This piece is inspired by curiosities surrounding Aviary’s releases 008: Basha Bekele and XX2: Pranoy Thipaiah, which were available in limited quantities through the Aviary website. To support this blog and the work I do—and to place this piece in context of the coffee that inspired it—please consider ordering.

The specialty coffee industry holds a certain affinity for the notion of purity; language invoking purity—of identity, of origin, of process—saturates discourse surrounding not only the product itself but its transaction, its business, its preparation, its cultivation.

Think: “natural process,” a human intervention far removed from the natural order (but framed to suggest otherwise), or “single origin,” a value orientation toward coffee from a single producer or block or cultivar, regardless of the economic or sensorial soundness of that separation, or “clean”—a word displaced from its intended meaning on the SCA score sheet and adaptable enough that it has become a cupping note Rorschach blotter. But a worldview prizing purity, however, requires a willful refusal to acknowledge history or privilege or power, engage with science, or embrace the nuance and complexity of the corporeal world.

And it requires the drawing of lines—often arbitrary—by arbiters who often hold a vested interest in the maintenance of that worldview.

This summer, the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama made headlines when it announced the disqualification of four coffees from the Best of Panama competition, declaring them to be “infused” and produced using “foreign additives.” Other processes that don’t use these “illegal” methods such as “thermal shock” were invoked so as to suggest that coffees processed using them were being presented dishonestly. The producers of those four disqualified coffees—one of which, I am told, would have won the top prize based on its score—received multi-year bans from the competition. 

But no evidence was provided, nor was scientific verification or analysis conducted to confirm that the coffees in question were, in fact, manipulated in some way outside the bounds of the regulations. The disqualification formally came down to a hunch—an inference, a belief, a bias—framed, essentially, as “I have never tasted these flavors in coffee before therefore this had to be produced artificially.” 

Instead of proof, SCAP members published an artifice: an open letter drawing battle lines invoking purity language—going as far as to say the disqualified coffees were “altered from their natural DNA expression.” Truth and science ceded ground to fear: fear of adulteration, fear of impurity, fear of contamination, fear of the outsider.

In the Best of Panama auction that followed, the average winning bid was $627 per pound, with the overall BOP winner taking home a record-breaking $4,542 per pound.

Purity, it turns out, is valuable to those with the power to define, wield and protect it.

By 2021, when I published a koji fermentation protocol on my blog, discourse surrounding fermentation had already overshadowed much of my career. In 2017, I was the first buyer of a commercial lot fermented using Lallemand L7 yeast using a protocol I designed with Lucia Solis (a strain which would later be marketed by LalCafe as INTENSO) and a year later wrote and helped execute the first yeast inoculated coffee fermentation conducted in Ethiopia. By 2018, nearly 60% of my book at the company I bought coffee for was fermented using inoculation of selected yeasts.

While spontaneous fermentations can offer greater cup complexity and dynamism relative to their inoculated counterparts (whether those inoculations be with fungi or bacteria or some combination thereof), inoculation can offer innumerable benefits from process management, predictability of outcomes, safety from spoilage and hygiene- or fermentation-related defects, qualitative differentiation and, in some cases, shelf life improvements.

I’ve written previously a response to critics of so-called infused coffee, some of whom use the language ‘adulterated’ to refer to not only co-fermented coffees but also those that undergo a controlled fermentation. A push to ban any of these coffees from appearing at WBC has, as of yet, failed to yield results—but in 2023, the Alliance for Coffee Excellence updated the eligibility rules for the Cup of Excellence competition for the first time since its founding in 1999, relegating processes other than ‘washed’ and ‘natural’ to an other- category of ‘experimental,’ and specifically prohibiting the ‘additives’ of anything other than water to processing. This excludes not only yeast, or koji, or fruit—but also enzymes, salt, oxygen or any other processing agent.

