
California-Grown Coffee Is Becoming the State's Next Gold Mine - danans
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/02/16/585409126/eureka-california-grown-coffee-is-becoming-the-states-next-gold-mine
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reillyse
So stupid. 250 pounds of beans were harvested. That is less than 2 (150lb)
bags of coffee. This is pure novelty.

Just because someone can get a coffee plant to grow coffee in California does
not mean the coffee will be any good. Coffee grows in a lot of places, really
good coffee takes particular terroir to grow really well. E.g. low grown
coffee generally doesn't taste very good and altitude alone isn't the answer.
The combination between altitude, soil, climate(cold at night, hot in the day)
makes the bean develop slowly and generates more flavour. This is not
speculation, this is information that coffee agronomists understand.

So, it's totally ok for somebody to sell expensive coffee as a novelty. What
is disappointing about this article is it extrapolates from a sale of 250 lbs
of beans to a "Gold Mine", implying that other beans grown in California might
be sold at a similar price. They won't be, because they will likely be very
poor quality. With the extremely high costs of production of the coffee, it
likely won't be profitable except as a novelty.

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adadad3442
You didn't read the article carefully enough- the 250 lbs refers to the output
of _one_ specific harvester, not the output from all 30k coffee trees in CA.

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reillyse
Nope. “Last year, the 24-member coffee cooperative harvested 250 pounds of
beans.“

So 24 farmers harvested 250 lbs, all of it bought by the one roaster at $60
/lb. Coffee plants take 18 months before they start producing harvestable
amounts of cherry.

~~~
lostlogin
That’s some crazy expensive coffee. If I buy the most expensive coffee the
importer brings in here is (copy paste) GUATEMALA FINCA EL SOCORRO YELLOW
BOURBON $20.70NZ (which is $15.28 US).

In that sort of price range are some fantastic coffees - I struggle to see how
something 4x more expensive could be that much better. My go to is Ethiopian
Yirgacheffe which is a few dollars cheaper at NZ $17.50.

~~~
reillyse
I shipped that coffee last year, tasted awesome:)

~~~
a012
HN is awesome, even you get in touch with people who deliver your coffee.

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phil21
Why is California so fascinated on agriculture which is extremely water
intensive? Coffee is up there with Almonds as far as I understand the
situation.

~~~
ghshephard
According to
[http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Report14.pdf](http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Report14.pdf)
it requires 140 liters of water to produce 1 cup of coffee. The most expensive
source of water that I can think of, from a reverse-osmosis desalinization
plant, costs $0.40/1000 liters in Singapore (Hyflux, 20 year contract), - so
that cup of coffee has a ceiling of about $0.08/to produce in terms of the
cost of it's water content.

The question should never be "how much water to produce this" \- but, "what
value are we getting from the water" \- if you are able to sell a cup of
coffee for $5, then it's probably a good investment of that $0.08.

~~~
gradys
This depends on water being well-priced in California (i.e. not subsidized,
reflective of opportunity costs and externalities). I don't know much about
water in CA, but is this the case?

~~~
jgowdy
No it is not. The water districts are extremely powerful, and the biggest
usage districts are held by agricultural interests. They have staggered
elections to stop water board takeovers and ensure that they can shift water
costs from usage based to per-meter fees. Captive homeowners in agriculture
controlled water districts can end up with $200 a month water bills for a
family of four.

Source: Lived in a water district for 7 years with some of the cheapest water
in the state (sub $3 a unit) yet a water bill for a family of four with fake
grass and small yard of around $180 a month. If we used ZERO water, the bill
would have been about $120 in flat fees. We were subsidizing the massive
avocado groves and other major agricultural producers in the water district.
They brushed off our complaints and the fact that we pointed to neighboring
cities with $40 water bills.

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imbur
Was it $180 per month or $180 per quarter?

~~~
jgowdy
Per month. Very small yard. Fake grass in the back.

