TL;DR

Climate pressure is shrinking the land we can grow great arabica on, while more drinkers than ever are learning to taste the difference. Less supply, more demand, higher prices. Furthermore, that pressure will push the industry in three directions: more home roasting, more roastery-level green coffee manipulation, and a ceiling on the co-ferment craze that flips scarcity back toward classically processed coffees. Add a renaming of the processing language by the Coffee Quality Institute, and specialty coffee is heading somewhere that looks a lot more like wine than it does today.

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I want to put something on paper because I think it’s coming and I want to be able to point back at this in a few years and either look clever or look like a fool. Both are fine.

The beans are about to matter more than they ever have. And I think the market is going to rearrange itself around that reality in ways most people aren’t expecting.

The Supply Squeeze Is Already Here

Here’s what I mean. The land we can grow great arabica on is shrinking. Climate change is not a hypothetical for coffee farmers. It’s already changing what grows where and how much of it survives. At the same time, more people than ever are learning to taste the difference between good coffee and ordinary coffee. Less supply. More demand. Prices go up. That’s not complicated.

What gets interesting is what happens next.

Home Roasting Will Trickle Up

You’ll see more people roasting at home. Not a revolution. A trickle. But as the beans become more precious and people become more curious, some of them will want to control the whole process themselves. Same instinct that pushed people toward sourdough and home brewing. Give someone knowledge and access and eventually they want the wheel.

Roasters Will Start Manipulating Green Coffee

I also think roasters will start doing things to green coffee that would make traditional importers uncomfortable. Post-harvest processing, conditioning, re-fermenting, manipulating storage conditions, all happening in the roastery rather than at origin. When green prices climb, roasters have every incentive to add value at their end. I know a couple of coffee businesses that have already experimented with rehydrating green. Nobody’s shouting about it yet. I think it becomes normal within a decade.

What Roastery-Level Co-Fermentation Actually Looks Like

And if you’re wondering what that actually looks like at the roastery level, it’s simpler than you’d think in principle and harder than you’d think in practice. Green coffee arrives dry. Around ten to twelve percent moisture. The biological activity that made fermentation possible at the farm has stopped. So to do anything resembling co-fermentation at a roastery, you’d need to rehydrate the green to wake it back up. Introduce your fruit or yeast or whatever you’re fermenting with. Control the environment in a sealed vessel. Manage the window. And then dry it all back down to safe moisture levels before you roast it.

The infrastructure isn’t that far from what some roasteries already have. Temperature-controlled rooms. Sealed containers. Moisture monitoring. The leap is intentional biological manipulation of the green before it ever touches the roaster, which is a completely different skill set. You’re not a roaster anymore at that point. You’re a processor. And that’s the bit that will make people uncomfortable.

Because the line between what happens at origin and what happens at the roastery starts to blur. And once that line blurs, the questions about transparency and labelling get very real very quickly. If a roaster in London ferments a Colombian green with passionfruit in their basement, is that still a Colombian coffee? Who gets the credit for the flavour? Who gets to call it craft?

I don’t have the answers. But I think the questions are coming whether we’re ready for them or not.

The Co-Ferment Craze Has a Ceiling

But here’s the one that might surprise people and also contradict my sentiment.

The co-ferment craze has a ceiling. Right now, co-fermented lots are the exciting, differentiated, premium-commanding end of the market. And I love what they represent. But innovation cycles are cycles. As more producers learn the techniques and more co-ferments hit the market, the novelty premium erodes. Meanwhile, classically processed coffees, the parchment dried lots where terroir and varietal do all the talking and there’s nowhere to hide, those become rarer at the top end. Harder to produce well. Fewer people bothering when the funky stuff commands faster returns.

So the scarcity flips. And the people with trained palates, the ones who’ve done the work to taste place rather than process, will pay more for the classics precisely because they’re harder to find done brilliantly. It’s a cycle. It always is.