Like Best of Panama, the CoE now requires and rewards a narrow definition of purity. Never mind that many of the yeasts and bacteria used in coffee fermentation are naturally found in spontaneous coffee fermentations—they were ruled additives.

In parallel, perhaps as a consequence of the covid-19 pandemic and its disruptions to the social order,  I’ve noticed a certain skepticism that fringes on conspiracy theorist paranoia regarding the microbial world that apparently extends to inoculated fermentations. Beliefs about the pandemic having manmade, engineered origins—despite most evidence indicating zoonotic origins—stoked fears about vaccines, microbiology and science in general. Skepticism of inoculated fermentations with intonations of the risks of the microbes used “escaping the lab,” causing irrevocable damage to the ecosystem has taken hold in specialty coffee, advanced and weaponized by those who stand to profit, advanced via podcasts and click-hungry online periodicals. 

But it’s nothing more than a canard, a nativist rhetorical Trojan Horse designed to legitimize purity language by masking it behind a veneer of rationality and a central tenet of specialty coffee: the ostensible concern for ecological and environmental sustainability.

Before Pablo Escobar brought them to Colombia, hippos didn’t exist there.

But in a fantastical and megalomaniacal display of power and excess, Escobar transported four hippos and introduced them to a new habitat at his private zoo at Hacienda Nápoles in Medellín, along with rhinos, elephants, giraffes and ostriches. Like coffee, hippos are native to Africa, not the Americas—and like Escobar, they were renowned and feared for their volatility and dangerous interactions with people.

Three decades later, Escobar is long dead; his hippos survive.

In truth, they’re thriving: In the intervening years, the hippos established themselves in the River Magdalena, the main river in Colombia that flows northward some 1,500 kilometers, cutting through the coffeelands of Huila north to the Caribbean sea. Scientists estimate that without intervention, the population of hippos in Colombia—all descended from Escobar’s—would reach 1,000 by 2035. Already, the hippos have pressured native species such as the endangered Dahl’s toad-headed turtle and Magdalena river turtle and threatened the balance of the ecosystem.

Coffee arrived to Colombia by 1790, over 250 years after the beginning of colonization, brought by a Jesuit priest (carrying with him not only a non-native species of drupe tree but also a non-native and invasive theology). As plant materials and people moved around the world, so too did the pests and diseases and microbes they carried. Microbes hold no passports and recognize no national borders; they move freely as passengers of colonialism and global trade—and are dispersed by convective forces and weather.

The advent of PCR analysis and genetic fingerprinting reveals that even before human  exploration, fungus and bacteria spread in wind and water far beyond the places they evolved. The species of fungus known as “Brewer’s yeast” or “bread yeast” (and also commonly used in viticulture and coffee production), Saccharomyces Cerevisiae, which is present globally may have, according to genomic analysis, in fact “a single ‘out-of-China’ origin for this species, followed by several independent domestication events.” The strain co-evolved with humanity—supporting population growth and civilization globally—and the spread of people, technologies and traditions during colonization certainly would have accelerated the colonization of yeasts across the world. Anywhere people go, microbes will follow. As a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences observed, “As trade volumes continue to increase and more trade connections are made between countries, the pressures from invasive species will only intensify.” Put more poignantly in a study in One Earth: “Biological invasions are synonymous with international trade.”

But people aren’t necessarily even required for the migration of microbes across timezones and continents: a 2013 study from USDA revealed the travel patterns of microbes in soil carried by strong winds; transpacific microbes carried by the jet stream may, according to NASA research, establish ecosystems in clouds, traveling between continents via wind and particulates. A study published in Nature found that “Aeolian processes can redistribute enormous quantities of sediment over the Earth’s surface. During dust events, bacteria can attach to dust particles—making bioaerosols—and travel long distances, causing environmental cross-border pollution.”

And so because of their portability and apparent invisibility, I can somewhat understand fears that I’ve heard about the use of microbial inoculation in coffee—concerns that these microbes might be like Escobar’s hippos and outcompete native, wild microbes causing some change in flavor profile or perhaps even harmful disruption of the local microflora.