~~~
exclusiv
Just watched a documentary on Netflix about water in California which stated
that 80 pct of the water goes subsidized to agriculture which is like 2
percent of the economy. They got into this family, the Resnicks of POM
Wonderful and all the shady moves they made to control public water privately
which caused this wake of issues including what you wrote about where families
either had no water, tainted water or it was crazy expensive. California even
bought back it's own water it invested to store in Kern county at a multiple.
Insane stuff.

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jdhn
>A single cup sold for $18. The coffee sold out within two weeks.

This is mindboggling to me. I don't think I've ever paid more than $5 for a
cup of coffee.

~~~
Canadauni
> Relative to all of the other things we're willing to spend $18 on — like a
> glass of wine or small-batch bourbon — investing in the memorable flavor
> experience of a great cup of coffee is worth it.

This quote further in the article captures the reason why someone might spend
more. Producing good coffee is actually more expensive than the market would
lead you to believe. For some people drinking good coffee is exactly like
experiencing a fine wine.

~~~
IntronExon
Given what I’ve learned about fraud in the wine world, the nature of
individual taste perception, and the inflated value of wine... I’m sure it is
entirely similar.

Useful references:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_fraud](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_fraud)

~~~
Canadauni
In contrast coffee in general is vastly underpriced. In a shop you are lonely
going to pay a premium but beans are generally produced by an underpaid labour
market that allows for coffee to maintain such a low value.

~~~
IntronExon
So, it’s like most clothing, and consumer electronics, jewelry, and so on?

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inamberclad
So, what does it taste like?

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scruple
I didn't like it. It lacked any sort of body or coffee taste. It had a taste
as if it was the lightest blonde roast that I'd ever had, but it was supposed
to be a medium roast, IIRC. And I love light roasts; My go-to daily
consumption is a blonde roast from a local roaster. I couldn't tell you
exactly when I had it, I left Santa Barbara a few years ago.

~~~
Canadauni
It is possible that it was poorly made. Light roasts are fully capable to meet
or exceed the body or "strength" of a dark roast. That being said it was
probably the coffee not having the most optimal growing conditions leading to
an empty tasting cup.

~~~
petecox
It's a relatively new market so its possible flavours will evolve as farmers
and roasters mature their experiences with the product. And I would expect the
price to level out once the novelty of sampling it has passed.

But yes, living in the self-appointed 'coffee-snob' capital of the southern
hemisphere, I do notice that fancy single origin roasts that dazzle the
experts often leave the average man in the street underwhelmed "It's nice,
but..."

~~~
lostlogin
Can I ask where you are? I’d nominate Wellington as somewhere like that - and
by my reckoning it is damn good.

~~~
petecox
Melbourne - I am bemused at hearing a tourism spiel about our "historic" lanes
overflowing with coffee shops, as if it were somehow unique. We do have per
km^2 more tattooed millennials honing their barista skills than most, I guess.

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dis-sys
Seriously? I use a long list of US products on daily basis, most of them are
really good. That being said, American coffee is the only big no go I can
think of.

People need to wake up from their day dream and realise something simple and
plain - many travel to the US with instant coffee packed in their luggage
because American coffee (made or grown in the US) is just !@#$%^.

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SQL2219
Number of the Day: 18 Coffee Trees per Person

[https://www.treehugger.com/green-food/number-of-the-
day-18-c...](https://www.treehugger.com/green-food/number-of-the-
day-18-coffee-trees-per-person.html)

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dang
There was a coffee-in-California discussion last year at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14436704](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14436704).

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bsg75
> Ruskey visited four different Blue Bottle cafes before finding a location
> where California coffee was still available.

The article never said how good the coffee was? That’s an important point in
this context.

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justonepost
What’s truly sad about this is the misappropriation of resources. Why not
donate the money to an efficient charity instead? I wish there was an onerous
tax on this nonsense. This is exactly why high VAT + tax credits to the poor
is the way we should generate our tax base.

