In the Grinder - Our Daily Coffee Weblog

This past weekend I traveled to Tacoma Washington to help judge the 2012 NW Regional Barista Competition.

This regional competition usually entices some extremely talented baristas from the Northwest, including the top baristas from Portland and Seattle.  2012 was definitely no exception.

Upon arriving in Tacoma, I flew right into judges calibration.  This year's judges calibration was a beefed up version of its former self.  I have to give a huge shoutout to Scott Conary and the rest of the head judges for creating a much more intensive and effective calibration and testing.  I was really impressed, and ultimately I felt like we as a judging group were really well prepared to judge some of the top baristas in the nation.

It was really nice to catch up with old friends and make some new ones in Tacoma.  Our pals at Sprudge.com did an incredible job covering the entire weekend, and created some really visually striking videos capturing the essence of the weekend.  I would highly recommend going to their site and seeing some of them.  The days in Tacoma were lightened up by the arrival of the "Portland Bad Boys", Sean and Mikey, some friends of our Portland Baristas, who made outrageous signs, ridiculous t-shirts, and brought a coffee outsider's innocence that really put things into perspective. What a blast.

There were a total of 20 competitors spanned over 2 days, and on the second day, that field was narrowed down to 6 finalists.  After the final round, the winners looked like this (no particular order after 3rd place)

1st Place Devin Chapman - Coava Coffee Roasters

2nd Place Laila Ghambari -Stumptown

3rd Place Tyler Stevens -Barista

Sam Purvis - Coava Coffee

Marty Lopes - Barista

Collin Schneider - Sterling Coffee

I found that this year it seemed like people were more focused on flavors and sensory experiences instead of a routine based around their experience at their particular coffee farm.  Some people haven't been to origin, and that is ok, it is not a prerequisite to being a champion barista.

I have some theories, but this could possibly be a result of Pete Licata, the 2011 USBC champ, taking the "barista at a coffee farm" approach to new heights in 2011 by literally picking his own coffee.  How can someone top that?  Aside from a barista planting their own coffee and competing 5 years later with that little seedling matured into a big bad coffee plant, they can't, so, why not talk about something every pro barista should know a hell of a lot about, flavors and sensory experiences.  I like it. 

Elaborating on this topic a bit more, I had some really interesting conversations with Devin Chapman of Coava about this very thing.  In his routine, Devin didn't even mention which coffee he was actually using.  He gave the judges three cards with different coffees Coava has on bar right now, and had them guess which one he used throughout the competition.  Devin spoke to me about introducing people to unbelievable flavor experiences first, then support that with origin information, only if they want to learn more.  I got the feeling that he feels like extremely specific origin information doesn't always need to be beaten over customer's heads, instead, lets let them come to us to find out more if and when they choose to.

On the airplane home I thought a lot about this.  I thought a lot about what we as an industry are doing well, and what we aren't doing so well specifically regarding dissemenating this information.  I like this analogy:  A person who is selling the most comfortable bed in the world is not going to lead his pitch with how many microcells the bed has, the chemical makeup of the fibers, or the specific pressure of the bed, he is simply going to say, "Why dont you just lay down on this bed and try it out?"

It has to be the same thing with coffee for most people.  Lets lead with our outstanding coffee flavors, let the coffee do the talking, and be dedicated to having supporting information easily available about our producers to give to our cafe customers who really want to take their coffee education to the next level on their terms, not ours. I am not saying lets throw out beanologies and extended producer profiles at all, but people that truly understand and appreciate a high quality coffee experience will ultimately want to know more, and its our job to be knowledgable and available when they do. 

We as the Cafe Imports team are pumped to be taking Devin along to Costa Rica with us as part of our origin trip sponsorship in January 2013.  We cannot wait to see what other champion baristas will be joining us over the next few months.

Congrats to Devin and the Coava team!  And well done everyone who got out and competed.

-Noah

Cafe Imports is organizing its first ever coffee sendback event to microlot producers in El Salvador.

What does that mean?

You send us a pound of roasted coffee from one of our partner microlot producers in El Salvador, and we will compile your coffee with other roaster's coffee and send one huge care package to the producers in El Salvador just in time for the Holidays.

We have really taken to heart how much farmers get from even just seeing how roasters use their farm info on their packaging, so we wanted to take it a step further and allow these producers to fully experience your final roasted product.

What do I need to do?

First off, contact us to make sure your coffee's producer will be represented during this first sendback event. 