Escobar’s “cocaine hippos” are what I think of when I hear that a non-native species is invasive: a highly fit, competitive species better adapted or advantaged in some way to survive, thrive and outcompete native species in its new home.

What I don’t think about when I think about invasive species in Colombia is microbes used for coffee fermentation.

If inoculation led to destruction of the native microflora, it would be evident in the microbial record. In the first study ever looking at the biodiversity of abandoned vineyards (e.g. ones where nature was allowed to once again take over) versus human-managed vineyards, researchers found that, on a microbial level, “a higher biodiversity was found in active vineyards where regular human intervention takes place when compared to abandoned ones.” This finding “goes against the assumptions that human intervention can destroy biodiversity and lead to homogeneity in the environment.”

The practice and technology of inoculation is ancient, with yeast domestication likely occurring before the actual discovery of microbes; inoculation was used to make bread Ancient Egypt in 1300-1500 BCE and Ancient China between 300-500 BCE, in the beer industry since the 16th century, and for the first time in wine in 1890 by Hermann Müller-Thurgau, who isolated a strain of Saccharomyces Cerevisae. But the mainstream use of inoculation in the wine industry came relatively late, championed by a new generation of quality-oriented winemakers in the Napa Valley in California who sought to not only reduce defects in their wines (and thus improve profitability) but also replicate the terroir of European-made counterparts. In partnership with Lallemand, Scott Labs produced its first active dry wine yeast in the 1970s. Scott Labs, which also distributes the Lalcafe line of yeasts used in coffee fermentations across Latin America, built its business with the growth of Napa’s wine industry, distributing winemaking supplies and equipment to some of the most prestigious wineries in the United States. The company’s authority and expertise in the field is well-regarded; their internal lab is staffed with PhD-bearing microbiologists, state-of-the-art equipment and connections to and partnerships with researchers in Europe and Africa.

“We can track the the implantation of our yeast using PCR analysis,” Zack Scott of Scott Labs told me via email. “What we show is that in any ferment there is an absolutely WILD array of  yeast, bacteria and molds that are present…This is true even in the much more arid and microbiologically ‘light’ areas where wine is grown. In humid warm areas where coffee lives, the diversity and intensity is much higher.  We saw this in the need for higher dose rates of yeast.”

That is to say: the challenge for inoculation is outcompeting native microbes. If the dose isn’t high enough, or if the inoculated microbe can’t replicate fast enough, it will not successfully colonize the fermentation and will not produce the desired outcome. In commercial wineries, where hygiene is strictly controlled—using sulfur dioxide to knock back yeasts on grapes, and using ozone to kill microbes present in tanks and around the winery before inoculation—the required dose is roughly four times lower than in coffee fermentations, where the conditions are less sterile. “The commercial strains need to be concentrated in both time and space to make an impact.” 

Zack continued, “When you look at subsequent ferments, you do not see implantation of the commercial strain. This is something we fought with a lot, primarily because the sanitation of the bins and water were so low, that reality is the wild flora dominates again and again.” 

Understanding microbial succession—the gradual shift in populations of microorganisms in an environment over time—is critical to fermentation design and is an observable fact which necessitates inoculation in subsequent fermentations that occur in the same space. In wild coffee fermentations, bacteria, which are faster to build biomass (known as having a shorter ‘lag phase’), initially dominate; but overtime, as the pH drops and, critically, ethanol levels increase (as yeast begin to metabolize sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide), yeast will dominate. This toxicity and microbial succession means that even in wineries where inoculation is used, it must be used every time.

