Amanda will be out next week (Nov 12-16) to do some work with Grounds for Health in Jinotega, Nicaragua. She'll be travelling with a group of doctors to this area and will help with clinic work for the week. Look for a travel story from Amanda in our "On the Road" blog after Thanksgiving.

Well, another auction has come and gone. Well, not really gone, the amount of work that goes into getting these auctions set up is mind-blowing, and getting the coffee milled and out is a bit too, but most of the work is growing the coffee, and it is wonderful to see prices that reward that work. Cafe Imports bought a bit of lot #12, a nice Organic, along with our friends at 49th Parallel and Ecco Caffe. In fact, Andrew from Ecco called me sometime around 6 am my time, which is a silly 4 am West Coast. He was roasting and cupping as we spoke. Well, after looking at a screen for seven hours, I need to go and get a cup of coffee, or a gin, and looking into some ambien for Andrew!

We just finished our cupping for the day (a late session). We cupped an offer on a Gr 1 Sumatran that tasted like nothing I've ever had before. This coffee tasted exactly like beets!
It was an unmistakeable flavor and the really wild thing is that it wasn't dirty-earthy... it was incredibly clean. Clean earth. Man, what a coffee!
I am not sure if I've convinced Jason that we should buy it yet, but I'm working on it.
What a fun way to end the day!

I'll post a sep blog if we end up buying this coffee.

Those of you who know us, know that we are BIG fans of the Clover brewer. We purchased our machine in May of this year and can't say enough great things about it. It has, however, ruined us for drinking coffee anywhere outside of the office.
I thought you might find the article in this week's Economist interesting.

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10150312&CFID=27417782&CFTOKEN=64736249