Secondly, if your producer will be represented, send us 1 lb of roasted coffee by the cutoff of DECEMBER 12th, 2011.

We will then send a big care package to our partner on the ground in El Salvador, who will distribute the roasted coffee and document the handing out of the coffee for us to enjoy.

Please send your coffee to:

Cafe Imports

2617 East Hennepin Avenue

Minneapolis, MN, 55413

Contact sales@cafeimports.com or your rep for any further information!

Noah:  Hello everyone, Joe and I just got back from BGA Camp-Pull-A-Shot in California.  It was a week full of professional development, fellowship, and making new friends while "glamping" near Santa Barbara, CA.  We had an incredible experience, and it was also just a perfect amount of ridiculous to keep things exciting.  This was my second year at camp.  Joe, this was your first year at camp, tell me about some things that stick out in your mind from camp...

Joe: The first thing pops into my head is Louie Poore's face, shadowed by a bull horn.  No, but seriously, so many baristas had so many questions this year. I feel as though Camp really attracted professionals who were looking to grow, full of curiosity and ready to have a blast with the coffee community.

Noah:  I totally agree.  People were excited and hungry for information.

You are now Level 1 and Level 2 certified. Congrats my man.  Also you are IDP certified, and you were able to test people all week, tell me about some interactions with those baristas and those questions they asked.  What left an impression on you?

Joe: I was feeling really guilty and kind of bad after day one. I had a lot of great baristas who were passionate and I could tell could work a bar with the best of them, but who did not perform to the level they wanted to on their practical tests. It was difficult to see them buckling under the pressure and nerves.

However, I then saw them throughout the week in classes, learning, asking questions, growing... I was able to retest a few on the last day. Wow! What a difference a few days makes. The baristas were nailing their tests and we were able to hand almost all of them certifications on Wednesday night.  It was affirmation to me that the BGA and SCAA are not only devoted to education, but executing.

Some questions I was asked... hmm.... Lots of cleaning questions. I was asked about what my favorite coffees were, roasters, you know... The questions that I couldn't answer really easily. It led to a lot of discussion about our coffee community in the US right now.

How 'bout you?

Noah: I taught two sessions of our Seed to Cup class on Tuesday morning, and in all honesty, I had flashbacks of our trip to Brasil with all the other Baristas.  I find that giving this course at an event where everyone is really hungry to learn compared to a disengaged audience, provide totally different results and give a much different vibe to the course.  In Brasil, you guys were totally on it...asking the right questions, creating thought provoking discussions about complex issues at origin, and I had a similar experience at camp.  I left the presentation open to questions during the entire presentation, so each course took on a life of its own.  I know I got a lot out of it for sure. 

The other thing that I really enjoyed was I got to be a nerd about running a bit by organizing the first ever BGA 5K.  We all gathered Wednesday morning at 7AM and ran 3 miles along the coast as the sun rose.  Pretty awesome way to start the day.  Toddy had an iced coffee table at the half way point, and that just added to the hilarity of a bunch of baristas running down the road in Santa Barbara. 

We did a coffee crawl before heading to camp.  What are your thoughts about the LA Coffee Scene?

Joe: I feel as though it is a lot like the rest of the US coffee scene. Great coffee made by great people who care. There seems to be a lot more business pushing toward simple espresso based drinks, like caps, shots and maccs than in a lot of other areas of the country. This is encouraging, as trends usually start in places like LA. Baristas really want to strip the coffee down to the basics in order to really put the intrinsic nature of coffee on stage. Baristas in LA are able to do this a lot more. However, they still seemed to have a lot of excitement about coffee. The guys at Handsome showed us this at a high degree, I would say. They were so stoked we stopped in.

What were some highlights for you?

Noah: I liked that we were able to get together with really awesome friends and do the crawl as a group.  Jason from Batdorf and his wife April, Sarah from La Marzocco, Tony from Tonx, Jon from Coffee Tools and his wife, and Todd from Starbucks all got together to enjoy this day.  I thought all the BS was stripped away.  We were just able to enjoy the coffee and enjoy totally different perspectives on roasting, barista skills, and shop aesthetics in a 4 hour period. All totally unique, valid, and awesome in their own right. 

OK big question...the liklihood that there will be an East Coast Camp Pull-A-Shot this summer is very high, if we get to go and teach and take courses again, what would you do differently or what would you want to get out of it that you didn't get an opportunity to do at this camp?