“In wine there is a feature which helps commercial strains become dominant in their environments during a season…it is called BOOZE! Ethanol is a huge selector of winners and losers—and Saccharomyces Cerevisae has an uncanny ability to survive.” While some bacteria and filamentus fungus like koji reach toxicity at alcohol levels as low as 3%, classic strains of Saccharomyces with little breeding could survive to 12.5% alcohol 100 years ago; today they average 14.5%. ”As you know, we are not getting these alcohols with the time or sugar concentration in most coffee production, thus again the only factor that allows for the domination of a commercial strain is the original concentration which allows achievement of the quorum needed (10⁸) for fermentation to ensue.  If you skip a dose, no domination; so again, there is no risk of continued ‘colonization’ after initial inoculation.”

Koji fermentation are, like yeast-inoculated fermentations, multimicrobial. The low alcohol tolerance of koji and its metabolic requirements mean that in the 4,000 years of its use by humans (earlier than coffee consumption in the modern sense) there has never been a documented case of koji ‘escaping’ and invading new territory. Scientists studying the microbial succession of sake fermentations and soy sauce fermentations have shown that while koji work as a processing agent early stages of the fermentation, they don’t work alone, and in fact are less critical to those fermentations than indigenous microbe; further, by the end of the fermentation, other, more robust microorganisms—like yeast, which itself can’t survive and colonize outside of an inoculated fermentation—crowd them out. 

Curiously, like with “managed” vineyards versus wild vineyards, inoculation seems to encourage diversity of microorganisms in an environment. When looking at Persimmon wine, researchers “found that spontaneous persimmon wine fermentation (SPF) resulted in lower bacterial community diversity and higher fungi community diversity than inoculated persimmon wine fermentation (IPF).” This, coupled with microbial succession of microflora advantaging to a specific environment, contradicts concerns of inoculation. The natural environment surrounding a fermentation tank is filled with a greater population even than the initial inoculation—and contains microbes better-adapted to that environment. 

Management of a vineyard itself seems to impact the population of indigenous microbes—perhaps an unsurprising finding given the interconnected nature of agricultural systems:

Different farm strategies for pest/disease/weed control and soil maintenance (irrigation, fertilization and soil cover) differently influence grape health and development, having direct or indirect effects on the survival and dispersal of yeasts and their vectors. Likewise, canopy management practices such as pruning, training, thinning and leaf removal affect the microclimate at the level of the berries, affecting therefore yeast survival and growth on grape berries.

These practices—pest control, soil management, weeding, pruning, training, thinning, fruit removal, canopy management—are all common practices on coffee farms—as is the heavy application of fungicides to suppress Hemileia vastatrix and other fungii as well as pesticides and fertilizers, all of which would impact the strength and diversity of native populations.

I put the question of koji’s survival and ability to colonize after targeted inoculation to Koichi Higuchi of Higuchi Matsunosuke Shoten Co in Osaka, Japan, a koji manufacturer founded by his family in 1855. Koichi is the seventh generation owner of the family who is deeply connected not only to the traditions and history of koji but also part of a new generation of koji producers exploring new techniques and applications, including coffee. “As far as I know, there is no thesis related to this issue so far,” he told me, referring to the threat of koji inoculations colonizing ground water, soil or outcompeting local microflora. First, he notes, “Most koji fermentations require sterilization prior to inoculation of koji starter.” Further, “we think there is no risk koji starter could work as the trigger of pollution mainly because A. oryzae exists in the air all over the world. Koji fermented food productions are done not only in Asian countries but also the American continents and European countries for a long time.”  He further argues that historically koji has been shown to be safe globally and that “using microorganisms that have been proven to be genetically safe is fundamental to the production of fermented foods.”

