When you think of California, you immediately think of wine, surfing, and Hollywood. But did you know that California is filled with talented specialty coffee roasters? You can do a caffeine crawl from Napa all the way down to San Diego. Here are some notable ones you should check out, and our favorite beans!

 

1. Verve Coffee Roasters

One of the leaders in the third wave coffee movement, Verve is transforming coffee drinking into an extraordinary daily ritual. The guys at Verve are committed to giving an authentic experience. They have a beautiful new space in Melrose that's worth checking out. Don't miss their Kenya beans, it is fantastic and has a super complex flavor profile from watermelon, peach, and bubblegum.

 

2. Entimos Coffee

Two coffee guys from Portland brought together by good coffee, and a couple years later Entimos Coffee was born. They love what they do and their passion is reflected in every cup. Our favorite from them by far is their Kenya from last season. Top notch cup where you get lots of peach, cranberry, and apple!

 

3. Augie's Coffee Roasters

This little red building house the coolest guys and delicious coffees in SoCal. Augie's love the coffee adventures they have and want to share it with all of us. They are meticulous about their coffees and is all about teaching you to see the hidden glories of each cup. The Guatemala Hunapu is excellent. It is rich, nutty and sweet, almost like you are eating some peanut brittle.

 

4. Holy Schmidt Coffee

This husband and wife team is doing some amazing stuff with coffee. Everything about Holy Schmidt is clean, modern, and beautiful like their website and Instagram feed. Try their Ethiopia Sidamo Natural. It is a blueberry and Fruit Loops bomb in your mouth!

 

5. Insight Coffee Roasters

Sacramento is getting a dose of some great coffee thanks to Insight Coffee Roasters. They are committed to educating people about good beans and work hard to bring the best in their cafes. Their new cafe is in a beautiful space, perfect place to enjoy their comforting and delicious brews.

 

6. Barefoot Coffee Roasters

One of the pioneers of Direct Trade Roasting, the Barefoot team travel to origins a lot to build relationships with the farmers and producers. They hand select the best and most breath-taking coffees they could find to bring back home. Try their Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Kochere. It is juicy and taste like sweet, succulent honeydew and peaches and berries come out when it cools. Yum!

 

7. The Westbean

Located in gorgeous San Diego, The Westbean Coffee Roasters are spreading the coffee love to SoCal with delicious single origins and showing people that black coffee is indeed colorful and complex. Check out their Papua New Guinea beans right now. It has fall spices shining through, nice and chocolatey with a hint of hickory.

 

8. West Coast Roasting

Nate and Melissa were one of the first third wave coffee roasters in Los Angeles. They have been roasting every batch by hand way before all the other third wave roasters popped up. They take pride in the process and are doing some good for the world by donating part of the proceeds to the International Medical Corps. The Tanzania Kanji Lalji Farm they offer is sweet with brown sugar, spices, and stone fruit. It is like you are eating a fresh baked peach or plum pie!

 

9. Four Barrel Coffee

Four Barrel is definitely a favorite and one of the best in California, and they have die-hard, dedicated customers. They take coffee very seriously, from the process of choosing the right beans to roasting. The team's roasting style highlights the best qualities of each bean so that we can enjoy a great cup every time. Go to one of their beautiful cafes and enjoy a cup of Ethiopia Biftu Gudina. Like a nice bouquet of flowers, strawberry and cherry pop tarts, with hints of peach soda. Delicious!

 

10. Portola Coffee Lab

Roaster of the Year 2015, this husband and wife team have been doing some great work from sourcing coffees, building lasting relationships with farmers and handcrafting the beans intricately to serve the very best. What you taste in every cup is the hard work of everyone involved from the farmers to the talented roasting team.

 

11. Ritual Coffee Roasters

Another favorite among coffee enthusiasts, Ritual Coffee Roasters started the coffee revolution in San Francisco. To this day, their careful process is unchanged and seek to continue changing peoples lives through coffee. Don't miss their organic Hama Ethiopia. You'll enjoy a cup filled with floral notes like lilac and jasmine, with hints of white grape.

 

12. Honey Co.

Nestled in beautiful San Luis Obispo, Honey Co. was started by Jon and Sara Peterson. They strive to offer a range of coffees that everyone can love and enjoy. The duo is still involved in every step of the business, from production to roasting and they are really stepping up the coffee game in this quaint town.

 

13. Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters

Wrecking Ball Coffee is quickly becoming San Francisco's most recognizable specialty coffee roaster these days. They have a top notch team and are known for amazing service in their cafe. Visit their space and enjoy a cup of their Guatemala Huehuetenango, one of their most elegant and sophisticated offering.

