Every Coffee Company Thinks It’s the Only One That’s Ethical and Cares About You
This article has been read and approved by my girlfriend.
Pictured: Generosity
Lately I’ve been really enjoying my coffee. I purchased the above dripper around a year ago and it’s been a companion, of sorts, albeit a less pretty one than it was when I originally got it. The water-tank has oxidized and turned yellow due to the iron in our well water, or something. We need a new filter I guess. I don’t know anything about water distribution technology.
Anyway, I’ve been enjoying all kinds of coffees because I went on Amazon and made the mistake of running a search for “sampler,” which resulted in 400 pages of candy, pastries, teas, jams, jellies, preserves, pickles, chutney, chips, licorice and sodas, all put into sampler packages and sold at slightly-too-high prices, but how can I resist Mrs. Bridges’s adorable jute bag filled to the top with cute little mini-jars of preserves?
Well, I’ll be able to resist in the future, because every marmalade tasted horribly bitter, and the ginger preserve had the misfortune of tasting like ginger.
Not pictured: Tasty marmalade.
To be fair, the Strawberry with Champagne and Blackcurrant & Blueberry tasted exactly like you’d hope.
Anyway, they also have whole-bean coffees, and I’ve got a grinder, which made me think that it was a sign. I also enjoy trying new flavors of just about anything edible, so I started adding coffees to my wish-list. I noticed, upon reading about thirty or so different brands, that most coffee companies had the same marketing angle: We love you more than your own family and we’ll pay a poor bean farmer a fair wage to prove it.
Personally, I can’t resist professionally photographed foreigners holding handfuls of coffee cherries, so these advertisements always work on me.
I’m sold.
Of course that wasn’t the only marketing angle. There was also the We won’t poison you with substandard swill like those other murdering crooks, but if I try to cover everything we’ll be here all day. So let’s just do a run-down of some popular ones, most of which have some level of lionizing of themselves while tacitly demonizing other coffee brands.
With that segue, let’s talk about our first coffee purveyor, who fancy themselves as miracle-workers and ass-kickers, two things in which Jesus Himself also proved proficient.
Kicking Horse Coffee - Resurrection
Prescribed for: Tiredness, appetite suppression, recovery from mortal injury.
While most companies are content to sell themselves on their proper sourcing of beans and the fair prices they purchase them at, Kicking Horse has decided to forego that kind of limp-wristed shilling in favor of expounding on the fabled salubrious effects of their coffee, presumably due to the high caffeine content, which we all know to be healthful.
Maybe I’ve started too loftily with this particular brand, because you can’t go too far up from “brings people back from the brink of death,” but no one could ever accuse me of burying the lead.
Interestingly, there’s no mention of ethical bean sourcing, although the Amazon article does mention that the beans were grown in Canada, so maybe that explains it; nor, incidentally, is there any mention of other companies, implicit or otherwise. Healing and kindness. Truly a Godly bean-roasting company, humility notwithstanding.
Backyard Beans - Environmental Heroes
Backyard Beans, because growing them anywhere else is akin to murder.
There’s no picture of the back of the bag on the Amazon listing, but they do have a lengthy, self-aggrandizing description, so let’s take that one at a time.
AN ORIENTAL MARVEL: The Sumatra, Ketiara by Backyard Beans uses an exclusive blend of premium Sumatra coffee beans that are dark roasted to bolster natural coffee flavors; Full-bodied coffee with a touch of bittersweet chocolaty aftertaste
Of course, no one has ever “blended”—a fanciful word that means “thrown multiple into the same pot” in common tongue; there’s no magical techniques happening here—these particular beans together, and let’s not concern ourselves with whether there may be a good reason for that. Backyard Beans has us covered. Not only do you get more than one bean variety at once,but it’s “dark roasted to bolster natural coffee flavors,” even though the longer you roast it the less “natural” the flavor is.
Have you ever heard someone say that bread is toasted to “bring out the natural bread flavors”? No? That’s no surprise, since when you toast or roast something, you're creating a chemical reaction, called a Maillard Reaction which I definitely didn’t just have to research so that I could seem like a pretentious pedant, and this is not something that occurs in nature, unless, I suppose, something gets struck by lightning.
Also, I’ve had a dozen different coffees now, and I never notice a “chocolate” flavor. Oh, speaking of which, can I just digress momentarily here to discuss something else?
Synesthesia Flavor Descriptors Are Balderdash
Trust me.
Look at this. It’s three maple syrups in three different shades. Light, medium and dark. Boy, I wonder how these taste! but I guess I don’t need to suppose, because Butternut Mountain Farm, the Vermont Company has me covered. There is a description of each flavor (and color, for some reason; perhaps for the colorblind shopper) all in the delectable synesthesia style.