As humans migrated around the world, bringing their culinary and agricultural traditions with them, koji, whose domestication predates coffee cultivation or consumption in the modern sense, followed too—from Asia and Europe to the New World, including Latin America. While emigration from Japan to the Western Hemisphere began in the 17th century, following Brazil’s abolition of slavery, a wave of Japanese immigrants arrived in the early 20th century to work in its coffee fields—bringing with them their traditional foods including miso, sake and soy sauce to the Amazon. Today, across the coffeelands of Latin America from Mexico to Brazil, it’s possible to find shio koji in the grocery store—or soy sauce made from Kikkoman’s factory in Brazil (or other facilities using koji in the U.S. and Latin America). And though koji was in use in food manufacturing in the United States by 1924, earlier having been used in distilling by Dr. J. Takamine in Peoria in 1891 (leading to one of the more interesting stories about the political ramifications of koji as a food technology) who also established a koji manufacturing program in New Jersey by 1894, it wasn’t until February 1997 that the United States Environmental Protection Agency released guidance in its Final Risk Assessment of Aspergillus oryzae about the use and safety of koji. In its report, which remains the industry’s guidance for regulation of the use of koji, the EPA examined the question of koji’s abilty to survive in nature and disrupt native microflora would also arise from its introduction in new places:

There is a basic question as to the likelihood that A. oryzae exists in the wild. Some researchers (Klich, 1994) indicate that A. oryzae can be isolated in nature. Other researchers (Kutzman et al., 1986) contend that A. oryzae is a domesticated version of A. flavus, with decreased survival characteristics such as reduced sporulation and the lack of sclerotia. Wicklow (1984) has described the competitive disadvantages of A. oryzae. These observations suggest that this organism is highly adapted to conditions in the laboratory.

Nonaflatoxigenic strains of A. flavus are, indeed, as Koichi states, already widespread in nature—“depending on the agricultural environments tested, 30% and up to 80% of the isolates of A. flavus from a particular region may be nonaflatoxigenic.” And yet, it is A. flavus and not these strains similar to A. oryzae that dominate microbial fermentations: “At this point we can only speculate about the distinction between A. flavus and A. oryzae that has made the latter a commercially useful organism while the former is a nemesis to worldwide agriculture. A. flavus has developed an extraordinary ability among Aspergillus species to colonize plants (Cotty et al., 1994).”

Because of this, producers wishing to culture koji on rice and use it for subsequent generations without ensuring purity do so at great risk and it’s difficult, if not impossible to differentiate between koji and other similar strains of mold that may have colonized the substrate. Differentiation between koji and other molds cannot be performed using a microscope alone nor by most molecular techniques: “Despite signifcant efforts and the use of a variety of techniques, including phenotypic characteristics, molecular approaches, and, most recently, MALDI-TOF, the separation of A. Flavus and A. oryzae is yet to be achieved successfully.” Attempts at morphological identification to prove successful generational reproduction, for example, or the contamination or spread of koji from a coffee fermentation to elsewhere on a farm would fail to distinguish inoculated, cultured koji strains from its close relatives and genetic ancestors like Aspergillus Flavus, a filamentous fungus present everywhere on earth and which, unlike koji, produces aflatoxin. Like Saccharomyces cerevisae, A. flavus is naturally present in spontaneous coffee fermentations. Unlike its domesticated relative koji, however, A. flavus poses risks to health and agriculture.

Koji, as a domesticated species, “seems to to have been selected to exhibit reduced sporulation” which, according to the EPA, “may represent adaptations to the artificial culture conditions of the koji fermentation.” Further, EPA concluded that “survival of vegetative cells during aerosolization is typically limited due to stresses such as shear forces, desiccation, temperature, and UV light exposure.” This fact, plus the absence of aflatoxin production, helps explain why in 4,000 years of use, there remains no evidence that it has modified or destroyed microflora where it’s used. Ultimately, EPA concluded that “the experience of safe commercial use of A. oryzae is extraordinarily well established” with a history dating back several hundred years. (NB: Even Australia, which has the strictest laws for protection of ecosystems and importation of plant and animal material in the world, regards koji starter as safe—not even requiring an inspection upon importation in sealed containers)

The same, says Zack Scott, is true of yeast inoculation, which has been a common practice in wineries across the world for more than 50 years:

I would challenge other voices to actually demonstrate with PCR combined with flow cytomety and phonetic expression to make them demonstrate even the beginning of what they claim. The absence of this data means that they could just as easily be saying that they are happier with fecal coliform (from a bunch of visiting foreigners) from the water supply contamination processing their coffee than commercial strains. This is to say their belief that their local microbiology is pure, unique and static is as dumb as their argument that a commercial strain is dangerous.

