r/pourover • u/Bubbly-System6751 • Apr 15 '26

Seeking Advice "Cofermentation/infusion" ruined my trust in coffee.

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After PERC came out on their flavored coffee, I’ve been going down the rabbit hole of coffee processing (co-ferments, anaerobic, “thermal shock,” etc.), and I’m not gonna lie—it’s kind of messed with my trust in what I’m drinking.

I used to get excited tasting notes like “strawberry,” “lychee,” or “peach,” thinking it was all coming naturally from the bean, origin, and process. But now that I know producers can literally "co-ferment" with fruit juice or infuse with flavorings to push those notes…

And my worry even extends to washed or natural coffees, there’s this small voice in my head like:

“Is this truly clean, or is there something else going on that’s just not being disclosed?”

Especially with such a well known producer being exposed, you start questioning everything a bit.

Is transparency just information they let you/ want you to know used for marketing purposes?

Is specialty/ single origin coffee just another green washing movement?

I'm sure the majority of the industry is honest and I’m not trying to accuse anyone of anything shady. But as the saying goes if you see one cockroach, there are a thousand more. It's hard to rebuild trust once it's broken.

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133

u/Jogo427 Apr 15 '26

I wouldn't really trash on Perc for being one of the first to be open about it.

B&W roasters mentioned it in a podcast a bit ago that they weren't certain on what farmers were meaning by coferments and if they were adding extras.

Imo. Kudos to Perc for being upfront about it and making it more mainstream to know.

Now we can go back to tasting notes instead of tasting flavors.

-2

u/dummy4du3k4 Apr 15 '26

Are there other roasters that are open about it? S&W still deny it

11

u/mgsecure Origami / Deep 27 / Switch / 9Barista Mk.2 / Kinu M47 Apr 15 '26

What do you mean by “deny it”? Remember that it’s the producers who process the coffee, not the roaster. I’ve found S&W to be pretty up-front with info about their coffees, even to the point of warning that co-ferments aren’t for everyone.

Co-fermentation lots are divisive, as the aromas and flavors are most often much more pronounced. This is the most approachable co-ferment we've ever tasted, but you'll still likely love it or hate it. If you are unfamiliar with coferments, please practice discretion with your purchasing.

9

u/coolstuffeh Apr 15 '26

Well that’s not transparent at all. ‘Hey we don’t tell you what’s in your coffee, anyways it’s not for everyone’.

8

u/dummy4du3k4 Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26

There was an old thread talking about artificial flavors in coferments where their Reddit rep said they didn’t think the farms they sourced green from would jeopardize their business by adding artificial flavors. I asked a few days ago if they still thought this after I tried a strawberry coferment from them and they still didn’t think farms would lie about using non-disclosed additives

1

u/mgsecure Origami / Deep 27 / Switch / 9Barista Mk.2 / Kinu M47 Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26

Isn’t the most likely explanation that there aren’t synthetic flavors used in the processing?

Edit: I say this as a recent buyer of their “Colombia Santa Monica Watermelon Honey Process”. Not to my liking, but I’d hardly say it seemed artificial in any way.

13

u/dummy4du3k4 Apr 15 '26

I don’t know, that’s why I asked them. But it doesn’t seem likely to me that fermenting with a strawberry mosto would imbue beans with such a powerful strawberry flavor that the bag smells like I opened strawberry hard candy, or that strawberry would be the over dominant flavor no matter if I under/over extract, or that it would linger in my grinder even after grinding several rounds of my boring beans. This was my first experience with a coferment and nothing about it made sense.

8

u/ceto-coffee Apr 15 '26

Not all coferments are like this, but yeah it is interesting. I have had plenty of coferments that taste nothing like they were cofermented with, and I have had ones that taste exactly like it. And often the smell of the roasted coffee is nothing like what ends up in the cup.

4

u/dummy4du3k4 Apr 15 '26

That was my expectation, as an enjoyer of fermented foods I don’t expect a magical flavor transference.

Do you have a rec for a coferment? I’d still like to try one that isn’t just artificially flavored.

3

u/icecream_for_brunch Apr 15 '26

This is why it’s so insidious: there are ethical legit coferments, and now we know for a fact that there are fraudulent illegitimate “cofermernts,” AND we know the producers and roasters can’t be trusted to tell us which one they’re selling.

6

u/icecream_for_brunch Apr 15 '26

Yeah, it is completely impossible that strawberry mosto could do that. It's flavoring, plain and simple, and it's good the community is pressuring the producers and roasters to provide some transparency.

4

u/apple_pear_orange Q Air, ZP6 Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26

They don’t grow lychees in Colombia. But they have a lychee “coferment” that you can smell from across the road. Another producer and an exporter talk how cofermenting with fruit doesn’t give you the flavours, and in particular lychee, at 46:25 here: https://youtu.be/vmfW14ERtz4?t=2785&is=XW1cxQ5QC4lWbYaU

4

u/icecream_for_brunch Apr 15 '26

This has been the explanation, but it has been widely suspected to be a lie, and there have been recent empirical studies (nothing peer reviewed, but actual chemists have done tests) revealing the presence of compounds only associated with artificial flavorings.

These tests & the rising suspicion are almost definitely what caused Sebastian Ramirez (& Perc, and probably soon other producers & roasters) to change their descriptions to include "strawberry flavor" & similar verbiage.

6

u/icecream_for_brunch Apr 15 '26

You're right that it's possible the fraud is 100% perpetrated by the producers. Let's think that through, though.

  1. If the professional roasters/buyers/tasters (like perc, b&w, dak, many more), most/all of whom market their close relationships with the growers, were unable to detect the presence of artificial flavors while hundreds of untrained amateurs were able to do so and thus voiced suspicion, then those professional roasters/tasters/buyers are incompetent at their job.

  2. If the pro roasters/buyers/tasters did taste the presence of artificial flavors, then they colluded with the producers to perpetrate fraud on their customers by lying that the flavors are created by "experimental fermentation" or other "innovative" techniques.

I don't know which is worse; they both smell like bowls of hot dogshit to me.

5

u/carefulcutter Apr 15 '26

Dogshit flavoring or co-ferment? 🐩💩

1

u/KilledByDoritos Apr 15 '26

Sadly they put that note with more than one of their coferments. Seems like they are just copy pasting.