Joe : This camp I worked the entire event. I didn't have any time to actually take courses and sit and think about things. I would like to take some courses next year. I was also a table lead at all of the courses I helped with. I would like to own a course next Camp. I want to develop some interesting courses in the future. I'm not sure how viable they would be before next Summer, but it would be cool to teach one then. You?

Noah: I really dig being able to proctor certification testing.  There is just something raw and real about seeing someone who has clearly worked hard and studied get an opportunity to showcase their skills and earn it.  I actually would be the guy who could sit and give certifications all day if it meant people got to leave with accomplishing what they set out to accomplish at camp.  So, I hope to do that, and also, I need to nail that level 2 certification, and that is a definite goal of mine for 2012.

Thanks Joe, thanks to all the shops that had us on the crawl (Intelligentsia, Paper or Plastik, Handsome, and Proof, and thank you BGA volunteers and SCAA staff, especially Marcus Boni, Carrie Gibson, Amber Sather, Ildi Revi, Lily Kubota, Adra Aragon, and Maria Hill for putting together an amazing camp. 

Here's to BGA Camp (s) in 2012!

Café Imports is proud to announce that we have two new outstanding people joining our team.  Joe Marrocco, formerly of Kaldi's Coffee, will be coming onboard as a Sales Associate.  Joe’s extensive background in training, customer support, barista skills, and sweet facial hair make him an invaluable part of our team moving forward.  Joe brings the perspective of a roaster, barista, and fast growing business trainer to the table; speaking that language is something our customers undoubtedly will benefit from.  We all look forward to having Joe here.  

Our second new hire is Gabe Dunn, formerly of Red e café in Portland and all around world traveler.  Gabe is coming on as a customer service rep, handling incoming calls and assisting the sales staff.  In addition to being an extremely talented barista at Red e, Gabe has done some really exciting things in the coffee world, including a biking trip through South America.  Gabe is fluent in Spanish and a very talented cupper.  We ran Gabe through the ringer here at the Café Imports Q certified lab, and he passed with flying colors.  Did I mention Gabe also has a sweet mustache?  Between Gabe and Joe, our facial hair street cred has increased by 200%. 

Also, have you met Matt Brown yet?  He has been here for about two months now in a customer service position.  You probably have talked to him on the phone.  No, not Matt Hupton, Matt Brown, Matty B, B-Dog, or Matty Ice, as he is affectionaly known here.  Matt came to us from Dunn Bros here in Minneapolis, and has been a huge help in this increasingly busy office. 

This past weekend in Portland, Noah and the rest of the BGA Executive council strapped on their aprons and got behind the bar at some of Portland's best coffee shops.  The BGA Executive council was in Portland for the annual Leadership Summit.  The point of events like this is to get creative like minds together to help plan the future of the BGA and SCAA as a whole.  Here is a video highlighting all the guest barista shifts!

Last week I had the honor of stepping in as a judge at the second annual Motown Throwdown hosted by Coffee Express in the outskirts of Detroit. The event was the epitome of a coffee lover get-together. Tom of Coffee Express in Plymouth, MI schemed up the event to showcase the barista and roaster talents throughout Michigan, which ended up bringing out a good crowd to share the love of coffee and learn from each other.

-Sally Rivera

The North Central Regional Barista Competition was held in Chicago this year hosted byTorani at Navy Pier. 

The event was absolutely chalk full of stellar competitors.  Last year's US Barista Champion and World Barista Champion Mike Phillips of Intelligentsia came from the former Great Lakes Region; now restructered into the North Central Region. 

Andrew, Sally, and myself all traveled down to Chicago for the event.  This year's RBC was held in conjunction with Coffee Fest, so many people who normally would not attend an RBC got the opportunity to step away from the show floor and check out the competition.  Sally and Andrew manned the booth while I took my USBC judging certification test.  I passed, and I was able to judge these incredible baristas over the course of the weekend.  I learned a ton during the certification process, and I would highly recommend doing it if you are looking in more ways to get involved in the coffee community.  

Outside of the competition, it was awesome to be in a city that does an excellent job of complementing fine dining with excellent coffee.  We visited The Bongo Room for breakfast and had perfectly prepared Intelligentsia coffee and went to the unbelievable Graham Elliot for dinner followed by exquisite shots of Metropolis coffee.  My hope is that more cities follow suit and give customers great coffee experiences at their restaurants.  

The finalists were announced Saturday evening: Ryan Knapp and Trevor Corlett of Mad Cap, Brett Felchner of Anodyne, Alli VanHyft of Grey House Coffee, and Scott Lucey and Cody Kinart of Alterra took the top 6 spots. 