If you want to control a coffee fermentation using an inoculation of selected microbes, it’s important to choose the microbe you use based on available infrastructure, desired outcome (whether functional or sensory) and based on the realities of fermenting coffee rather than other material.

While they can be precisely regulated and controlled, coffee fermentations typically happen in open-air environments without more than rudimentary temperature control often with the possibility of exposure to contamination by pests, animals or pollution. And while wine fermentations can occur over several weeks, coffee fermentations are rapid, typically anywhere from 8 to 40 hours depending on the specifics of the protocol and ambient temperature. Unlike coffee mucilage, wine juice is rich in nutrients and sugar to feed microbes—and is not diluted to the extent that many coffee fermentations are. And while grape juice itself is the fermentation medium, in coffee fermentations, we’re fermenting the mucilage, not the seed—necessitating a different approach.

These restrictions and realities of coffee fermentations inform our choice of inoculations. We need to consider: fermentation duration, availability of nutrients or nitrogen, the turbidity of the fermentation, typical ambient temperatures during the fermentation, the secondary metabolites produced by the strain (in other words, what flavor or aroma precursors it may create), how we intend to pitch or inoculate, and the availability and overall cost of the strain.

When I was selecting a strain of koji for Vergel to use in producing the coffee for Kaapo Paavolainen’s WBC presentation, for example, I focused on the balance of enzymatic activity for each species, its preferred temperature range, and its fermentation kinetics, specifically looking for a strain with a short lag phase (the period in which a microbe is adapting to its environment),  and rapid log phase (when its population grows) to maximize metabolic activity in the short 36 hour duration of the fermentation. While I selected a pure strain of A. oryzae for this purpose, Pranoy Thipaiah chose a different type of koji, A. luchuensis, for his experiments with koji at Kerehaklu Estate in India that I released through Aviary because while it shared the rapid fermentation kinetics of the strain I’d selected, its metabolism tended more toward production of citric acid, helping it to establish a culture as well as enhancing the resulting coffee’s cup profile.

The considerations for selected yeast are similar; a short lag phase, fast log phase, and high production of secondary metabolites—esters, aldehydes and ketones—in the standard range of a coffee fermentation (varies by climate, but often 18-30ºC). I’d also look for strains that can tolerate high turbidity and that have low nitrogen and nutrient requirements. I don’t recommend bread or brewer’s yeast; they tend to die off quickly, producing cheesy or yeasty off-flavors, and the fermentation conditions they’re adapted to are quite dissimilar from coffee fermentations. Many wine strains, however, tend to perform well in coffee fermentations and can enhance a coffee’s sensory character. The popular Lalcafe line of yeasts—which I frequently use—are selected from Lallemand’s catalog of strains collected from wineries around the world then which were robustly tested across continents for their performance in coffee fermentations.

Inoculation can be prohibitively expensive, though, and selecting strains—even if you’re reading the technical documentation—can be confusing or confounding based on the availability of strains locally or depending what cultivars of coffee you’re working with. I’ve put together a short guide chart of strains I’ve used myself or have otherwise evaluated in the hopes of guiding those producers who wish to use yeast inoculation toward higher probabilities of success. In all cases, for new users of this technique, I recommend thoroughly cleaning/scrubbing all coffee contact and fermentation surfaces prior to fermentation, attemperating the dry yeast prior to pitching, using a dosage of 1g per 1,000g of pulped coffee, and using a submerged fermentation to promote uniformity of the mass and ease of measurement and mixture. 

