If you buy coffee from a big name grocery store (yes that includes Costco and Sam's Club), then you may not be aware of some pretty frightening stats.
Those of you who are coffee drinkers have a routine first thing in the morning. Wake up. Grab the red tin or green bag. Two scoops in the drip machine. Drink. Wince. Add sugar and milk. Read social media updates and online news. Two more scoops in the machine. Drink. Wince. Add sugar and milk. Repeat.
Well did you know that this is what big coffee producers are capitalizing on, your routine? And it's even worse for you, the farmers and our environment.
Coffee comes from the fruit of a coffee tree, right? And like all crops, there is a perfect harvest moment in time that makes that coffee taste amazing, much like the palisade peaches we all know and love in Colorado.
Unfortunately big coffee companies are focused on extracting higher profit margins from YOUR coffee routine. So they use what is called "machine harvesting" to pick their coffee. Basically, fields of coffee trees are harvested all at once by these gargantuan gas-guzzling machines.
The result? Most of the coffee that gets picked isn't ripe, which is one reason your cup of coffee ends up tasting so bad. And in other industries (wine for example) that machine harvests other materials other than the specific crop, which falls into the collection bins -- including leaves, bugs, and even dead birds.
Even worse, machine harvesting steals jobs away from farmers across the world and can also be bad for the environment.
After harvest, and in an effort to mask all the short-cuts taken, most coffee chains over-roast their beans. Over-roasting or flash roasting burns out all of the real flavors and leaves it tasting like charcoal, bitter and burnt. Sound familiar?
Big coffee companies will try to spin this in marketing as BOLD or FULL-BODIED, but in reality it's just really burnt and they're banking on the consumer not being able to tell the difference.
High Altitude Coffee Roaster only roasts coffee from farmers that actually hand pick their coffee because at any one time in the life of a coffee plant there will be flower, green beans, ripe cherry beans and old yellow over-ripe beans. We are a specialty coffee roaster and pride ourselves on roasting every 2lb batch with attention to the changes of the roast itself.
Elevate your coffee experience and taste all the nuances specialty coffee has to offer in your next morning cup!