For those of you who don’t know, here’s the dictionary definition of synesthesia:
Not as helpful as I’d hoped.
In literary terms, it is when you refer to one sense by the use of another. For instance, I might describe a stabbing pain as “sharp” or “high-pitched,” both utilizing the sense of sound; meanwhile, a dull object colliding with one’s head might be described as “low-pitched” or “dull.”
So that in mind, check the image above of the syrups again. Notice the descriptions. The lighter color is referred to as “delicate,” the medium as “rich,” and the dark, my favorite, as “robust.”
They’re clearly basing the tastes on the colors!
A far more valuable description would be 1) How sweet it is, 2) how viscous it is, 3) how strong the syrup flavor is in contrast to the sweetness, and 4) the aftertaste, both in flavor and strength. Instead, we get a virtually useless color-based description. How ridiculous!
Returning to the Backyard. . . .
The next couple things in the Amazon listing—responsibly sourced and made in small batches—are unassailable. The customer needs to know if a company is fair-trade, and presumably if they’re making their beans in small batches, more attention can be given to each batch to ensure there are no dead beans (rotten/broken) and that there’s a consistent roast (no under- or over-baked beans).
To the next point, however, I cannot be as lenient:
A DELICATE BALANCE: Backyard Beans Roast Coffee Beans expertly strike a delicate balance between the nuanced flavors, the rich color & the heady, inviting aroma to give you a pitch-perfect coffee experience with every brew
A “pitch-perfect” (there’s that synesthesia again!) experience “with every brew”?
Well, you presumptuous sack, isn’t that reliant upon me?
Buddha Beans - The Only Coffee With Flavor
Caffeine with an additional helping of religious enlightenment—either that or a watered-down, superficial veneer of philosophical tenets that have nothing to do with the product being sold; but maybe, like coffee, I’m just being bitter.
This time the back of the bag is shown, but it’s the Amazon description that has all the juicy intrigue.
NOT FLAVORED COFFEE: But like fine wine each variety of our specialty coffee has unique notes of flavor | Our Ethiopian coffee has notes of Caramel, Green Tea, Jasmine & Lemon | Low Acid coffee
On the one hand, I’m tempted to commend them for not flavoring their coffee, but then I recall that only villains and layabouts drink flavored coffee,and it is therefore reasonable to assume that only villains and layabouts make flavored coffee as well. I refuse to praise anyone for making the trivial decision to not be evil.
I don’t, however, think they brought up the fact that they don’t flavor their coffee as a way of congratulating themselves, but rather so that they can say their coffee has flavor anyway.
What kind of foolishness is that? Every coffee has flavor, every bag proclaiming the “nutty finish” or the “hint of fruit,” none of which have I ever noticed, incidentally. Well, maybe in a good medium roast I get a kind of sweet nutty sensation, I’ll give ‘em that, but don’t be pretending there’s a “dark chocolate richness.”
And don’t get me started on the “superior” thing. Superior to whom? Other dark roasts? The other coffees in your lineup? Every other coffee brand? Isn’t Buddha supposed to be humble? I don’t even think this is honest, much less showing any kind of humility. Screw you, Buddha! I hope I never have to talk about deity-related coffee again.
Pantheon Roasters - Oh, Come On!
Pantheon - Many gods, but only one bean variety.
Where do I begin, here? with the ostentatious, gilded packaging? the “gold standard” proclamation that no one would bother verifying anyway?
Oh, I know! “Single origin.”
To the uninitiated, this is a fancy label that coffee roasters give themselves that sounds like some kind of environmental benefit, but it really just means “not a blend,” which means, “there’s only one bean variety in this coffee.”
That’s it. It’s just a flavor thing, which is completely preferential and has nothing to do with fair trade, ethics or even quality. It’s about as meaningful as a chocolate bar noting that it has peanut-butter filling or is a certain percentage of “dark,” which incidentally is another misleading statement. Dark chocolate is just normal chocolate, but it doesn’t have milk and therefore is objectively worse.
I don’t have a problem with a company saying that they only use one type of bean, but this “single source” phrasing is, in my opinion, deliberate. It sounds like some kind of ethical achievement, but it’s about flavor, but most people probably don’t know that and they’re gonna be guilted into buying the product over others.
I don’t care how many gods are in your coffee bag, it’s misleading codswallop!
Wrapping Up
So there you go. Coffee companies have a litany of moral standards that ensure you, the drinker, are not only getting the most superior flavor—regardless of which company you go with—but also that you’re going to make it to heaven, or if God isn’t real (because let’s be honest, it’s probably atheists who are most into the specifics of artisanal coffees; we southern Christians just want it blacker than black and strong enough to get us through a day of honest work) at least you’ll feel good about yourself as you slip into eternal nothingness.
How’s that for an uplifting denouement?