 

14. Equator Coffee

Equator Coffee & Tea has been around since 1995 and the brainchild of Brooke McDonnell and Helen Russel. Brooke and Helen knew that they had to translate the hard work of the coffee farmers all the way into our cup by striving to roast the best way possible and bring out the great characteristics of each bean. Don't miss their Panama Elida Estate Natural a rich coffee with flavors of plums and brandy. Also check out the elusive La Esmeralda Gesha and Rusty's Hawaiian Natural!

 

15. Temple Coffee

Temple Coffee Roasters is another great one in Sacramento that always has fantastic offerings and high rated coffees. They seek to form a strong coffee community through education and serving consistently great coffees. Step into their cozy modern space and have a cup of their Panama Don Pepe Gesha, it will rock your world!

 

Want to try more coffee?

Angels' Cup is an online coffee tasting club where subscribers get to blindly sample up to 208 different coffees per year, from over 100 top 3rd wave roasters. Small samples sizes mean you get to sample more coffees for less money. Tasting flights start at only $8.99!

Join Angels' Cup Today!

Coffee grows on trees, but it can also grow underneath and around them. Coffee is sometimes labeled as "shade grown" and in order to understand the benefits of shade grown coffee, it is important to review the different ways in which coffee in grown.

Arabica vs Robusta

Coffee is not a uniform crop; there numerous varietals of coffee grown around the world. The main botanical division is between Arabica coffee and Robusta coffee. Robusta coffee can self-pollinate and grows at lower elevations where it can endure hotter temperature and more aggressive sun exposure. All specialty coffee (aka the good stuff) is Arabica coffee, which is insect-pollinated and and grows at higher elevations where it requires milder temperature and less sun exposure.

Finding Balance: Shade vs Sun

Coffee beans are the seeds of the fruit of the coffee tree, known as "cherries." The balance of temperature and sun that yields optimal cherry development differs between different varietals of Arabica coffee. There are some varietals, such as those grown on larger plantations in Brazil and Colombia, that do hold up under full sun. These heartier varietals tend to be some form of hybrid seeds selected for field performance that maximizes use of space. In terms of pure efficiency, shade grown coffee is not an efficient use of space because it initially means less trees per hectare and less harvestable coffee per hectare, although this can change over time. However, coffee grown under shade offers many other benefits, benefits that extend beyond simple yield calculations. Shade grown coffee is categorized as an agroforestry system. Agroforestry is just what it sounds like: agriculture merged with managed forests. Like any other tree, coffee needs sunlight and too much shade can be worse than none at all.

Green, unripe coffee cherries in development.

Brass Tax: Costs vs Benefits

Shade grown coffee does not subscribe to a single model; its cultivation is far more varied than that of full sun coffee. Different trees can be intercropped with coffee to achieve different goals. Some species of trees are nitrogen fixing and make key nutrients readily available in the soil. The falling leaves from these trees provide an additional layer of decomposing matter that acts as one kind of fertilizer. These falling leaves (known in the business as "leaf litter") also act as a preventative layer to keep weeds from growing up between the coffee trees, therefore lessening or even eliminating the need for herbicides, which are expensive and time consuming to apply, in addition to being environmentally detrimental. Shade trees have to be "regulated" or pruned to keep them from entirely blocking out the light that coffee needs to grow. Pruning requires manual labor, which quickly becomes an expensive additional cost for producers, whose highest cost is already the manual labor necessary to harvest coffee cherries by hand. Shade regulation also requires planning and timing, adding another variable layer to farm management. It's tricky, but plenty of producers understand the benefits and are willing to take on the work even if their coffee isn't sold for a premium under a "Shade Grown" label. Each producer practicing agroforestry has a different motivation and therefore a different plan of execution. Reasons for planting coffee as part of a shade system can relate to producers' concerns for soil and environmental health, financial strategizing, or the desire to be stewards of habitats for birds and mammals. Over time, studies have shown that shade systems also increase the yields of coffee trees. Working under agroforestry systems does not produce the immediate results that agrochemical fertilizers deliver, but in the long run shade coffee can offer more cherries per tree and per hectare than its conventional counterparts. Coffee agroforestry is integral to the ways in which today's coffee farming must adapt to changing climates, including rising and erratic temperatures and inconsistent, sporadic rainfall and periods of drought.

