[Jamin roasting on our Jabez Burns sample roaster]

Last week we gathered everyone we could find around the office and forced them to drink espresso until they were sick and delirious. With us were our friends from Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza, Marcos and Felipe Croce, who grew and processed some of the coffee we'd be pulling. We roasted five of our current Brazil offerings (including many from FAF) to a medium espresso roast to evaluate them as single origin espressos and to explore their potential as possible components of a blend. We pulled 1 1/2 ounce shots for all coffees using 18 g of coffee in a double-basket between 25-29 seconds at 202 degrees. We tried them all in milk, but have only included notes for the straight shots. Here is what we found:

#1734 Brazil Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza Lot 11 Pulped Natural Hamilton and Celso Famlies
This was a powerhouse coffee on the cupping table, but we wanted to see how it would perform when prepared as espresso. This is a coffee we’re excited to watch develop and improve in subsequent harvests. We found it to be complex and sweet, with tropical fruit notes, pineapple, cherry, chocolate, sweet tobacco with a smooth, creamy body. More proof that good coffee in = good espresso out.

#1735 Brazil Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza Pulped Natural Silvio and Celso Families
This coffee was very good and showed great potential on the cupping table. The prep is a bit rough, but this coffee’s strengths more than overshadow its slight shortcomings. This is another coffee we think will continue to improve in the coming years. This was the sweetest coffee we tasted as espresso. This coffee was bold and rich and a little dry, probably due to the slight under-ripeness of some of the beans. This was a crowd-pleaser and would work very well as medium-bodied S.O. or as a component in a blend.

#1862 Brazil Eulino, Pulped Natural Microlot
This coffee was rich and buttery, with almond and bittersweet chocolate flavors. This coffee is holding up great, thanks to the Grainpro bags we packed them in at origin.

#1860 Antonio Rigno, Pulped Natural Microlot
This coffee has clean acidity and ripe fruit. The shot was chocolaty and sweet, very balanced with a sweet aftertaste. This was a favorite of many. This coffee is also packed in Grainpro bags.

#1807 Santa Terezinha Auction Lot
For those who love caramely, balanced, low acid espresso coffees, this one certainly delivers. This is an auction lot coffee packed in vacuum sealed mylar bags and is still holding up quite nicely. The prep on this coffee is very clean. We found the shots to be very balanced, low in acid, and very sweet.

I have to mention that the show-stopper espresso of the day was a late addition, and it wasn’t from Brasil. Our El Salvador from the Apaneca-Ilamatepec Mountain Range (#1882) had such a creamy mouthfeel and ripeness of fruit on the cupping table, that we suspected it would make an excellent espresso. We were right! This blend of 5 microlots was incredibly creamy and sweet, with ripe cherry flavors, caramel, and long-lingering sweetness in the finish.

You can view more pictures of the action over in our photo album.

Twin Cities' Kare 11 News tracked the trail of specialty coffee all the way back to Café Imports. Here's reporter Chris Kallal's take:

"You may be surprised. One of the nation's best coffee importers is right here in the Twin Cities, supplying the best coffee shops and roasters in the country."

View the video now:

Our Harrar from the East Haraghe Highlands has arrived. In the East Haraghe Highlands, coffee trees can be 200 years old and reach up to 16 meters high! This particular lot of coffee was processed using traditional methods. After the cherries are harvested, women crush the coffee in deep wooden pots by hand, and the coffee is then naturally sundried. We found this cup to have a slight blueberry flavor with rich tobacco undertones. The ID is P1886.

The Grounds for Health Specialty Coffee Auction is coming up this TUESDAY JUNE 2nd. Don't miss out on this opportunity to share the gift of health and life with thousands of coffee producing women.

Cafe Imports has donated the following 8 bags of our latest favorites to the auction:

Burundi Washed Arabica Bwayi Lot 2 ID: 1637
Burundi Washed Arabica Bwayi Lot 5 ID: 1635
Costa Rica Microlot West Valley Llano Bonito de Naranjo Helsar de Zarcero Caturra ID: 1626
Costa Rica Microlot Orosi, Zalmari, Cachi, La Margarita Honey ID: 1628
Kenya AA Auction Lot Rungeto Coop, Kirinyaga Region ID: 1855
Kenya AA Auction Lot Rungeto Coop, Kirinyaga Region ID: 1856
Ethiopia Organic Yirgacheffe Washed Koke ID: 1594
Rwanda Bourbon Fully Washed, Bufcoffee Washing Station ID: 1772

Log on today and REGISTER to bid Tuesday June 2nd:http://coffee.stoneworks.com

For further information, please check out the following link and download the item below.
http://www.groundsforhealthauction.blogspot.com

Download file

THANK YOU in advance for supporting Grounds for Health in their mission to save women's lives!

