In the Grinder - Our Daily Coffee Weblog

We want to wish Jamin, Piero, and Andrew a safe trip as they travel down to Colombia this week to teach some courses on sample roasting and cupping with the farmers we work with and our other partners on the ground! 

Safe Travels! 

-The CI Team

Are you guys as excited about Colombian Fly Crop coffees as we are??  Looking at this photo album from Sally's most recent trip to Colombia gets us pretty pumped up for new coffees rolling in this fall. 

View the Photo Album HERE

Cafe Imports' very own Jason Long has a story featured in the popular book floating around right now "Coffee Story: Ethiopia" written by Majka Burhardt and supported by Ninety Plus. 

Jason's story is on page 52 and is titled "Ethiopian Universe". 

Check it out!  Books can be purchased HERE

Minneapolis had its first frost last night of 2011, September 14th, YES SEPTEMBER 14th...grrr....

Trust me, we are just as bummed as you may be reading that.  However, do you know who is not bummed?

 ....The wonderful people at Urban Farming, thats who! They take all of our left over coffee bags (thousands from us in 2011 alone).  Urban farming used the burlap bags to protect their gardens at their locations throughout Minneapolis, and the bags saved the crops!!  During the spring they use the bags as a weed preventer in their gardens.  Multi-Season applications folks!

Yay for burlap!  And yay for Urban Farming! 

Looking for an awesome place to donate your burlap?  Contact Cherry Flowers cf@urbanfarming.org

Andrew, Jamin and I went down to Colombia to visit the Kogi and other Cabildos who export through Juan Tama. We have been working with them for about a year now and have found a lot of potential in the quality along with a really cool story behind it.

On this trip I was able to see the differences in processing between different origins and even amongst regions. El Salvador usually has the wet and dry mill integrated into one big mill. In Colombia, where there are many small-land-holders, farmers de-pulp and dry their own coffee and sell the parchment.

After going through some theory, we gave an introduction to cupping. These producers have very little cupping experience. This is a big challenge for all because it is hard to know what you have when you haven’t tasted it. We saw many members excited about cupping their coffees.

To end the first half of our trip we visited Don Remijio which contributed to our “La Milagrosa” microlot. He has a very humble operation—about 1 hectare of coffee (Typica, Caturra and San Bernardo). He owns his own micro de-pulper and a parabolic solar dryer (which is key due to the rainy season). Don Remijio also cultivates coca, corn and soy. When we were leaving he made sure everyone of us took two of his freshly laid eggs each and a shot of agua ardiente.

On my trip to Colombia this summer, I was lucky enough to be invited as a judge for a Concurso de Taza or Cup Contest hosted by Coocentral Coop in Garzón, Huila. A small panel including myself and two lovely Aussies joined the coop’s head cupper, José Jadir Losada, in cupping our way through 30 coffees over two days. This contest was designed to showcase the local farmers’ coffees, and the financial reward provided an incentive to produce the best cup possible. Knowing that this contest and our results would put extra food on someone’s table or provide more clothing or schooling or simply some good ol’ fashioned fun, we took our job seriously.

Before we get to the coffee, a bit of background on the grand work Coocentral is doing for its members is very much worth a mention. Coocentral was established in 1975 with 55 members and has now grown to more than 3,000 members and they keep pouring in. This growth in itself illustrates how well integrated the coop is into the farmers’ livelihood. On a basic level, Coocentral works much like a bank and is even set up in a similar fashion. The green buyer pays the coop directly, and Coocentral in turn gives a portion directly to the farmer and a portion gets put back into projects and programs to support and improve producer communities. When a quality premium is paid for a particularly tasty cup, it is presented in the form of a giant check given to the farmer publicly in order to provide incentive for other farmers to keep working hard and to demonstrate that the initial sacrifice made for quality is greatly rewarded. 

In Garzón, there is no central wet mill to sell cherry; instead, these small land-holders each have their own micro-mill on site. Once the beans are pulped, they are sold to Coocentral either in wet or dry pergamino, although the transportation of wet can be risky, and it brings a lower price. Coocentral is in the process of building a brand new drying plant (different than a dry mill) where wet pergamino can be efficiently dried in higher quantities. 

Once dried, each coffee is cupped by José and his team who cup over and over, and I mean anywhere from 20 to 150 samples are cupped a day! These samples are classified based on cup quality to be sold either as a micro or macro lot. 

 

Which brings me to our lovely Café Imports selected microlots…

We are! We are!

Here is a video from Fazenda Cafundo in Piata Brazil.  These coffees are being cupped now and microlot containers are being assembled.  We are crossing our fingers to have microlots in November and new Yellow Bourbons as well around that time.