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How We Made This Year’s Holiday Blend
By Caitlin McCarthy-Garcia
Making a seasonal green coffee blend at the same time each year doesn’t mean we always have the same coffees to work with. Each year brings its own challenges in coffee seasonality, flavor, and shelf life.
After a few years of making the Holiday Blend, we knew two things about this year’s process: as always, we wanted a natural, and for the first time, we wanted a wet-hulled Indonesian coffee.
Finding the Natural Component
Natural processed coffees are key to a blend like this. We want distinguishable red fruit flavors and a creamy body, and a natural is usually where we start.
When I began blend prep in late August and early September, our inventory was surprisingly low in Grade 1 natural Ethiopia arrivals, coffees we can usually count on this time of year.
Looking elsewhere, I pulled samples of natural coffees from the Americas, including a Honduras from the COMSA cooperative and an El Salvador from Finca Santa Leticia. I hoped one would work well in the Ethiopia’s place.
Bringing the Components Together
For the washed component, I selected some of our versatile, fresh staples: Costa Rica Monte Crisol, Guatemala Finca La Providencia Palhu, and Mexico Oaxaca San Jose Zaragoza. I wanted a coffee that could bring the natural and wet-hulled profiles together.
The wet-hulled coffees we tasted included Java Taman Dadar, Sumatra Lintong Parpea, and Flores Bajawa Ngura. These are all zippier, lighter, more aromatic versions of the fudgy wet-hulled Mandhelings many of us imagine.
The idea this year was to get some spicy sweetness into the final blend, adding another category of warming flavor while supporting the brightness and cup structure.
I chose these coffees based on their individual cupping notes. Each contained some version of the flavors I associate with a holiday blend, flavors I also think are among the most approachable for coffee drinkers.
Cupping the Finalists
My colleague Charlie Habegger and I cupped through each coffee, then created four or five blends each. We narrowed those down to our top four and invited our Crown colleagues to cup and vote on their favorites.
We landed on a three-coffee blend of Honduras COMSA natural, washed Guatemala Finca La Providencia Palhu, and wet-hulled Sumatra Lintong Parpea.
The Lintong really comes through, but it doesn’t overwhelm the overall profile. The sweetness and fruit are apparent as well. In the cup, we found cranberry, baking spice, spiced cider, hazelnut, forest floor, and a creamy body.
For roasters, this blend also works nicely roasted together, even though each coffee has a different processing method and bean density.