After competiting again on Sunday, of the six finalists, the top three were decided.  Ryan Knapp took 1st place, followed by Scott Lucey taking 2nd, and Trevor Corlett taking 3rd.  (Sidenote, Trevor went over by 30 seconds during the competition which equals a 30 point deduction from his total score). 

Also, congrats to Jonathan Jarrow for winning the first ever NCRBC Brewers Cup!

We are very excited to have Ryan be the 3rd confirmed person to join us on our big Barista trip to Brazil this July!  Also, some exciting developments, we have finalized our dates, July 10th-19th 2011.  Sarah Allen from Barista Magazine is confirmed on the trip, as well as Mr Italy himself Giovanni Simonelli is now coming.  This will be Giovanni's 1st trip ever to origin.  We are so excited to have those two industry icons along with us. 

Congrats to all the competitors this year!

I am off to LA this weekend for the SWRBC.

-Noah

This past weekend I spent some time out in the Northwest for the Regional Barista Competition.  It was really neat to spend some time in a part of the country that is so rich with coffee knowledge and really stellar roasters.

I flew into PDX and spent some time in Portland getting know some of our customers better and enjoying some awesome food.  Pok Pok changed my life I think...

It was cloudy and rainy for the majority of the trip, and I was just really happy that the Northwest lived up to all the atmospheric stereotypes I had grown to associate with it; hammered in by countless viewings of The Goonies.

The actual NWRBC event was held in Tacoma this year and graciously hosted by Dillanos

The SCAA staff did a great job of choosing a spot that was super intimate, yet had enough space for all of us to fit and catch a glimpse of the action on stage.  The first two days the 33 competitors each competed and were judged on their espresso, cappuccino, and signature drinks.  Some signature drinks include reductions, fresh whipped cream, and countless other concoctions to make a mark on the judge's palletes. 

Saturday night the top 6 finalists were announced:

Laila Ghambari, Stumptown, Seattle

Ryan Wilbur, Stumptown, Portland

Sarah Dooley, Espresso Parts, Olympia (Using Olympia Coffee Roasting)

Robbie Britt, Espresso Parts, Olympia (Using Olympia Coffee Roasting)

Tyler Stephens, BARISTA, Portland (Using Barefoot Coffee)

Sam Purvis, COAVA Coffee, Portland

Following the announcement of the finals, Joshua Boyt and his new shop Metronome Coffee in Tacoma hosted a rocking party.  It seemed like it was just a great moment where people could let loose a bit after being all coiled up with nerves from competition. 

Sunday was the big day, and all 6 finalists took the stage one by one to compete once again for the judges.  At this point in the competition nobody really changes anything up in their routine, but just aims for even better execution. 

After it was all said and done, Sam Purvis from Coava took home the top slot.  We are super excited to have him travel along with us to Brazil this summer as part of our Origin Trip Program we developed with the fine folks at the SCAA.  Every regional winner, the USBC winner, and the WBC winner will all be traveling on one rocking trip with us in July to Brazil. 

In addition to the traditional Barista competition, this year also marks the first year of the Brewers Cup.  This gives baristas the opportunity to choose whichever brew method they prefer to make coffee for a judging panel.  The winner of each regional will ALSO travel to Houston for the finals, and the US Brewers Cup winner will travel to the Netherlands to compete nationally.  How COOL!! 

This years Brewer's Cup winner was Devin Chapman from Coava Coffee. 

Coava swept the NWRBC...great showing guys. 

Great jobs folks at the SCAA and BGA for putting on such a killer event.  I really had a blast, and as usual, the momentum behind the barista community right now seems to be almost unreal.  We love the excitement and energy coming from that area of the coffee world right now. 

-Noah

This past Thursday marked a momentus occasion for the Twin Cities coffee community.  The coffee community came together as a unified group and put on the first ever Twin Cities Thursday Night Throwdown!  It was an amazing night and a really awesome way to see a physical respresentation of the momentum our local coffee scene has behind it right now.  The event featured the extremely talented Twin Cities DJ Soviet Panda, and baristas in attendance took part in the Espresso Throwdown and Latte Art Throwdown.  Mariah from Kopplin's Coffee took first place in the Espresso Throw Down and Gordon from Quixotic Coffee took first place in the Latte Art Throwdown.  We managed to set up a HD camcorder and project the competitors on a big screen inside Quixotic.  We want to thank all the competitors and sponsors for making this such a memorable night!

