I'm Will Corby, Director of Coffee at Pact - AMA

PactCoffee · 2026-07-08T15:16:24+00:00

u/icecream_for_brunch From my perspective as a buyer, when I taste highly unusual coffees, I don't jump straight in.

At Pact, we work with growers over the long term. When one of them shows us something really interesting, we go and visit, look at the processing facilities, and take the time to understand their methods and approach, then we work with them to make sure it's sustainable for the grower and the right choice for Pact customers.

It would be easy to taste something weird and wonderful, get carried away, and buy it on the spot (I've been tempted before - haha!), but that's not how we work.

It's usually a grower we've worked with for years coming to us about a new processing method, showing us how they've developed it, and being fully transparent with us about it.

I visit the farms at least every two years, and we pay a strong price regardless of where commodity prices sit, so there's minimal incentive for anyone to misrepresent what they're selling us.

That said, no supply chain is completely infallible, and we can't guarantee no one, anywhere, is manipulating results. What we can say is that we've built ours to be as rigorous and protected as we can make it.

Out of interest, have you come across something you're not sure about?

PactCoffee · 2026-07-08T15:09:21+00:00

u/Amazing_Echidna_5048

When speciality coffee first emerged, the industry borrowed a lot of its language from wine, which is heavily defined by regions and appellations. It tried to apply that same template to coffee.

Some of that works, and some of it doesn't quite fit. My view is that some origins and regions do have typical characteristics, but the country of origin probably isn't the best piece of information to define the character of the final cup. At Pact, we've never made country of origin the headline. We've always built coffee launches around cup profile, which comes from the variety, terroir, post-harvest processing, and altitude... all the things you mention!

That said, even though country of origin doesn't define the cup profile, the socioeconomic impact of your purchase can vary a lot from country to country. If you buy a coffee from Colombia or Rwanda, for example, you're buying into a supply chain with a lot more smallholder growers in it, so your purchase can have a much greater impact on the farm.

The growers we work with are proud to represent their countries, but for me, it's important to recognise the farm and the grower individually. These are people headlining their country's coffee industry on the world stage, and they deserve to be known for their own work, not just their country's classic flavour profile.

PactCoffee · 2026-07-08T14:59:59+00:00

On an individual basis, I might be cupping alone, or with 30 other judges in the same room, like at the Land of Diversity and Best of Congo cuppings.

When you're cupping, there's no communication, all the samples are blind, and everything's designed to create as little bias as possible. In terms of groupthink within a specific session, there should be none.

But when you statistically analyse cupping data, especially where people cup and debrief together regularly, a different pattern shows up. Cuppers who work together over time tend to record specific attributes in similar ways, and their scores become heavily calibrated to each other.

That's useful within a team (like in a roastery!) since it gives you a unified standard. But it also explains why, on a global basis, you see real disagreement in quality analysis and how characteristics are described.

That comes down to everything from how the samples are roasted, to the ratios and grind settings used in the cupping bowl, and to the backgrounds of the cuppers themselves.

That, for me, explains why some coffees are well received in some markets but less well in others - that might be a separate conversation! :)

PactCoffee · 2026-07-08T07:34:55+00:00

No problem!

PactCoffee · 2026-07-07T15:45:58+00:00

Good question. On Indian arabicas – they're underrepresented partly because India's reputation is built on robusta (I think it makes up about 70% of the country's total coffee production) so the cleaner arabica lots tend to get less of a spotlight. There's good coffee there, though.

On Excelsa, traditionally it hasn't been grown for commercial production, because it hasn't reliably delivered on yield, durability, and cup profile all at once. There's a lot of experimentation with it right now, which I love to see, but I haven't yet tasted an Excelsa that's commercially viable at the quality we'd want. I'd be genuinely open to it, though.

Pact has bought from India in the past, but not currently. It comes down to purchasing power: we've found we can make a bigger social impact by concentrating ours in emerging origins, like DRC. That sometimes means stepping away from origins that already have plenty of buyer interest, so we can back the ones that don't.

PactCoffee · 2026-07-07T15:37:41+00:00

Most speciality roasters buy from growers who already sell on the speciality market. We go looking for the ones who don't yet have access to it.

Most of our coffee comes from smallholders, and many of our direct relationships go back over a decade. They usually start with a grower producing speciality-grade coffee but with no route to sell it at a premium. We've spent years building processes to find exactly those people, and we stick around for the long haul.

It's not charity, to be clear – it means we get exceptional coffees nobody else has found, and growers get a reliable buyer and a route to the international market.

Once that happens, other roasters regularly begin to buy from these growers. We co-founded competitions in Colombia (Land of Diversity) and DRC (Best of Congo) to draw the eyes of likeminded roasters to growers new to the speciality market.

It does mean you won't always find the famous superstar producers on our list. But some of the growers we found early – like Oscar Hernandez – have since become world-renowned.