Our Costa Microlots packed in GrainPro are here! Along with them came these Traceability Certificates signed by the producers. If you are looking for a relationship coffee, these are a great option with a superb cup. Check out our beanologies and photo album for more information on the specific lots and producers

In March, I traveled with Jason to eighteen micromills in the Central Valley, West Valley, and Tarrazu regions of Costa Rica. Along the many bumpy roads and through the many treat-filled homes of the producers, I gained a better understanding of the hard work and dedication that goes into creating a great cup of coffee.

The micromill revolution in Costa Rica has allowed a sustainable price to be paid to the farmer, a high quality cup to develop, and a vast amount of information to flow from field to cup. The region, micro-region, farm name, varietal, altitude, producer names, and history of the micromill are passed along with each lot of coffee produced. Micromills not only allow Café Imports to obtain an exceptionally high quality product, they also allow the stories to be told of producers and the risks they have taken to create a unique and exciting cup of coffee. These stories are included in our beanologies with the hopes that this information will be passed onto the consumer. The producers are incredibly proud of the coffees they nurture, and recognition for their hard work and commitment to quality is well deserved!

Cafe Imports is pleased to announce that Tim Chapdelaine has joined Cafe Imports. Tim is the current chair of the Roaster's Guild and a passionate advocate of specialty coffee. Tim's many years in coffee and experience in coffee education, along with his desire to serve the high end specialty market will be a complement! WELCOME TIM!

I’ve been traveling for the past two weeks assisting Marty Curtis with administering the Q Grader Exam. The Q Grader exam is the only comprehensive professional accreditation for specialty coffee graders and cuppers. We gave two tests, one in Arkansas at Combustion Systems and one in Boston at Coffee Solutions. The test itself lasts 5 days and includes over 20 different sensory and proficiency tests related to cupping and assessing green coffee quality. I’ve posted some pictures over in our photo blog. If you want to learn more about this program, please visit the Coffee Quality Institute’s website.

Last week I traveled to Pereira, Colombia to participate as a sensory judge for the Cup of Excellence program. Pereira rests in a small valley that descends from the western Andes mountains, placing it in the heart of the major coffee growing regions. For those who are unfamiliar, the Cup of Excellence is a rigorous evaluation process that seeks to separate and reward exemplary lots of coffee and return fair premiums directly to the individual farmers responsible for producing them. Of the hundreds of lots submitted to the competition each year, only the finest are selected for evaluation by an international jury of skilled cuppers.

After a week of intensive cupping, the jury and the producers gathered together for the announcement of the final selections at the awards ceremony. For many farmers, this may be the only time that they will be recognized and appreciated publicly for their hard work and commitment to quality. As you can imagine, it is an emotional event for everyone. Winning top honors is a life-changing event for many farmers and their families. This year’s awards ceremony was held in conjunction with Salon Internacional del Cafe. During the ceremony, each finalist was brought on stage and introduced individually. For me, this is one of the best things that the Cup of Excellence program accomplishes—it connects a human face to the producers whose lives we depend upon for our own livelihoods.

This year, top honors were awarded to Alejandro Florez from the Meta region, from finca El Porvenir. Mr. Florez has been growing coffee since age 14. His coffee scored 91.6 points. Runner’s up included Javier Sanjuan Gomez and Leonte Collazos Rojas. The auction for these coffees will be held April 23, 2009. More information about this program and the other finalist can be found at www.cupofexcellence.org.

Be sure to check out some photos of the event posted in our photos section.

You can view all of our current COE coffees here.

I’ll admit it. I have always found Costa Rican coffee bright, clean, fine acidity, and rather boring. It sounds like a strange combination, but when you look at the history of coffee in Costa Rica, they had always done it “right.” During the 1970’s and 1980’s, Costa Rica had raised the bar for world coffee production by making a very consistent high quality, relatively massed produced, homogeneous product.