Everyone in attendance had a great time drinking spectacular coffee and free beer.  I even saw one brave soul dive into the 2.5 liter latte remnants from the throwdown after the event.   I guess that's how you know it was a good time...when people start diving headfirst into buckets of latte.  

We want to thank Quixotic Coffee for hosting the event and we want to thank Sight Glass Coffee for donating the espresso.  Finally we want to give a big shout out to Paul W. Johnson for photographing the event.  Check out Paul's full Flickr stream of the event HERE

The very first annual Camp Pull A Shot put on by the Barista Guild of America begins this Monday October 18th in Beautiful Santa Barbara California.  We are very excited to be the title Sponsors of this event and we would recommend that if you are interested in learning more about it, please visit the BGA website by CLICKING HERE

Café Imports is very proud to be a part of this incredible event for Baristas across the world.  We believe that Baristas play one of the most important roles in the coffee industry by connecting consumers to coffee and we want you to know that we recognize that and we want you to know that we are truly grateful. 

COOPAC coop is located in the western Rwandan provinces of Rabavu and Rutsiro.  Rabavu lies on the shores of the great African Lake Kivu, the border between Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo.  Lake Kivu has long been the center of African lore because of its unparalleled beauty and surprising volcanic nature.  Tribesmen in this region of Rwanda have long reported seeing explosions far out in the lake.  The geologic activity of this region may be one of the main factors contributing to the incredible soil used to grow coffee trees here.  COOPAC is revered for its wonderful ecological environment in the steep slopes of the volcanic mountains, and also for its abundance in healthy rain.  All of these factors come together to create the ideal coffee growing environment for COOPAC.

COOPAC Coop is Fair Trade Certified, and their membership has doubled every year over the past 10 years to over 2000 farmers in 2010.  People here are proud to be a member of COOPAC, and truly look out for one another like family.  COOPAC has invested a significant amount of money into the infrastructure for processing coffee.  They have committed to exporting only high quality fully washed coffee, and their efforts have paid off; this year COOPAC took home the top price in the 2010 Rwandan Cup of Excellence.  Jason was in Rwanda for the event, and said it was an incredible time.

We are so proud to have worked with COOPAC over the past several years.  Right now we have some very nice Fair Trade COOPAC Coffee (ID P2310).  We also bought several other lots, including really nice Peaberries that will be on our offering sheets soon, while Jason was on the ground this year and are very excited for them. We are working with COOPAC as we speak to further develop a microlot program. We want to continue to work with COOPAC not only for their amazing coffee, but because this organization is doing amazing things for the quality of life of the people of Rwanda and raising the bar on coffee quality industry wide.

Keep an eye out for new COOPAC Coffees!

This weekend Noah and Jamin took off to Skamania Washington for the 2010 Roasters Guild Retreat. We really enjoyed visiting some of our friends and their shops in Portland before the event and checking out the city Minneapolis ousted at the #1 bike friendly city in the US. I could go off on a tangent about this, but honestly, Portland shut down a main road in the city and made it a bike lane permanently, so I highly doubt any city can top that, including my beloved Minneapolis.

The retreat itself was an amazing experience. The backdrop of the Skamania Lodge looks like it was just cut out of a postcard. As Jamin so eloquently put it, "Oh this is what Pandora is like". What a great spot in the Colombia River Gorge.

The variety of classes and workshops at the retreat were extremely insightful. We were able to brush up on Q skills, Roasting, Grinding, and other coffee related topics. I personally found the breakout session round table discussion extremely eye opening. We were broken down into tables and asked to challenge a number of topics like the future of Fair Trade, the supply of specialty coffee, and how relationship coffee can survive plus $2.00 prices to name a few. There were other greenies like us, roasters, shop owners, and others that made up an extremely wide cross section of our industry. I loved hearing perspectives from everyone.

The other really fun challenge was being broken up into 12 teams of 8 and asked to roast and blend an award winning mix of Guatemalan Coffee graciously donated by ANACAFE. Our team made a blend of creamy Coban (25%), intense Acatenango (50%), and sweet San Marcos (25%). We were pretty proud of our blend, but came up just short of the glory. We got 2nd place. Next year we are going to take it all.

What a great weekend and great experience.

We cannot wait for next year! For more information on future Roasters Guild events, visit www.roastersguild.org.

Cafe Imports is Proud to Announce that 2010 Has Been By-Far the Biggest Year Ever for Microlots!

