FTO Harrar Illily Deratu is here.
We found this coffee to exhibit great blueberry, chocolate flavors.
It'll go fast!

A few things to talk about today, so thought I'd do it all in one big, meaty blog.

First, thought I'd share with you a picture of the Cafe Imports booth at SCAA 2007 (taken by Zander). We featured some of our top coffees this year, brewed on the Clover brewer we just purchased. We are proud to say that we are the first 'Greenie' to purchase this machine and we are very excited to have it installed back in our lab.

We plan on doing a sort of 'Clover Chronicle' once it's installed and will post how we're dialing in the coffees, etc. If you're using any of our coffees in a Clover and have some settings you'd like to share with us, please email them to jamin@cafeimports.com (they'll be kept for our internal use only). Thanks!

Next,
Thought I'd share with you some pictures of the computer lab in Huehue that the purchase of our Rio Azul helps to fund.

If you've not purchased this coffee in the past, you'll find it shows floral, sweet, chocolate notes.

And, finally, wanted to share with you the good news that our Organic RA El Salvador Santa Teresa was recognized at the RA Breakfast at the SCAA. It scored an 88.25 (we scored an 89.1 on the preship). This is a great Bourbon coffee that is milled using thermal waters on the Santa Teresa Estate. Check it!
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There is a new water decaf process in town--Mountain Water!
Our Organic Mexican MWP decaf has been immensely popular. We also now have FTO Peru MWP.
We will be sending more coffees to get tolled at this facility in Mexico and really encourage you to check them out.
You can find out more about this process by visiting www.descamex.com

Our office will be closed on Monday, May 28th in observance of Memorial Day. Please plan your orders accordingly.

Have a great holiday weekend.

Today we tasted some single source honeys from Minnesota's own Ames Farm. We tasted 5 honeys collected over one specific time period, from one unique geographical location and from one single hive. These honeys are raw and unfiltered. We were amazed at the complexity of flavor and strong sense of "terrior" these honeys possessed. The standout today was definately the 2006 Creamed Basswood honey from Hive 110A at Pioneer Creek. This honey was delicate and floral with a creamy, buttery body and a delicious minty aftertaste.

Each bottle comes labeled with the main contributing flower and specific hive the honey was collected from. You can enter this number into a searchable database at Ames Farm's website to find out specific tasting notes and harvest and processing dates for the honey. To support this great product or to learn more about single source honey, visit their website at www.amesfarm.com.

-Jamin Haddox

The box

The Clover

Our Clover is finally here! We’re excited to be the first importer to add this fantastic tool to our cupping lab. We’ve been roasting up a ton of different coffees and exploring the possibilities. Here are some initial observations:

-- The Clover is built like a tank. Even the instruction manual is stainless steel. I love the machined drip tray. This machine is built to last.

-- The Clover is sensitive. Like a precision-tuned automobile, you've got to have some skills if you really want to get Clover's piston pumping. Okay, forgive the terrible analogy. What I mean is, that you the user are in control of the brew. The machine is stable and will churn out repeatable results cup after cup, but it’s up to the user to dial in the brew. This is a positive attribute for our lab. This means however, that if you just slap some coffee into the Clover, you won't be tasting it's full potential. In fact, I’ve already made some not-so-great swill out of some very nice coffees while messing about with the settings. Granted, we’ve found that within a certain general window of parameters, the coffee tastes really good, but for a truly euphoric coffee experience, some experimentation is needed. Think of it as a tweaked-out espresso machine for drip coffee. Even two seconds in dwell time can produce perceptible changes in the cup. A little time spent tweaking reaps amazing rewards.

-- The Clover’s greatness is at least partially subjective. Okay, so I'm still a little starry-eyed. I think this is a fantastic break-through for the high-end specialty market, so I'll temper my enthusiasm by admitting that the Clover's greatness may be partially subjective. The Clover has its own unique flavor “profile”, which is one I really like, but should be thought of as one really good way to brew coffee and not necessarily a replacement for traditional methods (even though I’m not missing cleaning up the mess of my usual press pot). Of course, a vac pot, pour over brewer, and press pot are all capable of making great coffee, and I enjoy them all. But the Clover is just so dang convenient. Part of the Clover’s strength lies in its instant and convenient control over brewing parameters and speedy execution.

So after a week of Clover coffee, initial impressions from everyone here are highly positive. I think the Clover will prove to be a wonderful lab tool, and has already proven quite useful in a couple of our cuppings. We look forward to continuing our extraction education. Look for continued Clover coverage in the future, including a comparison of multiple brewing methods, including the Clover.

- posted by Jamin Haddox