Certification: For the Birds

The only organization offering an official seal verifying that coffee is grown as part of a shade system is the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Institute with their Bird Friendly label. The SMBI applies Bird Friendly status to farms already certified organic; organic farms use shade as a tool, as mentioned above, to eliminate the need for herbicides. Bird Friendly shade grown coffee is cultivated in conjunction with the specific species of trees that provide habitats for migrating birds. Not all shade systems offer viable habitats, so Bird Friendly shade grown coffee is only one subsection of coffee agroforestry systems. Rainforest Alliance certification also requires farms to have some sort of shade trees planted with coffee, but it does not require these trees to create specific habitats. Rainforest Alliance looks to the health of the soil and whole ecosystems, and its reason for requiring trees is a much to stabilize soil and protect water sources from runoff as it is to encourage biodiversity of fauna. It is true that any agroforestry system invites more species of birds, animals, and insects than full sun coffee, but this varies depending on the other goals of growing coffee alongside other trees. Some other trees intercropped with coffee include avocado, orange, and banana trees. Fruit trees offer an additional source of income for producers, allowing them to diversify the crops on their land and not be subject to one lone market price that fluctuates wildly. Having multiple crops cultivated together offers harvests at different times of the year and hopefully offsets and major drop in the market price of one crop.

Avocados and coffee on Miguel Badilla's Rainforest Alliance certified farm in Santa Maria de Dota, Tarrazu, Costa Rica, 2012

Avocados, nitrogen fixing trees and coffee on Miguel Badilla's Rainforest Alliance certified farm in Santa Maria de Dota, Tarrazu, Costa Rica, 2012

Hardwood trees are also frequently planted with coffee. These may provide some habitats for birds, but mostly they provide medium and long term financial insurance. Hardwood trees like mahogany, walnut, cedar, and oak take many years to grow, but when they are harvested can be sold for a significant sum. Producers plant hardwood trees as a legacy for their children. Some producers also harvest hardwood on their farms for their own construction of furniture for their homes and farms. Coffee agroforestry is also part of larger carbon sequestration schemes and there are also discussions of ways producers can be paid for the carbon credits their farms generate. Coffee produced with minimal or without agrochemicals can quickly become carbon neutral, since coffee plants are themselves trees and therefore pull carbon from the atmosphere.

Shaded coffee at Finca Monte Claro organic farm in Turrialba, Costa Rica

Real World Experience

Different countries and different regions face different challenges in growing coffee and for some shade coffee is a no-brainer, while for others it is simply not feasible. Shade trees above coffee in places with particularly high moisture content can create a sort of tarp that incubates fungi that destroy coffee leaves. In other places, shade can create the perfect incubator for the microorganism that kills pesky bugs that eat the coffee cherries. Working with coffee agroforestry requires an initial, careful assessment of the conditions of a given farm. Some producers carry this out on their own and others have the benefit of resources provided by agricultural research institutes or national coffee offices. Usually, smaller farmers are the ones who opt to adopt shade and agroforestry models, but larger plantations have also demonstrated success, notably Aquiares Estate in Turrialba, Costa Rica. Turrialba was the first place I visited in my coffee travels during 2012-13. Read more about my observations on coffee, climate, and tropical agriculture at whencoffeespeaks.com and find out how producers themselves describe coffee production in When Coffee Speaks: Stories from and of Latin American Coffeepeople.

Fair trade coffees and direct trade coffees aim to make coffee production a viable livelihood for farmers in the dozens of countries where coffee is grown. Fair trade is not a single, stagnant solution; it is an evolving model (really a set of models) designed to advocate to for people who have, in the past, not been able to sustain themselves by growing coffee. Fair and direct trade work towards financial sustainability for growers, but how can sustainable agriculture help make coffee more fair to the environment? Coffee is a perennial crop, meaning the same coffee tree produces fruit for multiple years. It’s a stretch to think that your morning latte comes from the seeds of little red cherries grown on a leafy tropical plant, but the reality is that coffee does in fact grow on trees. Like any other crop, coffee grows better with fertilizer and requires inputs to protect it from pests and plagues in the forms of insects and fungi. The fertilizers, insecticides, and fungicides used to boost and protect coffee and the herbicides used to control weeds around coffee trees can fall within a wide range of toxicity. Sustainable coffee farming is similar to sustainable agriculture in general in that its goal is to keep coffee trees productive without dousing them with chemicals that will destroy soil and nearby water sources or poison other flora and fauna. Several certifications exist to assure consumers that coffee is produced in ways that account for the long term environmental health of coffee farms.

Rainforest Alliance:

Rainforest is a New York-based non-profit that sets certification standards based on maintaining holistic biodiversity in accordance with the very stringent principles of the Sustainable Agriculture Network. Various auditing agencies check farms of all shapes and sizes against these standards. Rainforest is comprehensive in its concern for individuals, communities, and ecosystems. Rainforest is different from organic because organic certification requires the complete absence of agrochemicals and chemical fertilizers, while Rainforest permits the use of those with low toxicity. However, organic certification does not require that farmers manage their waste products responsibly, whereas Rainforest does. There is no guaranteed premium for Rainforest certified coffee, but there is always some small price differential that makes it to producers. Rainforest Alliance certification not only requires producers to use low toxicity products, plant trees and diverse species of natural barrier plants on the property, ensure protection of water sources, and impeccably manage waste, it requires producers to keep organized documentation of all of the above. Certifications require lots and lots of paperwork. Getting a farm certified can come down to whether or not a single piece of paper has been saved to present to auditors or was lost in the shuffle. Rainforest Alliance has the reputation among Latin American farmers for being the strictest. View Rainforest Alliance standards.

