Grower Highlight: FRINJ Coffee
Hey everyone, Derek Opperman here, I’m the Head of Quality Control (and the on-staff Q Grader) at FRINJ. We are the company that pioneered coffee production in California.
FRINJ was founded in 2017, but the story really starts with our late co-founder Jay Ruskey, who planted the first commercial coffee trees at his family farm, Condor Ridge Ranch in Goleta, in 2002. Jay's vision is the foundation of everything we do today. We now have a network of farms stretching from San Luis Obispo down to San Diego, with our HQ and post-harvest processing facility in Ventura.
The 2026 harvest is right around the corner. Some farms in San Diego County are already picking their first cherries. Our harvest runs late May through early November, moving south to north, so things are about to get very busy.
To learn more about FRINJ check out our website and social media.
Most people assume coffee cannot really be grown in California. What did FRINJ learn that proved that assumption wrong? Also, how have your expectations changed over the years as you have perfected the craft of growing California coffee?
The thing we learned that proved the assumption wrong is that you can use high latitude and coastal microclimates to replace high altitude. All of our coffee is grown between 60 and 300 MASL because low elevations at our latitude produce environmental conditions similar to high-elevation farms in the tropics.
High-quality coffee requires a mild climate that doesn't get too hot and doesn't get too cold. It also requires a specific day-to-night temperature fluctuation that slows cherry maturation and builds complexity. In the tropics, you get that by climbing in elevation, since lowlands are too hot and cause fast ripening. We get the same effect at sea level because we're at a much higher latitude. Our coastal Southern California climate produces diurnal temperature fluctuations similar to 1800 MASL in the tropics, and our cherries take around 10 months to mature, comparable to farms at altitude in Panama. We don't grow at altitude in California because the high elevations here would be too cold, and coffee doesn't like to freeze.
As for how our expectations have changed: we are continually surprised by the quality. Early on, the goal was just to prove you could grow drinkable coffee here. Then it became about whether we could grow genuinely good coffee. Now we're producing coffees in conversation with the best origins in the world, and I don't think we've found the upper limit yet.
We're still in the early chapters of understanding California as a coffee origin. Every harvest teaches us something new about what this region is capable of.
For San Diego readers specifically: what makes North County a viable place to grow coffee? How many different San Diego farms are currently being used?
North County benefits from the same factors as the rest of coastal Southern California: a mild climate driven by ocean influence, with warm but not hot days and cool but not freezing nights. What sets it apart is that it still has a rich agricultural history and real working farmland available. Much of coastal Southern California has been repurposed for development, so the places where we can actually expand are limited. North County is one of them.
Eight of our roughly 20 farmjs in the 2025 harvest were in San Diego County, and we expect that number to grow in 2026.
How are you able to get complex flavors out of coffee that is grown at such a low altitude? Is there a particular processing method that helps with this?
We grow at low elevations because we're at a high latitude. The combination, plus our coastal influence, creates environmental conditions similar to high-elevation farms in the tropics. That gives us an extended cherry maturation period, which is where the complexity comes from. There isn't a specific processing method we use to compensate for elevation. Our farms produce excellent cherries on their own.
That said, being a new origin (California coffee was only established in 2002) has shaped how we process. The most characteristic California method, though it's becoming more common elsewhere, is our "yeast washed" or "yeast-inoculated washed" process. It's a variation on the standard washed process with an initial yeast-inoculation stage. We started doing this because our farms and mill, as a young origin, simply lacked the beneficial coffee microbiome that established origins have built up over generations. The result was semi-washed coffees that never fully released their pectin. Commercial coffee yeasts solved that problem.
2025 was a milestone: we were finally able to reintroduce the traditional washed process, producing our Condor Ridge Ranch Traditional Washed Geisha, which we submitted to the Dubai Coffee Auction. That matters because it suggests our farms have matured enough to support the kind of native fermentation that defines coffee at the world's best origins. There are real but subtle flavor differences between the two processes, and we're glad to be in a position to offer both.
Given how new California coffee is as an origin, are you running any side-by-side trials with the same genetics across different regions or microclimates to study terroir? What have you learned so far about how places like San Diego versus Santa Barbara show up in the cup?
The genetic material across our farms is largely the same. It traces back to the seeds that we have acquired over the years, and that Jay planted at Condor back in the day. When we cup coffees from different sites side by side, we're getting a relatively clean look at how process, environment, and farm management affect the cup.
For each day lot we track variety, processing method, fermentation time, dry time, and cup score. Larger farms go block by block, smaller ones do not. Over time, that data has helped us dial in on the post-harvest side.
On the terroir question specifically: it's still early days. With genetically similar material across sites, what we're seeing is that quality differences track more closely to farm-level management (irrigation, fertilization, soil care, pruning) and microclimate than to broad regional identity. We have excellent farms in San Diego and excellent farms in Santa Barbara. There's no clean throughline yet that lets us say "Santa Barbara tastes like this" or "San Diego tastes like that,” and that is a function of the genetic similarity.
The one generalization I'd make is that proximity to the ocean tends to be a positive factor, though too much wind exposure becomes a problem. But even that is complicated, because we have growers doing excellent work further inland, such as at Silent Springs in Moorpark.
Honestly, we're still gathering the data. Ask me again in another five or ten harvests and I'll probably have a much better answer.
What has Mraz Family Farms contributed to the California coffee story, and what makes their Oceanside-grown Geisha special?
Mraz Family Farms has been an important part of the California coffee story so far. Jason’s early advocacy for California coffee has brought a lot of new people into our world who might never have encountered us otherwise. The farm is certified organic and they also grow a range of other exotic fruits, which speaks to the kind of agricultural curiosity and skill that translates well to coffee farming.
Their Geisha has produced some of our most memorable lots over the years. The coffees have a very high sweetness, which is something that you can taste in the cherries themselves.
What are the biggest farming challenges in San Diego County: water, heat, cold snaps, labor, pests, processing, or something else?
All of those things except pests, really. Knock on wood but we do not currently have to deal with rust and coffee borer beetle.
FRINJ coffee is still priced well above what most consumers are used to, often in smaller bag sizes. As production scales and the industry matures, do you see a future where your coffee becomes more accessible both in price and in larger formats (200g+ or beyond)? What needs to happen to get there?
We actually do offer a larger format: our dark roast comes in a 340g bag at a lower (for us) price point. It pulls a great traditional espresso.
Growing coffee in coastal Southern California means paying California prices for land, labor, and water. The truth is that California-grown coffee will probably never be as affordable as conventional origins without some fundamental shift in the economics of California agriculture.
Long term, I think coffee prices in general are going to rise. Domestic drinkers are increasingly following international cues and paying higher prices for rare, exceptional coffees. And beyond that, as the true cost of coffee production becomes more widely understood (the labor at origin, the climate pressure on growing regions, the real economics), I think people will become more receptive to paying what coffee actually costs to produce well.