A coferment of coffee made with wine yeast and blackberries available at Modcup | Photo courtesy of Modcup
What if producers could take pretty good coffee and turn it into something distinctive, allowing farmers to make more money while turning customers on to unique flavors, all without adding any calories?
Welcome to the world of coferments, one of the hottest trends in specialty coffee.
“If you told someone 30 years ago that you could naturally make a coffee taste like passion fruit, or strawberries or blackberries, you would look at them like they were crazy, right? ” said Russell Bruguiere, cofounder of Kos Coffee, a roastery and coffeehouse in Maitland, Florida., that offers a wide variety of coferments.
“Through really progressive farmers that are highly experimental, they’ve been able to create fascinating coffees for consumers to taste and enjoy.”
Some of the coffees have pronounced peach flavors, or strawberry, or jasmine, sometimes accentuating the existing characteristics of the beans and sometimes taking them in a different direction.
Coffee producers began developing the process in Colombia around 10 years ago, when they began experimenting with anaerobic fermentation, the oxygen-free process also used for making beer and wine. They started adding wine yeasts to the coffee.
Soon they began adding other fermentable ingredients, such as fruits, herbs, and spices. Compounds produced during that process influenced the flavor of the beans before they’re dried and roasted.
The results were coffees with new, distinctive flavors.
“It really shows us how a farmer can manipulate the taste of coffee and how far we can take coffee using a natural method,” Bruguiere said.
That’s in contrast to conventionally flavored coffees, when flavors like hazelnut and vanilla, usually from manufactured oils, are sprayed onto the beans after roasting.
Cofermenting generally happens near where the coffees are grown, because processing quickly after harvesting ensures the coffee’s quality. As a result, more of the value is added in those producing countries, providing more benefit to the farmers.
Bruguiere said it also means that farmers can take coffees that would normally not sell at a premium, such as a Caturra — a high-yield coffee that’s fine but not particularly special — and potentially triple its price.
And the flavors are not subtle — coffee fermented with green apples tastes like green apples, those processed with peaches taste like peaches.
“I’m really digging the strawberry coferment we have right now,” Bruguiere said. “A couple of years ago we had a Mojito coferment that was extremely popular and really beautiful as well. The farmer used lime and mint leaves to coferment. It was gorgeous.”
Bruguiere tends to roast his coferments lightly and serve them black, often as a pour-over, to allow customers to fully appreciate the nuances of the beans, but other operators take different approaches.
Justin Wilde, head roaster of Modcup, a roaster with cafes in Northern New Jersey, likes to blend coferments with other coffees.
“Coferments are highly expressive, which is why we’re interested in them in the first place, but on their own they’re super-intense,” Wilde said.
“I found that we really like these coffees on the cupping table [where coffees are tasted and evaluated], but when you sit down and drink an entire cup of it, it’s just too much, for me at least.
“So we use them to draw out the notes that are present in other coffees.”
For example, Wilde might blend a peach coferment with a washed Ethiopian coffee that has floral notes that will be augmented by the peach.
“It doesn’t quite taste exactly like a peach from the supermarket, but it’s very reminiscent of peach candy or peach skin,” Wilde said. “And when you blend the coferment with other coffees it adds to the complexity of that coffee.”
Coferments can also be useful in coffee education, Wilde said, explaining that people with palates that aren’t trained to taste coffee can feel intimidated when sitting with experts who detect elements of stone fruit, lavender, or bergamot, while novices just taste … coffee.
“It really helps to have a reference point when they try a peach coferment and it’s just undeniable peach — like Peach Snapple or a peach ring — all really accessible flavor profiles.”
And they’re fun.
“They are really cool tools for expanding your menu and making seasonal drinks super-fun,” said Wilde, who will use fruit-based coferments in the summer and then switch to ones with cardamom or cinnamon for the winter.
Wilde has also featured lemon grass, blueberry, grape, and mango coferments, as well as one made with beer yeast that tasted like Earl Grey tea.
And though they generally sell at around a 40% premium in coffeehouses — but it varies considerably — they don’t come across as pretentious.
“If I pull a shot of a strawberry coferment and mix it with milk, it tastes like Strawberry Quik,” Wilde said.
And they’re good for you, which appeals to Josh Blumberg, who founded New York Coffee Club a year ago, setting up “coffee experiences” for corporate events, or popups often in partnership with wellness companies or yoga or pilates studios. They’re engaging events that allow people to drink together without alcohol, and he frequently serves coferments.
Partly because, as Wilde said, they’re fun, but also because they’re “a really great way to get a lot of flavor without dealing with syrups or creamers or whatnot,” Blumberg said. “You’re adding zero calories.”
He said his guests who drink coferments are an interesting mix.
“You get people who really love coffee and are interested in the science of it and expanding the coffee area of their mind — kind of like me. But you also get people who like coffee, but they’re not super deep into it. They also like teas and ades — lemonades, limeades — and smoothies. Coferments, I think, are an interesting way to bring them back into coffee.”
Most of his attendees, as with most American coffee drinkers, prefer cappuccinos and lattes, and Blumberg argues that, unlike conventional coffees, the coferments can stand up to the dairy and sugar and their flavors still come through.
Mr. Espresso, a roaster based in Oakland, California, that mostly supplies foodservice, introduced its first coferment in May: a Sumatran semi-washed Typica varietal cofermented with powdered jasmine flower and yeast.
“We liked it because it’s not a super fruit-forward coferment,” said John Di Ruocca, Mr. Espresso’s vice president of coffee. “A lot of the ones I’d tried come off as very one-dimensional, but in this one the jasmine complemented the Sumatra coffee, which is a more savory coffee, usually with flavors of forest floor and herbal notes, and we thought the jasmine was an interesting complement to that.”
Apparently his customers liked it too, because it sold out before the end of July.
But not everyone’s on-board with coferments. Some roasters disagree with Bruguiere’s assertion that it’s natural and instead argue that it covers up coffee’s natural flavors and diminish the expression of its terroir.
“Coffee is extremely subjective,” Bruguiere said. “And I’m a big believer that the best coffee is the coffee you like, and there are a lot of coffee purists out there who traditionally like very clean, washed coffees.
“But I love coferments not only because I like the way they taste but because the farmer can charge more money for the coffee, which is equally important to me.”
Since coferments are trendy among independent roasters now, Bruguiere can get more money for them too.
“I would tell you that cofermentation right now is very similar to what we saw 10 years ago in the beer industry, when everybody was drinking IPAs and sour beers, right? No one wanted to drink Pilsner.
“We’re having the same kind of boom in the specialty coffee industry where people are really excited about different, cool, funky, unique coffees, and they’re very open to spending more money on those coffees.”
Pilsners have since made a comeback in the beer world, and Bruguiere acknowledged that the current surge in coferments could taper off.
“I mean, it’s a cycle, right?”