Organic:

Organic coffee production must adhere to mandates dictated by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The requirements to be USDA certified organic are essentially a long list of products that cannot be used. Farmers are required to submit proof of the approved products they have used to fertilize and control pests. The same accredited organizations that audit for Rainforest Alliance certification also often audit for organic. It is common for farms to be dual certified. Usually, if a farm is organic it is not a stretch to have it Rainforest Alliance certified, or vice versa. All certified organic farms must undergo a "transition period" during which no agrochemicals are used to that the soil can return to its "natural" equilibrium. This sort of limbo period can be an additional challenge to producers, who lose money on decreases in production from suddenly loosing profits and who have not yet been certified in order to receive premiums. View USDA Organic standards. There are plenty of farms that are organic or otherwise sustainable that do not earn certifications proving so. This has to do with logistics or money or both. Farms can be intensively managed as organic with chemical-free fertilizers and pest/plague control inputs, or they can be de facto organic because producers don't have the resources to buy expensive inputs. The balance of moisture levels, hours and intensity of sunshine, and initial soil fertility make certain places more apt for organic farming and others near impossible locations for organic production. Read The Ins and Outs of Organics: Demystifying Production.

Bird Friendly:

The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Institute offers Bird Friendly certification to farms that are already certified organic and meet additional regulations to ensure they offer habitats for migratory bird species. View Bird Friendly Standards. All certified coffees have an added layer of oversight. This layer is a thick slice of bureaucracy that requires paperwork, chains of custody, signed documents, and legal seals of approval. Whether all this positively impacts farmers and the environment is the million dollar question. The people who work at these organizations swear it does, and sometimes I’ve seen evidence that supports it. Farmers are of mixed opinion, ranging from passionate supporter to vehement anti-certification. Like everything with coffee, it varies from country to country, mountain to mountain, and farm to farm. In When Coffee Speaks: Stories from and of Latin American Coffeepeople producer Gladys Araque of La Pradera, Antioquia, Colombia describes the pride she feels in producing a clean product in harmony with her surroundings and how she is even prouder that her farm has multiple certifications as external corroboration of the work she and her husband do to produce sound coffee.

“As one becomes more educated, with trainings and workshops, in these steps, you start to see that final product improves. These have been five years where people are saying, “Oh look, you’re certified,” but to us it’s not really about—like I said—“Money, money!” Rather it’s about learning and then being able to apply it to your very own soil, to your very own cafetales, your trees. That’s what’s carried us. Perseverance on one hand and on the other hand because we like it. We like living in nature, and we like doing things well in order to see the positive results. We get to be very proud. People ask us, “How do you do it?” And we’re always thinking, more than anything, about the client. The person who’s going to drink it, whether it’s you or someone else. I have the peace of mind that this coffee is well made. This is fundamental, not thinking about money, rather about whether or not people like it. That they can drink it and say, “What delicious coffee! How did they make this?” And that it’s as natural as possible. That it doesn’t have many chemicals; that’s the idea. We don’t like to use anything that will harm the soil. The most difficult is to get people to understand the importance of taking good care of things. It’s hard for everyone to understand. To get people to understand their own worth and to value what they do is very, very hard. Certifications make very harsh criticisms—unfortunately—some of those were of our own neighbors. Our very own neighbors don’t want to be a part of what we wish everyone could work together towards. This part has been hard. Everything else has been doable, but for people to understand has been hard. We started as one hundred families, and at the end there are seven of us certified. Only seven families out of a hundred. So it’s very sad. We’d like everyone to be a part of the journey that is so wonderful. But, unfortunately, this is what hurts us the most. The biggest success is to feel so satisfied knowing that people who drink our coffee are drinking it with all the guarantees that what we’re doing is as low impact as possible. We’re not lying. It’s true what we’re doing. It’s a coffee that’s created with lots of work and lots of love. We really are working towards something bigger.” – p. 278

Coffees certified as sustainable are not perfect, but they do serve as a way to capture the attitudes of producers like Gladys who dedicate their lives to preserving a balance with nature and share those values with likeminded consumers. Stay tuned for the next post explaining Shade Grown Coffee. All photos by Rachel Northrop. See more at whencoffeespeaks.com.