Never mind that coffee was introduced over centuries from Ethiopia through Yemen then Indonesia then the new world carried by colonizers, missionaries and opportunists; never mind that it brought with it pests and fungus and social disease, from transatlantic slavery (in Haiti and Brazil) to oppression of and violence against indigenous peoples (from Mexico and Guatemala to Peru and across Latin America, to Kenya and PNG, and, and, and), to deforestation (Brazil, again, and Ethiopia), to the expanded use of environmentally-destructive and dangerous pesticides and fungicides and synthetic fertilizers. Never mind the damage that this crop and its industry have wrought and the people worldwide that it—with the assistance of World Bank, IMF and the United States government—keeps impoverished. 

This is the status quo that purists who defend coffee’s “tradition” benefit from.

But the damage is done: the movements of humans brought coffee to new lands hundreds of years ago and everything that came with it—and it’s unlikely that those economic activities will cease, even as climate change forces the Coffee Belt to higher elevations and further latitudes from the equator.

For producers, it’s uncommon to farm land perfectly suited for the production of competition-quality coffee. Even if the conditions seem right, unless the land hasn’t been used for agriculture or industry before it’s very likely that soil fertility isn’t what it needs to be. Even if the farm is high enough and the rain holds off long enough during the ripening stages and the temperature stays temperate and there’s little risk of tropical storm or frost, it still doesn’t mean that the trees growing there are the right kind of trees, or that there’s sufficient canopy, or sufficient labor, or sufficient access to finance or market or milling or even roads over which to transport that coffee to export.

For someone with means, they can buy the optimal land with virgin soil and plant it with boutique cultivars and shade, and build a processing station, and wait the five years before real production. 

But for a smallholder farmer or tenant-caretaker, that’s all but impossible: you farm the land you live on and can do little in the way of making improvements that might jeopardize the income from the sale of that coffee. Adding shade, which might protect soil fertility and increase quality, can also decrease yields. Stumping might recover a farm’s productivity, but not for 2-3 years; renovation with new cultivars might take 5, and at significant cost.

Using the a farm’s existing resources and enhancing or differentiating quality through processing can add value to the coffee already grown there; this value can improve a producer’s agency, quality of life, and ability and motivation to reinvest in their livelihood. I’m not just talking about the use of inoculations—but even the addition of panela or tropical fruits to kick-start fermentations (a practice I’ve been aware of long before these coffees were villainized) or the addition of salt at 2-3% in a fermentation tank.

If the industry cosigns the purity pact drawn up by COE and SCAP, we short-circuit this pathway. Competition for quality in the narrowly-defined purist way now exclusively permitted by COE and CQI and SCAP isn’t leveling the playing field for smallholders—it’s tipping the scale against them.

UPDATE 2024-10-30: Shortly after I published this piece, I heard from Rachel Apple, who has extensive experience as a juror and judge for Cup of Excellence competitions. She wanted to express that she believes it is more fair that “like coffees” be evaluated against other similar coffees “in the same way that the most gorgeous ‘traditional’ washed 88 point Honduran on a table next to a pristine yeast inoculated ‘experimental’ 88 point Ethiopian would be really challenging to force-rank fairly to a large swath of cuppers, I’d argue that there can be as much variation within a single producing country if we look at every variety, process, co-ferment, region, etc.” I think that’s a fair point—but pushed back on the draft rules I’d seen that seemed to prohibit all additives from the competition, including in the experimental category. Under those rules, as I described above, yeast and enzymes would be prohibited. Rachel looked into this for me and came back with a somewhat tentative response—that it’s still a work in progress and somewhat of a grey area. COE has in fact allowed yeast inoculation and enzyme treatment into the experimental category—but this is the only category where they might be permitted, as defined and determined by the head judges in upcoming meetings. Salts, fruits, acids, or other additives would still not be permitted in competition in any case. As head judges meet make a final determination, I hope that they read this post and take its thesis to heart. Thank you, Rachel, for your time, efforts and thoughtful remarks.