The Microbial Terroir Argument

Now I want to nuance that because I don’t want to sound like I’m writing off co-ferments entirely. I’m not. I was at a cupping in San Francisco recently and some of the processing methods on the table were genuinely fascinating. What struck me wasn’t the novelty. It was the specificity. These coffees tasted the way they did because of where they were grown and processed. Not just the country or the region but the farm itself.

And that’s because of the microbes. This is the part that most people outside the industry don’t hear about and it’s the part that excites me the most. When farmers process coffee at origin, microorganisms drive the fermentation that breaks down the cherry’s mucilage layer. Yeasts, bacteria, fungi. They’re naturally present on the coffee cherry, on the processing equipment, in the water, in the air, in the soil of that specific farm. Every farm has its own microbial fingerprint. It is as unique to that place as the altitude or the soil composition or the rainfall.

Why Every Farm Has Its Own Flavour Fingerprint

When a producer introduces a specific yeast strain or ferments the coffee with fruit, they’re not just adding flavour on top of the coffee. They’re shaping the environment in which those native microbes interact with the sugars and acids in the mucilage. The fermentation produces organic acids, esters, and alcohols that become aromatic precursors, locking into the seed. When you roast that coffee and those precursors go through Maillard reactions and caramelisation, the flavours that emerge are a direct product of that microbial environment. Of that farm. Of that place.

So if roastery-level co-fermentation does take off, every roastery will develop its own microbial character over time. Think of a sourdough bakery whose house starter tastes like nowhere else, or a winery whose cellar carries a microbial signature that shapes every vintage. That’s not a fad. That’s terroir expressed through biology. And that’s here to stay.

But I still believe the cycle holds. Interesting processed coffees won’t disappear. People will still seek them out and pay for them and be excited by them. But the premium will settle. The novelty will wear off as the techniques become more accessible. And as that happens, I think we see a renewed appreciation for classically processed coffees where the variety and the terroir do the heavy lifting and the craft is in restraint rather than intervention.

Sitting the Q Grader: What Changed

Recently I sat the Q grader examination in London. It came immediately after the London Coffee Festival so I thought why not continue the fun. Spend a week on my own education. If I pass I pass. My tongue felt like it was about to fall off. I hadn’t slept well in weeks. And a few days in something shifted. I stopped thinking of it as a nice experience and started thinking I can pass this. I want to pass this. Also, let’s be honest, twenty-plus years in the industry and a fail? I’d have struggled to live that one down. It became a wonderful week dedicated entirely to coffee. And I passed. I had to do a retake on triangulation. But I passed.

And the most surprising thing about the entire experience wasn’t the difficulty. It was the language.

Washed Is Now Parchment Dried

The Coffee Quality Institute, the people who certify Q graders and set the standards for how we talk about coffee professionally, have renamed the processing methods.

• Washed is now parchment dried
• Natural is now cherry dried
• Honey is now mucilage dried

These aren’t fancy rebrandings. They’re descriptions of what is actually happening to the bean. Parchment dried means the fruit has been removed and the bean dries in its parchment shell. Cherry dried means the whole fruit dries intact around the seed. Mucilage dried means the skin comes off but the sticky fruit layer stays on during drying.

That’s it. No confusion. No “honey” that has nothing to do with honey. No “natural” that could mean anything to a consumer walking into a cafe for the first time.

That is standardisation. And it matters because you can’t build a discerning market on confusing language. Wine didn’t get to where it is by calling Pinot Noir “the thin-skinned red one.” Coffee needs a common language that respects both the consumer and the producer. We’re getting one. Slowly. But we’re getting one.

The Sweetness Trend, and Why Bitterness Still Matters

Currently, we’re trending back toward sweetness. Sugary drinks. Flavoured everything. And that’s fine for the mass market. But coffee is bitter. I like the bitterness. I’ve spent two decades learning to love what bitterness can tell you about a cup. And I think there’s a growing number of people, maybe not a majority, maybe never a majority, who feel the same way. Who don’t want their coffee to taste like dessert. Who want it to taste like coffee, grown somewhere specific, by someone who cared, roasted by someone who understood the raw material.

