Soon we'll be out of Java Estate and it is unclear for various reasons when we will be able to obtain a new supply of that coffee. This means that Mocha Java Blend will also be gone in the near future as I think Mocha Java Blend ought to be made with coffee that actually comes from Java, even if I could get a comparable flavor with something else. The Java Estate that we are running out of was very hard to come by. We would have purchased more had we been able to, but we could not.
The best Javanese coffees are grown on four large estates owned by the government of Indonesia. There are a few small independent farms, but the coffee they produce usually does not taste as good. Last year, the government of Indonesia decided that the C contract price on which most international coffee trade is based was pathetically low (it still is) and so they would not sell Java coffee. Our suppliers made several bids, eventually asking them to name the price they wanted, but the coffee simply was not for sale.
New crop Java coffees typically come into the United States in July and August, but the availability of coffee from estates we are accustomed to is unclear. Likewise, it is not yet known if an independent farm will surprise us with quality equal to the government controlled coffees. We should know in a few months if we will be able to obtain Java of the quality you expect from us.
Mocha Java Blend is not the only blend we've been using Java coffee in. I decided that as long as I would need to rework these blends, I may as well see if I can make French Roast a little bit better.
Our previous French Roast was our Brazil Prima Qualita roasted to a final bean temperature of 479 degrees in about 19 and a half minutes. I took a look at my cupping records and decided that I might get good results roasting a blend of 75% Timor Maubesse and 25% Sumatra Gayoland to a profile similar to what I was using for the Brazilian French Roast. This tasted good. It was certainly dark enough to call French Roast, but it didn't have quite the character of the Brazilian French Roast. Fortunately, I could tell what was missing and guessed that making a blend 90% if this (which I have called AFRA-1) and 10% Sulawesi Toraja would give me the flavor I was looking for. This tasted just right. I ground a little for espresso and found that with an espresso preparation it was a little bland (as expected) but certainly drinkable (an espresso classification I do not take lightly).
This approach has given me two coffees to work with in place of one for the blends containing French Roast. I could create blends using either French Roast or AFRA-1, depending on which provided the better flavor in the blend. Those reading carefully will have noticed that AFRA-1 is made entirely of Fair Trade Certified coffees. Some of the blends previously had quite a bit of Fair Trade Certified coffee in them, but because they also contained French Roast, which was not Fair Trade Certified, the coffee could not be labeled as Fair Trade.
Big Island Blend and Wilson's House Blend are now made of 100% Fair Trade Certified coffees. These blends exhibit the same flavor as the previous versions of these blends.