In this edition: more great new coffees, including one from NOMAD that's sure to sell out almost instantly & I settle the debate once and for all on how long to rest your coffee.

Not in this edition: the man who won a Nobel Prize but might not know it because he's gone off-grid and is "living his best life."

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Welcome to the sixth edition of the coffee index.

I won't bury the lede: I can't find any examples of NOMAD offering discounts on their coffee. That's why it's pretty sweet that they offered the subscribers of this small-but-mighty newsletter community 10 percent off literally whatever you want — use the code CoffeeIndex10, though I suggest you wait a day (or at least a few hours) to use it. Given what they're soon releasing for sale, this discount has the potential to be pretty valuable. The three coffees mentioned below go on sale October 10 at midnight in Barcelona (6pm EDT on the 9th).

Over the past seven days, 104 new coffees went for sale (among the roasters I track). I added four new roasters to the list. Total coffees tracked to date = 2422. A ton of great Ethiopian coffees went for sale this week; I had to take care not to fill the entire list with them!

1. I'll start with NOMAD. The three coffees they've been hyping for a couple of weeks now are indeed special. Check out the washed and natural geshas from Finca Hartmann, but this is the real one for me — a eugenioides variety from the only farm in the world that grows it. If you're not familiar, coffea eugenioides is a variety that boasts incredible sweetness, near zero bitterness and is naturally low in caffeine. It's also exceedingly expensive to grow. This year's harvest yielded just 210 kilograms of coffee cherries, and only 24kg of green coffee (total, for all roasters, not just NOMAD). It's said to be a "parent" to every arabica variety we drink today. I've never had one, but I've been told it barely tastes like coffee as I know it; I've been told to film my reaction to my first sip. Anyway, here is NOMAD's eugenioides — a natural processed gem from Finca Inmaculada. You can expect it to sell out quickly as only 15-20 bags will be for sale. Tasting notes: Powdered sugar, papaya, melon.
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2. I love when roasters sell the same coffee processed in different ways. La Cabra has got quite the selection from Mulugeta Muntasha's Dawencho station in the Sidama region of Ethiopia. For several weeks, an anaerobic natural processed coffee has been available. Last Friday, the Danish roaster listed three new lots: an anaerobic honey, a white honey and a red honey. The white honey offering will be the most like a traditional washed coffee, with most of the mucilage removed before the seed is dried. I think a red honey is probably halfway between a washed and a natural coffee. The difference between the anaerobic natural and the anaerobic honey versions? I'll need the experts in the group to weigh in on that one.​
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3. Here's a look at the first Kenyan coffee ever roasted by Special Guests. It's the London-based roaster's 43rd release and it's an SL28/SL34 from the Gura Wetmill, which is a processing station I am not at all familiar with. The AA graded beans look like they fit the bill for a classic Nyeri cup profile. Tasting notes: Black currant, blueberry, red cherry.
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4. I'm hoping to meet Justin Bull on Sunday at the Aeropress event in Brooklyn. Bull won this year's U.S. Brewers Cup Championship (and was world #6) and he also runs Helm in Indianapolis, a shop I visited last April when I was in town producing coverage of the total solar eclipse. Here are two Ethiopian landrace varieties from different washing stations in the Yirgacheffe region — one from Danche and one from Chelbesa. The point, according to Bull, is to show how even within Yirgacheffe, which itself is contained within the larger Sidama region, different microclimates can affect a coffee's final cup profile. Chelbesa tasting notes: Honeysuckle, lemon-lime, apricot, white tea; Danche tasting notes: Jasmine, earl grey, white peach, melon.​
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5. Another Ethiopian coffee? Sure, because when I find a coffee that's just screaming to be made as a Japanese flash brew, I can't help myself. This is H&S's first Ethiopian release of the year and I love how owner Coulter Sunderman describes this double fermented washed offering as a "slightly twisted" take on the classic Ethiopian profile. Maybe I'll do a whole feature on coffees that would rip as flash brews — I could drink iced coffee all winter. Tasting notes: Sun tea, peach, yuzu.​
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6. I'm not sure how I discovered Somewhere Coffee, which roasts just outside of Edmonton, because I've never been to Edmonton. Jeremy Godbout and his wife Amanda seem to have a good thing going. They started Somewhere in January after getting into coffee 10 years ago. When you check out this natural processed red bourbon from Nyamasheke, you'll see that they list the seven farmers who gather their coffee cherries and travel by boat to the Ngoma washing station to have it processed. Jeremy says he relies on importers to share the names of the farmers who produce the lots he buys, but he "loves showing as much as I possibly can." I love it too. He's offering 15 percent off this and his other coffees — the code is TheIndex15. Tasting notes: Black cherry, hibiscus, dark chocolate.

When I got into coffee, one of the first things I learned was that if the bag didn't have a roast date on it, it was not serious coffee. Which I took to mean that coffee would be at its peak if I made it as soon after it was roasted as I possibly could. This was also at the beginning of the pandemic, and I was binge-watching coffee influencer videos of V60s with these massive blooms, bubbling up, up and away – CO₂ exploding out of a bed of the freshest coffee anyone had ever set their eyes upon.

And then I learned that was basically bullshit. I mean, the blooms are cool, but there are many ways to fuck up a perfectly well-roasted coffee, and apparently just trying to make a cup of it before it’s ready is one of them. Patience, they said, allow your coffee to...rest.

So now I buy my coffee a month in advance and let it sit in a drawer as I enjoy the coffee that has relaxed, off-gassed, rested. If only I could be so lucky.

But how long are we supposed to wait? I wish I had a list of almost 200 roasters to survey. Hm. In fairness, ChatGPT did some heavy lifting here for me, but I found that (only?) 32 percent of the roasters on my list – almost entirely light, ultra light or nordic style roasters – recommend a specific amount of time to rest their coffee.

And yeah yeah, I understand that it’s different for every coffee, for every roaster. There are a million variables. I just wanted to see if I could find some consensus.

Of the 64 roasters who suggest how long to rest their coffee, here’s how the numbers break down: 13 say one week, 20 say two weeks, 13 say three weeks, 13 say four weeks and five say five weeks or longer.

I converted the weeks to days and did some napkin math. The average is 20.4 days, though I had to exclude Luminous from the equation, since they recommended a rest time of 17-65 days for this now sold out kumquat co-fermented purple caturra. So yeah, do with that what you will.

What I did with it was throw it out the window and watch a nearly four year old James Hoffmann video.

"Honestly, brewing coffee the next day after roasting won’t taste as good as it could, but it won’t taste that bad," he says. "Maybe 20 minutes after roasting – not ideal. But certainly the next day, it’s basically drinkable and enjoyable, but it will get better after 3 or 4 days of good storage."

But that was in 2021 – basically the olden ages of coffee. Ultra light roasts are in now. Some of us are basically drinking green coffee. What does Hoffmann say about that?

"For very light roast, very dense coffees – yes, you might benefit stretching that out to maybe 10 days, in some cases even longer. The taste of coffee that still has a lot of CO2 in it can be almost like forgotten sparkling water, where you have a kind of carbonic acid tang to it and [there’s] an unpleasant sort of sourness."

So there you have it. Rest your coffee from anywhere between one and 65 days. I consider this debate settled now.

Thanks, as always, for reading. If you have an idea for a future newsletter, want to talk coffee, or have any feedback whatsoever — you can reply to this e-mail.

Next week: more new coffee, and the story of how an MBA project turned into a profitable business helping young people produce high-quality coffee and driving down the average age of coffee farmers in Colombia.

Thanks for reading.

Jeff