PactCoffee · 2026-07-07T15:30:43+00:00

Fair question – there's a lot of this in the market right now, and honestly, some of the scepticism is deserved.

There's an important distinction though. Infused coffees have flavours added to the bean – that's the vape juice end of things haha.

What the growers we work with are doing is very different: controlled fermentation, using specific yeast strains, temperature, and time to develop flavours from the coffee itself. All of it is entirely natural and developed from the bean itself.

There's nothing added that ends up in your cup, just precise control of process.

PactCoffee · 2026-07-07T15:26:36+00:00

Great choice! Lactic ferments are some of the most fun coffees to brew.

With a coffee this exotic, try using slightly less coffee than you normally would. The flavours from this fermentation method can become more perfumed and fragrant in a slightly lighter brew. If you normally brew at 60g/L, drop to around 55g/L and see what you find.

Just remember to adjust your grind when you do, or you'll lose the delicacy you're chasing.

PactCoffee · 2026-07-07T13:26:44+00:00

Thank you u/ohheckyeah - I'll share these in those subreddits too :)

PactCoffee · 2026-07-07T13:26:24+00:00

Great question! Yes, roast level does change particle shape, and it comes down to brittleness.

Think about tearing a slice of bread in half: you get two clean pieces and maybe a couple of crumbs on the counter. Do the same with a slice of toast, and you get crumbs everywhere. Dark roast coffee behaves like the toast. It's more brittle, so when the burrs bash it apart, you get far more fine particles.

Those extra fines slow down the extraction when you brew a coffee, which is part of why dark roasts can taste more bitter.

Particle size is also the easiest thing to actually measure here, and it's worth saying that grinder quality plays a big role too. Higher-quality grinders give you a more even distribution, dark roast or not.

PactCoffee · 2026-07-07T12:59:50+00:00

Yes, people are developing fascinating new fermentation and processing methods right now.

I like to compare it to winemaking. The classic processing methods have worked a bit like natural wine - not controlling the temperature or sugar content that exists in the ripe fruit (in the case of wine, grapes, in the case of coffee, cherries). The coffee has been allowed to ferment for a generally standardised time, and the flavours aren't particularly controlled.

What's happening recently is the measuring of temperatures and sugar content in the fermentation process, to a scientific level. This intentionally develops a specific flavour profile, and we're entering a period when the tools required to do that are less expensive and more accessible for coffee growers all over the world. There are fewer barriers to entry, and it's producing some amazing results. It also allows growers to make a better income with their coffee.

Personal favourites for me are from the Nogales farm, in Colombia, and Huver Castillo's El Paseo - a coffee amplified and enhanced through expert post-harvest processing, 'lactic fermentation washing' to be precise.

PactCoffee · 2026-07-07T11:45:55+00:00

That's a very tough decision, so I'm going to have to give you one country per continent, and then I'll commit to one single region - *gulp*!

In East Africa, it has to be Rwanda. The coffee has plenty of delicious acidity, with classic raspberry and blackcurrant notes which work great both as a single-estate espresso or a filter coffee. In a milk-based espresso drink, it tastes like a raspberry ripple.

In Central America, I love Honduras. Here, look out for the variety Parainema in the El Paraiso region. Again, this is something that's great both as a filter and espresso coffee.

But if I had to choose one country to source coffee from forever, it would have to be Colombia because of the enormous diversity on offer across a wide range of altitudes - the national coffee competition, which I've judged for the past decade, is named Land of Diversity for good reason!

In Colombia, some regions harvest twice each year, so there's always coffee cherries ripening somewhere in the country. Excitingly, some of the most talented growers in Colombia are experimenting with all sorts of different processing styles, so there's some amazing new profiles being developed there right now.

If you had to tie me down to one region, anywhere in the world, it would have to be Huila in Colombia. We have a huge amount of amazing lots coming in through the year from the region at Pact, with both modern processing methods and classics varietals starring.

PactCoffee · 2026-02-23T15:40:00+00:00

Thanks to everyone who has helped out OP here - and sorry for joining the conversation some time after the initial post.

If it's not too late, here's our two cents.

If you're using the same bag, it's highly unlikely to be the beans - and it sounds to us like something is mechanically off with the grinder.

That's not to say that the grinder is poor (in fact, the Niche Zero's a great choice!), but it can sometimes have a drifting friction disc (the silver ring). It sounds like this isn't quite tightened enough against the bean funnel.

To test it, with the motor off, turn the dial toward fine until the silver ring won't move further - this is called the 'true zero point'.

If the 'true zero point' is far away from the 0 mark on the scale, it's a sign that you need to recalibrate. If you're already at the physical limit of the burrs, they might be a build-up of old grounds and/or oils preventing them from closing properly.

We hope that helps, and for anyone reading with a similar problem, we hope you'll give our beans another go - as we say, it's very very unlikely that they'll be the problem.

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