ah… as an example have a soft cup, not acidic, balanced, and mild. They are approachable coffees and all happen to be quite expensive.

When it is not good, Puerto Rican coffee is usually impacted by premature aging from humid storageGreen coffee can be stored much longer than roasted coffee: Roasted coffee starts to lose its aromatics in 10 days after roasting. Green coffee can be stored months… conditions. But the issues could stem to the selection or post harvest processingThe removal of the cherry and parchment from the coffee seed.: Coffee is either wet-processed (also called washed or wet-milled) or dry-processed (also called wild, natural or natural… too: At times, the selection of coffee cherryOriginally coffee literature referred to the fruit of the tree as a “berry” but in time it became a cherry. It is of course neither. Nor is the… can be quite poor due to harvest conditions and labor availability. To produce clean and defect-free coffee flavors in the cup, one of the requirements is selection of ripe coffee cherryEither a flavor in the coffee, or referring to the fruit of the coffee tree, which somewhat resembles a red cherry.: Either a flavor in the coffee, or… only. Green unripe cherries make for astringentAstringency is a harsh flavor sensation, acrid flavor, that provokes a physical reaction on the toungue, the tactile feeling of papery dryness. It can have saltiness, sourness and… and harsh flavors in the cup, while over-ripe produce fermentedAs a defect flavor, a fruit quality in a coffee that is excessively ripe, toward rotten. Fermented flavor can be the result of poor wet-processing, over-ripe cherry, or… wine-to-vinegar notes.

It’s good to be aware of the fact that higher priced coffees don’t necessarily have a “better” cup, but rather that price is determined by the cost of production, and limited availability. Remember that this is a coffee grown in the U.S. so production costs are higher. We would love to support coffee production in PR because it is from the US, but can’t do it solely because of that factor, and particularly because we find it does not pass our minimum expectations on the cupping table.