What is a microlot?  We define a microlot as a specific harvest of coffee, usually 10-75 bags that contains exceptionally cared for beans with an elevated level of traceability back to the farm where it came from.  We believe that microlots are some of the world'd best coffee because of the care and attention given to them.  

This year we have brought in nearly 5x as many Microlot containers than last year.  At the end of the year, we anticipate having successfully imported over 25 containers of microlots. 

What is a container you ask?  Well, our lingo, what we call a "container" or a "box" is a ship loaded freight container that holds around 270 bags of coffee.   If we estimate that each bag is about 150 pounds, then each container would hold about 40,000 pounds of coffee.  Wowza!  How many pounds in 25 containers? 

1,000,000 pounds of microlot coffee! 

We are very proud of this year's achievement in helping create a market for well grown, beautifully processed, and delicately handled, small lots of the world's best coffee beans.  And thank you guys for buying these beans and continuing to raise the bar in the industry.  

So what is on hand now?  

Right now we have:

Brazilian Microlots

Costa Rican Microlots

El Salvadorian Microlots

Guatemalan Microlots

Kenyan Microlots

Nicaraguan Microlots

What is coming yet this year??

Colombian Microlots are on their way!

Sulawesi Microlots are soon to ship!

Feel free to ask your sales rep all about current or upcoming microlots, or email sales@cafeimports.com

Ethiopia 2010

Ethiopian govt was approaching a problem with illegal activity amongst exporters. 50k tons of coffee which was supposed to be exported was either blended with lower grade coffees and sold into the local market at better prices or substituted with lower grade coffee and exported. Profits on selling into the local market were above 30% at times. Additionally the act of buying from your own company when they are not legally separate was everywhere. It was something which was technically not supposed to happen but the transactions were being allowed. Prices for direct coffees were very high. The govt was revising its auction system and the CLU (coffee liquoring unit) to address transparency to producers and improve the integrity of the quality grading at CLU.

The great bulk of coffees out of Ethiopia were simplified but also homogenized by this process. When the Prime Minister heard of the illegal local selling of export grade coffee he arrested and shut down many exporters.

The result is that unless you are a union or cooperative or association of growers with a license to sell to foreign buyers or a large farm with the resources to sell via the second window, you cannot export your coffee as a specific brand or specific to a location beyond the ones the ECX has. The coffee is delivered to an ECX warehouse and catalogued and then auctioned as one of many regional types on the ECX. It is still illegal for an exporter to buy their coffee if they are also involved in milling.

The DST is the Direct Specialty Trade capability of the ECX. It is an auction system developed to allow buyers to cup the coffees they want to bid on and to buy directly from a producer who will then elect a Service Provider (formerly known as exporter) to export the coffee. The auction was a success for the project in terms of the prices received but the great majority of coffees did not move.

Many Coffees were submitted and paid just above the going rates from the Unions. The opportunity to have growers organize into groups and be able to assign a good miller to represent their coffees is still in progress. Very few have been successful.

I visited Idido and Beloya with Johannes from Bagersh. It should be a 6 hour drive to yirga but it ended up much longer. Obstacles are many.

The road is basically swarming with dogs, goats, people horse and mule drawn carts. And vehicles of every imaginable type. There is a built in survival mechanism in almost every animal that lives near this road. This Hyena likely was bolting across the road at night. They are not well liked by the locals as evident by the stones and fruit that the kids pelted its corpse with.

Johannes is the manager of Idido and Beloya. The stations (both washed and natural special prep) are managed by a manager also. Currently the stations are idle and the amount of top natural coffee coming out is nil. Small bits have made it to the auction and also to a couple of US buyers. Some of this special natural was auctioned off by Bagersh and raised $2.95/lb FOB Djibouti. This coffee was intense but potentially edgy with a lot of edgy fruit. Some buyers apparently liked it very much. Ultimately I think this was a fair price for this coffee.

The Idido mill is located Southeast of the town of Yirgacheffe. The coffee comes from 1850-1980 masl (meters above sea level). Half of the mill is devoted to sun dried coffee (all of which is ripe and carefully selected) which can produce a total of 4-5 containers/year. Currently the mill is only producing washed coffee as the ECX has made this the only option. Specific coffees are still unattainable via the ECX unless it is from a producer group that has elected to organize and gain access to the export market via the second window. If Idido were to produce top natural coffee it would be homogenized into a yirgacheffe natural and blended. The specific origin of the coffee would be erased.