Those people are going to drive the next chapter of this industry. And if I’m wrong, I’ll cop it. But I don’t think I’m wrong.

Where This All Leads

And here’s where it all leads. I think we become a more discerning market. I think people start to prefer a particular variety of coffee the same way they prefer a Pinot over a Shiraz or a Riesling over a Chardonnay. And with that preference comes an understanding of processing. You’ll know you like parchment dried coffees because you like clarity. Or you’ll know you lean toward cherry dried because you want body and fruit. You won’t need someone to explain it. You’ll just know because you’ve paid more attention.

That’s the cycle. Better education leads to better taste leads to better demand leads to better coffee at every level of the chain. Simply better. And hopefully, eventually, that translates to your local cafe. Because if there is one thing I cannot stand it is wasting my coffee units on a shit coffee.

I’ve got a small quota. One, maybe two cups a day. That’s it. And I refuse to fill that quota with something mediocre. I’ve been saying that since the first issue of this newsletter and I’ll keep saying it until it sticks.

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Key Concepts in This Piece

• Parchment dried (washed): The fruit is removed before drying. The bean dries in its parchment shell. Clean, structured cups.
• Cherry dried (natural): The whole fruit dries intact around the seed. Fruity, wine-like cups.
• Mucilage dried (honey): The skin is removed but the sticky fruit layer stays on during drying. Between clarity and sweetness.
• Co-fermentation: Deliberate introduction of fruit, yeast, or specific microbes during processing to shape flavour.
• Terroir: The way place shapes flavour through soil, climate, altitude, and microbial environment.
• Q grader: A coffee professional certified by the Coffee Quality Institute to grade coffee against international standards.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is parchment dried coffee?

Parchment dried is the Coffee Quality Institute’s new term for what used to be called washed coffee. The fruit is removed from the bean before drying, and the coffee dries inside its parchment shell. As a result, parchment dried coffees tend to taste clean and structured, with clear origin character.

What is cherry dried coffee?

Cherry dried is the Coffee Quality Institute’s new term for what used to be called natural processed coffee. The whole fruit dries intact around the seed. Furthermore, cherry dried coffees typically taste fruitier and more wine-like, with the bean absorbing flavours from the surrounding pulp.

What is mucilage dried coffee?

Mucilage dried is the Coffee Quality Institute’s new term for what used to be called honey processed coffee. The skin is removed but the sticky fruit layer (the mucilage) stays on the bean during drying. As a result, mucilage dried coffees sit between parchment dried and cherry dried in flavour, with both clarity and sweetness.

What is co-fermented coffee?

Co-fermented coffee is processed with the deliberate introduction of additional ingredients (fruit, yeast, specific microbes) during fermentation. Furthermore, this shapes the flavour profile by influencing how naturally present microorganisms interact with the sugars and acids in the coffee cherry.

What is terroir in coffee?

Terroir in coffee refers to the way place shapes flavour: the soil, climate, altitude, and the unique microbial environment of a specific farm. Furthermore, every farm has its own microbial fingerprint that influences fermentation and ultimately the flavours that emerge in the cup.

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Related Reading

• Routes Coffee, What Is Specialty Coffee and Why It Matters
• Routes Coffee, What Is Washed Coffee Processing?
• Routes Coffee, What Is Natural Coffee Processing?
• Routes Coffee, What Is Honey Process Coffee?
• Routes Coffee, What Is Anaerobic Coffee Fermentation?
• Routes Coffee, Why Coffee Tastes the Way It Does
• Routes Coffee, Understanding Taste and Sensory Receptors

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Drink Better Coffee with Routes

If you’re thinking about all this in the context of what you drink at home, a Routes Coffee subscription is the easiest way to taste your way through different processing methods and origins. Each bag arrives with detailed tasting notes, so you can develop your palate cup by cup. Furthermore, that one or two cup quota is worth filling with something exceptional.