Black coffee made from instant coffee is understandably horrifying and tastes like ammonia smells, but have you considered fresh coffee? I don’t mean filter coffee, either, the filter paper absorbs all of the tasty coffee oils, leaving only an ashy aftertaste, I’m talking espresso, moka pot, greek / turkish coffee and french press.
Similarly, if you normally find that you hate dark chocolate, perhaps it is because your chocolate is made with slave labour and also not very good.
I am currently enjoying a fine ten year old aged Java. It is very tasty, and I highly recommend.
Isn’t most coffee farmed with child slaves too. I just assume any agricultural crop that originates from the global south has nefarious shit going on. Like coconuts are usually picked with collared monkeys.
Not necessarily. Here in Brazil we have lots of regulations around growing coffee, and there are lots of co-ops with very high yields that have sustainable practices. It’s not all perfect, of course, but it’s our main export and we have mechanisms to ensure proper procedures. But then again, when I buy my coffee, I actively look for that kind of thing, and the ones I buy typically have a QR code or some kind of tag that allows me to track their provenance. It’s good to know the origin of the beans to understand the flavor profile, and to know that it comes from a farm that’s ethical.
I didn’t know that about Brazilian coffee but what you describe makes sense. I think the issue is for most people outside of coffee growing regions is that because we can’t easily buy from the grower, most of our coffee goes through the dirty hands of someone like Nestle and who can tell which beans end up where after that.
That’s true, the bigger the company selling you your coffee, the less likely it is that they’ll make sure that their beans are properly sourced. I suppose that’s true for all economies of scale, and coffee is no different.
This is where I usually get my coffee beans: https://www.latitudescoffees.com.br/ they do a lot (or so they say) to ensure that they’re getting their products from small scale operations, quality over quantity. As I said before, there are plenty of farmers’ co-ops doing lots of great work. Not saying that the Brazilian agricultural industry is nice and ethical - it absolutely isn’t, by and large. I do think there’s lots of folks doing good work out there, though!
Next time you’re shopping for coffee, see if you can find any traceable options! I think that’s slowly becoming a kind of standard.
Global north too!
especially the global north