The near side of this picture is where the drying beds would go for the washed coffee. One crosses a small bridge over a stream to get to the area for the drying beds for the natural coffee. This is one of the great coffees of Ethiopia and the pinnacle of cherry red production. Abdullah Bagersh is really the pioneer of this coffee and his techniques in dry milling are secret and increase the capability of removing the quakers from this coffee.

The coffee at left is just regular sun-dried coffee. It is better than much of the sun-dried coffee in Ethiopia but still a grade below what we would need. The coffee is dried in the cherry to appr 12% moisture and then it is milled to remove the hull. This milling process results in a very mixed quality of coffee which needs to be separated by gravity tables, catadors (vertical air sorters) and by hand in the dry mill.

The dehuller operates with a stone or a metal rotary press against a pressure plate which can be adjusted. All of these processes can be adjusted to allow some sorting along the way. What comes out of this particular de-huller is likely a traditional grade 4 Natural Yirga which needs to be further sorted for export.

As with most processes in Ethiopia the coffee is moved by hand. Labor is available and the processing of coffee is a major supplement to the income of farmers in any given area. Women will sort coffee on the drying tables and men will do the moving of coffee in the mills as it is processed.

We had a bit of coffee in the coffee hut at the mill. Buna Arbol is the first boiling of the coffee. Buna Baraka is the second. This is a tradition in Ethiopia. The local consumption is high and it is competition for the coffee that we buy as the local price is competitive with export levels.

We hope is that the grouping of producers who make great coffee and enabling them to lease milling capabilities will allow them to sell their coffee direct. We are a bit dubious as to the potential of organizing these groups for 2010 harvest.

3 options exist for buying coffee in Ethiopia.

Unions such as Oromia, Sidama, Yirgacheffe (recently FT re-certified) or private estates with grower groups surrounding them such as Mordecofe which can access the second window.

ECX coffees which are regional in designation, but not geographically specific.

These coffees have lower value as a result of their lack of specificity so we have to be careful where we buy.

Or

DST coffees from the auction which are specific small lots from producers. These seem to be mostly coffees from Coops at this point and this was not the opening up of direct trade with producer groups we hoped for. It did create the framework for this process but we will have to wait and see how it progresses for the 2010 harvest beginning this autumn.

The Next DST Auction is on April 29, 2010 and samples should be available around the time of this writing.

I apologize in advance if this is a bit longwinded, but the view out of the window was totally amazing.

A full moon out of the plane window over  the late afternoon sky above Sudan.  A Mars like scenery below with the dust up at forty thousand feet that you can taste in the cabin.  Touching down in Khartoum on route to Ethiopia.

As the sun sets, the blue sky merges with the dust and a purple-brown replaces it.  A raspberry hue bands across the horizon beneath the moon.  Now below on the deep desert floor, waves of red sands break around black volcanic rock with the moon radiating a full moon glow.

All this color and transformation occurs quickly but smoothly, and it’s now dark outside, besides the stars in the sky.

As always, I’m excited about the trip in front of me and about seeing my travel buddies again.  This time, I was off to Harrar, the old walled city, to see Harrar coffee as it has been grown for hundreds of years.

The first thing that I note, as we drive into the highlands of Harrar, is that this does not look like any other place that I’ve seen where coffee is grown.  It’s dry, almost arid.  It looks like a place where coffee should not be found, yet it is here, and has been here for almost ever.

Donkeys are still the mode of transport most used to bring coffee down from these hills. The many Akrabis (collectors) bring coffee from the farmers to their small stations to ship via truck to the suppliers with their hulling machines.  The camels for the most part have been replaced here by trucks, but the little else has changed.

The trees are old, some of them, very old, up to two hundred years old, and the methods of farming are passive at best.  No fertilizer or pruning here.  “Garden coffee” was a term used often, and that seems to mean that the coffee grows, and you pick the cherries when (hopefully) perfectly ripe.

Why is Harar coffee an unwashed coffee?  Well, there’s really not a lot of water.  This is old school coffee.  It grows naturally here, it’s picked, it’s laid to dry, and it’s hulled and roasted. 

In Ethiopia, the varietals seem to be endless.  There are estimates for over four thousands varietals that exist that seem to be spontaneous mutations of typical.  In most Yergacheffee’s (don’t tell me this is misspelled, I saw the same poster in Ethiopia have two different spellings for Yirgachefe) if you look at the green, you’ll see small little “bourbon-esque” beans, along with long canoe looking beans.  One of the things that I noticed in Harrar was a difference between East and West Harrar coffee.