My very first origin trip was to Costa Rica in March of 2002, and I’ve been there many times since, but returning this year, on the 200th anniversary of the introduction of coffee into Costa Rica was a great time for a homecoming of sorts. I knew something different was going on down there, that the status quo was changing, as last year, we’d finally cupped some coffees that, in my terms, had “personality.” What’s personality in a coffee? It’s that uniqueness of a cup that can take it from a very respectable 85 to 87 to over the 90 level on the cupping table.

So what was going on? One word (maybe one compound word), Micromills. Traditionally in Costa Rica, and most of the world, coffee is raised by farmers who sell it in some various state of production to someone else, who process it some more, and sell it to someone else, who collects coffee from many many people, who do something else to it, and then, finally, put it in bags to ship abroad to us. As you can tell, the farmer gets lots along the way. Brand names trump farmers, exporters trump farmers, even collectors (often referred to as coyotes in Central America) trump the farmer. The farmer does not often know the real value of the coffee and where ultimately the coffee goes. It’s just loaded up on a truck and heads off down the hill and around the corner. This type of coffee production is commodity production. Whatever special care the farmer does with his coffee, it recedes into the mass production of hundreds to even thousands of such farmers. His hard work and passion has become a standardized product.

The Micromill revolution changes all of this. The farmer tenderly grows his coffee. He carefully picks it now, picking only the ripest cherry, as his coffee will represent him now. He mills it at his own micromill. He lays it out to dry carefully, and when it’s at the right level of moisture and perfect in the cup, sells it under his name to importers and roasters who seek out the nuanced cup that can now exist.

Micromills allow micro production that allow us, the coffee drinker, to taste the region, the micro region, the farm, the varietal, and even the altitude. Costa Rican coffee used to be only Costa SHB EP (Strictly Hard Bean European Preparation) or Maybe Costa Rican Tarrazu SHB EP. Now, Costa Rican Tarrazu San Martin de Leon Cortes, Finca Cafetin, 1800 meters and over, Villasarchi varietal, is possible. Wow, too much information, eh? Absolutely not!! It matters, it all matters. Last Friday, the 13th of March, we cupped 65 samples of coffee starting at 9 am and cupping, only with some saltine crackers and fruit to starve off hunger, until 6 pm that evening. I’ll admit that was the limit of what physically we could take, but every coffee had a face to it. In the cup, and often in the other room, waiting eagerly for us.

Are these micromills the solution to all of coffee’s problems around the world? Yes and no. Yes, when the altitude, soil, and varietals, along with the farmers care, can produce a superior cup. ICAFE, the Costa Rican Coffee Institute estimated the cost of production was $1.20 per pound green for the average farmer in Costa Rica. A rough estimate from many of the Micromill farmers that we spoke with was $1.60 per pound. Quite obviously a micromill located at 800 meters with Catimor would not make much sense, but for a farmer high up on the mountain at Chirripo who’s at 1600 meters and above who unfortunately in the past had to sell his coffee down the mountains into an area know for lowland cheap HB (hard bean – under 1200 meters) production, it could be a wise investment for a hard working farmer.

And these Micromills are big investments. From the farmers that we meet who had gone out and built one from scratch, we are talking $120,000 to $150,000 investment. This is in a country with a GDP of $6,500 per person. These farmers are small, independent farmers who are investing their money and their life to make their coffee better. Many farmers did not build at once, but built up over a few years, as cash allowed. We met two brothers who went to the U.S. to work and raise money, returned home and started La Lia micromill, which is named after their mother.

The Micromill revolution started back five to seven years ago when the commodity price for coffee was so low that the farmers thought they’d save a few dollars processing, and do it themselves. This probably was not a good idea, as the economies of scale were against them, yet it allowed the farmers, who had great coffee to start with, to sell their coffee as it came from the earth, not combined with everyone else’s. These farmers are from farms such as Herbazu, Cafétin, Helsar, Don Mayo, and many other now famous names.

The sustainability of these farms is without par. Some farms are certified organic, as a few within the Helsar family, but all are family ran, using traditionally farming, that use and re-use all they can. The Micromills use mechanical pulpers that run from 20% to 5% of traditional wet processed coffees. These farmers live on the land, sell their own coffee, and run them for the long term. Profitability is a necessity, but over the long run, they are not just maximizing it for short-term overseas shareholders of the large multinationals. True sustainability is social, environmental, and economic. These farms have all of these intertwined into a degree that transcend simple certifications. Are the farms paying fairly? Yes. Are they environmental? Yes. Are they economically sustainable? Yes. It all comes down to the cup. True sustainability is only possible where social, environmental, and economics come together. Come cup the revolution!