The Eastern Harrar was lighter yellow in color.  This is the home of the famed Golden beans, coffee this is pure soft yellow.  The bean size was larger too.  The Western Harrar coffee was more longberry, and overall the coffee looked rougher than the Eastern.  Not rougher in preparation, but just less moist and round, and like it had had a tougher time.  Cup wise, I’ve noticed smoother mocha profiles and less earth in Eastern Harrar coffees, but have not cupped exclusively enough to confirm this.  The woodier cedar cup seems to be Western Harrar phenomena.

I’ll blog a bit more later this month about the trip, but wanted to toss in a few photos here from our visit to the city of Harrar.  The Hyenas are a bit funky up close.  They are not small dogs, but large animals with supposedly one of the strongest jaws in the animal kingdom.

The house here is Arthur Rimbaud’s, the famed French Poet, who moved to Harrar in the late 1800’s, ran guns, met Haile Selassie's father, and apparently, in the spirit of troubled French intellectuals, ran amuck, and died quite early at 37 years of age.

Lastly, here are a few pictures of the city.  The rest of the pictures will be online later this week. 

This trip was assembled with a number of buyers of Cenfrocafe coffee and we wanted to focus on the producers, quality controllers and association from whom we buy the coffee. (This is my first Blog ever!!!) We were introduced to this association a number of years ago by Cafe Verde and have been impressed by their professionalism and capabilities in producing great coffees. They have individual day lot cupping at their lab backed up by Cafe Verde which means that the lots are built properly and achieve quality objectives. We gathered in Lima on Monday and had a calibration and educational cupping @ Cafe Verde which is a cafe and cupping facility in Mira Flores. It is just up the road from the beach and it was awesome to have great coffee just next to the hotel in their cafe. KC O'Keefe is the founder and owner of Cafe Verde and has been living in Peru on and off for the better part of his adult life. He is shown here with Luis who is the lead cupper in the Cafe Verde Lab.

It is a long road to Jaen in Northern Peru. We flew to Chiclayo from Lima and from Chiclayo on the coast it is a 4.5 hour drive on a nicely paved road. We were excited by the new toyotas and the apparently professional drivers. The trip at night might be bearable but our driver decided that he was going to be the first to Jaen no matter how many times we stopped to vomit. We arrived in Jaen on Monday night and slammed into our pillows in the brand new Luna Del Valle. Jaen is a fascinating little town with lots of Che Guevara and Tiger (Shining Path) mud flaps. The 3 wheeled taxis have motorcycle front ends. We ended up using these for rides around town in the evening. Jaen is a bustling little town even though it was established in the 1970s.

Our first stop in the field was an association in San Ignacio called Nueva Generacion in San Ignacio.

The managers of the associations that were part of this area were present at the initial meeting before a farm visit. We visited the farm of Maximilliano who was one of the more energetic and enthusiastic farmers in the area.

He explained his pruning techniques and replacement of aging trees. This was a relatively new production area having been planted in 1994. His farm was 3 hectares with production of 40qq/hectare. (400 lbs) He harvests about 15 times/year and employs 20 employees seasonally to harvest and prune as they harvest. His farm is around 1650 meters and is a great example of how to grow coffee in this region. One important advantage of these growers is drying. They use Solar Driers and are very good at getting the coffee to 12% in parchment before delivering to the Cenfro Receiving station (More later on this)

These driers can take a little long to dry coffee if it is rainy and the growers are looking at options to make mechanical drying available in micro drying mills around the growing regions. We had lunch and a meeting with the association heads and enjoyed some of the local CUY (roasted guinea pig). At the end of the meal they brought out coffee for us which was delicious and much needed. This coffee was roasted at Cenfrocafe where they sell roasted coffee around the country. The farmers in this area are leading the way in pricing in the country and have contributed to Cenfrocafe delivering the highest ave prices to any group of farmers in Peru. The farmers who have their coffee find it into the best categories get paid extra for their efforts. Our next stop was a farm owned by a woman in the Flor y Fauna Association. Her name was Jenara Campos Garcia.

She is looking to start using the Guano de Isla (sea bird Guano) fertilizer on her farm to improve tree health and production. The trees have a better chance of resisting Ojo de Pollo (Chicken Eye fungus) if they are healthy.

On our second full day we stayed in Jaen & visited the Cenfrocafe Coffee Bar.

We will be keeping you posted on these coffees as we cup pre-ships and as they arrive later this autumn.